And in January the International Center of Photography (ICP), in New York, launched its "Year of Fashion," a series of six exhibitions organized by the ICP’s Carol Squiers and guest curator Aletti. Among the four shows currently on view through May 3 are a solo exhibition of Edward Steichen’s commercial work produced during his reign as chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair, from 1923 to 1937, and "Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now," which includes tear sheets and enlarged, framed photographs by contemporary big-shots like Klein; Nick Knight, who began as a favorite of i-D in the ’80s; Meisel; Roversi; the Norwegian Sølve Sundsbø; Teller; and Bruce Weber, who, in recent years, is responsible for Abercrombie & Fitch’s steamy billboards and catalogue imagery. On May 15, "Avedon Fashion: Photographs, 1944-2000" takes center stage at the museum.

Meanwhile, in Milan, "Extreme Beauty in Vogue," an exhibition commissioned by the fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana and art-directed by the architect Jean Nouvel, opens on March 4 in the Palazzo della Ragione. The show, which runs through May 10, is a look back at 75 years of fashion photography in Vogue by Avedon, Annie Leibovitz (of Vanity Fair portrait fame), Klein and Penn, to name a few.

Contemporary fashion pictures have been surfacing at photography fairs as well. In December, Art Photo Expo, held during Art Basel Miami Beach, presented the second edition of its sale exposition In Fashion Photo, with 250 works by 35 fashion photographers, including the British lensman Miles Aldridge, known for his highly stylized and decadently glamorous pictures; the French photographer Bettina Rheims, who is celebrated for her portraiture — both fine-art and commercial, for clients like Chanel; and Sundsbø. Prices, according to François Trabelsi, who organized the show, ranged from $4,000 to $100,000.

Not many dealers, however, have a history of selling contemporary fashion work. The few notable exceptions include New York’s Staley-Wise Gallery and Hamiltons Gallery, in London, which shows primarily vintage pictures. Such sparse representation is partly because fashion images tend to acquire value in collectors’ eyes only with historical distance; freshly published pictures don’t yet have the patina of a classic Avedon or Penn.

Also holding the market back is the fact that commercial photographers often earn much more from a single day’s shoot than from the sale of one of their prints through a dealer. Some of them, moreover, are exclusively focused on creating images that reproduce well in publication. Meisel, for instance, "really works for the page," says Aletti, who notes that Meisel is in nearly every issue of Italian Vogue (which is edited by Franca Sozzani and art-directed by Luca Stoppini), where he is often given as many as 30 pages, providing him with creative leeway not seen in many American publications.

Commercial photographers, of course, work with stylists, editors and designers, a collaboration that perhaps complicates the creative ownership of an image. The issue of legal ownership was simplified in the 1970s, when, according to Staley-Wise’s Taki Wise, contracts were changed so that the copyright belongs to the photographer. Challenges remain for fashion photographers when it comes to creating a market for their work, including the job of figuring out how to define their editions. Fine-art photographers, says Wise, sometimes limit their prints to as few as three or five in number. But many are prepared to take on these tasks. "They want to be perceived as artists; they want to have that attention in the gallery world and to be collected," says Aletti. There’s evidence that today’s fashion photographers are starting to earn this respect.

Last fall, for the first time, New York’s Cook Fine Arts exhibited contemporary work, including prints by Aldrige and fellow Englishman Simon Emmett, priced at $5,000 and $4,500 respectively, alongside classic photographs by Avedon and the like. "There are so many extraordinary images that just happen to be fashion images," says gallery director Scott Cook. "If we keep showing them regularly, people will start buying them."