Lillian Bassman: Lingerie

Bassman Lillian

Description

Through the 1950s and the early 1960s, working with that eras supermodels, fashion photographer Lillian Bassman created the quintessential modern feminine image of women in their lingerie. As Ginia Bellafante put it in the New York Times recently, In place of heavyset women constraining themselves in what was essentially equipment, Ms. Bassman deployed immeasurably lithe models, conveying a world in which women seemed to linger in the pleasures of their own sensuality. Fifty years later, these images have lost none of their allure, and the enormous cultural impact of the TV show Mad Men has given them new currency.

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781613123256
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

IN 1951, PHOTOGRAPHER LILLIAN BASSMAN described her sensibility to a magazine writer: I m completely tied up with softness, fragility, and the personal problems of a feminine world. This lifelong passion has lent her work its particular esthetic and psychological power. As soon as she became a fashion photographer in the late 1940s, she began to make images of women in intimate settings and quickly established herself as a specialist in lingerie-women s underwear and nightclothes. As viewers have since observed, this body of work rises above its commercial roots to portray a private realm where women appear to be effortlessly self-possessed. Speaking of Bassman s lingerie work in the New York Times , Ginia Bellafante pointed out that the photographs seemed like visual entries in the personal journals of the women photographed.
LILLIAN BASSMAN: LINGERIE is a collection of photographs spanning sixty years that expresses a consistent and penetrating artistic vision, invoking associations with achievements in literature and film.

Whatever the subject, Lillian Bassman stamps each of her pictures with her unmistakable, intense femininity. Almost the archetype for junior-size models, she is tiny, and given to wearing little bodices and full skirts, all designed by herself. Thus, Carmel Snow introduced HARPER S BAZAAR s newest photographer to the magazine s readership in the Editor s Guest Book section of the October 1948 issue. A year later, on the occasion of her first assignment for SEVENTEEN , the magazine s They Worked with Us This Month feature described Bassman in similar terms: She is fast becoming a specialist in feminine photography. Most of her pictures are of lingerie, women dressing, undressing, combing their hair. By 1951, Bassman was well-enough established as a fashion and beauty photographer to merit a perceptive feature in POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY , where the writer gave her the last word: I m completely tied up with softness, fragility, and the personal problems of a feminine world. Fifty-seven years later, she told Judith Thurman, for a Talk of the Town piece in the NEW YORKER , I think my contribution has been to photograph fashion with a woman s eye for a woman s intimate feelings.
She was an inveterate observer of women and their ways. This came out, for example, in a euphoric letter that she wrote at the end of her first day in Paris (August 19, 1946): It was too late to get served at the hotel so I decided to walk down the Avenue. I spotted my corner carefully and then proceeded. It s strange how similar and how different French girls are [to American girls]. In the majority, they look like old victory girls of B way. High pompadours, long hair over their shoulders, skirt at above knee length and heavy dmpy high heeled shoes. It wasn t too light and I was shy about staring too much, so all I got were quick outlines. Bassman, who was even then hatching her escape from art direction into the freer fields of photography, soon lost her shyness about staring.