Life as a Runway

Street style is a medium that’s hard to shoot.  At this point, it’s so ubiquitous that it’s overwrought, yet there’s an allure in capturing stylish people going about their business that’s very much of the city and requires engaging with the full depth of humanity to understand.  Yet there are countless photographers repeating the same formula, losing sight of the medium’s roots.  Scott Schuman, who runs the blog The Sartorialist, has maintained a sense of that is unique, even though he tends to shoot the same people within the fashion industry nowadays, focusing less on random people on the street who catch his eye.  Aside from Schuman, the late, great Bill Cunningham was one of the few people who captured this style well, and his keen eye is missed in a day and age where shooting groups of influencers walking out of Fashion Week shows passes for street style photography.  This is “street photography” as a staged and performative gesture, since these influencers wear outfits lent to them by major houses and are paid to be shot and have their image disseminated on the internet.   

Since Cunningham passed last year, The New York Times has given greater prominence to their semi-weekly street style features called “Life as a Runway.”  While they don’t have the randomness found in Cunningham’s work, they find elements of style in various places, whether at a gallery opening in Los Angeles, a prominent FiDi ad agency or a Whole Foods in Williamsburg.  The desire to showcase style from both major events and everyday occurrences is the embodiment of the medium’s democratization, proof that anyone, no matter their walk of life, can develop the eye to create an outfit that beguiles, appeals or pushes the boundaries of the now into something we’ll see more of in the future.  

The difference between “Life as a Runway” and Cunningham’s work is that it is scripted.  The beauty of photographers like Cunningham and Schuman is that they rely on random chance; even Schuman’s most stylized shots seem like the subject could have turned a corner, not knowing they were about to be snapped and have their outfit seen by millions of style mavens.  Though “Life as a Runway” has a more overt storyline than either Cunningham or Schuman’s photography, it brings style photojournalism out of the counterculture (originated on blogs like The Selby and Backyard Bill) and into the cultural vanguard.  The outfits tell as much of a story as the brief texts describing them, and it’s amusing to see how the people - some regular citizens, some niche celebrities like Carrie Brownstein or Kim Gordon - react to the photographer’s lens and the reporter’s inquisition.  

“Life as a Runway” is the culmination of the dawning of our visual age, since even the most literary-minded people now want images to accompany their text.  Images provide a reference point and concreteness to a story; they engage both the analytical and creative parts of the mind.  While this comes at the loss of imagination - since the story is told for us, rather than allowing us to draw our own, perhaps misguided, conclusions about a scene from someone’s outfit - it introduces us to a new type of style journalism that intrigues due to its multidisciplinary roots and its ability to reassure that street photography is still alive and, in some cases, evolving.

All photos courtesy of The New York Times.