The History of Fashion Photography

Nancy Hall-Duncan, 1979

The history of fashion photography is, quite simply, a record of those photographs made to show or sell clothing or accessories. To its critics it is a subject of ephemeral ends and misplaced values. Yet in a larger sense, it is important as a record not only of fashion description and photographic style but also of artistic influence, commercial impact and social and cultural customs.

The exact beginnings of fashion photography have yet to be determined but they probably go back as far as the 1850’s or 1860’s. It was not until the 1880’s or 1890’s, when it fulfilled its commercial purpose of selling to a large audience through the medium of the printed page, that fashion photography came into common use.

Its birth was related to a technological breakthrough: the invention and practical application of the halftone printing process, which allowed a single photograph to be reproduced a great number of times on the same page as type. Though photographs of fashionable dress had existed almost since the public announcement of photography in 1839, true fashion photographs did not reach a large public through magazine reproduction until nearly a half-century later.

The fashion photograph’s primary concern with the style of dress rather than the sitter or the setting is what distinguishes it from other types of photography such as portraiture, theatrical publicity, or pornographic shots. Particularly in its earliest period, fashion, portraiture, and theater photography resembled each other because society belles and personalities of stage and screen were often used as models. Displaying fashions on professional models was considered shocking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which is in sharp contrast to the glamour and prestige currently associated with fashion modeling. Such celebrities as Sarah Bernhardt, Tilly Losch and Irene Castle, who could be recognized instantly, were perfectly suited to be fashion models.

It is in fact sometimes difficult to distinguish photographs taken for the theater from those taken for fashion, though the theatrical shots generally show their sitters in more theatrical poses and include more stage props, such as leopard heads and bearskin rugs. During the 1910’s when it became fashionable for society celebrities such as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to indulge in fashion modeling, fashion photographs were strikingly similar to society portraits. Recently fashion photography has begun to resemble another type of photography—pornography. In fact, many photographs taken with a pornographic intent have become so stylish and, conversely, many fashion shots are so filled with sexual innuendo that it is difficult to differentiate between the two. For our purposes, however, the distinguishing feature of every fashion photograph—and the common denominator in the great diversity of style and approach—is its fashion intent.

It is the twofold stigma of commercialism and materialism that makes fashion one of the few types of photography whose very values are called into question. Fashion photographs are designed to be seducers, propaganda so potent it can beguile us into buying the most frivolous products. Fashion photography also commits the “sin” of being produced not only for love but for money, implying creative manipulation and the sacrifice of photographic and artistic integrity. Fashion photographs are ostensibly as transitory as last year’s style or this month’s magazine issue.

These and other criticisms obscure the fact that the fashion photograph can have its own artistic integrity and social importance. The content of the fashion picture is not the clothes alone but also the attitudes and conventions of the people who wear them; it is an index in miniature to culture and society, to people’s aspirations, limitations and taste. Though fashion photography illustrates rapidly changing modes, the best fashion work transcends mere “trendiness” and mirrors the life style of a period. It reflects the self-images of people as well as their dreams and desires.

The fashion photograph is not a statement of fact but an ideal; it does not deal with commonplace subjects but with created illusions, flattering garments and flawless models. The success of a fashion photograph depends not only on the desirability of the clothing but on our willingness to believe in and identify with the subject. Once workaday reality intrudes, the potency of the idealization is lessened.

A common criticism of fashion photography is that it does not depict anything “real” or true to our existence and, therefore, meaningful. Any photograph is normally approached as a truthful document—reliable evidence of something which existed before the lens as if before one’s eyes. A fashion photograph does not depend on realism, yet one of the most convincing reasons that it is a potent selling device—more so than a drawing or a sketch—is our willingness to believe in it. No matter how artificial the setting and despite our awareness that every fashion shot—even a realistic one—is posed and orchestrated, a photograph persuades us that if we wear these clothes, use this product or accessorize in such a way, the reality of the photograph will be ours.

The symbol of the model has become so pervasive and the identification so complete that some models command up to a million dollars a year to create an “exclusive” advertising campaign. The very idea of exclusivity in models, utilized by such firms as Fabergé and Revlon, indicates that masses of people find fashion photography credible.

Fashion itself is closely related to the way fashion photographs look. Fashion is a highly visible symbol: it can be used to express individuality, status, financial means, or attitudes. In the nineteenth century the writer George Sand, for example, rejected tight-fitting women’s garments and wore men’s clothing as an expression of her belief that women were sexually and intellectually restricted. Fashion also reflects acceptable modes of behavior. For instance, the S-curve style of the turn-of-the-century fashion, which was uncomfortable and was in fact physically harmful, was a fashion which corseted the bust and upper body to such an extent that the bust “overhung” the hips by three to four inches. Carmel Snow, an editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, explains how the style can be traced to social conventions:

In the first decade of the twentieth century a woman dressed over an extremely firm foundation, lavishing her art on her sway-back figure…The functions of that day served enormous amounts of food. You have only to look at those twelve-course dinner menus to understand why the “strong” figure, with a big bust, was fashionable.

Many other social developments have been reflected in fashion. For instance, the loose clothing of the 1920’s flapper may be related to that era’s social freedoms, the emphasis on femininity in the fashion of the late 1940’s as a reaction to wartime clothing restrictions, and the eclecticism of fashion in the 1960’s as a result of the new liberties sanctioned by the sexual revolution, the women’s movement, and the drug culture.

The history of fashion photography can also be taken as an index to sexual mores. Clothes are often used as a means of sexual attraction. The fact that women of a certain period have chosen to dress like sexless clothes racks, aloof sex goddesses, or lusty aggressors reflects a sociological change of some importance. Thus, the publication ofHelmut Newton’s voyeuristic perversions and Chris von Wangenheim’s sadomasochistic cruelties in glossy magazines is a telling result of the sexual revolution.

