NEW YORK, NY — Daisy Chain Biannual formalizes a simple conviction: fashion photography is art.
Historically, image-making has been supported through well-established systems of patronage, perhaps most notably during the Renaissance when artists were commissioned by church, court, and merchant patrons to produce works that constructed narrative, articulated identity, and ultimately came to define cultural memory.
In the twentieth century, fashion photography operated within an analogous structure. Editorial production functioned as a form of secular myth-making sustained by institutions capable of financing ambitious visual work. In recent years, however, the infrastructure of visibility has shifted. As institutional models of curation were displaced by algorithmic distribution, attention became quantifiable and the credibility of institutions eroded, the conditions of image production and circulation are forever changed.
Daisy Chain honors the lineage of commissioned image-making by establishing a space in which images may be produced on their own terms. Conceived as a biannual book rather than a conventional magazine, the publication provides a platform for exploration guided independently of commercial considerations. By placing canonical art photography and editorials in deliberate dialogue, Daisy Chain affirms the primacy of image-making.