Fashion Photography
Started: 1850
Ended: Present
KEY ARTISTS
 | Edward Steichen Quick View  Artist Page |
| Edward Steichen |  |
| Edward Steichen was an important early photographer. He was an innovative fashion photographer and helped Alfred Stieglitz found with his first modernist projects. Art Story: Edward Steichen Artist Page | ||
 | Man Ray Quick View Artist Page |
| Man Ray | |
| Man Ray was an American artist in Paris whose photograms, objects, drawings, and other works played an important role in Dada, Surrealism, modern photography, and avant-garde art at large. Art Story: Man Ray Artist Page | ||
 | Cecil Beaton Quick View Artist Page |
| Cecil Beaton | |
| Beaton was an influential fashion photographer known for his technical precision and staging, helping to form the sophisticated style of the 1930s. Beaton was also a successful set and costume designer, and war photographer. Art Story: Cecil Beaton Artist Page | ||
 | Irving Penn Quick View Artist Page |
| Irving Penn | |
| Irving Penn was a fashion photographer and worked for many years for Vogue magazine, founding his own studio in 1953. Influenced by European Modernism - and in particular Surealism - he became one of the most famous photographers of all time erasing the lines between fashion photography, fine art photography, and "high art". Art Story: Irving Penn Artist Page | ||
 | Richard Avedon Quick View Artist Page |
| Richard Avedon | |
| Richard Avedon revolutionized fashion photography by enlivening his models, by showing them in movement. He also excelled in black-and-white portraiture - celebraties and common folk were exhibited in psychologoically revealing ways. His large and powerful body of work makes Avedon one of the most famous photographers of all time. Art Story: Richard Avedon Artist Page | ||
 | Helmut Newton Quick View Artist Page |
| Helmut Newton | |
| Infusing magazines with his erotic and exciting black-and-white photographs, Helmut Newton captured arresting scenes of stylized fashion erotica, frequently embedding sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts alongside the couture. Art Story: Helmut Newton Artist Page | ||
"Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. My responsibility is to the reader. The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader."
Summary of Fashion Photography
Not a movement as such, fashion photography is perhaps best described as a branch of fine art photography that focuses exclusively on the promotion of haute couture. Fashion photographs accentuate the fashion designer's brand - or their "look" - which is typically expressed as an attitude or concept (and may not feature the clothes or accessories at all). Since it is informed by high art, popular culture and societal views of gender, self-image, and sexuality, Fashion Photography is seen as, in the words of art historian Eugenie Shinkle, "a most fantastic barometer of the time."
Historically, Fashion Photography was regarded as ephemeral and commercial, with gallery and museum exhibition space only granted to those special fashion photographers who also happened to be established artists. By the 21st century, however, art historians, scholars, and leading art institutions have come around to the idea that Fashion Photography deserves to rank as a branch of fine art photography. Indeed, Shinkle observed that apart from "a handful of exceptions, there was a real reluctance amongst scholars to engage with [Fashion Photography] in a serious way. Unapologetically commercial, it had been reduced to 'only advertising.' And, until recently - that is until it started appearing in galleries - it was considered to be ephemeral."
Key Ideas
Iconic Fashion Photographer Deborah Turbeville despised the fashion world. "It's seeing all those people who you’ve seen for years, who've spent fifty years of their lives just looking at clothes," she said. But this didn’t stop her producing some of the most groundbreaking works Fashion Photography had to offer.
Important Art and Artists of Fashion Photography | |
 Artwork Images | Gloria Swanson (1924)Artist: Edward Steichen Artwork description & Analysis: Considered the father of modern Fashion Photography, Steichen's portrait of silent movie star Gloria Swanson remains one of his most celebrated commercial works. Produced while he was house photographer at both Vanity Fair and Vogue, Steichen's image merges the worlds of fine art portraiture and Fashion Photography to spellbinding effect and provides an early example of how the worlds or art, entertainment, and fashion would interrelate. The image was published in the February 1928 issue of Vanity Fair to help publicize Swanson's latest film Sadie Thompson (a topical story of a free-spirited, jazz-age woman who, following a scandal, relocates to a tropical island where she seeks redemption). Steichen's great skill (or one of his great skills) was his ability to work with his models and to draw the very best out of them. It was a knack that all the great Fashion Photographers would need to master. Gelatin silver print - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
  | Noire et Blanche (Black and White) (1926)Artist: Man Ray Artwork description & Analysis: Man Ray's iconic photograph shows the French nightclub singer, actress and painter, Alice Prin; better known in the cultured Parisian circles in which she moved as Kiki de Montparnasse. With her eyes closed, her head reclines on a table beside an ebony African mask which she holds upright in her left hand. Published in a 1926 issue of Vogue, the work appeared with a caption, "Mother of Pearl Face and Ebony Mask," and, as art critic Daisy Woodward noted, "It is a majestic study in tone and texture: the patches of light on the dark, lustrous mask are echoed by those punctuating Montparnasse's shiny black hair, while, in contrast, her soft, porcelain-hued face and shoulder boast delicate patches of shadow." Gelatin Silver print - Museum of Modern Art, New York |
 Artwork Images | The Hat Box (White panama hat) (1934)Artist: Cecil Beaton Artwork description & Analysis: In this signature work, the head of the famous model-turned-designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, is seen emerging from a hatbox. She is wearing a panama wearing hat (by Suzy) that is crucial to the composition; its horizontal and diagonal lines are both emphasized and framed by the conical shape of the box as its lid (which helps frame Schiaparelli's profile). The cropping is slightly askew, playfully emphasizing the unorthodox point of view, while the soft white background, with its fluffy bedding and billowing curtains, lends itself perfectly to Beaton's tongue-in-cheek tone. Gelatin silver print - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
More Fashion Photography Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 05 Apr 2019. Updated and modified regularly. 
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