SELLING DREAMS
One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography
Introduction
The V&A is home to the UK’s National Collection of the Art of Photography.
The Collection comprises over half a million works including many hundreds
of fashion photographs by international names such as Edward Steichen
(1879-1973), Irving Penn (1917-2009), Richard Avedon (1923-2004), Helmut
Newton (1920-2004), David Bailey (b.1938) and Tim Walker (b.1970).
Through displaying the greatest highlights from the Collection and
many rarely exhibited works, this touring exhibition explores the range
of approaches to fashion image-making, from the earliest years of the
twentieth century to today. In 1984, Irving Penn commented that he saw
his role at Vogue as ‘selling dreams, not clothes’. Although varied in their
practices, the photographers featured in the exhibition share a vision
that goes far beyond a simple recording of fabrics and surface detail.
The exhibition will chart how the medium flourished with the rise of
illustrated magazines and how influential editors and art directors such as
Alexey Brodovitch, Alexander Liberman and Diana Vreeland collaborated with
photographers to shape generations of style throughout the past century.
Exposing the medium’s evolution and the fascinating dialogue between
fashion photography and fine art photography, this exhibition is beautiful and
scholarly, glamorous and insightful.
Opposite page: Vogue’s Eye View
of Diablerie, American Vogue,
October 15th, 1949, Irving Penn
Front cover: Lily Cole and Giant
Camera, 2003, Tim Walker
Exhibition Content
This is the first touring exhibition from the V&A’s Collection to explore the
work of international fashion photographers and to draw together such
a broad range of important historic and contemporary fashion images.
The exhibition includes approximately sixty works by more than
twenty major fashion photographers, as well as original magazine
spreads from publications such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
The photographs are grouped into eight sections, reflecting key
themes in fashion photography throughout the past hundred years.
A Glittering New Century – The rise of fashion photography and illustrated
magazines in the early years of the twentieth century. Photographers include
Baron Adolf De Meyer and Edward Steichen.
Classicism and Surrealism – The European avant-garde and the influence of the
Surrealists in the 1930s. Photographers include Baron George Hoyningen-Huene,
Ilse Bing and Herbert List.
Beauty and Abstraction – Bold experimental work from the mid-twentieth
century by photographers such as Erwin Blumenfeld and Lillian Bassman.
Shooting in the City – American masters depict the optimism and energy of
post-war New York. Photographers include Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and
William Klein.
Best of British – The elegant work of gentlemen photographers Cecil Beaton,
Norman Parkinson and John French, in contrast to the social realism of a new
generation of photographers, led by David Bailey in ‘Swinging London’.
Picturing Femininity – Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber and Deborah Turbeville
push the boundaries and explore the themes of sexuality and femininity in the
1970s and 80s.
Reportage and Real Life – ‘Straight-up’ photography and the rise of style
magazines i-D and Dazed and Confused in the 1980s and 90s. Photographers
include Corinne Day, Elaine Constantine, Juergen Teller and Rankin.
Fiction and Fantasy – Imagined worlds and the elaborate narrative approaches of
contemporary photographers including Tim Walker, Glen Luchford and
Steven Meisel.
Opposite Page: Figures in Silk by
Julian Ton-Chin, New York City, USA,
February 1967, Hiro
A Glittering New Century
The exhibition opens with some of the finest early fashion photographs from
the V&A Collection. The rise of illustrated fashion magazines in the early 1900s
goes hand-in-hand with the development of the half-tone printing process,
which allowed photographs to be printed on the same page as text, without
any loss to the image quality.
This section will explore the genesis of fashion photography, showing society
portraits by photographers including Baron Adolf de Meyer (1868-1946) who,
in 1914, left London to become the first star photographer at American Vogue.
The soft focus and backlighting de Meyer employed to produce romantic
portraits were suited to advertising and fashion work, but by 1930 his style
had been superseded by harder-edged images by photographers such as
Edward Steichen (1879-1973), who turned away from Pictorialism to promote
the precisionist New Objectivity, and believed women should be able to see
clothing photographed in clear detail.
Opposite page: Unpublished
Fashion Study for Vogue, 1919,
Baron Adolf de Meyer
Classicism and Surrealism
The greatest fashion photographers of the 1930s began their careers in Germany
and France, with an aesthetic that was strongly influenced by the work of
Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dali and Man Ray.
