Steven Meisel is the greatest fashion photographer ever. There, I’ve said it. While the history of the medium is stacked with dazzling talents, none of them has quite matched Meisel’s range and passion and understanding of fashion. “Many of the good photographers don’t care anything about fashion, ” Franca Sozzani, the late editor of Vogue Italia, once said. “They just like to make an image. But Steven really likes fashion. And he’s the only photographer who has anything new to say about it.”
And he got to say it over and over and over again, thanks to Sozzani, who virtually handed her magazine to him on a platter. Vogue Italia wasn’t the world’s bestselling fashion magazine (its American cousin outstripped it in sales by at
