Nelson Fitch is sitting at a table in Unicorn Café, where he opens his MacBook and begins scrolling through hundreds of photographs. “About 90 percent of them I dislike. But that’s pretty typical,” he says as he points out a few here and there with starred ratings. Out of the 311 pictures, only five will be published.
Fitch, a Weinberg junior at Northwestern, joined the ranks at STITCH a year ago. Now a photo editor for the biannual fashion magazine, he’s putting the finishing touches on the new issue, which debuts today.
He pulls up a black-and-white photo of a barefoot woman, touching land after a jump. Her coat and long skirt are captured flowing in mid-flight. “We definitely knew we wanted this.”
For Fitch, the four-hour photo shoot began before he ever set foot in the Kresge classroom where the photo was taken. “Before the shoot, I spent hours and hours messing around in Photoshop with some different looks and ideas.”
“You take a picture with the edit in mind. I knew what kind of aesthetic I wanted in the end, so you have to light it and have the setting be conducive for the editing.” With the original photo of the jumping girl, he mimics the process of shooting for a black-and-white image with high contrast, dramatic lighting and theatrical pose. The original photo shows a light in the background and a detailed white backdrop. With a few clicks of the mouse, the photo transforms in seconds to a powerful pose etched from a black and white fashion icon.
In the upcoming issue-in the works since October-the photography centers around ideas of youth, subversion and rebellion. “What I like about this issue is that it feels like STITCH is moving forward. We set out to accomplish a magazine that a Vogue editor could look at and not think ‘that’s some dumb student group.’ “
On top of striving to set the bar pretty high, it’s no easy task trying to get the clothes, the model and the pose to portray the exact concept the magazine looks for. “There’s the basic element of having to represent clothing, which is actually kind of a pain,” he says, laughing. “Because often, I’m looking for just a certain image I want to associate with this clothing or in this issue. Defining that image varies.”
Fitch says the black and gray clothing mirrors that of a “peasant’s outfit.” That doesn’t mean any of these outfits come cheap; STITCH borrows a lot of its featured clothing from Bonnie and Clyde’s, a luxury boutique in Wicker Park. Model selection revolved around the clothes they were using, because this issue features many black and white photos. And for Fitch, dark clothes meant a woman with dark hair.
Fitch began photographing in high school, where he used his brother’s digital Canon Rebel and a Minolta A200 to learn the ropes. Come junior year, the Fitch brothers began to work for a start-up photography business. Fitch met Matthew Alfonso, editor of STITCH (Full disclosure: Alfonso will be a columnist for The Weekly this quarter), his sophomore year in a photo class. From there, he was invited to come aboard.
“I’ve always been interested in fashion photography because they always stress the limits of the medium of photography, and that’s a lot of fun to me.”
With this new issue of STITCH, consider the limits stressed.
