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Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy

Audrey Hepburn in Paris
7 July 1956. Audrey Hepburn in Paris. Photo by Bert Hardy. Read more.

When Paris was liberated in 1944, the city was on its knees. Within little more than a decade, it had regained its status as a world capital of unmatchable style, romance and allure.

The mood on the streets and the streets themselves had certainly improved a bit. But the really startling difference was to the city’s reputation. How did Paris manage such a stunning transformation in what we would these days call its brand image?

Paris after World War II – fact

Post World War II, France is broke, its economy on its knees, and over a sixth of all the buildings in Paris are in a seriously dilapidated state. In Paris: Biography of a City, Colin Jones reports that the wear and tear of decades of neglect are painfully obvious in smoke-blackened stone facades, cracked and untended stucco, and peeling paintwork. In Another Me, Ann Montgomery, who worked as a model in Paris, recounts that when she arrived there in 1954, “Much of Paris was still infected by a war-weary shabbiness that cast a despairing shadow over the grandeur of the ancient city.”

According to Antony Beever and Artemis Cooper (Paris After The Liberation) in April 1945 the city’s population averages only 1,337 calories a day. This overall figure hides terrible imbalances between the beaux quartiers and working-class districts where many, especially the old, virtually starve to death. And the truth is that there is a group of wealthy Parisians, diplomats and visitors living a life of luxury. Everyone else has to do whatever they can to look after themselves. The black market is in full swing.

There is a collective sense of shame at the way the country rolled over without a fight in the face of the Nazis. There is a settling of old scores, the most visible face of which is the meting out of summary justice: collaborators are executed or, in the case of women, their heads shaved. Increasingly politicized, Parisians stage public protests as often as celebrations.

In 1947, the year Christian Dior unveils the New Look, France is still suffering terribly from wartime shortages. There is little coal, and electricity is rationed. Daily circumstances for the average Parisian are not much better than they were during the war. That summer, Paris is paralyzed by an increasing number of workers’ strikes. The humorist S J Perelman describes his impressions of Paris during a trip that summer:

The food scarcity was acute, the cost of living was astronomical, and a pall of cynicism and futility hung over the inhabitants. Everywhere you went, you sensed the apathy and bitterness of a people corroded by years of enemy occupation.

In October of the same year, the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The regular afternoon showings at the great couturiers are crowded with some wealthy French women; some members of the diplomatic set; some tourists, and many members of what is called “international society.” The girls who model the gowns are scrawny and petulant looking. The dresses themselves have never been so elegant nor so luxurious. One couturier makes it a business to feed his models. “I want them to look like human beings, not skeletons,” he said. “And, if they have enough to eat, perhaps they’ll smile,” he added hopefully.

Arthur Miller, another visitor, that winter observes:

The sun never seemed to rise over Paris, the winter sky like a lid of iron graying the skin of one’s hands and making faces wan. A doomed and listless silence, few cars on the streets, occasional trucks running on wood-burning engines, old women on ancient bicycles.

Rationing of bread continues until February 1948; coffee, cooking oil, sugar and rice are rationed until May 1949. Even foreign residents have to line up outside the town hall to get coupons for everything from food to clothes. Harper’s Bazaar’s “Report from Paris” in the autumn of 1949 opens, “In an atmosphere tense from the bitter strike in the dressmaking trades, the collections finally came off.”

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paris youth scene

1950s Paris – the nightlife

Between the wars, Paris had embraced jazz, which was very much in tune with the city's artistic, bohemian reputation. Here, is a glimpse of Paris by night in the late '50s, with rock-and-roll dancers prefaced by some nice neon lights. It's reminiscent of the nightclub scene in Funny Face. Too bad there's no soundtrack.

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paris streets

1950s Paris – the streets of Montmartre

Here's a taste of Montmartre, Paris' bohemian quarter. There's no soundtrack but there is a goat grazing under a tree, an old man asleep at a table and a girl brushing a little boy's hair in a doorway – a nice companion piece for the tourist version of Paris and, despite the dilapidated houses, no less affectionate. It's a kind of movie equivalent to the stills of the humanist photographers.

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paris tourism

1950s Paris – the tourist version

This promotional video from the early 1950s is shot by none other than the great Jack Cardiff, who has recently been working with Albert Lewin and Ava Gardner on Pandora and the Flying Dutchman and with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.

Paris after World War II – fashion

21st century marketers seeking to launch or reposition a product or service look for “flagship attributes”  – features that will grab headlines and capture people’s imagination. The flagship for the post-war renaissance of France in general and Paris in particular is fashion.

Why fashion? Because that’s what the city was synonymous with the before the war. The sector employs some 13,000 skilled artisans in such highly specialized workshops that despite their efforts the Nazis have failed to move it to Germany. France is desperately short of foreign currency, and rich women overseas, especially in the Americas, are willing to pay a fortune for their clothes. What’s more, couture is a high-profile and exportable manifestation of l’art de vivre for which France would like to stand.

In the summer of 1944, shortly after the liberation of Paris, led by Lucien Lelong and Robert Ricci, a group of French artists and designers develop a plan to enable Paris to recapture its position as the world capital of haute couture. They create 170 figures, each one-third the size of a real person, to display the first post-war Paris collections, complete with jewellery, designed to scale by Boucheron, Cartier and Van Cleef. The dolls are shown in a miniature theatre (Le Petit Théâtre de la Mode), with sets by the likes of Jean Cocteau and Christian Bérard.

The show opens at the Louvre in March 1945, and attracts more than 100,000 visitors, as well as raising a million francs for French war relief. The same year, it moves to Barcelona, London and Leeds, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Vienna before crossing the Atlantic in 1946 to New York and San Francisco. Meanwhile, the devaluation of the franc in December 1945 acts as a powerful incentive for tourists and buyers to come and spend money in France: couture has never been so reasonable!

Paris after World War II – A double-page spread in Vogue introduces the New Look
April 1947. A double-page spread in Vogue introduces the Paris collections and with them the New Look. The sketch is by Nobili, the setting Maxim’s restaurant. The photo is by Clifford Coffin. Cecil Beaton unkindly observed that Dior looked “like a bland country curate made out of pink marzipan.”

The turning point comes in spring 1947 with the launch of Christian Dior’s New Look, his first collection. The lead up is chaotic. With less than two months to get the collection ready, an untried staff, and not enough space, work has to be done in corridors and on the stairs. A key workroom lady collapses with nerves and a model passes out in Dior’s arms at a fitting.

