When American Photo approached Nigel Barker about shooting the magazine’s first-ever fashion story, the America’s Next Top Model judge found that he couldn’t use, well, models. “Nobody reads American Photo for fashion tips or to see a fashion story,” he told us last night at the party for his new exhibit “Moon Warriors,” at Bloomingdale’s in Soho. So Barker used a futuristic prototype camera with extra-long exposures to shoot couture at 2 a.m. on a beach. Because the pictures had to be exposed using only moonlight, models would have had to remain perfectly still for up to an hour at a time. Sounds like a Top Model challenge, but Barker has a heart. “We had to use mannequins because people can’t stand still for an hour,” he said. “You can’t use anybody human for this job.” Still, he was recently reminded of the value of live people — his ANTM contract was just renewed until season sixteen. “So you better not be bored of my face, because it ain’t going anywhere.”
