Legends
ofphotography
T
oday’s fashion
photography
landscape is a varied
and experimental
platform for technique and
style, with figures such as Annie
Leibovitz and Rankin pushing
the boundaries of what we
consider within the margins of
sartorial representation. Today
we could consider fashion
photography an art form in
Toni Frissell
and of itself. But back in the
early 20th century, fashion
images were stuck in a fusty rut- until US-born photographer
and Cecil Beaton protégé Toni
Frissell came along.
Prior to Frissell’s fashion
photography (which featured
countless times in Harper’s
Bazaar and Vogue) the genre
treated its models as mere
clotheshorses. The models
the world rested on how
quickly she could light her
boss’s cigar. Frissell wasn’t in the
business of lighting anyone’s
cigar. Her aim, through the
platform of fashion imagery,
was to demonstrate the agency
and engagement of women in
the real world: determined,
active, athletic, independent
and, most of all, alive. Through
the lens of Frissell, women were
active participants, as opposed
to the demure homebodies
perpetuated in the images that
choked the pages of
contemporary fashion titles.
Frissell, effectively, treated
fashion photography like a
photojournalistic assignment.
This is no surprise when we
look at the second phase of her
career, which commenced
during World War II.
In 1941 Frissell offered her
skills to the American Red
Cross. Soon after, she was
photographing for the Eighth
Army Force and was the official
photographer for the Women’s
Army Corps. The body of work
produced during this time is
incredible. She seems to have
interacted with and
documented just about every
individual she encountered –
nurses, front-line soldiers,
orphaned children and more.
Frissell in this period was able
to deliver a thorough and
three-dimensional overview of
the American services and their
engagement during WWII.
Upon returning from the war,
Frissell continued to shoot
fascinating and diverse subjects
across the globe. Her sitters
included Winston Churchill,
Eleanor Roosevelt and the
Kennedys. In 1953 she became
the first female staff
photographer on Sports
Illustrated, a publication she
continued to work with for
several decades.
Frissell’s memory began to
slip in the 1970s, an early sign
of her impending dementia. To
preserve all she had gained, she
set about writing a memoir, the
manuscript of which ran to
almost 1,000 pages. Her
collection of images is now kept
at the Library of Congress.
Astonishingly, it contains
around 340,000 images.Fashion photography has two
phases: before and a er Toni Frissell.
Oliver Atwell looks at her work
occupied studio settings,
striking poses that today would
be seen as quaint and awkward,
their faces plastered with rictus
grins and their busts pushed up
to planetary proportions.
Frissell’s great break with
fashion tradition was simple- for the first time, readers
looked upon images of
bathing-suit-clad women on
location and bathed in natural
light. These models weren’t
bruising their knees on a cold
studio floor; they were surfing,
biking, splashing in the tide or
just generally getting sand
between their toes.
It’s seems odd to identify this
as a ground-breaking and
forward-thinking leap in
fashion photography, but try to
see this in the context of the
age where a woman’s place in
© CONDE NAST VIA GET T Y IMAGESOne of Frissell’s
fashion photographs.
Her work was very
influential