The turmoil and excitement carry over into the show itself, as Vogue editor, Bettina Ballard recalls in In My Fashion:

I was conscious of an electric tension that I had never before felt in the couture. Suddenly, all the confusion subsided, everyone was seated and there was a moment of hush that made my skin prickle. The first girl came out, stepping fast, switching with a provocative swinging movement, whirling in the close-packed room, knocking over ashtrays with the strong flare of her pleated skirt and bringing everyone to the edges of their seats. After a few more costumes had passed all at the same exciting tempo, the audience knew that Dior had created a new look. We were witness to a revolution in fashion…

The New Look, a reprise of mid-19th century fashions with billowing skirts below nipped-in waists, is a sensational departure from the frugality and angularity of wartime fashion with its broad shoulders reminiscent of military uniforms. The New Look is also totally uncompromising. It calls for unusually intricate workmanship and a return to sewing techniques that have been almost forgotten. And it requires serious undergarment engineering to create the distinctive, curvaceous silhouette. “Money no object” would summarize it nicely.

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christian dior the man behind the myth

Christian Dior – the man behind the myth

It’s 1947. France is in the midst of reconstruction after the war. Although fabrics are rationed, a young designer wins the world over to his daring vision of feminine elegance. His name, Christian Dior, is destined to reach the realm of myth. But what do we know about the man himself?

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1950s fashion – the designers

Fashion in motion

This rare archive footage shows fashion by five of the leading couturiers working in Paris in the early 1950s: Christian Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Jaques Fath, Pierre Balmain and Coco Chanel. The clothes are gorgeous and it’s fascinating to see how the models move.

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paris city of fashion

Paris – city of fashion

Paris – City of Fashion, is a British Pathé production that likely dates from the early 1950s. Don’t be put off by the schmaltzy soundtrack and the cringe-worthy French accent affected by Lambton Burn for the voice-over. Focus instead on the gorgeous clothes, the stylish mannequins and, of course, the shots of the city itself.

It’s a triumph for Christian Dior, garners acres of press coverage around the world, and marks the beginning of a renaissance for French couture. The fashion editors, the rich and the famous love it. Most of those who can’t afford it, aspire to it. It’s just a must-have, as a Parisian around at the time recalls:

For two years after the war, fashions – wide shoulders and knee-length skirts – didn’t change. SUDDENLY, Christian Dior arrived and over night we all adopted his New Look. We immediately threw away all our previous dresses and skirts. It was still hard to find material, but it was inconceivable to still wear short dresses! At that time, there were big differences in fashion between the cities and the countryside, where women went on being dressed as before, an object of ridicule for us city-dwellers.

But, particularly in France, the New Look is controversial, as demonstrated by a photo shoot organized to show Dior’s clothes in a Montmartre street market.

The clothes were dispatched to Montmartre in great wooden packing cases on board a camionette. The models changed into them in the back room of a bar. But when, proud and graceful, the first one walked out into the rue Lepic market, the effect was electric. The street sank into an uneasy silence; and then, with a shriek of outrage, a woman stall-holder hurled herself on the nearest model, shouting insults. Another woman joined her, and together they beat the girl, tore her hair, and tried to pull the clothes off her. The other models beat a hasty retreat into the bar, and in a very short time clothes and models were heading back to the safety of the Avenue Montaigne.

That anecdote comes from Antony Beever and Artemis Cooper’s book.

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1948. The New Look

1948. The New Look

Around 1948. Could the setting for this shot be the bank of the Seine? The unknown model turns away from the camera to glance at...

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1949. Pure escapism

1949. Pure escapism

July 1949. It's not just the super-extravagant, strikingly asymmetrical gown (surely a Paris creation?) that's escaping from the privations of World War II. It's the...

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1950. The mirror of fashion

1950. The mirror of fashion

October 1950. A tunic coat by Dior, apparently shot on the streets of Paris by Richard Rutledge. Relatively unknown today, he is one of...

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1951. Fashion headlines

1951. Fashion headlines

1951. Pioneered by the likes of Richard Avedon and Norman Parkinson, outdoor shoots become increasingly popular in the fashion magazines of the 1950s. But, as...

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1954. Chez Dior

1954. Chez Dior

1954. The black tweed afternoon dress is being modeled by Renée Breton just outside Christian Dior’s studio at 30 avenue Montaigne. The photographer is Willy...

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1955. Studied sophistication

1955. Studied sophistication

1955. The model is Rose Marie. But the only information on the back of the photo is the year together with a pencil annotation identifying...

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1953. Sculpted elegance

1953. Sculpted elegance

1953. The black wool dress and black leather belt are by Jacques Fath. Guy Arsac, the man behind the camera, is one of Jacques’ favourite...

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1952. Ensemble by Paquin

1952. Ensemble by Paquin

February 1952. Jeanne Paquin was the first woman to gain international celebrity in the fashion business. Known for her innovative designs as well as her...

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1957. Quintessential Paris

1957. Quintessential Paris

1957. This may be a fashion shot but it could equally well be a movie still – perhaps from one of the early films of...

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1956. Fashion magnet

1956. Fashion magnet

August 1956. Dior has named this line, part of his autumn-winter collection, “Magnet”. Not only is the grey, rustic-Garrigue wool dress a Dior creation, so...

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1959 Poster girl

1959 Poster girl

Around 1959. With the 1960s around the corner, hemlines are moving in just one direction. Once again on the streets of Paris, this time in...

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For all the protests, The New Look reflects a genuine change of mood in society and sets the tone in the fashion world for the next decade. What’s striking is how savvy Dior is as a businessman. An article by Theodocia Stavrum in the San Francisco News describes his establishment in its first year of operation, about six months after the launch of the New Look:

Little do you realize when you sit I the elegant high-ceiling, gray-walled salon, with sleek French models displaying clothes, that in the back of the charming od building there is a modern “skyscraper” as they term it. It’s actually five stories high, as high as French law allows.

Here we found the workrooms and the head cutters, fitters, tailleurs and their staffs, first and second hands and apprentices. There’s also an employees’ “canteen” where we found many of them eating a hot luncheon with a bottle of beer or wine at each place.

There’s a complicated system of selling. Some saleswomen are socially prominent and wear the clothes, bringing friends in to buy. There are various saleswomen who rate according to experience and ability. A crew of chauffeurs deliver the things and a concierge must be on the place day and night. There are about 12 models, a head of the dressing room, and four dressers … plus several dozen other men and women who tend to the intricate details of the business.

And Christian Dior is not the only entrepreneur. In the course of the 1950s, his counterparts, like him, create perfumes, open boutiques and license their designs to foreign manufacturers so that by the end of the decade the leading couture houses have become global brands.

Paris is right back on the international map.

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Jacques Heim

Jacques Heim

Around 1950. As a designer, Jacques Heim is not in the same league as Christian Dior, Pierre Balmain and Jacques Fath, but then who is?...

