Stylee Fridays: Samuel Fosso Revisited
- story THE FADER
Seeing the FADER style department’s handiwork mounted on ICP walls (photographer Krisanne Johnson and contributing Style Editor Mobolaji Dawodu’s ATL fashion story) was one of the biggest reasons to be cheerful on our field trip to the institute’s Year of Fashion. The other was Samuel Fosso—a glorious black and white self-portrait of the Nigerian photographer wearing the jazziest, whitest, most high-waisted sailor pants we’ve ever seen, all styled against the monochrome checker board that is his studio floor. On someone else this outfit might have been ridiculous. On Fosso it is ridiculously stylee. The image is part of “This is Not a Fashion Photograph,” a collection of iconic pictures never intentionally shot as fashion photography but all with that elusive air of style about them. In amongst the Cindy Shermans, Larry Clarks and Gordon Parks, Fosso might just be the awesomest oddball in the bunch.
