SHOWstudio 'Master' Project

In celebration of Nick Knight's Mastered course, SHOWstudio presents a series of films and stills chosen by Tessa Kuragi and Tom Hingston and created by a selection of the students involved. Born out of a desire to bring a genuine and personal portrayal of sex back to the forefront of contemporary fashion, Knight asked his students to create an image taken from an erotic film of their creation.

Knight explained to the students, 'The fact that on two huge media image platforms, Facebook and Instagram, it is not allowed to show a woman nipples, this is taking us back to almost Victorian moral values and worse still sends out a very harmful message to women, that showing your breasts is in someway wrong and even sinful.

Even the most natural action of breastfeeding is now becoming taboo in public in the United States. It is important to re-address this imbalance in the media and it is only done so by showing how important and how brilliant imagery of this sort can be.

'I am not looking for imagery that objectifies women or men and I believe if the model is part of the creative process, informed and most importantly consensual to being part of it, then the subject is not being objectified.'

The results present an erotic catalogue of imagery taken from the moving picture, exploring both the possibilities of contemporary eroticism and the development of the fashion image in motion. The submissions presented here were chosen by Knight himself, alongside model and artist Tessa Kuragi and graphic designer Tom Hingston.

CMXCIX

"Shot in Mount Bromo, East Java and Bali - Indonesia, this film is a modern interpretation of an ancient Indonesian legend, Rara Jonggrang. A prince in a far away land cannot marry his bride unless he is able to build a thousand temple in one night. The spectacular scenery and saturated colours draw together the old world and the new with this fashion film take on magical realism." 

Nilgin Yusuf, Director of Media and Programmes at the London College of Fashion & Contributing Fashion Writer for SHOWstudio