What Lies Beneath: 'Undressed' at McLean Project

THE ANGEL OF DEATH is walking toward you with deliberation, and you can't even see her face, just the shimmering dress.

Photographer Aimee Helen Koch has taken the fairly alarming step of photographing Parisian runway models mid-stride and then painting over every inch of skin, flesh and background with matte black. You're left with just the clothing, afloat in a sea of shadow.

Some of the pictures entice: The clothing is quite fine, after all, in Paris' fall Fashion Week, the subject of "Undressed," at McLean Project for the Arts. But it takes only a confrontational picture like "Shirt #1," a starkly posed jacket in ebullient contrast, collar flared aggressively, grain pumped to the max, even a bit of motion blur to remind you that there is more afoot here than adulation. Koch is taking aim at the way runways are, well, run.

"There's a diverse array of clothes, but you always see the same body type: extremely tall, extremely skinny, extremely beautiful. If you look at the model and think, 'I could never [fit into] that,' is [it being marketed correctly]? What would happen if you took [the model] away?" she asks.

By painting out the people, Koch confronted the issue of self-image. "Anorexia's frightening," she says, hinting at the perils of exposing insecure teenagers to runway fashion.

So why don't fashion designers just use mannequins? "A lot of reasons. You're supposed to be curious, not just about the cufflinks or whatever, but about the person who's wearing that: What are they hiding; what are they covering up? A lot of fashion is getting you to want to undress the wearer," says Koch. "The best clothes are the ones that are provoking you to think about what's under them — not in a purely sexual sense, but also in an identity sense."

"Fashion: It's horrific but it's beautiful," she laments, and you can't help but share her horror in the more ominous photographs; her "Dress #1" — that Angel of Death — feels like an embodiment of the fashion industry as destroyer of self-image.

And if you imagine concern about runway gender issues to be a bit academic, consider this: in three months of shooting, Koch was one of two female photographers among a pack of men. All but a few models were women.

"There's a male gaze and a female object. It strikes you in the face — that's not just something you read about, or something that happened 20 years ago; that's happening every day."

» McLean Project for the Arts, 1234 Ingleside Ave., McLean, through Dec. 20, free; 703-790-1953

Written by Chris Combs/Express
Photo courtesy of Aimee Helen Koch