Roxanne Lowit

For over three decades, the unique lens of Roxanne Lowit has captured the faces, personalities, and spaces of modern culture. To review her incomparable work is to step behind the proverbial velvet rope. To see her images is to witness the creation and the celebration of fashion and art and theater and film, pleasure and joy and aesthetic delight. Lowit has photographed thousands of luminaries, including Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Kate Moss, Yves Saint-Laurent, Johnny Depp, Madonna, and George Clooney. Lowit has always done things differently. A native New Yorker, she was originally a textile designer. But she found her true calling crafting imagery of a different kind, and then created an entirely new genre of photography by taking her Instamatic where nobody else wanted to go: backstage at fashion shows. While everyone else was fixated on the runway, she captured the real action was where the rest of the photographers weren’t looking. Her epiphany typifies her keen eye for new possibilities—and it transformed fashion photography forever. But she has gone even further, elevating her medium into fine art. Lowit’s work has been exhibited in many of the world’s major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Victoria & Albert Museum; the Warhol Museum; and the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow. Her photographs are part of the permanent collection of Japan’s prestigious Kobe Fashion Museum. She has also been featured in one-woman shows in New York, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London, as well as at group exhibitions at the Gagosian Gallery, Colette, and Art Basel Miami.

Pages in sketchbook 

For my secondary research I decided to bring my attention to a photographer known as "Roxanne Lowit" a fashion photographer that is well known for photographing the behind scenes of the fashion world and is from the time (nineties). I like her work as I feel she portrays fashion in a unusual and mysterious way as she is allowed back where no other photographer has been before and the way she documents the models is quite inspiring because she captures the models being themselves and having a good time instead of overly staging the photographs and showing the fun side of fashion. Its not all serious, she just have to look closer and go beyond the boundaries of what you aren't allowed to do. I also like how she has used specific lighting techniques to create a portrait for instance the image shown on my sketchbook of the model wearing red lipstick smoking shows the butterfly lighting beautifully. From evaluation her work I feel that Lowit uses a ring flash as the image is perfectly lit on the subject creating a dark background. From looking at her work has made me want to recap on specific lighting techniques used when taking portraits.