Suicide-themed fashion feature VICE: Art, offensive, or both?

"Last Words" is a fashion series with the models recurring suicide of female authors who tragically ended her own life. It is part of our 2013 Fiction issue, one that is entirely dedicated to women writers, photographers, illustrators, painters and other contributors.  VICE magazine fashion spreads are always unconventional and address with an editorial in the art of perspective rather than typically an editorial photo. Our main goal is to create clever images, with the message of fashion, rather than driving. "Last Words" was created in this tradition and focused on the disappearance of a group of writers whose lives we do not want to cut short tragically, especially in their own hands. We are no longer displayed "Last Words" on our website and apologize for all that has been hurt or offended. Originally published at 10:30: VICE never, never hesitate to push the envelope, and we love it for that. Not a day goes by without a mini-controversy breaks on the properties of the mag. But today there is a big problem, and we are very reluctant to justify the title of art. The film "Last Words" describes the suicide of a number of influential writers such as Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Iris Chang, and Charlotte Perkins. And when we say that we mean that quite literally. Beautiful models lookalike arise staged photos based on the final moments of the actual lives of the most influential voices. One holds a gun to his mouth, another blood flowing from his wrists in the sink, spread another lie on the ground after a fall from a tall building. Undoubtedly, the photographs are powerful Annabel Mehran guaranteed to cause a deep response and may be disrupted. These are all things that we believe are common characteristics of great art. But it is when you scroll down and under "Suno dress, Chloe Sevigny for Opening Ceremony x Bass Shoes" under a photo of Sylvia Plath studied in an open oven begin to feel things very inappropriate. The fact that the lives of these women have done this way does not mean that they should not be honored. In addition, suicide is not a question that should be ignored. There are many reasons why an artist might be interested in this abyss painful moments of contemplative life (and death). But if you frame as an editorial fashion, something is not right. This looks much more to glorify and beautify suicide, an honest representation. And yet, when we saw these pictures in a gallery, we may feel very differently about it - in fact, we are not even necessarily a judgment about the artistic and aesthetic quality of the photos themselves.  But in this case the context is important, and for us it is what makes it a rather insensitive property that is not so much to cross the boundaries and challenge than break completely because of the shock value has.