I’ve never been much of a fashionista. I’m more of an “annual visit to Woollies for my chinos and shirts” kind of guy, inclined to be disdainful of the vanity, posturing and consumerist frenzy of the fashion industry.
But I’m also a Meryl Streep fan, which means I’m persuaded by the unforgettable speech in The Devil Wears Prada in which her character, Miranda Priestly, explains — with haughty finesse and unquestionable authority — how the runways in Paris, New York, London and Milan trigger innumerable mechanisms that eventually lead to the paltry selection of items hanging in my closet.
Recently I’ve been watching old seasons of Next in Fashion with my kids, who have not inherited their father’s prejudices and are strangely patient in updating me on popular culture. Pitting budding designers against each other, Next in Fashion is one of those reality shows in which the participants demonstrate astonishing skill under pressure. It also tugs at the heartstrings as viewers are given insights into the designers’ personal and professional struggles.
So I no longer roll my eyes when I hear people affirming that fashion is about storytelling and identity. I’ve also learnt to look beyond pouting models and catwalk struts to see the full picture of artistry and even activism in fashion.
I admit that there is unlikely to be much of the latter in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which comes out in the first week of May (timed to coincide with the 2026 Met Gala). And I reserve my right to quote Marx on “the murderous, meaningless caprices of fashion” as exemplary of capitalism’s excess, inequality and exploitation when I want to sound progressive at dinner parties. But that dismissal is, I know, too simplistic.
A more nuanced engagement with this multifaceted phenomenon can be found in Fashion_The Image, an exhibition at the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography and the neighbouring Inside Out Centre for the Arts in the Joburg suburb of Forest Town (until May 30). Curated by creative director Sharon Armstrong and editor Aspasia Karras with Erica de Greef and Ayabukwa Magocoba of the African Fashion Research Institute, the collected material extends beyond the narrow categories of “fashion” and “photography” to explore visual culture countrywide and the continent more broadly.
A key aim of the exhibition is to promote fashion photography as an artistic discipline in its own right, rather than purely as an adjunct to or in service of the fashion industry. Yet the credits below each image — listing not only the photographer but also the names of the designer, stylist, hair and makeup artist and model — remind us of how many people it takes to produce these collaborative works.
The photographs are truly arresting. The material arranged at the Inside Out Centre benefits from (even when it clashes with) the quirky and often grotesque installations in Ballen’s permanent exhibition. This counterpoint also applies to Ballen’s own “fashion” photography, ranging from older pieces like his photos of Selma Blair for the New York Times to direct responses to the exhibition theme — whether employing Ellé the stuffed baboon as a model or depicting human models made to look like mannequins and masked in animalistic guises. Ballen challenges the boundaries of the category of fashion photography no less than the boundaries between beauty and the beastly.
The relationship between the art/artifice of fashion and the natural world spurs another visual subtheme that positions the model against or within vivid landscapes. The complementary “Movers and Makers” section of the exhibition is explicitly urban.
More specifically, it considers how fashion photography in Joburg “has interrogated and reimagined norms of gender, style and visibility”. These brightly coloured prints are offset by the black and white images in a section dedicated to Lesotho-born, Paris-based photographer Koto Balofo.
Various fashion-related short films are also running on a loop. Some of this material fits more directly into Ballen’s distinctly macabre aesthetic; other artists have produced upbeat music videos, while cows, idyllic rural vistas and bold fabrics feature in a short-form Imprint love story.
With dozens of photographers on display, Fashion_The Image is a treat and a provocation for the fashion-forward and the fashion-phobic alike.
This article was first published in Business Day.
