Photographer Miles Ladin is gearing up for his second solo exhibition at the Station Independent Gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Entitled “Supermodels at the End of Time,” the exhibition presents itself as a jab at the fashion industry’s “hollow glamour”; and includes candid, backstage photos of supermodels Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Iman, among others. Many of the photos were taken at high-profile fashion events during Ladin’s assignments for Women’s Wear Daily and W magazine in the 1990s.
Alongside the photographs are text selections from American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis’ 1998 novel Glamorama, which also focused on the excesses and underlying darkness of the fashion industry. Together, the text and images document high fashion’s collusion with, and impact on, American celebrity culture.
The images in Ladin’s exhibition—backstage moments at runway shows, dinner table conversations, the suffocating media presence—aren’t so much satirical in 2016 as they are journalistic, which Ladin himself seems to realize. “The decadence of those days,” he told The New York Times, “now almost seems quaint.”
For more information on the exhibit, click here. “Supermodels at the End of Time” runs from Oct. 7 through Oct. 30.
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