The depiction of fashion has changed along with the concept of what constitutes attractiveness. The attractive woman at the turn of the century was demure and coquettish, her very proper dress paralleling her ladylike demeanor. By the 1920’s both the concept and the portrayal had changed to that of the newly liberated woman, the flapper, while by the 1930’s the image of woman had assumed a sleek elegance and an air of luxury. In the 1940’s the concept of attractiveness reflects the same straightforward style one finds in the clothing itself. The postwar reaction against such severity led to the elegant idealization of woman in the work of Irving Penn and the charm and playfulness of Richard Avedon’s early style. Both attitudes, which would have been unthinkable during the war, display the tone and style of the 1950’s woman.

By the 1960’s and 1970’s the concept of the attractive woman had again changed radically giving a new look to fashion photography. Avedon brought sexual liberation to the fashion idiom of the sixties, capturing the tone and tenor of the decade better than perhaps any other photographer. Many influences, such as the de-emphasis on haute couture in favor of ready-made clothing and the shift in women’s expectations due to the women’s liberation movement, contributed to a new idea of what made a woman attractive. This woman was independent, sometimes aggressive and exotic in the sixties and relaxed in the seventies. She became sexually liberated, willing to experiment and concerned with her individuality.

It is ironic that the photography of fashion, which bases its appeal on the reader’s desire to appear unique and “up-to-the-minute,” has rarely been in the avant-garde of photographic style. There are numerous examples of how fashion photography has been behind, rather than ahead of, the times. For instance, the style called pictorialism, which experimented with effects of light and atmosphere, was adapted to fashion photography some twenty years after its use by such photographers as Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Käsebier. Similarly, photographers did not begin employing surrealist effects in their fashion work for more than ten years after the first Surrealist Manifesto appeared. “Realism” did not surface in fashion photography until after it was an important force in both painting and “art” photography. The general standards of what is considered acceptable—for very few radical statements ever meet with the approval of a mass audience—have sometimes limited and compromised creativity. Nonetheless, fashion magazines have been one of the most important means by which aesthetic styles such as cubism and surrealism have reached a wide public and, as such, are key disseminators of aesthetic taste.

The fashion magazine has also played an important and unappreciated role in the fostering of outstanding photography in both fashion and non-fashion areas. In the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar—the only magazines to maintain active studios concurrently in New York, London, and Paris over a period of several decades—one can find a significant body of work by photographers of true stature. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Robert Frank, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn,Charles Sheeler, Bernice Abbott, Diane Arbus, and many others have at one time or another contributed to such fashion periodicals.

The empires built by Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar enabled them not only to attract the best photographers but to encourage new talent as well. The publisher Condé Nast was said to have created at Vogue the equivalent of a Hollywood movie studio empire in which the “star” photographers were supplied with their photographic heart’s desire, allowed to construct extravagant sets, demand the most exotic props, and command huge sums for their talents. The publisher of Harper’s Bazaar, William Randolph Hearst, backed by inherited wealth and an enormous income from his newspapers and mass magazines, was reputed to have offered even more lucrative arrangements than Vogue. The fact that these publishing empires aimed at selling to women rather than men goes a long way toward explaining the remarkable amount of first-rate women’s fashion photography that was published.Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar are only the most obvious examples of how the vitality of fashion photography in any city—London, Paris, or New York—has been dependent on such periodicals.

The context of the fashion photograph is the page of a fashion magazine. What have been described as “snappy layouts,” “bubbling captions,” and “sledge-hammer directives” have for the most part maintained a boring uniformity in such magazines through many decades. Yet fashion photography manages to retain a wealth of social and cultural implications. Examining the fashion photograph before it is placed on the fashion page—before it is reduced, cropped, retouched, or overlaid with type—can serve the important function of revealing to use the photographer’s original intent. For the most part, the fashion photographer surrenders control of the way his work is presented when he submits it to a magazine for publication. To a photographer concerned with the photographic integrity of his shots, the way in which his photograph is edited can be devastating. “I have learned the discipline of not looking at the magazines when they come out,” one major fashion photographer said early on in his career, “because they hurt so much.”

Few fashion photographers conceive their work in terms of its final presentation on the magazine page. Richard Avedon is one photographer who does so: with remarkable creative imagination he has constantly sought new ways to add variety to the magazine format. His photoessays, which lead the reader from page to page, are only one example. Similarly, Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, two Paris-based photographers, each exert great control, being allowed by French Vogueto select their own models, and the clothing they wish to photograph as well as the concept for the shot. Bourdin also chooses to do his own layouts, producing the most original, daring, and elegant fashion spreads done today. The degree to which the fashion editor and art director of the magazine determine the treatment of the photograph varies of course from photographer to photographer, depending not only on his experience but also his personal preference. Richard Avedon, for instance, enjoys editorial collaboration and finds ideas the fashion editor brings to each sitting a source of inspiration which “constantly revitalizes” him.

In a provocative article, critic Hilton Kramer has pointed out that the conventional value of photography will be challenged by the uses of fashion photography and that the “conversion” of fashion photography into an object of artistic interest will undoubtedly meet determined critical resistance. Yet it seems likely that further reassessment of fashion photography will discover new values in the medium and admit the possibility of its stylistic excellence. Our purpose is to trace the development of stylistic conventions in fashion photography and to relate fashion photography to other types of photography, the arts, society, and culture. Concentrating on the three major fashion centers, London, Paris, and New York, this book hopes to prove its criterion of selection: that a great fashion photograph is more than great fashion and no less than great photography.