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Christian Dior

Christian Dior

1957. During World War II, along with Pierre Balmain, Christian Dior works as a designer for Lucien Lelong. In December 1946, backed by textile-magnate Marcel...

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Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent

February 1958. The scene at Dior after the showing of Yves Saint Laurent's first collection. The model leading the way is Victoire Doutreleau, who was...

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Jacques Fath larking about with Paulette Goddard

Jacques Fath larking about with Paulette Goddard

1951. As is apparent from this photo (in which he is imitating Maurice Chevalier while Paulette Goddard is hamming it up as Joan Crawford), unlike...

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Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin

1959. Pierre Cardin moves to Paris in 1945 and works at the fashion house of Paquin and with Elsa Schiaparelli. The following year he is...

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Pierre Balmain

Pierre Balmain

1955. Pierre Balmain works with Edward Molyneux and Lucien Lelong before opening his own couture house in 1945. Along with Cristóbal Balenciaga, Jacques Fath and...

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Paris after World War II – fantasy

But there’s more to Paris’ renaissance than the couturiers. Important as they are, their success and influence are underpinned by the efforts of the international fashion press, particularly Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

Carmel Snow
1959. Carmel Snow, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, who sends Richard Avedon to Paris.” Photo by Gleb Derujinsky. Read more.

Ann Montgomery remembers how “Every fashion magazine in the western world was represented by top editors accompanied by photographers racing to record the work of the fabulous couturiers during the two-week blitz of showings” of the spring and autumn collections. Vogue sends Irving Penn, Harper’s Bazaar Richard Avedon.

It is Avedon who probably plays the biggest part in creating Paris, the fantasy of popular imagination. Whereas Penn captures the collections in a studio, Avedon takes the fashions out on the streets, turning Paris into a film set for an increasingly ambitious series of fashion stories. For example, for the September 1954 issue of Harper’s Bazaar he and his model, Sunny Harnett, stage a series of night scenes for which he has to use large floodlights to compensate for the slowness of the photographic film available to him. He ends up renting generator trucks to illuminate whole blocks of Paris, and police to hold back the crowds who gather to watch the proceedings.

The resulting editorials together with the published work of other less famous photographers such as Gleb Derujinsky and Kenneth Heilbron revive an image of Paris that has been decades in the making. During the Belle Époque (the period between the 1870s and the beginning of World War I), Paris established itself as the cultural capital of Europe and a go-to destination for any US citizen of wealth or artistic pretension. In the 1920s and ’30s it acquired almost mythical status as an artistic melting pot, attracting a host of American luminaries including Ernest Hemmingway, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, F Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Man Ray and Cole Porter.

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american in paris

1951. An American in Paris

After the initial titles, the trailer opens with an archetypal view of Paris dominated by the Eiffel Tower. We go on to meet Gene Kelly’s impoverished painter together with his fellow artists, living and, of course, falling in love in Montmartre, Paris’ bohemian quarter. “Paris is like love or art or faith, it can’t be explained, only felt.”

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sabrina

1954. Sabrina

Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn) returns to Long Island, transformed by her stay in Paris and complete with all the essential accoutrements: the poodle, the clothes and the La vie en rose soundtrack. No wonder David fails to recognize her!

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funny face

1957. Funny Face

A wonderfully rich American caricature of “Paree” – the volatile couple sharing a bottle of wine by the nightclub entrance, the moody bohemian cellar, the girls’ names (Mimi and Gigi), the fake French accents, the trippy music and the expressive dance, albeit that it reassuringly develops into a more conventional tap dance with which Hollywood audiences could feel right at home.

Avedon’s idea of Paris (and we’re talking here about an idea rather than just a place) reaches the movie-going public with the release in 1957 of Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. The plot is loosely based on the lives of Avedon and his first wife, Doe. It is about a successful photographer who transforms a bookish clerk into a reluctant model and then falls in love with her. Avedon is hired as a special visual consultant to director, Stanley Donen. He designs the opening credits, which are accompanied by his fashion shots, and he makes a series of boldly graphic fashion images based on the numbers one to ten (see Richard Avedon – ways to be lovely). Funny Face is one of several movies that help mythologize Paris for the US market

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Simone Simon with Pierre Balmain

Simone Simon with Pierre Balmain

September 1950. Pierre Balmain, sporting a prodigious moustache, makes final adjustments to the evening gown that Simone Simon wears at the highlight of the Biarritz...

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Audrey Hepburn with Hubert de Givenchy

Audrey Hepburn with Hubert de Givenchy

1959. At 6ft 6ins in height, Hubert de Givenchy towers over his client. Six years earlier, while filming Sabrina, Audrey visits the couturier’s studio to...

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Lana Turner with Jacques Fath

Lana Turner with Jacques Fath

June 1948. Lana Turner contemplates the gown, her husband contemplates the model, the assistant contemplates the camera while Jacques Fath is lost in contemplation. A...

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Brigitte Bardot wears a gown by Pierre Balmain

Brigitte Bardot wears a gown by Pierre Balmain

October 1956. What more potent combination could there be to boost the glamour and prestige of Paris than a combination of Pierre Balmain and Brigitte...

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Ava Gardner with Christian Dior

Ava Gardner with Christian Dior

1957. Ava Gardner is just one of Christian Dior’s movie-star clientele. Other clients include Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Jane Russell and Sophia Loren....

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Paulette Goddard at Jacques Fath

Paulette Goddard at Jacques Fath

November 1953. The model looks defiant in contrast to the movie star’s relaxed demeanour. Contrary to what the caption on the back of the photo...

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The relationship between Paris and Hollywood doesn’t begin or end with the movies themselves. When couturiers and stars get together, everyone’s a winner. The cult of celebrity goes from strength to strength during the 1950s, promoted by a host of magazines and newsreels. If the most famous hookup is between Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn, there are plenty of other stars eager to beat their way to the couturiers’ salons, including Rita Hayworth, who wears a Dior gown to the preimiere of Gilda. What’s more, the couturiers become celebrities in their own right.

The Vendôme Column dressed by Jean Dessès
31 March 1951. The Vendôme Column dressed by Jean Dessès.

If the Americans are doing their bit to help the couturiers burnish the image of Paris on the international stage, a talented group of photographers, known as the French humanists, also lend a hand. Notable among them are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis and Édouard Boubat. Their warm, lyrical and witty images of street life (a small boy running home with a baguette under his arm, a young couple snatching a kiss outside City Hall, a man jumping over a puddle) capture the appealing face of a more gritty reality. Photographers from abroad such as Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken also contribute.

