In Focus: The first photo shoot and the invention of fashion photography
Originally posted: Monday, 16 July 2012 at 9:34am
https://web.archive.org/web/20130527142159/http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/the-first-photo-shoot-and-the-invention-of-fashion-photography-120712/default.htm
In 1911, Edward J. Steichen photographed models wearing gowns for a magazine and invented the modern fashion photo shoot.
In the early 20th century the magazine industry embraced fashion photography as a tool for selling an enviable lifestyle, and with it clothes and accessories. The combination of photographers inspired by the avant-garde or informed by world events with a strong commercial imperative helped create a unique visual language that still exists today.
Fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar identified fashion photography not only as a source of content for their expanding readership but as a vehicle to entice advertisers. Fashion editorial accompanied by photo shoots helped to elevate clothing into the realm of fine art. Photography brought recognition to fashion designers, models and the photographers themselves.
Although fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar began publishing in the 1860s, it wasn't until 1911 that Lucien Vogel, an enterprising French magazine publisher and editor, decided to feature fashion photography as an editorial feature.
He enlisted leading American photographer Edward J. Steichen to photograph the gowns of couturier Paul Poiret for publication in Art et decoration in April 1911. This magazine feature is considered one of the first examples of modern fashion photography – traces of which are still evident in fashion magazines the world over today.
Edward J. Steichan, editorial for Art et Decoration magazine (1911)
Photographers such as Edward J. Steichen, Cecil Beaton and Richard Avedon helped to establish the visual language of the modern fashion photo shoot; exotic locations, elaborate staging and a hint of story-telling helped to create moods and suggest emotional connections with the products they were helping sell.
With many of the early fashion photographers also contributing photojournalism to magazines such as Life, fashion shoots sometimes overtly, or indirectly, referenced current world events. But many of the greats, like May Ray, framed their subjects in contrast to the political turmoil engulfing Europe in the 1930s. His photograph Portrait of Coco Chanel (1935), for example, is a study of opulent but refined elegance – a suitable tribute to the women who so greatly influenced the fashion industry. Similarly, in the wake of WWII, as Europe smoldered, fashion photographers like Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton reveled in depicting a sense of freedom (sexual and political), optimism and prosperity in the post war era.
Edward J. Steichen Wind Fire -Therese Duncan on the Acropolis (1921)
Fashion photography has played a fundamental role in the development of the global fashion and magazine industry. Early exponents developed the visual language of the modern day photo shoot and directly, or indirectly, reflected what was going on in the world around them. Today’s stars, Nick Knight, Annie Leibovitz, Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans, Peter Lindbergh, Bruce Weber, Olaf Martens, Chico Bialas and Ellen von Unwerth among others, continue to channel and reinvent the look and style pioneered over a hundred years ago.
Herbert Tobias, ..und neues Leben protzt aus den Ruinen, (1955)
F.C. Gundlach, Op art badeanzug von sinz, (1966)
Helmut Newton, Rue Aubriot, (1975)