I went to see the Horst exhibition as I have found the history of photography extremely interesting. My delight and captivation with Paul Himmel and Lillian Bassman was just the start of it. Since reading about them I have watched documentaries on Richard Avedon and Brian Duffy, and those, along with seeing the David Baily exhibition and reading about Diane Arbus mean I am beginning to piece together some history and development within fashion photography at least.
Horst, born in 1906 in Germany, worked at Vogue under Mr. Nast himself. The limitations of photography then plus Conde Nast's insistence that photographers used 10x8 plate cameras meant that Horst's work - focused on dresses - had to be shot in quite a specific way. For instance the lights, and there were lots of them, were extremely bright and tended to make the models' skin look lined and sallow. This explains why the faces of many of his models in the 30s (often not models at all but friends of people who worked for Vogue) were in shadow or hardly lit at all. He says in the V&A exhibition book that he 'tried lighting it (the face) from below or from the side, or sometimes straight on with just the eye of the cheek lit up' (1) which sounds rather surreal.
In fact many of his images are quite surreal in particular one of hands, which I believe is quite famous where some real hands are placed in a pattern with the hands of a mannequin; surely influenced by Dali and his cohorts. The fashion designer Schiaparelli worked closely with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau interpreting 'Surrealism's shock value and translated it into headline fashions' (2) Horst photographed Shiaparelli's collections and continued the themes of Surrealism into the images.
Horst uses light to sculpt the picture he's creating. He is known for his lighting - dramatic shadows and chiaroscuro (strong contrasts) can be seen throughout his work, and his photographs of actors all look very much like stills from the film nior productions they would have been working on.
I was particularly amazed by the colour photograph section - Horst, along with Cecil Beaton was one of the earliest and most successful colour photographers and I know that the street and art photographers I've been looking at didn't start using it very much until the late 70s and 80s . The prints, many copies of Vogue covers from the 40s and 50s, are huge reproductions made possible by digital technology. When they were first produced colour slide film was used so no negatives were made at all and so not many of these images have been seen until the V&A show.
What I noticed was how fresh and modern they seem, despite the intervening Baily and Duffy years and all that has occurred since. In fact I would say that fashion magazines now are influenced by all that has been before including Horst and those that followed.
Some of the images had a softness and a sense of movement too which I was surprised by, but that is hardly surprising given that the models sometimes needed to try and stay absolutely still while they held poses for seconds at a time as the exposure was made. The movement is not like it is in Richard Avedon's work which has so much energy (very different tools available to him though); it is more subtle, hinted at. In particular I am thinking about images Dress by Jean Desses, 1952 (plate 157) and Dress by Henri Bendell, jewellery by Harry Winston, 1948 (plate 158) (3) which show some or more than a little blur. I liked this about these images as up to that point everything seemed incredibly still and almost statuesque in much of what I'd seen. My absolute favourite image is of Barbara 'Babe"Cushing Mortimer Paley, dress by Triana-Norell, 1946 plate 175 (4). I am not sure why I like this image so much. Perhaps because her face is partially obscured by her hand. The painted nails and cigarette emphasising her extraordinary eyes. She looks like a movie star of the era but was in fact a socialite and editor at Vogue, daughter of a rich surgeon and married to two wealthy men (not together of course!) Her beauty was enhanced after she had an accident and had to have corrective surgery. There is something so beguiling about the photograph - the lighting, the subject and the colour all work together to make it deeply memorable and striking.
In addition to the fashion photography Horst photographed nature, male nudes and travel photography. The photographs of men are quite abstract. There are no faces, no sultry eyes at the viewer, simply shape and form made with body and light, although it has to be said they are pretty homo-erotic. They are interesting for me to see in light of the work I did on assignment 2 using my body (clothed) and fabric to create shapes, along with my growing discomfort with the female nudes that litter art history as well as current photography practice.
Horst died in 1999 in the United States. Images of Catherine Bailey taken in 1989 are included in the book so he kept working until nearly the end of his long life.
1 Page 12 - Horst, Photographer of Style, Edited by Susannah Brown, V&A Publishing, 2014
2 Page 70 - Horst, Photographer of Style, Edited by Susannah Brown, V&A Publishing, 2014
3 & 4 Plates from Horst, Photographer of Style, Edited by Susannah Brown, V&A Publishing, 2014
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