In her next post on curating Capturing the Catwalk, Meghan Hansen explains how she created the impressive light box that sits at the entrance of the exhibition – and why it’s an important part of runway history.

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Different people learn in different ways, so I was particularly interested in providing several different modes of experiencing Michel Arnaud’s photography.

Will Arnaud examining the lightbox at the entrance of Capturing the Catwalk.

Communicating the great scope and quantity of the Arnaud Archive was a particularly goal of mine. The nearly 200,000 color slides take up an entire wall of shelves in my office — organized alphabetically by designer name, and by date and season within each designer section.

With this in mind, I featured a single fashion show on a lightbox. The Givenchy haute couture collection by Alexander McQueen for Fall/Winter 1997-1998 was one of the final collections that Arnaud photographed before leaving fashion to pursue architectural, interior, and portrait photography. Upon entering the exhibition, the visitor is faced with a large lightbox custom-made for the exhibition. There are 220 photographs laid out of the box, which show the photographs Arnaud shot for this single collection (approximately twenty minutes long in person).

In order to accommodate the lightbox’s size, I actually had to cut the number of photographs in half. There were about 400 photographs in the Givenchy collection, as many as twenty for a single ensemble. I put the images in runway order and eliminated photos that were out of focus, blurred, or similar to other shots. The resulting display gives the visitor an idea of how vast the Archive is, including thousands of runway shows documented by Arnaud from 1970 to 1998. It also provides insight into the challenge of reducing the fashion news to just a few images to be featured in the season’s fashion spreads.

The lightbox also features a magnifying glass, which can be used to inspect the small “thumbnail” images on view. This is a similar experience to fashion editing in the days of 35mm film. In the evening, after attending a full day of fashion shows, photographers and editors worked at lightboxes in their hotel rooms, reviewing hundreds or even thousands of photographs. Pieces were selected for editorial shoots, accessories and trends were pinpointed, and runway photographs were selected for publication.

Arnaud examines his work on the custom-built lightbox in Capturing the Catwalk.

I encourage you all to visit Capturing the Catwalk at the FIDM Museum before it closes on July 7. Examine Alexander McQueen’s F/W 1997 collection as if you were a fashion editor. Let us know on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter which looks you would like to feature in your magazine!