giants, dwarfs, transexuals, and mentally disturbed people were
part of her gallery of portraits of an America of exclusion. In contrast,
her photographs taken in nudist colonies show the everyday life of
American families, with the exception that the people she portrayed
were without clothes. As a result of this approach, the viewer
pays hardly any attention to the nudity of the models but is more
interested in their pose and surroundings. Far from the perfect
athlete’s physique that Riefenstahl sought, Arbus photographed
flawed human bodies with an interest in their circumstances rather
than with any sexual connotation. Despite the coldness of her
documentary style, her empathy is real and the simplicity of her
approach to subjects outside the mainstream of society is both
exemplary and moving.fashioN PhotograPhy
At the end of the 1930s, fashion photographers began to see
models not merely as clothes horses on which to hang the
designers’ clothes, but as subjects in their own right. Working for
Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, Erwin Blumenfeld
(1897–1969) succeeded in uniting the avant-
garde approach to composition and the use
of solarization with fashion photography. His
work depicted fashion in a graphic style, with
the clothing abstract and the model’s body as
the main focus. His emphasis on the models
themselves eventually resulted in Blumenfeld
photographing some of the first nude images
ever to be seen in Vogue. In using backgrounds
appropriate for the clothing and creating an
atmosphere that permeated the whole image,
he invented a very personal universe that still
influences fashion photographers today.
Horst P. (Paul) Horst (1906–1999) first gained
fame on the publication of his photograph The
Mainbocher Corset, which appeared in Vogue
in 1939. Though not a nude image, the model’shourglass shape is emphasized by chiaroscuro lighting and the
untied ribbon lacing her corset hints at nudity. With her head bowed
and slightly in profile, the model has accepted our gaze, voyeuristic
and complicit at the same time. Horst photographed many nudes in
this style, using several studio lights to create a stylish play of light
and shadow.
In this new fashion concept, the body became the most
important feature and the clothes took second place. The images
of Horst and Blumenfeld demonstrated the desire for a rediscovery
of the body and its artistic dimensions while serving the needs of
fashion photography. Magazines on both sides of the Atlantic,
from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar to Le Jardin des Modes,
encouraged this kind of aesthetic, with images of underwear,
bathing suits, and nudes.
But not every fashion photographer made his nudes the
servants of the needs of fashion photography. In 1949–1950 Irving
Penn (1917–) photographed nudes that were highly unconventional
by fashion standards: their fleshy torsos are twisted and stretched, Horst
Odalisque 1, platinum print on canvas
(1943). With just a few well-chosen props
and dramatic lighting Horst has managed to
conjure up a scene of luxurious intimacy. Erwin Blumenfeld
Cubistic Purple Nude (1949) was
created by superimposing different
images, bringing surrealistic
experiments into fashion photography.
fashion photography 23