Manipulation & Make-Believe In Fashion Photography

In Steven Meisel's 2007 Vogue Italia series,

"Super Mods Enter Rehab", smacked-out-looking models

are dragged along institutional corridors by aggressive

orderlies, take therapeutic baths (though so zonked are they,

they've forgotten to undress), hang out in their

locked-ward dormitories, and generally do their careers

no self-harm whatsoever. Previously, Meisel has had models

play at Homeland Security narcs and terror suspects

I doubt these mockumentary images are intended

as social commentary, or as a lacerating satire of

the fashion industry's atmosphere of vacuous complicity

They are too much part of the game,

too locked in the same hall of mirrors