London 2007

Hedi Slimane photographed Courtney Love in concert at Bush Hall, London on July 9th 2007. Images are from his Rock Diary.

Slimane's photos of rock fans have been published more widely than his photos of rock stars. Anybody with a similar level of VIP access and a similar level of super-expensive equipment could take similar pictures and probably nobody would take any special notice of them. The difference is that Slimane's photos can be read as primal sources for the megastar fashion career.

As the official Rock Diary somewhat obliquely explains –

HEDI SLIMANE STARTED TO PHOTOGRAPH FANS SINCE THE EARLY 2000, AND THE BIRTH OF A NEW GENERATION IN UK / GERMANY / US / AND FRANCE.
HEDI SLIMANE WAS CLOSELY ASSOCIATED TO THIS SCENE, THROUGH HIS FASHION DESIGN / STAGE DESIGN, AND EARLY STAGE PHOTOGRAPHS.
THE ROCK DIARY WAS CREATED IN THE EARLY 2000, AND STARTED TO BE PUBLISHED IN V MAGAZINE.
STAGE, AND LATER, LONDON BIRTH OF A CULT, WERE THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHY ESSAYS EVER PUBLISHED ON THE NEW ROCK SCENE. THE BOOKS FEATURE MANY OF THOSE FANS PHOTOGRAPHS ( ROCK DIARY / JRP RINGIER PUBLISHING ) 

These vague, redundant sentences in all-caps are considered perfectly adequate as text to accompany the work of the man who is now paid huge sums to do the work Yves Saint Laurent used to do, and before that was paid huge sums to do the work Christian Dior used to do. The horribleness of this prose is a handy, tidy little piece of proof that language itself is becoming of so little importance in comparison to images that it can be served up as near-meaningless mush (like that above) and nobody will either notice or care.