And what of Paris itself? The rive gauche, particularly Saint Germain, with its intellectuals, academics and artists, its jazz clubs, poets and singers, is definitely the place to be in the 1950s. At the same time, an almost unbearable nostalgia for the hedonism of the past crystallizes around threatened sites of fin-de-siècle Paris, in particular Montmartre, where the facades of the celebrated Place du Tertre, meeting place of Paris’ turn-of-the-century artistic community, are restored. As the years go by, the district is transformed into a theme-park version of its former self – a perfect fusion of France and the US!

Paris after World War II – postscript: a real-life romance

In September 1950, a young photographer comes to Paris to record the autumn collections for Vogue. He is Irving Penn, a protégé of Alexander Liberman, the magazine’s art director, and a rising star in the publication’s firmament. She is Lisa Fonssagrives, a Swedish model who has been appearing on the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar since 1940.

Lisa Fonssagrives is an artist in her own right. She began her career as a professional dancer and until recently she was married to Fernand Fonssagrives, a dancer-turned-photographer. She herself has tried her hand at photography and will go on to have a distinguished career as a sculptor.

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Lisa Fonssagrives in a coat by Cristóbal Balenciaga

Lisa Fonssagrives in a coat by Cristóbal Balenciaga

1950. In his celebrated book, Moments Preserved, Irving Penn writes:

Clothes from great designers preoccupy Paris twice a year when the new collections are shown...

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Lisa Fonssagrives in an evening dress by Jeanne Lafaurie

Lisa Fonssagrives in an evening dress by Jeanne Lafaurie

1950. Information about Jeanne Lafaurie is thin on the ground. She sets up her fashion house in 1925, and it becomes known for dependable, if...

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Lisa Fonssagrives in a tunic dress by Marcel Rochas

Lisa Fonssagrives in a tunic dress by Marcel Rochas

1950. Encouraged by his wife and supported by Jean Cocteau, Cristian Bérard and Paul Poiret , Marcel Rochas sets up his couture house in 1925.

...
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Irving Penn and Lisa Fonssagrives are in love, and together they embark on a collaboration that within a matter of years will become legendary in the world of fashion photography. The ground has been well prepared. A notebook entry by Irving Penn reveals that:

Always sensitive to possibilities, Alexander Liberman arranged for me in Paris the use of a daylight studio on the rue de Vaugirard, on the top floor of an old photography school. The light was the light of Paris as I had imagined it, soft but defining.

We found a discarded theater curtain for a backdrop. As it turned out, 1950 was the only year we were able to have couture clothes during daylight hours at the height of the collections. Clothes were hurried to the studio and back to the salons by cyclist.

The photographs of the Paris collections that Irving Penn produces with Lisa Fonssagrives and three other models are the antithesis of those of Richard Avedon. Penn austere and serious, Avedon ebullient and capricious. Penn is entranced by stillness, Avedon by movement. Penn works exclusively in a studio, Avedon takes his models out onto the streets…

A brief article in the November 14, 1960 issue of Life Magazine highlights what Irving Penn, inspired and supported by his muse, achieves:

Into a world of photography that had equated elegance with rich and ornate props, there popped, about 15 years ago, some sparse, harsh, intensely realistic – yet still elegant – pictures. They were the work of Irving Penn, a junior art director of Vogue, who was “trying to create a new kind of fashion picture.” What he created was a new, austere style that influenced all modern photography.

Later that year, Irving Penn and Lisa Fonssagrives marry; and they live, by all accounts, happily until her death in 1992.

Dior fashion show in Chicago
1957. Dior fashion show in Chicago. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron. Read more.

Want to know more?

There’s a wealth of material out there and you can do worse than Google the designers, photographers and subjects in which you’re interested.

The best source of information about what Paris was like during and immediately after World War II is Paris After The Liberation by Antony Beever and Artemis Cooper. Ann Montgomery’s self-published memoirs, Another Me, is a good read and contains some nice anecdotes written from the point of view of an American girl coming to Paris who ends up working as a model.

There is no shortage of monographs on Christian Dior. For a relatively brief, online option take a look at the material available at the Design Museum website.

More generally, London’s V&A museum has excellent articles on the golden age of couture, the world of couture and the fashion show. A good website for information about fashion history generally, including the 1940s and ’50s is Glamour Daze. The Telegraph has an interesting article about How Haute Couture rescued war torn Paris by Anne Sebba, author of Les Parisiennes; How the Women of Paris lived, loved and died in the 1940s. If you’d just like to look at some nice pictures of the couturiers and their dresses, Vanity Fair’s slideshow, The Haute Couture Renaissance, is for you.

If you can beg, steal or borrow a copy, Richard Avedon, Made in France published by Fraenkel Gallery, 2001 is to die for. There are lots of monographs on both Avedon and Irving Penn. Angela Magnotti Andrews has written a nice article about Vintage Celebrity Marriages: Lisa Fonssagrives + Irving Penn. Last but not least, there’s an article by Robert Muir on Irving Penn.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Unknown model by Kenneth Heilbron
Kenneth Heilbron – mid-century fashion from Chicago
Mrs Alfred G Vanderbilt by Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon – art and commerce
The Fashion Flight – California comes to Paris

Filed Under: Fashion, Films, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: An American in Paris, Carmel Snow, Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, Constantin Joffé, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Funny Face, Guy Arsac, Hubert de Givenchy, Irving Penn, Ivy Nicholson, Jacques Fath, Jacques Heim, Jeanne Paquin, Kenneth Heilbron, Lisa Fonssagrives, Mary Jane Russell, New Look, Paris, Pierre Balmain, Pierre Cardin, Renée Breton, Richard Avedon, Richard Rutledge, Rose Marie, Sabrina, The New Look, Willy Maywald, Yves Saint Laurent

George Hoyningen-Huene – from film to fashion and back again

Fashion shot by George Hoyngingen-Huene
Around 1935. Fashion shot by George Hoyngingen-Huene.

George Hoyningen-Huene is the perfect subject for aenigma – a photographer who, in the early days of his career, got involved in the movie business, went on to work in the fashion industry and eventually fetched up in Hollywood. It makes for a fascinating story.

George Hoyningen-Huene is born in 1900, the son of a Baltic nobleman, the chief equerry to Tsar Alexander III, and an American expat whose father has been the United States Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the Russian court. But although George comes into the world with an enormous silver spoon in his mouth, his childhood is far from promising. He’s neglected by his parents and does poorly at school.

In 1916, friends of his family are involved in Rasputin’s murder. And the following year, as the Revolution gathers pace, he flees with his mother to England. After a spell at grammar school, age 18 and filled with youthful idealism he goes to fight alongside the White Russians in the hope of establishing a social democratic state. But, together with his comrades, he contracts typhus fever and almost dies.

