Craig McDean‘s portraits for the Prada autumn/winter 15 menswear campaign eschew colour and location, favouring a simplicity and style that the Italian fashion house summarise with the phrase: “nothing more than is necessary”. Like the spring/summer shoot, the new campaign features a selection of Hollywood’s leading men, but this time around there are no odd props or intriguing backdrops.
The leads are cinematic supermen: Batman v Superman’s Scoot McNairy features alongside Man of Steel’s Michael Shannon and 18 year old Tye Sheridan, who will appear in next year’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Wearing double breasted suits jackets, neat, slightly glossy shirting and tailored overcoats, the men are intelligent New Wave icons, doing all the acting with their eyes and arm gestures. In the film that accompanies the static images, these gestures come to life with pensive movement and jerky dancing.
“These photographs are studies of what it means to be an individual stripped of artifice,” the campaign notes state, adding that the mood is inspired by the photographic style of outtakes made popular in the 60s and 70s, when “cinema and music dared to break free from staged perfection.”