Guarding their creative powers in a world flooded with images and other content, much of it mediocre, is a concern among up-and-coming fashion photographers like Danko Steiner and Daniel Sannwald.

“We live in a rather dull moment in fashion,” says Pascal Dangin, the founder of Box Studios, who retouches the work of photographers like Patrick Demarchelier, Steven Meisel and Inez van Lamsweerde.

You can maybe understand, then, why designers and photographers want to perk things up with sex. Sexuality and gender crossovers are always a place to go, especially now that the industry has become slushy with products . And, as Mr. Dangin said, “We still have some big taboos about sex.”

Last year, Givenchy got much attention for using Lea T, a transsexual model, in its advertisements. For his spring 2011 show, Raf Simons used Andrej Pejic, a model with long blond hair and girlish features, because his collection of zippered tunics and wide trousers dealt in part with transgender. “It’s become a natural thing for people to change their bodies,” he said.

Mr. Pejic will also appear in ads for Marc by Marc Jacobs, photographed by Juergen Teller. Mr. Meisel, who has used androgynous models before, took that approach with Balenciaga’s spring campaign. The designer Riccardo Tisci hired Stephen Thompson, who has albinism.

Preparing for his Thierry Mugler debut at the Paris men’s shows, Nicola Formichetti was in Montreal photographing Rick Genest, a young man whom he found on Facebook and is known as Rico. Mr. Genest had his body tattooed to resemble a skeleton .

Of course, in fashion, things can always get stranger, but they rarely do anymore. Nudity, androgyny, sadomasochistic fantasies, an overtly gay sensibility - all these ideas have been expressed for years. For Mr. Tisci’s generation, they might be interesting to explore in a new context, and with greater acceptance. But more often than not, the decisions seem arbitrary, amounting to dissidence on the consumer leve l.

“It’s just manipulation to get you to the next thing,” said Klaus Stockhausen, the fashion director of German GQ.

But it is easy to see why sexuality is such a hot issue. Things are a bit frozen. Many of the designers who could truly communicate ideas - Martin Margiela, Helmut Lang, Alexander McQueen - are gone from the scene.

The London-based Mr. Sannwald, whose photographs are inspired in part by the work of Fritz Lang , recalled being told by a British magazine editor that his images were too extreme. He countered by producing old issues of Vogue, but those pictures were deemed too risky to use today.

“It was unbelievable,” Mr. Sannwald said. “Everybody is concerned about pleasing the advertisers, and it’s not just the big magazines.”

In some ways, the focus on sexuality reflects the fairly narrow thinking of designers and photographers . After all, the Internet offers people all kinds of ways to express themselves, representing a world that is livelier and more daring than what currently takes place on runways and in mainstream magazines.

One direction suggested by the Internet is the return of individual creative power. As Barbara Vinken, the author of “Fashion Zeitgeist,” said, if people can surgically manipulate their bodies, or virtually turn their bodies inside out with tattoos, “you have to wonder what the function of fashion still is.” These ideas are far more potent than another genderbender.

The photographer Phillip Toledano did a series of portraits of people who had fairly radical cosmetic surgery. One man told him he wanted to look like an animated character. “I think the good thing about technology is that it’s going to widen the definition of beauty,” Mr. Toledano said. “It’s pretty narrow now .”

Maybe by the time his daughter is a teenager, he mused, she will be able to take a pill and have blue skin. “Because that will be the fashion for a week or two.”


CATHY HORYN
ESSAY