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Fashion photographers are tastemakers and workhorses, artists and salesmen. Their imagery reflects the culture they work in, but there is no denying their influence in shaping culture as well.
When the first illustrated fashion magazines emerged in the 1890s, the ideals of fashion rested squarely with an aristocracy of style. In a large sense, the beginning of fashion photography and its profound cultural impact can be traced back to the 1920s, when a pioneering fashion photographer, Baron Adolphe de Meyer, began using society beauties and famous actresses as models, as in his 1920 photo of Helen Lee Worthing (Right). His images were painterly depictions of women as immobile and immortal icons.
De Meyer was brought from Europe to work for Condé Nast's Vogue. He later left to work for Harper's Bazaar. To replace him in 1923 Vogue brought in Edward Steichen, who broke with the past by showing self-assured women standing tall and confronting the camera, as in his famous 1927 image of Marion Morehouse (Left).
Through the 1930s,
photographers such as
Cecil Beaton and Horst P. Horst constructed a distinctly sophisticated look that now seems to define that decade. Beaton's remarkable career stretched into the 1960s and '70s, and his images reflected his passion for staging and art direction. His 1955 image of Margot Fonteyn (Right) combines many of the essential
elements of his style.
The protégé of another famous photographer, George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst also studied with Le Corbusier. He brought to his fashion photography what one historian has called an "architectural purity," which can be seen in his well-known 1939 photograph of a Mainbocher corset (Left). Once merely dress-up dolls, women were transformed into works of art.
Another change in the depiction of women came from Martin Munkácsi, a Hungarian working for Harper's Bazaar who took women out of the studio to photograph them moving and in real settings, as in his 1935 "Nude with Parasol" (Right). Richard Avedon once said Munkácsi brought "happiness and honesty" to an art that had been "joyless and lying."
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The 1940s brought
war and the fall of the world's fashion capital, Paris. American fashion designers stepped forward with an egalitarian approach that stressed function and a new idea of style. An American photographer, Irving Penn, also began his career during the war. Penn was brought to Vogue in 1943 by the magazine's new art director, Alexander Liberman. By war's end, both had established themselves as creative giants, just in time for one of the biggest revolutions in fashion. In 1947, Dior's "New Look" arrived, making plentiful use of fabric in long rustling dresses with pinched waists. Penn captured the moment in images that are iconic, timeless, sculptural, formal, and uncompromising, as in his 1951 photograph of model Mary Jane Russell (Left).
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It's Richard Avedon, however, who more than any other photographer epitomized the elegance
of 1950s fashion. Working with the legendary art director of Harper's Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch, Avedon captured women with a thrilling energy; they were very much part of
the exciting real world of culture and art. His 1956 image of Suzy Parker in Dior was a statement of creative authority (Right).
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