10 Fashion Photography Icons

Rebeca Saray shares 10 of her favorite fashion photographers with Domestika

With more than a decade of experience, the photographer, director, and digital artist Rebeca Saray (@rebecasaray) has created an unmistakable style.

The unsaturated colors, the delicate expressions, and the use of color are the basic hallmarks of this Spanish artist, whose photographs enable her to experiment with her most whimsical and dreamy side, exploring the themes of nudity, magic and the importance of detail.

Now Rebeca shares with Domestika the names of some of those photographers she most admires in the fashion industry:

Eugenio Recuenco

Considered one of the best and bravest fashion photographers in Spain, Recuenco works with continuous light and a panoramic format. His models tend to tell a story on their own, creating harmony between design and decoration.

“The photographer’s vision goes beyond the camera. We can’t take refuge in the fact that we can operate a camera and other people can’t. The photographer can limit themselves to portray reality without giving an opinion, without having a judgment about what he’s shooting.”

Nick Knight

This English photographer is considered among the most influential fashion photographers due to the constant visionary nature of his work. Knight is an artist who strives to break classical blueprints and aesthetics with his ideas, displaying beautiful images that exalt unconventional beauty.

"I throw my heart and soul into my work. I express my life through the prism of my photography. I use it as a way to pursue my desires".

Helmut Newton

A pioneer in transgression, sensuality, and sexuality in the world of fashion photography, this German photographer creates porno chic through beautiful, timeless images with a naturalist tinge, and represents voyeurism through his photography.

"I’ve always avoided the photography studio. A woman doesn’t go through life sat down or posing in front of a white background".

Tim Walker

A British photographer who regularly works with Vogue, W, and Love, Walker’s style is characterized by the use of color, shapes, and theatricality. As well as working with different designers, he also portrays celebrities, taking them into the world of fashion with a story.

"I love capturing things that could disappear. This is the point of photography. What I am photographing is an imaginary place that never existed, but is connected to something that has been real."

Ellen von Unwerth

Unwerth is an artistic reference-point for both luxury and sophistication. She works as a model herself, which allows her to see photography from both sides and infuse her work with beauty and eroticism. In the 1980s, she photographed Claudia Schiffer. In the 1990s, Duran Duran, Dido, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Rihanna. She is one of the few examples of women working behind the camera in the fashion industry.

"A sexy image can come from anyone who establishes an intimacy with their model. You can take a sexy photo of your cat if you want."

Patrick Demarchelier

This French photographer uses very slim, tall models in his work, focusing on haute couture. His work harnesses natural light; indeed he used a single lighting motif for the majority of his portrayals. Over the course of time he has gained a reputation as a portrait painter, and has demonstrated his aptitude for photographing nature, ethnicities and cultures.

"When you are a photographer, you’re working all the time - because your eye is the main camera."

Manuel Outumuro

After his academic training in graphic design, this Spanish photographer taught himself photography. His camera is an exceptional witness, documenting the history of clothing during the most recent turn of the century. His fashion photographs provide a unique document, one which reflects part of the history of fashion over the course of the last 20 years.

"I don’t think anyone is ‘unphotogenic’. Badly illuminated, if anything. You can take a good photo of any face".

Mario Sierra

Sierra is one of the Spanish photographers with most publications and covers to his name, due to his fresh commercial style, always delivered with impressive care to achieve a very clean aesthetic. Outdoors he prefers natural light and works with out-of-focused backgrounds. He is an expert in selecting just the right amount of props and clothing to lend maximum weight to his models’ expressions.

“Others do scenery, press or weddings… I do fashion. I think it is one of the most complete of all forms of photography.”

Bela Borsodi

This Austrian creator began working as a photographer after studying graphic design and fine arts. In his early days, he focused on the composition of still lifes, and little by little began combining more artistic aspects with elements of graphic design, an essence of craftwork, eroticism, and psychology, to offer an image which is surreal, controversial, irreverent, and raw.

"The photography is the end result, but I am more fascinated by what happens before and the ideas that lie behind".

Annie Leibovitz

For many people, Leibovitz is the most famous photographer of our time. With her characteristic lenses and her black clothing, she’s responsible for some of the most important and iconic photographs of the last 30 years: the image of a naked John Lennon hugging Yoko Ono, and the photograph of Demi Moore showing off her pregnancy, without any clothing. Her style points to two extremes, from the cleanest and most classical to the exploration of dreamlike worlds. But both capture the essence, the intimacy, and the depth of the model.

"If I didn’t have my camera to constantly remind myself that I’m here to do this, I would have run away I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist."

Rebeca Saray offers through Domestika the courses Fashion photography and digital retouching and Photography for artistic nudity. In these courses, you will learn how to create fashion editorials step by step and deliver a photography session with artistic nudes from various creative perspectives.

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