On his return he finds his parents have settled on the French Riviera. Along with thousands of Russian refugees, he heads for Paris where he takes on various odd jobs including a stint as a lumber inspector for an American company in Poland.

George Hoyningen-Huene – the Paris years

After a series of odd jobs, George finds that with his tuxedo he can get jobs as a movie extra and it is here that he learns how to light people and sets.

In the meanwhile, his sister opens a dressmaking business and asks George to sketch the dresses for her catalogue. Soon he starts making a living at fashion illustration. In a 1965 interview he remembers:

I would have to go to dance places and night clubs and to the races and remember clothes – I couldn’t sketch all the time, I had to remember them. It is very curious how one can train one’s memory if one wants to. I could remember over a hundred dresses in every detail, after about two hours’ work. Then I would go home and start sketching.

Then he gets a job as an illustrator for Harper’s Bazaar and after that another opportunity opens up:

Then Vogue came around and made me an offer which at that time was quite wonderful (I was 25 years old). Among my duties was to prepare and design backgrounds for photographers. There was Man Ray, and there was an English photographer and several other men, and they were all being tried out for Vogue. Their final choice was a young American photographer who showed a lot of talent but who was rather erratic. One day he didn’t turn up. There was the set and the model was ready, and there was an assistant who did darkroom work. I called the office and they said, well, just shoot it. So I took the picture. From that day on I was Vogue’s Paris photographer.

As his work gains recognition, George Hoyngien-Huene exhibits at the Premier Salon Indépendant de la Photographie in 1928 and at the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart the following year.

In the Paris of the 1920s, George Hoyningen-Huene mixes with the likes of Coco Chanel, Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Bérard, Pavel Tchelitchew, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Lee Miller and Salvador Dali (who, walks all the way up the stairs to George’s seventh-floor apartment because he’s scared of taking the elevator). Perhaps he meets Kenneth Heilbron, who arrives in Paris in 1926.

George Hoyningen-Huene – Vogue via Harper’s Bazaar to Hollywood

Edward Steichen comes over, allows George to watch him work and gives him moral support. In 1929 Condé Nast brings him over to New York and, in George’s own words:

From then on, I suppose I can say that I became the best fashion photographer between 1930 and 1945.

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Carole Lombard modelling a lamé gown by Travis Banton

Carole Lombard modelling a lamé gown by Travis Banton

1934 This over-the-top flight of fantasy is worthy of Cecil Beaton with its giant rococo frame encased in gauzy drapery. What an artful way of backlighting the subject in her ultra-chic evening gown. Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene.

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Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn

1934 If the photo of Carole Lombard is in the style of Cecil Beaton, this one of Katharine Hepburn seems to foreshadow the work of Bruce Weber. Hoyningen-Huene tended to work in the studio, but this shot shows how he can use natural daylight to flattering effect. Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene.

The mid-1920s to the mid-1940s, and particularly the first of those two decades, are golden years for George Hoyningen-Huene. During that time he produces some of the defining images of the world of fashion. His style is very much that of his time: classical, pared-back, austere even (the 1935 fashion photo that opens this article is a good example) – in strong contrast to the pictorialist aesthetic of the likes of Baron Adolph de Meyer. But he can work in a range of styles, as the photos of Carole Lombard and Katharine Hepburn, both shot in 1934, show.

In 1930 he meets Horst P Horst, who becomes his photographic assistant, occasional model and lover. Horst will become another of the 20th century’s great fashion photographers, but that’s another story. And in 1935 he moves back to Harper’s Bazaar to work with its dream team of Carmel Snow (editor) and Alexei Brodovich (art director).

After World War II, George decides it’s time for a change. He’s already published books on Greece, Syria, Egypt, Africa and Mexico based on his travels, and h begins to teach photography at the Art Center School in Pasadena. He’s already made several documentaries in Spain and Greece when George Cukor, an old friend, asks him to come and help with his first colour picture – a remake of A Star is Born. George Cukor was clearly a big admirer.

When I brought Hoyningen-Huene to the screen he’d been for years the most distinguished photographer on Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. He was a friend of mine, living in Paris, and had done a great many books. He was shooting a documentary movie at the time, and, as A Star Is Born was my first colour picture, I thought he would be ideally suited to assist me on its colour problems, since he knew all there is to know on that. Since then he’s profoundly affected all my films. He was nominally the colour co-ordinator but he touched every department with his enormous taste and knowledge.

So what exactly is colour coordination in the movie world? George Hoyningen-Huene outlines his take in that 1965 interview:

If you mix up a lot of colors and don’t have a dominant color, your eye gets distracted and you don’t know what you’re looking at. Then you get a sort of chromo-postcard effect.

In order to design a picture, you have the problem of figuring out what sort of wardrobe goes into what back-ground. You see, my function is to have the art director and the wardrobe people know exactly what the two departments were doing, and then decide on what the overall was going to look like, because you cannot design sets and have the wardrobe disregarded. It wouldn’t make any sense. It all has to jell. It has to be coordinated, and that is my function. Now, very often a certain outfit, let’s say, on the star, has to play against various backgrounds, and some combinations are satisfactory and some are not. That, of course, is unavoidable. But on the whole we can always juggle things around, especially if you’re designing sets. If they’re existing locations, then you have to accept what you have.

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Ava Gardner smoulders behind a fan

Ava Gardner smoulders behind a fan

1956. Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene.

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Ava Gardner in an off-the-shoulder dress

Ava Gardner in an off-the-shoulder dress

1956. Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene.

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Ava Gardner in pensive mood

Ava Gardner in pensive mood

1956. Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene.

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Ava Gardner en déshabille´

Ava Gardner en déshabille´

1956. Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene.

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Ava Gardner in a white-lace mantilla

Ava Gardner in a white-lace mantilla

1956. Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene.

A Star is Born marks the beginning of a long and fruitful working relationship between George Cukor and George Hoyningen-Huene in the course of which they collaborate on many films including Bhowani Junction, during the making of which Huene takes a series of portraits of Ava Gardner, five of which you can see above.

They’re a fascinating contrast with the photographs produced by MGM when Ava arrived in Hollywood little more than ten years earlier. There, she was very much an aspiring starlet – youthful and slightly diffident. Here she’s a woman – strong, handsome and confident, her fabulous bone structure caressed by Huene’s wonderfully subtle lighting. And there’s a quiet intensity – the focus thrown exclusively onto Ava with nothing to distract the viewer.

George Hoyningen-Huene dies of a heart attack in 1968 at his home in Los Angeles.

Want to know more about George Hoyningen-Huene?