Ilse Bing (1899-1998) was one of several leading European female photographers
of the inter-war period. She employed an extensive knowledge of darkroom
techniques to create stylistically imaginative images. Her immediate and
exclusive use of the most advanced camera of the time, the Leica, and her
rapid success as a photographer earned her the title ‘Queen of the Leica’. In his
early career Baron George Hoyningen-Huene (1900-1968) worked as a fashion
illustrator, but in the mid-1920s he moved on to photography. With a painterly
sense of geometry, volume, light and shade, Hoyningen-Huene excelled at stylish
studio compositions and, like his friends Horst P. Horst and Herbert List, he often
blended Surrealist and Classical motifs, to striking effect.
Left: Beachwear by Schiaparelli,
British Vogue, 8th August 1928,
Baron George Hoyningen-Huene
Beauty and Abstraction
In their work for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940s and 50s, Erwin
Blumenfeld (1897-1969) and Lillian Bassman (b.1917) pushed the boundaries of
experimental fashion photography. Their images were unique and attention
grabbing. Blumenfeld had close connections with the Berlin Dadaists, who had
led an experimental fine art movement making use of linguistic devices and
seemingly nonsensical but intuitive subconscious connections. Blumenfeld
and his friend Paul Citroen were co-leaders of the Amsterdam branch of Dada.
In his fashion photographs, Blumenfeld employed a variety of techniques
including solarisation, multiple exposures and distortion.
Lillian Bassman possessed a romantic vision, manifest in her elegant, often
abstract work and advertising campaigns for the fashion houses Chanel and
Balenciaga. Her artistic approach riled Harper’s editor Carmel Snow, who, in
1949 warned Bassman, ‘You are not here to make art, you are here to show the
buttons and bows’. Later fashion photography has often embraced the idea of
a less descriptive approach, such as Bassman pioneered, in which the evocation
of a lifestyle is equally as important as depicting the object for sale.
Right: Model and Mannequin,
American Vogue Cover,
1st November 1945, Erwin
Blumenfeld
Shooting in the City
Post-WWII New York saw the rise of a new generation of American imagemakers. Vogue Art Director Alexander Liberman reinvented the magazine. With
a passion for simple design and a serious commitment to art, he brought the
work of Irving Penn (1917-2009), William Klein (b.1928) and, later, Richard Avedon
(1923-2004) to the pages of the magazine.
Penn modernised fashion photography by simplifying it, using natural lighting
and removing clutter, to focus purely on the fashions. In contrast, Klein’s blurred,
grainy or distorted images reflect his own experiences of the dynamism of the
metropolis. Avedon began his career working for Alexey Brodovitch and Carmel
Snow at Harper’s Bazaar, after studies at Brodovitch’s Design Laboratory at the
New School for Social Research in New York. Some of Avedon’s most innovative
fashion photographs capture models in the open air – strolling through the
city streets or roller-skating in Central Park. When he joined Vogue in the
mid-1960s, Avedon began to spend more time in the studio, producing images
with his signature stark background, concentrating attention on the form of
the model and the pared-down psychologically intense dialogue between the
photographer and subject.
Opposite page: Fashion by
Talmack, Molly Parnis and Herbert
Sondheim, American Vogue, July
1959, William Klein
Best of British
The images in this section of the exhibition illustrate traditional and modern
Britain and juxtapose two fashion extremes – debutantes in ball gowns by
Charles James, alongside models in Mary Quant mini-dresses.
British fashion photographers matched their American counterparts in both
creativity and technical flair. Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) captured a casual
realism in his quirky and inventive work that spanned over five decades.
Images by Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) from the late 1920s echo the romantic,
sparkling style of Baron Adolf de Meyer, and draw inspiration from Rococo
paintings. The elegance and opulence of Beaton’s theatrical settings is shown
alongside the vivacious documentary approach of David Bailey (b.1938) and
the next generation of London-based photographers, who turned models such
as Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy into household names.
