ART & DESIGN

Donna Down Under

Donna Karan, known for embracing spiritual adventure, has teamed up with fashion photographer Russell James, whose exhibit “Nomad Two Worlds” will go up in January at Karan’s Stephan Weiss studio in New York’s West Village....


arar_donna_karan_v.jpg

Donna Karan, known for embracing spiritual adventure, has teamed up with fashion photographer Russell James, whose exhibit “Nomad Two Worlds” will go up in January at Karan’s Stephan Weiss studio in New York’s West Village. For the series, James (who also shoots Victoria’s Secret’s steamy ad campaigns) spent a month traveling through the Australian outback photographing sacred Aboriginal sites and inviting indigenous artists to paint “story” onto the images to illustrate the country’s cultural conflict. “I wanted to go on the trip with him,” says Karan, who ultimately decided the journey would be too strenuous, adding, “I love L.A., and to me [Australia] is sort of the L.A. of the world, with more of the cultural aspect of it.”

Water triptych: Courtesy of Russell James