CECIL BEATON
British
One of the best-known portrait photographers of
the twentieth century, Cecil Beaton was a consum-
mate arbiter of style and elegance. He passionately
chronicled women, the social set, celebrities, and
many aspects of World War II, documenting these
through photography, writings, and illustrations
over the course of half a century. Although known
chiefly for his photography, he also received great
acclaim for his set and costume designs, among
them the legendary overstated Ascot hats and
gowns forMy Fair Ladyand the beautifully evo-
cative costumes forGigi. Enormously prolific, his
artistic roles were extraordinarily varied, however,
and complexly interwoven, with style and culture
always at the heart of the matter. Beaton intuitive-
ly understood the power of the press and media
and defined how it could create and celebrate the
notion of ‘‘celebrity,’’ his own included. The Paris
editor ofVoguein the 1950s, Bettina Ballard, wrote
he was ‘‘forever improvising.’’ Philippe Garner of
Sotheby’s London wrote, ‘‘Beaton was an impre-
sario who used fashion to colour the scenario of
the play that he made of his life, and in which he
himself starred as production photographer and
principal player.’’
Beaton’s interest in photography came quite
early. While attending Harrow, he received from
his parents a folding Kodak No. 3A Autographic,
which produced postcard-sized negatives. He
started taking pictures of his sisters, Baba and
Nancy, dressing them up in various fantastic cos-
tumes under the direction of his nanny. He used
mirrors or cellophane or painted backdrops to cre-
ate a theatrical effect, and would pose family mem-
bers dressed in elegant costumes, as seen inBaba
Beaton: A Symphony in Silver, 1925. Self-taught in
photography,hegraduallydevelopedastyleofarty,
stylized portrait photographs, inspired by such
illustrious contemporaries as Baron de Meyer and
Edward Steichen, the master fashion photogra-
phers of the early twentieth century. The roots of
his fantasy of beauty lay in his comfortable Edwar-
dianchildhood,whilehis fashionpictures werecon-
structed with elaborate artifice reflecting a kind of
loosely derived, drawing room Surrealism.
Beaton began a career as a portraitist, where he
was ‘‘taken up’’ by poet and society figure Edith
Sitwell, of whom he took a number of memorable
studies, and introduced to high society and the
world of high fashion in the late 1920s. His first
photographic exhibition, in 1927 in London, was a
great success that eventually led to a contract with
Conde ́Nast’sVoguemagazine. First hired by Brit-
ishVogueas a cartoonist, he soon was photograph-
ing for the magazine as well as for the American and
French editions. He worked forVogueinto the mid-
1950s.That Beaton was the sole British exhibitor at
the landmark 1929Film Fotoexhibition of moder-
nist photography in Stuttgart indicates theconsid-
eration given to his earliest work. Beaton first
visited the United States in 1929 where he photo-
graphed various stars forVanity Fair.
Conde ́ Nast, the irascible publisher of Vogue,
loved to inspire his photographers by having them
compete against each other to see who could create
the most striking and exciting fashion photos. Beaton
therefore found himself competing against one of the
men upon whom he had modeled himself, the well-
established Edward Steichen in New York as well as
George Hoyningen-Huene in Paris. Although Bea-
ton’s style did not change radically from that of his
earliest, highly theatrical set-ups, it was refined, and
his ability to make his ‘‘interesting, alluring, and
important people...look stunning,’’ in the words of
his biographer Hugo Vickers, was his real key to
success. His unique, ifeccentric stylewas richlyvaried
with enough visual references to Surrealism to make
the photographs inventive, witty and stylish.
Beaton would pose society women as well as
mannequins in the most flamboyant Greek tragedy
poses or as if in ecstatic mystical states, such as his
1935 portrait of actress Marlene Dietrich in which
she poses as a ‘‘mirror image’’ of a classical bust. In
many of his works, his human subjects became
elements of an entire decorative tableau. The only
stipulation that infringed on Beaton’s happiness at
Voguewas Conde Nast’s insistence that he give up
his ‘‘little’’ Kodak and replace it with an 8 10
camera that would provide the quality of prints the
Voguereaders expected. The small camera had en-
abled Beaton to crawl around on ladders and get atBEATON, CECIL