In 1965, Elizabeth Dixon interviewed George Hoyningen-Huene as part of the University of California’s Oral History Program. It’s a fascinating read and a full transcript is available online. William Ewing draws heavily on it for his definitive book, The Photographic Art of Hoyningen-Huene. He has also written a substantial article for LoveToKnow. I also consulted Robert Emmet’s George Cukor Interviews. And, of course, there’s always Wikipedia.

Since I wrote this piece, the George Hoyningen-Huene Estate has been acquired by Tommy and Åsa Rönngren, who have created an elegant and informative website that really should be the first port of call for anyone interested in the photographer.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Hoyningen-Huene makes a portrait
The Young Look in the Theatre by Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson – photographer and fantasist
Shooting for the stars – insights from four leading Hollywood cinematographers

Filed Under: Fashion, Photographers Tagged With: Ava Gardner, Bhowani Junction, Edward Steichen, George Cukor, George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P Horst

Marilyn Monroe – the tragic star who morphed from Norma Jeane

Marilyn Monroe is such a legend. What can one say about her that hasn’t been said before? And yet she absolutely has to feature on any website about movies and fashion.

So my angle here is to compare the photos and accounts of two different photographers. André de Dienes captured Marilyn as Norma Jeane at the beginning of her career (she adopted the name Marilyn Monroe in 1946 but didn’t change it legally until ten years later). Bert Stern took some of the last photos of her in 1962, six weeks before her death.

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Norma Jeane with a bow in her hair photographed by André de Dienes

Norma Jeane with a bow in her hair

Paradise Cove, November 1945. Paradise Cove is a secluded beach north of Malibu. It's where André took Marilyn for their first shoot, the day after...

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Marilyn Monroe wearing a black hat photographed by Bert Stern, June 1962

Marilyn Monroe modelling a hat

Bel-Air Hotel, Hollywood, June 1962. A great composition, this – Marilyn's face framed by the black diagonals of her hat and collar. And the combination...

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The expressions and smiles are miles apart – the touching candour of 1945 has given way to a more calculated allure in 1962.

Both photographers were completely besotted by Marilyn – clearly her charisma wasn’t merely an on-screen phenomenon. Men simply found her irresistible, as André recounts in his journal, writing about an early road trip with her:

We were hardly on the outskirts of Los Angeles when the police patrol stopped me for faulty driving. Norma Jeane was sitting close to me and the policeman might have felt jealous! She felt very indignant. In her sweet voice she riposted to the policeman that he was a crook and that we had done nothing wrong. The man, part seriously and part joking, said to Norma Jeane that if she cared to stay there for the night he would not make us pay the fine.

I paid twenty dollars and we continued the trip. That was only the first proposal she got on that trip. Amazingly, at various places we stopped, people began proposing to her. A garage mechanic said he would give his left arm if she should stay and become his wife. A miner in the mountains said he wanted her and would give her everything he had. A young farmer said he was looking for a woman of her beauty! The owner of a motel proposed to her! And the haberdasher where I stopped to buy her jeans went nearly out of his mind wanting to see Norma Jeane try on various garments in the little dressing closet. Like a magnet, she attracted all men!

Not surprisingly, both André and Bert fantasised about photographing Marilyn naked – the former couldn’t bring himself to do so, but the latter could and did. On the other hand, André became Marilyn’s lover, Bert couldn’t bring himself to do so.

André’s first encounter with Norma Jeane – foretold in the stars

In 1945, André de Dienes picked up the phone to two agents. He was looking for models for a nude photography project he was planning. He was in a hurry because a fortune-teller had predicted there was a girl in Hollywood “waiting for me to photograph her!”

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Norma Jeane wearing a short-sleeved shirt and jeans photographed by André de Dienes

Norma Jeane in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans

1945. During their road trip, André and Norma Jeane stopped at a farm where she fed the animals. Here she flashes a coy, come-hither smile...

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Marilyn Monroe draped in chinchilla photographed by Bert Stern, June 1962

Marilyn Monroe wrapped in chinchilla

Bel-Air Hotel, Hollywood, June 1962. Defiant, defensive or just play-acting? Here Marilyn collaborates with Bert to subvert Vogue's intention of a more formal fashion shot....

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The body language is so different – there’s a beguilingly shy nonchalance about Norma Jeane in 1945. In 1962, Marilyn looks raddled, exhausted but infinitely more beautiful. She’s like some kind of tragic heroine.

The second agent, Emmeline Snively, announced that there was a very pretty girl in her office, waiting for her first modelling assignment and promised to send her around right away. Later that afternoon, Norma Jeane, 19 years old, arrived at André de Dienes’ bungalow.

Norma Jeane wore a pale pink sweater, tight to her body, and her curly ash-blonde hair was tied around her head with pink ribbon. … She reacted, responded to everything I said. She started to look around in my room examining all the pictures I put on the walls, and began asking questions. … She was utterly sincere: she did not wish to speak about herself, except when I asked her my own questions. She was sincere in wanting to know who I was, what I was doing with my life… and I began to amuse her exceedingly with all sorts of stories that ran through my mind, and I kept dishing them out to her. I still remember it so clearly as if it happened just recently. …

I came straight to the point in our conversation, asking her whether she would like to come to travel with me. We would would go by car to explore the Vast West, and take pictures everywhere – – glamour photos for magazine covers, and nudes, too!

I had a stack of large enlargements of photos I took of movie stars the year before, and some nudes, and Norma Jeane looked through them with great approval. She was excited, and wanted to pose for me. And she asked “Would you like to see my figure?” In a jiffy, she grabbed her hatbox, went to the adjoining room (the bedroom) to put on a bathing suit, and smiling, beaming with happiness, she swirled around the center of the living room, happy to be able to show me her beautiful figure.

A day later, I took her to the beach to take pictures of her, and again and again I photographed her each day. My mind was made up for sure; I wanted to take her away from Hollywood right away on a long trip. Just go with her anywhere, everywhere! I felt completely enamored by her.

Bert’s first encounter with Marilyn Monroe – a lightning bolt from the heavens

By the time Bert encounters Marilyn ten years later, she’s already a star. It will be another seven years before he photographs her for Vogue.

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Norma Jeane sitting in a country road photographed by André de Dienes

End of the road for Norma Jeane

1945. This is not the only occasion on which André photographed Norma Jeane on a highway, but for me it's the best. I love the...

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Marilyn Monroe modelling a black dress photographed by Bert Stern, June 1962

End of the road for Marilyn Monroe

Bel-Air Hotel, Hollywood, June 1962. Another shot from this series appeared in Vogue to illustrate Marilyn's obituary. By the time Bert took it, the shoot...

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She’s sitting in both shots, but the postures speak volumes.  In 1945 Norma Jeane is energised, ready for the next adventure. In 1962 Marilyn is exhausted,  with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

The first time I saw her was at a party for the Actors Studio, in New York City. It was 1955. A friend and I had been invited, and when we walked in, there she was: Marilyn Monroe.

