100 years of Condé Nast’s iconic fashion photography celebrated in stylish new exhibition, including striking shot of swimsuit-clad models stretching in a shower room
‘Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast’ provides a visual history of how the fashion industry has evolved from the 1920s to the present day
A GLAMOROUS shot of five swimsuit-clad supermodels lumbering up in a shower room is one of the striking images that has been unveiled to celebrate 100 years of fashion photography.
The Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (FEP) delved into the stylish archives of , the US-based publisher, and brought together pictures from its magazines, including Vogue, Vanity Fair and Glamour, for a new exhibition.
‘Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast’ provides a visual history of how the fashion industry has evolved from the 1920s to the present day.
Curated by the FEP and Nathalie Herschdorfer, an art historian who specialises in the history of photography, the fascinating portraits are currently on display in Beijing.
A vibrant image by Sebastian Kim, which featured in a 2011 edition of Teen Vogue, features two near-identical looking models in sports clothing.
The girls face one another with matching ponytails and minimal make-up looks as they blow on whistles. Their arms are adorned with heavily-jewelled bangles.
Another portrait sees a porcelain-skinned model throw her head back as she prepares to nibble on a bunch of red grapes.
The provocative photograph, shot for Love Magazine in 2011 by Sølve Sundsbø, sees the flame-haired beauty dressed in a tight-fitting white dress and a copper bangle.
A glamorous image by Guy Bourdin for French Vogue in 1955 sees a model pose in an almost saucer-like hat as a black veil hangs in front of her face.
Edward Steichen captured a model dressed in an elegant pearl necklace and fur-collar coat as she gazes nonchalantly to the left for American Vogue in December 1923.
Fashion photographs – glamorous, provocative, beautiful, accomplished, magical – have always been associated with some of the most famous names in the history of photography, such as Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and Mario Testino.
This has been the case since the beginnings of fashion photography in the early years of the 20th century: the great American photographer Edward Steichen took what were probably the first fashion photographs in 1911 and since then some of the most distinguished practitioners have turned fashion photography into an art form.
Today, fashion photographers are exhibited in the most prestigious museums.
Their photographs are sold by galleries and auction houses for considerable prices and each year publishers release new books dedicated to the best of the genre.
For many fashion photographers it was the editors and art directors at Condé Nast publications, such as Edna Woolman Chase, Diana Vreeland and Alexander Liberman, who launched their careers.
Since his earliest days as a publisher in the very first years of the 20th century, Condé Nast was a gifted talent scout.
By surrounding himself with great artists, he placed Vogue, in addition to his other magazines (most notably Vanity Fair and Glamour, as well as the foreign editions of Vogue), at the forefront of the photographic avantgarde.
The Condé Nast studios in New York, Paris and London were laboratories of creativity, employing artists eager to capture and show off the gems of haute couture.
The exhibition, accompanied by a book, looks at the early work by such luminaries as Horst P. Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld, David Bailey, Guy Bourdin, Corinne Day, Deborah Turbeville and Sølve Sundsbø as it appeared in the pages of the Condé Nast magazines.
This creative collaboration has kept fashion photography – and Condé Nast – innovative and often challenging but always able to capture the style of the day.
With unprecedented access to the Condé Nast archives in New York, Paris, London and Milan, the curator Nathalie Herschdorfer has gathered original prints as well as pages from the actual magazines to provide a unique opportunity to see the work of over eighty photographers right at the outset of their careers who went on to become the biggest names in the history of fashion photography.
The book features essays by Olivier Saillard, Director of the Musée Galliera, Paris, and Sylvie Lécallier, Head of the Photography Collection at the Musée Galliera, together with an exclusive interview with Franca Sozzani, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Italia.
Full details on the exhibition can be found on the website.