Inspired by Lillian Bassman

It's a Cinch: Carman by Lillian Bassman, New York Harper's Bazaar, 1951

John Galliano once described Lillian Bassman's photographs as "painterly strokes of light". Her use of abstraction, dynamic composition, and manipulation of exposure in her photographs of women are hallmarks of her signature style. Lillian Bassman was a leading fashion photographer for magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar from the 1940s through the 1960s. In more recent years, she has photographed campaigns for Galliano, Neiman Marcus, New York Times Magazine, among others.



In 2009, the book Lillian Bassman Women was published featuring 150 of her best images. It was a little over a year ago that I discovered Lillian's work and wrote a post about her book. Since I'm not much of a techie, it was her example that encouraged me to finally master Photoshop and take advantage of its incredible power to manipulate images to a painterly effect. If she could master Photoshop at the age of 84, then it didn't seem like I had any excuse not to follow her lead!

I recently discovered the Slate Gallery Guide listing for the first show of Lillian Bassman's work in Canada which opens on Thursday, February 10th at the Izzy Gallery. This show called Women features eleven works of this iconic fashion photographer and runs until Thursday, March 3rd.

Ere we shall meet again
by Ingrid Mida 2010

At my most recent exhibition of work All is Vanity (at Loop Gallery until February 13, 2011),  my photos were compared to to Bassman's, a comparison that I felt honoured by. When I wrote my artist statement for the show, I included photographers Cindy Sherman, Sarah Moon and Deborah Turbeville as having inspired me when I should have put Lillian Bassman's name at the top of the list!

The Mystery of the Fashion Photograph

Dovima in an evening dress by Dior, Photo by Richard Avedon 1955

Unlocking the mystery of a great fashion photograph is something that I'd like to better understand. I think I know it when I see one (like this one by Avedon), but is it a matter of opinion or is there something that great fashion photographs all share?

One of the chapters in the recently released Berg publication "Fashion in Fiction" is called "The Mystery of the Fashion Photograph" and was written by Margaret Maynard, Associate Professor at the University of Queensland. She poses these questions:
1. "What makes certain high-end photos eye-stopping, what gives them their strange thrill, their compelling intrigue, and why is this important?"
2. "What is it about some images that evoke in the viewer a desiring state of mind?"

 Like many scholarly works, I had to read between the lines to try and figure out the answers to these questions as the author does not clearly state her opinion. She references other people's opinions, but it is hard to clearly discern her point of view.  The other problem that I had with this book is that there are references to images but very few photos are included within the book. Describing an image is a lot different than seeing it. I had great difficulty understanding what this author considered to be a compelling fashion photograph based on her description of it. Even if the photo had been in black and white, it would, in an instant, convey what paragraphs of description cannot do. I found that to be a problematic issue in this chapter in particular and throughout the book.

Nevertheless, I think that this author defines a great fashion photograph to include a narrative or an open-ended drama, "specifically set up to lack a bounded point of view." (page 57) Furthermore, "the most interesting fashion images seem to obscure, even hide, their raison d'etre, their commercial links. Sometimes details of commercial or designer retailers are minute, relegated to the back of magazines or even absent. It is possible their absence energizes desire by strength of visual impulse." (page 61).

The author also links the text accompanying the photograph to the viewers engagement with it. "We need to acknowledge current multidimensional approaches to photography and current views of the complexity of verbal/visual tensions and intersections between photos and text that produce understanding. Barthes suggests that fashion images provoke fascination (1981a:17) but also that the presence of language acts to stay perception, thus cementing meaning as fashionable (Carter 2003:150)."

Cover of "Women" a book by Lillian Bassman 2009

It is probably evident from the passages that I've quoted that this book is meant for other fashion scholars. As someone who reads extensively, I appreciate writers who can take dense material and make it accessible to a broad audience. Without photos to accompany the text, I only have a vague sense of what the author might consider to be a compelling fashion photograph.

