A Singular Elegance - Photographs From Baron Adolph de Meyer

-

Elizabeth Arden ad, 1927
I've been meaning to write about a wonderfully inspiring exhibition of photography I saw at the Robert Miller Gallery which has unfortunately now ended. Anyway, better late than never and the works of the photographer in question, Baron Adolph de Meyer, (1868-1946) can also be found in The Metropolitan Museum and MOMA here in New York, The V&A and The National Portrait Gallery in London, The Getty Center in L.A. and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

 de Meyer, famous for his early twentieth-century portraits of renowned beauties and celebrities is widely recognized as being the founder of modern fashion photography. 

 He was hired in 1913 by Condé Nast (the person, not the publishing empire he founded!) to be the very first staff photographer of both Vogue and Vanity Fair.
The following is from the Robert Miller Gallery press release,
"His masterful backlighting, subtle toning, extravagant props, and nuanced backgrounds of diaphanous or glowing fabrics reduced to patterns of light and shadow became the hallmarks of his style. An Edwardian to his core, his own life was the embodiment of the social world that Condé Nast was keen to present to an American audience: cultivated and aristocratic, but also at the nexus of a nascent celebrity culture."
He originated the multi-paged fashion essay, and was the impetus for the creation of the modern professional modeling industry.


Dolores, 1918
Josephine Baker, 1926


Fashion Study, two models at a table, 1920




Helen Lee Worthing, 1920


Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1912


Nijinsky, 1912

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 10, 2010 at 3:50 PM

    Love this post. Love your blog! Rita

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jayne Mountford May 12, 2010 at 10:19 AM

    Thanks Rita, such beautiful images aren't they?
    J

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Streisand Effect

-
Image
It's not that Barbra Streisand had actually gone away anywhere but she had been kind of quiet in recent years. All that changed recently. First, in the September 2010 issue of Harper's Bazaar an editorial story entitled, "A Star is Re-Born" featured Jennifer Aniston in an homage to the mega-star shot by Mark Seliger. This photo reminds me of a very similar pose struck by Isabella Rossellini, made up to look like Barbra by the late, great Kevyn Aucoin. My Dec/Jan copy of House Beautiful arrives with a feature on Streisand's first-ever book, My Passion for Design in which she "shares the intimate story behind her obsession with home" plus the cover of the August 1974 edition of the magazine which included a feature about her Hollywood home. As if this wasn't enough to convince me that Streisand's star was back in the firmament, along comes another magazine, another story on Streisand's home. This time, December's Harper's Bazaar, photog
Read more

The apple of My i

-
Image
Japanese ad for iMac, 1998 iMac in 5 colors 1999 My obsession with Apple began in 1999 when I bought my first i-Mac. I don't mind admitting that the main reason I bought it was because of the way it looked.The ergonomic shape was both futuristic yet comforting and who could resist those fresh and juicy colors? Mine was blueberry but you could also have strawberry, lime, tangerine and grape. It was a eureka moment for me, that first realization that computers and electronics don't have to be beige and boring or worse still frightening and hard to use. It's quaint to think about it now but my hesitation about buying it was based on the fact that it was a hard drive and monitor "all-in-one". Based on the comments of the few computer buffs I knew back then, this could prove to be a problem later on if the hard drive broke down but the monitor was still good or vice versa. Well form won out over possible malfunction, I bought my first Apple product and I have never l
Read more

The Divine Decadence of Helmut Newton

-
Image
As I mentioned recently, the current fascination amongst certain runway designers and celebrities with racy lingerie looks often brings to mind Helmut Newton 's style of photography. If only he were still alive, what a moment he'd be having. Unfortunately he died in a macabre accident when his car hit a wall in the driveway of Chateau Marmont which had for several years served as his L.A. residence. It has been speculated that Newton suffered a heart attack in the moments before the collision. Newton favorite Nadja Auermann appeared in many of his portraits including these photos taken for American Vogue in 1994. Newton was born in Berlin in 1920. The 1972 movie Cabaret based on a novel written by British author Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin evokes the air of danger and desperation prevalent during the years of the Weimar Republic as Hitler rose to power and Jews were increasingly discriminated against. Seemingly the spirit of smoke-filled, pre-WW2 German night-clu
Read more