Opposite page: Twiggy, Battersea
Park, London, British Vogue, July
1967, Ronald Traeger
Picturing Femininity
This section of the exhibition examines how photographers in the 1970s and 80s
engaged with contemporary attitudes to femininity and sexuality, pushing the
boundaries and courting controversy.
Helmut Newton (1920-2004) brought together the themes of emotional
ambiguity and sex; capturing powerful, aggressively confident women in
glamorous and contrived settings. He was inspired in part by the burgeoning
paparazzo photography, principally in Rome, and his interest in voyeurism caused
debate among critics and feminists. Deborah Turbeville (b.1938) initially worked
for Harper’s Bazaar, bringing to the magazine a woman’s perspective on the
subjects of beauty and female objectification. In her famous Bath House series
the positioning of women in these intimate surroundings refers to the long
history of male artists who have depicted bathers.
Left: Fashions by Stavropoulos and
John Anthony, Americian Vogue,
December 1947, Helmut Newton
Reportage and Real Life
The aesthetic of fashion magazines changed dramatically in the 1980s and
90s. This period witnessed a departure from the elegance and glamour of
earlier epochs, towards a gritty depiction of ‘Generation X’ in a wave of new
style magazines such as i-D and Dazed and Confused.
The concept of the ideal model changed too, as fashion began to embrace
grunge culture. The most memorable images from this period undermine the
artifice of the fashion world, showing models ‘off-duty’ in their own homes.
The photograph of Kate Moss in 1993 by Corinne Day (b.1965) celebrates the
young model’s quirkiness and lack of experience, and Hungry? by Rankin
(b.1966) depicts a slender model devouring a bar of chocolate, bringing
issues such as eating disorders to the fore. The radical approach of these
photographers shattered the illusion of perfection that had been carefully
crafted over many decades by glossy publications.
Right: Silver Ladies, issue 18,
Dazed and Confused, March
1996, Rankin
Fiction and Fantasy
The exhibition finishes with dazzling contemporary photographs by
international practitioners. The best of today’s fashion images are rich with
narrative, humour and poetry, often referencing the masters of decades past. This
section draws together work by the most innovative photographers, who work
with big budgets, set designers and multiple stylists to create elaborate fantasies.
Vogue photographer Tim Walker (b.1970) conjures a whimsical technicolor
England, inspired by the opulence of Cecil Beaton’s early work and classic
children’s fairytales. Steven Meisel (b.1954) has photographed every cover of
Vogue Italia for the past two decades, picturing extraordinary fashions in a lavish
and often provocative style.
While fashion trends and photographic technologies have altered radically over
the past century, the photographer’s ambition to create a dreamlike, aspirational
world has remained the same.
Opposite page: Prada Spring/
Summer Advertising Campaign,
1998, Glen Luchford
Exhibition Details
Size
The exhibition requires a space of approximately 200-350m2.
Schedule
The exhibition is available to tour nationally from Spring 2011 onwards.
Exhibition Curator
Susanna Brown is Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert
Museum. Her expertise ranges from the history of photographic exhibitions
to fashion, portraiture and international contemporary fine art practice. As
part of the curatorial team responsible for the Museum’s national collection
of the art of photography, she works on displays for the permanent
collection galleries as well as touring exhibitions. Her current projects
include The Other Britain Revisited: The New Society collection of photographs
(2010), Cecil Beaton’s Royal Portraits: A Diamond Jubilee Celebration (2012),
and a major retrospective of the fashion photographer Horst P. Horst (2013).
In her previous role at London’s National Portrait Gallery she contributed
to numerous exhibitions including Angus McBean: Portraits (2006), The
Beatles on the Balcony (2006) and Vanity Fair Portraits (2008).
Publications include numerous photographers’ biographies for the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and frequent contributions to
photographic journals and magazines including Blueprint, Cent Magazine,
Grafik, Distill, and The British Journal of Photography.
Opposite page: Fashion
Photograph, 1960s, David Bailey
Above: Dress by Omar Kiam for Ben Reig, American Harper’s Bazaar, March 1950, Lillian Bassman
Images shown are representative of the type of objects that will feature in the exhibition. All text and images contained within this document are to
be used for information purposes only. No further adaptation, alteration or manipulation whatsoever of any of the images or text contained within
this document is permitted without the prior written consent of the V&A.