She was the center of attention. All the men were around her, and all the light in the room seemed focused on her. Or was the light coming from her? It seemed to be, because she glowed. She had that blonde hair and luminous skin, she wore a gleaming sheath of emerald green paint.

“Look at that dress,” I said to my friend.

“I hear they sew her into it,” he said.

How would you get her out of it, I wondered, with a razor blade?

I’d laid eyes on Marilyn Monroe only moments before and already ideas about taking her clothes off were going through my mind.

I walked toward her, not with any intention of speaking to her, just in a trance of pure attraction. I had about as much control over myself as a moth flying around a candle. I wasn’t more than three or four feet away when she turned and smiled in my general direction, her dress shooting green stars. I was dazzled. I didn’t question why she would be smiling at me. At that instant I fell under her spell. It was a moment I wanted to go on forever.

Want to know more about Marilyn Monroe?

I’ve drawn heavily on two main sources. The first is Photo De André De Dienes, a reproduction of André’s notebook. It’s currently out of print, but an edited version is available as André de Dienes. Marilyn Monroe. My second source is Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting.

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Norma Jeane with a radiant smile photographed at Tobay Beach by André de Dienes

Norma Jeane with a radiant smile

Tobay Beach, Oyster Bay, 1949. In this photo, taken four years on from the 1945 series, Norma Jeane is turning into Marilyn Monroe. Perhaps the...

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Marilyn Monroe with pearls and sparkle photographed by Bert Stern, June 1962

Marilyn Monroe with pearls and sparkle

Bel-Air Hotel, Hollywood, June 1962. This image is from the final sequence that Bert took. It's fabulously glamorous and intimate. And it's also enigmatic –...

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By 1949, Norma Jeane is playing the part – she knows just how to dazzle with her smile and is evidently relishing the experience. In 1962, she’s playing the part again – but who knows what is going through her mind?

Other topics you may be interested in…

André de Dienes – desert frolics
Carole Landis publicity photo for Secret Command
Carole Landis – die young, stay pretty
Sabrina in a black strappy dress
Sabrina – Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe

Filed Under: Photographers, Stars Tagged With: André de Dienes, Bert Stern, Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jeane

Kenneth Heilbron – mid-century fashion from Chicago

These days, when you think of mid-20th century fashion photography two names spring to mind: Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. Their work is now in the permanent collections of major museums and art galleries around the world, the subject of regular retrospectives and highly prized by collectors – a single print can fetch tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction, and rising.

Artwork for a Kenneth Heilbron exhibition poster
Around 1960. Artwork for a Heilbron exhibition sign.

But travel back in time to the 1940s and 1950s and their contemporaries may well have been bewildered at the attention garnered by Penn and Avedon given that they were just two of a host of photographers working for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and the other fashion magazines of the era.

There’s Lillian Bassman, who blurs and bleaches her prints in the darkroom to produce magical, high-contrast images of sylph-like models. Or Clifford Coffin, who pioneers the use of the ring-flash to dramatize his models and outline them with shadow. The work of others is perhaps less distinctive but is not just technically brilliant but totally conveys the zeitgeist – think Louise Dahl-Wolfe, John Rawlings, Gleb Derujinsky…

This is the era of European haute couture, dominated by the likes of Christan Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy, Jacques Fath and Pierre Balmain. And of Paris as the almost mythical centre of the fashion universe, immortalized in Funny Face. But while Paris grabs the fashion headlines, Europe is in a sorry state, struggling to recover from the devastation of World War II. In the US, by contrast, fortunes continue to be made, the standard of living to rise and Hollywood to cement its status as a fashion capital of the world.

In the Midwest, Marshall Field & Company of Chicago lead a host of merchants serving the newly rich and those with aspirations in that direction. Middle Americans too far away to drop by are served by the city’s major catalogue retailers – Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. And mid-20th century Chicago has its own fashion photographer too. His name is Kenneth Heilbron.

A charmed life

Christmas card artwork by Kenneth Helbron
1948. Artwork for the Heilbrons’ Christmas card.

Kenneth is the second son of a prosperous millinery importer. In 1926, age 23, he is sent by his father to Paris, the city of not just of Coco Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin and Jean Patou but of Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Josephine Baker and the Ballets Russes. He returns to Chicago with his new wife, Mildred Anderson, five years later. Years later, he recalls the Great Depression as a thing that happened to other people, never to the friends in his circle.

Anyway, he takes up photography as a means of supplementing the family income, and his talent and connections ensure success. He is chosen as a Chicago bureau photographer for Life, Time and Fortune magazines in the 1930s–40s. In 1938 he becomes the first instructor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Expanding into advertising and fashion photography, around the beginning of World War II the Heilbron home and studio move to the building that will later become famous as Hugh Hefner’s residence and office –the Isham mansion on State Street, where Kenneth stages portrait sittings in the grand ballroom. Although he hires laboratory assistants, he alone operates his cameras and makes prints over which he exercises absolute control.

The fashion and advertising shoots are great money-spinners and enable the Heilbrons to move to a 22-room townhouse on Wells Street in Chicago’s Old Town neighbourhood. The coach house becomes Kenneth’s photo lab, separated from his home by a private garden centred on a small lily pond. And the house itself begins to fill with American folk art, antique furniture and whole families of exotic cats, of which he took many, many photos.

Kenneth himself is quite a dandy (echoes of Norman Parkinson here). Often he dresses in custom-made Parisian clothes, and for decades, his signature look includes an ascot (a cravat) and a beret.

In 1985, the year of a retrospective at the Art Institute, the Heilbrons move to Galena, where he continues to photograph neighbours and officials. He declares himself officially retired from active picture making in 1994, three years before his death.

A man of his time

It is for his fashion photos that Kenneth features on Aenigma. His biggest client in that area seems to have been Marshall Fields, but his work also appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times (including an article about Wilhelmina) and no doubt many other magazines.

It is absolutely of its time. Like his contemporaries, Heilbron goes for naturalistic shots, often taken on location. There are some fabulous settings in Chicago – the Art Institute, the glazed upper deck of the original Equitable Building still under construction, on the street – and also in Paris.

