Celebrating the art of travel since 1854, this autumn Louis Vuitton is setting off again for new horizons, with the publication of three additional titles in its Fashion Eye Series of photography books: Vienna by Stefanie Moshammer, Hong Kong by Frank Horvat and Deauville by Omar Victor Diop. As with the previous titles, each book reveals a country, region, city or place through the eyes of a fashion photographer.
With affection and wit, the Austrian photographer Stefanie Moshammer plays on familiar clichés about Vienna and offers an unexpected portrait of her hometown, while a selection of largely unpublished black-and-white images of 1960s Hong Kong by the Italian-born French photographer Frank Horvat reveals a city whose teeming streets never seem to grow weary of their thronging pedestrians. For his part, the Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop trains his lens on Deauville, the iconic seaside resort on the Normandy coast, exalting its streets and edifices, but also exploring its connections with his native Dakar.
A natural fit for the soul of travel, photography is an evident form of expression for Louis Vuitton, whose editorial process makes sure that the book is granted the status of a medium in its own right, with the singular aim of continually renewing its visual vocabulary. Fashion Eye is a tailor-made series: each type of paper or binding, each layout, and sometimes even the printing processes used, in keeping with artisanal tradition, serve the title at hand. For a book is first and foremost the work of an author, a designer and a printer.
Title after title, a broad compendium of perspectives emerges, one that shifts with the destinations, including urban panoramas and natural landscapes, scenes of local life, and more contemplative work, with images in colour and/or black and white. Each book in the series features an ample selection of large-format photographs, accompanied by biographical information and an interview with the photographer or a critical essay. Fashion Eye gives rise to an unprecedented dialogue between emerging talent, seasoned photographers and fashion photography legends. It confronts contemporary creation with little-known archival treasures to create a collection of invaluable reference works, as much in terms of its approach as its aesthetics.
Vienna | Stefanie Moshammer
Austrian photographer Stefanie Moshammer plays with common Vienna clichés and offers an extraordinary portrait of her home city. She brilliantly creates visual stories that connect a multitude of levels of interpretation by following the paths opened up by her formal exploration of elements ranging from staging scenes to abstraction to screenshots.
Starting from the space Vienna occupies in the collective imagination, with all its clichés, she likes to involve her readers in the physical and mental mysteries of the Austrian capital, drawing inspiration from its significant personalities and important historical sites, but also producing self-reflexive moments. The result is a narrative like no other, where past and present are engaged in a rambling conversation to better give shape to a certain vision of what Vienna is… or is not.
About Stefanie Moshammer
Stefanie Moshammer, born in 1988, is a visual artist whose practice takes place at the intersection of empiricism and experimentation. After receiving a diploma in textile design from Vienna’s Hetzendorf Fashion School, she studied graphic design and photography at the University of Art Design in Linz before taking courses in advanced visual storytelling and social and cultural anthropology. Stefanie Moshammer is the author of several books, including Vegas and She (Fotohof Edition, 2015), Land of Black Milk (Skinnerboox, 2017), Not Just Your Face Honey (Spector Books, 2018) and Each Poison, A Pillow (Images Vevey, 2023).
She has received numerous awards and accolades, and her work has been published in various print and online publications such as i-D, Art – Das Kunstmagazin, ZEITmagazin and Harper’s Bazaar. Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Austria, but also throughout Europe as well as in the United States, China and South Korea.
Fashion Eye Hong Kong & Fashion Eye Deauville
With a selection of largely unpublished black-and-white images from 1960s Hong Kong, Italian-born French photographer Frank Horvat presents a city whose teeming streets never seem to tire. Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, on the other hand, turns his lens on Deauville, the famous seaside resort on the Normandy coast, and shows its streets and buildings, but also the connections to his hometown Dakar.