Fashionista by Dave Yoder

fashion (n)

c. 1300, fasoun, "physical make-up or composition; form, shape; appearance," from Old French façon, fachon, fazon "face, appearance; construction, pattern, design; thing done; beauty; manner, characteristic feature" (12c.), from Latin factionem (nominative factio) "a making or doing, a preparing," also "group of people acting together," from facere "to make"

-ist

word-forming element meaning "one who does or makes," also used to indicate adherence to a certain doctrine or custom, from French -iste and directly from Latin -ista

When I left my California newspaper job to begin freelancing in Milan, I had no interest in fashion; rugby, surfing, and adventures in photojournalism were my passions. But Art Streiber in LA urged me to visit an editor at the Fairchild office in Milan. Absurdly, I took a photo essay I had shot on bounty hunters, a gritty portfolio that was the farthest extreme from fashion photography I could have chosen. To my surprise the editor loved it and hired me, to shoot in my reportage style, backstage at the largest shows in Milan. I had acquired a coveted spot available to only a handful of top fashion photographers and had no idea how lucky I was.

A few years later the director of Visa Pour l'Image, the most prominent photojournalism festival in the world, berated me for sending these pictures for his festival. They were insultingly far from photojournalism to him. But he didn't see in them the dedication and effort I had grown to respect in the industry. That same year at the festival, David Griffin, the director of photography at National Geographic, said "if you could shoot archaeology like you shoot fashion, that could be really great." It was like he turned on a light and showed me a new path right in front of me.