In the genre known as classic fashion photography, Horst P. Horst is an icon. He is celebrated as a pioneer who created striking, unforgettable images with unique compositions. Critics unanimously name him one of the most influential fashion photographers of the mid-20th century.
Maybe less known by the general public are the many facets of his work, inspired by both classicism and surrealism, exuberant with glamor but also imbued with satire at times. The exhibit Essence of the Times, at SCAD FASH Museum through April 16, covers six decades of the master’s work, from the early 1930s to the ‘90s. It’s a great opportunity to experience the full breadth of his talent.
The exhibit is lavish in scale, featuring more than 80 large images printed by the Horst Estate. These are digital prints from Horst’s original Kodachrome transparencies. The very high-grain film allows for considerable details and saturation in tonality, making the prints magical in their clarity.
In Paris, Horst studied under famed architect Le Corbusier. His meeting later with Vogue photographer George Hoyningen-Huene launched his interest in fashion photography and his career took off rapidly from there.
When Hoyningen-Huene retired in 1935, Horst became chief photographer at Vogue and his distinctive aesthetics graced the covers of the magazine for decades.
Muriel Maxwell, Hat by Lilly Dache is a fitting illustration of the wit and creativity that Horst was known for. The model leans against two mirrors at an angle, producing an intriguing trompe-l’oeil that reflects her image infinitely in a circular fashion.
The way Horst plays with background, angles and perspective is apparent in other images too, such as Dress by Hattie Carnegie, where the photographer places the model against two bold striped panels set in such a way that it creates a disorienting depth of perspective.
Horst’s dramatic use of lighting and sculptural poses were his trademarks. He used light to shape the bodies of his models, highlighting a profile, a structure, or detail of a silhouette, as exemplified in Suit and Headdress by Schiaparelli.
One of his most iconic images, Mainbocher Corset, demonstrates Horst’s subtle use of light. “I had never photographed a corset before. It wasn’t easy,” he wrote. “The light in the photo is more complex than you think. It looks as though there is only one light source. But there were reflectors and extra spotlights as well. I don’t know how I did it. I couldn’t repeat it. It was created by emotion.” It was the last photograph he took in Paris before leaving for New York, fleeing the Nazi occupation. He would not return until 1946.
The classicism and sensuality of that image are in startling contrast with another photograph Horst took the same year, 1939.
Electric Beauty is a disturbing portrait of a woman seated next to a table filled with cosmetic products and surrounded by electrical wires. She wears a mask that seemingly blinds her to the possibility that she could be electrocuted.
“It was perhaps intended as a satirical comment on the increasingly extreme beauty treatments of the 1930s, and the futility of such preoccupations at a time when the world was on the brink of war,” writes Susanna Brown in Horst: Photographer of Style.
Electric Beauty is not the only image infused with a sense of the surreal — Horst was a close friend of Salvador Dali and deeply influenced by the surrealism movement — but none seems to match its intensity and dread.
Interestingly, Horst changed his methods many times. Initially working in black and white, he embraced color photography in the ‘40s when magazines had access to new printing technologies. Later in life, he relinquished his formal and dramatic lighting techniques to adapt to a more informal look, using available light.
This is the case in a series from the late ‘70s, when fashion editor and columnist Diana Vreeland assigned him to produce environmental portraiture of the rich and famous for Vogue’s “Fashions in Living” pages. Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Dior, Gloria Vanderbilt and many others are portrayed in the series, the most striking photograph being that of Vreeland herself, dressed entirely in red, matching the colors of her New York apartment.
Horst continued to photograph for Conde Nast well into his 80s and died at his home in Florida at the age of 93. It is hard to imagine a more inspirational life story for anyone striving to be relevant in our rapidly changing world.
::
Virginie Kippelen is a photographer, multimedia producer and writer specializing in editorial and documentary projects. She has contributed to ArtsATL’s Art+Design section since 2014, writing mostly about photography. And after living 25 years in the United States, she still has a French accent.