For me, a great fashion photograph has a strong graphic component, a sense of narrative and perhaps an element of surprise. My favourite fashion photographers are Richard Avendon, Irving Penn, Deborah Turbeville, and Lillian Bassman.

Do tell, what do you think makes for a great fashion photograph? And do you have a favourite fashion photographer?

Threads: Six Masters of Fashion Photography

It seems like it was only recently that fashion photography was acknowledged as an art form. But even so, it is not often featured in gallery shows and it was by chance that I stumbled across a show called Threads: Six Masters of Fashion Photography at the Diemar/Noble Photography Gallery in London. On display and for sale was the work of six fashion photographers including:

Edwin Blumenfeld
Guy Bourdin
William Klein
Helmut Newton
Norman Parkinson
Edward Steichen

This coherent and elegant presentation of iconic black and white images from six masters of light and composition is well worth a visit. Highlights of the exhibition include
Polaroids by Helmut Newton
One of two known prints of Guy Boudrin's photo of a model wearing a hat in front of gutted rabbits in the now infamous ‘Chapeaux – Choc’
A rare group of vintage prints by Norman Parkinson
Rare Surrealist fashion images by Erwin Blumenfeld

There is no charge to see the exhibition and it was a real delight to see such exquisite work up close without having to jostle for elbow room in a crowded museum.  If the gallery owners hadn't been so deep in conversation, I would have asked them why they didn't include a  female fashion photographer like Lillian Bassman in the show. (And if I wasn't so shy, I might even have handed over a business card - sigh!)

Threads: Six Masters of Fashion Photography
Diemar/Noble Photography
May 13 - July 11, 2010
66/67 Wells Street
London, UK    W1T 3PY
44 (0)20 7636 5375
email:  rsvp@diemarnoble.com

Book Review: Lillian Bassman Women

Sometimes life seems to be a series of serendipitous events. I first saw this image on the blog Studio Judith where artist/designer Judith had written about the mystery of a woman wearing veils but did not know who to credit the image to. A day later, while watching Fashion Television, I saw the image flash by on the screen during an interview with the photographer.  After seeing hearing Lillian Bassman's spirited and lively interview, I wanted to buy the book. And yesterday, there was the book staring at me.... just in time to inspire me for a photo shoot I'm doing this afternoon.

Photographer Lillian Bassman recently celebrated her 93rd birthday and also published this book called simply Lillian Bassman Women. Filled with extraordinary black and white fashion imagery that are a cross between abstract painting and photography, Lillian's work is hauntingly beautiful and unique beyond measure.

Even more astonishing is that Lillian only recently came back to fashion photography after a hiatus of twenty-two years. Having first picked up a camera in 1947, Lillian was a sought-after photographer during the 1950s and 1960s and was known to "photograph fashion with a woman's eye for a woman's intimate feelings." But in 1971 and 1972, Lillian destroyed most of her fashion photographs. She had come to believe that fashion photography was formulaic with little room for experimentation and had moved on. During this period, Lillian rented out the ground floor of her carriage house to Helen Frankenthaler who used it as her studio. In 1990, Frankenthaler found some bags bulging with negatives and returned them to Lillian. In 1994, Lillian returned to the darkroom and started making new prints, exploring new interpretations of the images. Since then, she has adopted Photoshop as her darkroom tool of choice saying that "The computer is as good a tool as any for creating experimental effects". Given that she is in her nineties, she serves as an example of how to embrace change.

This oversize book is filled with exquisite images of Lillian's work, capturing an abstracted form of painterly elegance and beauty that is difficult to put into words. If I could, I would love to be her apprentice/intern, because the spirit of what she has done - creating photography with a painterly quality - is exactly what I hope to achieve with the documentation of my mother's dress collection. I will be studying Lillian's photographs with great intensity and trying to recreate her magic on my images using Photoshop!

Title: Lillian Bassman Women
Introduction by: Deborah Soloman
Photographs by: Lillian Bassman
Published by: Abrams, New York 2009
Category: Non-fiction, Photography
Number of Pages: 228
Price: US$50, Canada $64.99 UK 29.99