Those are interresting views.
I agree with Fred - and have said exactly the same thing about my own work - it really is the same old shot/emotion coming through (at least it is as plain as a pikestaff to me) - and I think I, and also most other people, just can't escape ourselves. It doesn't matter what the thing in front of the camera - the treatment seems to be coming from the same part of the brain; or is it the groin? Nah, I don't do lillies.
On the other hand, perhaps that's why I fell in love with 50s Cadillacs: those chromed breasts jutting out of the bumpers out there in front... or even the illuminating perspex lady on the hood of the DeSoto (I hope it isn't a memory failure again).
Horvat's weakness. That's a difficult one. How much of any of it - the career choices - was really down to him, to any of us? He seems to have had his fair share of ups and downs: magazines going bust on him; editors changing mid-stream; had he specialized, I wonder would he have been a better pj than fashion shooter? I think that the one led to the other: his pj stuff is echoed in the early fashion where he takes it into the steet, into bars, the races, all the new things that turned the page from the stuffy to the cool. Sieff also jumped interests a few times before landing squarely in the pages of Vogue et al.
The other complication, of course, is that some minds are more restless than others. There are those who can stick within a single discipline all their days and those who just can't for one reason or another. Again using my own example, I would have been as happy staying in fashion, I think, but it died around me. So, calendars became my escape from one burning field over the fence into the neighbouring one. The fashion days were much easier from a basic shooting point of view: the clothes were the subject. Simple as that. With the cals, one had to dream up all manner of extraneous stuff to create themes, continuity etc. etc. But, at least they got me out of the studio, and I always loved trips.
Rob C
EDIT: GIven the idea situation, and the benefit of hindsight, I think I would have rather stayed in fashion and also done straight nudes, cutting out the general calendar stuff. Not that I didn't enjoy it, because I did, but fashion, of the right kind, can give you the same opportunities for exciting femininity which is maybe the greatest buzz of all - and the nude can give you fun with shapes and light.