Image essay

For Open 8, the editors invited Pascale Gatzen to make a visual contribution, more specifically in reaction to The Regime of Visibility by Camiel van Winkel. As a fashion designer, Pascale Gatzen is primarily interested in fashion as a formal system of codification and production of meaning. Gatzen won international fame with photos of clothing she made herself, which were published in various fashion magazines. Her clothes are meticulous re-creations of the two-dimensional images of clothing as presented in fashion spreads in magazines such as Purple, i-D magazine and Vogue, but rather than interpreting the items of clothing from the fashion spreads (the collaborative interpretation of designer, stylist and photographer) as derivatives of an original, as representation, Gatzen treats them as something that can be treated as inspiration, as source. By photographing the remake and presenting it alongside the photo from the fashion collection on which it is based, Gatzen manages to liberate the image from the representation, or, put more precisely, opts to revise image and representation in a way that transcends their limitations.