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Feeding the pigeons

Feeding the pigeons

Around 1948. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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The New Look

The New Look

Paris, around 1948. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Street fashion

Street fashion

Chicago, around 1946. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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By the Seine

By the Seine

Paris, around 1960. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Rejection

Rejection

Around 1955. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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At the airport

At the airport

Around 1960. Unknown models. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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The fan

The fan

Around 1955. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Art critics

Art critics

Chicago Art Institute, around 1960. Unknown models. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Scooter girl

Scooter girl

Paris around 1960. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Poster girl

Poster girl

Paris, 1959. Ivy Nicholson. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Distracted by the news

Distracted by the news

Paris, around 1960. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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In a world of her own

In a world of her own

Paris, around 1960. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Taken by surprise

Taken by surprise

Paris, around 1960. Ivy Nicholson. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Coffee and colonnade

Coffee and colonnade

Paris, around 1960. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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Dancing down the steps

Dancing down the steps

Around 1962. Wilhelmina modelling a summer dress. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron

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In a hurry

In a hurry

Paris, around 1960. Ivy Nicholson. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

Looking at the images here, it’s clear that Heilbron had a great eye for composition (in 1939 he published a book on Composition for the Amateur), an ability to put his models at ease and the technique to capture the studied elegance of the times. He was also willing to spend hours in the darkroom coaxing subtle details into a single image he wanted to preserve. This helps to explain why many of his pictures exist as unique vintage prints.

Unknown model by Kenneth Heilbron
Around 1962. Unknown model. Photo by Kenneth Heilbron.

As with Penn and Avedon, fashion was just one aspect of Heilbron’s work and he looked beyond it for less glamorous subject matter. But he didn’t go to the dark places that Avedon explored, nor did he pursue an aesthetic with the uncompromising rigour of Penn. Nevertheless, these days if he is known at all, Heilbron is admired above all for the photos he took from the late 1930s through the 1940s of Ringling Brothers Circus life and performers – shots which are both intimate and penetrating.

And those circus images bring to mind Avedon’s shoot with Dovima at the Cirque d’Hiver. Asked why he never tried to pose a model in a real circus, Heilbron replied that his clients would have found the concept unacceptable. He was hired to produce images of luxurious fantasy; however intriguing it might be, the backyard of the circus was not fashionable.

Other topics you may be interested in

The Young Look in the Theatre by Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson – photographer and fantasist
Mrs Alfred G Vanderbilt by Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon – art and commerce
Wilhelmina modelling a chiffon evening dress
Wilhelmina – glamour and tragedy

Filed Under: Fashion, Photographers Tagged With: Ivy Nicholson, Kenneth Heilbron, Wilhelmina

André de Dienes – desert frolics

André de Dienes is best known for his photos of Marilyn Monroe and I’m planning to showcase some of those in a future article.

Here I’d like to draw your attention to two of his other obsessions: the great outdoors (and in particular the American West) and the nude. And perhaps this was his way of escaping from his past.

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Desert contours 1

Desert contours 1

Around 1950. Unknown model. Photo by André de Dienes.

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Desert contours 2

Desert contours 2

Around 1950. Unknown model. Photo by André de Dienes.

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Desert contours 3

Desert contours 3

Around 1950. Unknown model. Photo by André de Dienes.

A bit of background

With the currency devalued and his family in crisis, André’s mother commits suicide and he runs away from the Transylvanian village of Turia, where he was born, to Budapest. There he takes a job in a fabric store, where he spends his days surrounded by wealthy women and expensive fabrics. By night he works as a stagehand so as to get to see operas and musicals.

But he hasn’t gone far enough to escape his demons. Age 15, he travels across Europe, mostly on foot, until he arrives in Tunisia where he purchases his first camera. In 1933 he goes to Paris to study art. There he’s taken up by the couturier, Edward Molyneux, for whom he undertakes a series of fashion shoots.

Five years later, in 1938, Arnold Gingrich, editor of Esquire, offers him work in New York City, and helps fund his passage to the US. There he works for Vogue, Bazaar, Life and other magazines. He’s still restless and in 1944, spurred on by his interest in native American tribes and by an invitation from David O Selznick (producer of Gone With The Wind), he moves to California.

A more vivid contrast with the land of his birth is difficult to imagine. And there he settles and begins to specialize in nudes and landscapes.

André de Dienes in his own words

His objective is to see beauty in nature. He travels extensively to find the right locations for his shoots, his favourites being deserts and seashores. He writes:

Every picture I have taken of the nude was for the sole purpose of expressing my feelings for the beautiful.

His advice to photographers interested in photographing the nude is unambiguous:

I ask you not to disgrace the nude with your camera. Respect it, express its beauty, exercise and better your beautiful emotions. Try not to photograph just naked girls; try to give meaning to your pictures; be proud of the photos you take. Do not abuse the luck and privilege of having a girl pose for you in the nude. Do not photograph nudes as I do, but try your own techniques, give in to your own feelings. Try to create something entirely new, abstract, in any way, as long as it remains within the bounds of decency.

Ironically but perhaps not surprisingly given his status as one of the leading photographers of nudes of the early 1950s, he ends up contributing to Playboy during its early years. In fact, one of his nudes features in the very first issue.

Technically, André de Dienes’ work is pretty superb. He rarely uses a light meter:

Neither in shooting nor in enlarging do I use a light meter (except for color indoors). My brain becomes a computer and I figure the exposure pretty accurately.

And to make his photographs true to life, he never retouches them.

The two shoots

Both of the shoots on this page were taken at the sand dunes near Yuma, Arizona.

I did drive through those sand dunes several times. It’s a beautiful stretch of about twenty miles wide, one hundred miles long of big, big sand dunes like in the Sahara desert in Africa, and I took many beautiful photographs of nudes. And I did encounter sand storms several times, so bad that the windshield of the car had to be replaced twice, and the insurance company refused to insure me any further.

They are brimming with escapist rapture. There’s something ecstatic about them. They show the rapport André de Dienes builds with his models, and the results are wonderfully spontaneous.

In Desert Contours, it’s late afternoon and the sun is getting low in the sky, casting long shadows across a vast desert landscape that dwarfs the unidentified model as she runs, jumps and surfs, her curves set against the swirls of the wind-ruffled dunes. She may occupy a tiny portion of the canvas but she is absolutely the focal point.

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Desert Dance 1

Desert Dance 1

1946. Mallia Phillips. Photo by André de Dienes.

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Desert Dance 2

Desert Dance 2

1946. Mallia Phillips. Photo by André de Dienes.

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Desert Dance 3

Desert Dance 3

1946. Mallia Phillips. Photo by André de Dienes.

In Desert Dance, Mallia Phillips (identified as the model on the back of one of the prints) is jumping for joy, her diaphanous dress billowing around her.

Want to know more about André de Dienes?

There’s some good background in the introduction André de Dienes. Marilyn. Online, take a look at Ten Glamour Photographers of the 50s and 60s and Cursum Perficio.

Filed Under: Photographers Tagged With: André de Dienes, Arnold Gingrich, Bazaar, Edward Molyneux, Life Magazine, Mallia Phillips, nudes, Playboy, Vogue

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