I don't know why Rob but your mention of Hans Feure brought to mind this article which you may find interesting:
https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2016/04/23/is-it-still-fashionable-to-be-a-fashion-photographer/
Thanks for your link, Chris; the article was fairly as I remember the scene to have been, other than that
Blow Up was seen, at the time, as something of a joke by we who had nursed our interest from an epoch a decade or so previously. To be specific, that scene where the two chicks and the hero destroy a roll of background paper by cavorting on it would never have happened on my watch: Colorama was just too bloody expensive to waste like that. I even used to put masking tape on all the girls' shoes just to avoid scuff marks. Photoshop might have saved me the trouble...
But yes, I do think that I wouldn't fit into the role today. Throughout my years at it, all the models were perfectly capable of doing their own hair and makeup even though the artists for the above functions already existed. I suppose it was a matter of geography and budgets, and as Brian Duffy explains in his video about the shoot for the iconic Bowie image, if you want to make it expensive, you have come to the right place!
Heroin chic and the younger set wasn't, I think, as much about style as about inability to work on a higher, more developed professional level. But death became a clean-up man, as in the
Pulp Fiction sense, where today, memory of it features in insurance company commercials.
I believe the greatest change is caused by the slow death of print, coupled with the increased difficulty in trying to make a go of it (photography) as a viable profession as distinct from a trustafarian's delight. I just found a link, yesterday, to Sandra Lousada, a photographer whose work I enjoyed from way back; I discovered that she came from an established, showbiz/arts family... how do you compete? Which is not to denigrate the great work that she does, but unless doors are ajar, you have little to no chance of getting your foot across the threshold.
Thanks for thinking of me!
Rob