“Where did all the weirdness go?” the emperor posed upon attending the International Center of Photography's (Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, NYC) current show, Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now, on view from January 16th through May 3rd.

ICP is holding a cultural, fashion history exhibition of mainly the last two years, as shown in tear sheets and covers from fashion’s leading magazines. The most notable trend is the prevailing digital coating on so many photos: the possibility of a single hand at play, a unifying sensibility found in very dissimilar artist/fashion photographers. Most of the exhibition’s photos proclaim their creative differentiation while dressed in fashion’s status quo. It is more than a fashion photo exhibition. It is a pictorial study in the relinquishment of responsibility, a willingness to part with sole credit for their work. Paradoxically, the images are created to promote brand recognition.

A degree of psychological compassion is engendered when the photo displays that old battle of the obfuscated self from the one already defined. Here art is the black hole that pulls one out of an already accomplished terrain. ICP rather well, if not intentionally, documents where fashion photography lies in regard to artistic work and how it is weird that addressing the assigned task -- promoting the magazine in question’s advertisers -- is not the primary concern.

However, when the artist moves to the fashion photographer’s slot, the repositioning has a pragmatic credibility: financial benefits, but the “I am an artist” still holds, for “look at my other work” is always scrawled in one corner of the photo.

When fashion photos show their own identity, not revamped as self-portraits, the artistic-fashion photographer emerges, not as crossover, but one immune to trends: nothing weird about his images, but all so very beautifully clothed.

The exhibition rather cleverly divided the show into many sections, designated with roman numerals, but no material is provided to explain the reasons for the respective divisions, nor why such seemingly gratuitous titling was used. None of the numbered sections has any distinctive components; in fact, each part is a metaphorical compliment of another section: all are different, but do not warrant divisional placement: the analogy to the digital trend is curatorially shown.