Photographic suspension and disbelief: fashioned bodies in oscillation

The term ‘the fashioned body’ encompasses both the physical body and the cultural body as site for the presentation and reading of status from the everyday to the epic in the spectacle of dress and body adornment. Photography offers up a unique space for the playing out and alignment of this material, where ‘bodies’ can be derived and fabricated and held within a suspension of disbelief. This presupposes a certain reference point, or ‘model of the body’ situated within a particular cultural scope, and necessarily brings with it matter and application that oscillates back and forth across art, fashion and photography.
This is of our own making, and a convention that is referenced in theory and practice that constructs, interrogates and propagates what fashion/ the fashioned body has been, is and might be in response to a pluralism of concepts and contexts. This paper presents an articulation of these, specifically in relation to photographic practice and performance.