And has been for two decades now… remarkably long lived.
I think Richardson has a very similar technique, although he tends to shoot with white backgrounds. These specific pictures seem closer still to the photography in magazines like Apartamento, or in this case https://record-magazine.com/issues
I always wonder when this retro frontal flash approach will go out of style. It’s handy while it lasts, because it’s very easy to make interior shots this way. No need to bother with lighting setups, just a single big flash mounted with your camera. Quite the accessible style! Yet it does help to differentiate from phone cameras, which seems to be a driving force for photographic trends… Just like shallow depth of field has been fashionable for a while (and might go out of fashion now phones can fake it), big flashes are not typically found on phones.
The style also works, I think, because it channels event photography rather than art photography, which gives it its immediacy and nonchalance. It’s very similar to the look of photojournalism in the eighties when certain press photographers started working with colour films to document openings etc., they used the big Metz flashes on a bracket and the diffusers were less sophisticated so you get this very direct, often blown out light. And amateur photographs of parties at the time were much the same (albeit with smaller flashes).
So stylized (because retro) yet nonchalant. And it’s really easy to do, just have your flash fire a bit harder than it suggests on it own :)