{"id":4996,"date":"2015-11-08T10:55:12","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T14:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kerryhannon.com\/?p=4996"},"modified":"2015-11-08T10:55:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-08T14:55:12","slug":"fashion-photography-is-fashionable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kerryhannon.com\/?p=4996","title":{"rendered":"Fashion Photography is Fashionable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the-new-york-times<\/a>Larry and Melissa Lax didn\u2019t intend to build a collection of photography that would lure curious fashion editors and museum curators to their white-sided fieldstone home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.<\/p>\n

The couple just wanted artwork to decorate the place. But on the recommendation of their interior designer 15 years ago, they visited the Staley-Wise Gallery<\/a> in SoHo, which specializes in fashion photography, and were soon hooked.<\/p>\n

Today their home has 30 classic fashion photos displayed throughout the main floor. The centerpiece is a long stretch of hallway \u2014 a catwalk of mostly black-and-white images of stunning women in stylish clothes taken by some of the most revered photographers of the 1940s and \u201950s, including Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Lillian Bassman.<\/p>\n

It turns out that the Laxes were ahead of the curve in the current, yes, fashion for fashion photography. In the last decade, it has attracted a wide audience, and many images are worth far more than the haute couture they were used to market.<\/p>\n

Read story on The New York Times<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPrices are going up, up and up,\u201d said Etheleen Staley, who, with Takouhy Wise, owns the SoHo gallery. \u201cIn the past five years, prices for the classics have easily quadrupled.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Irving<\/a>
Irving Penn\u2019s \u201cBall Dress by Olivier Theyskens for Nina Ricci, New York, 2007.\u201d Penn\u2019s career spanned the decades from the 1940s until his death in 2009. Credit Gift of the Irving Penn Foundation, Cond\u00e9 Nast\/Smithsonian American Art Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fashion photography \u201cby its very nature is chic, and, at the moment, is very much in vogue,\u201d said Merry Foresta, the guest curator for a new museum show, \u201cIrving Penn: Beyond Beauty,\u201d <\/a>the first retrospective of Penn\u2019s work in nearly 20 years, currently at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s such a big nostalgia and fascination now for the period from the late \u201940s into the \u201960s \u2014 what I call midcentury modern fashion photographers such as Penn, Avedon, William Klein and Bassman,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Smithsonian\u2019s exhibition features work from all stages of Penn\u2019s career: street scenes from the late 1930s, photographs of the American South from the early 1940s, celebrity portraits, fashion photographs, still lifes and private studio images. This is Penn \u201cin a full retrospective mode, from beginning to end,\u201d said Ms. Foresta, the museum\u2019s photography curator from 1983 to 1999.<\/p>\n

In the auction and gallery world, you don\u2019t have to look hard for evidence of fashion photography\u2019s cachet: At the fall auction at Phillips, a Lillian Bassman<\/a> photo from a 1950 test shoot of the model Margie Cato sold for $10,625, above its estimated price of $7,000 to $9,000.<\/p>\n

A contemporary fashion image by David LaChapelle, whose work has appeared in Details, GQ, Vanity Fair and Vogue, typically starts at about $18,000 for a 20-by-24-inch image and $35,000 for a 30-by-40-inch.<\/p>\n

A print by Patrick Demarchelier, who has worked for Vogue and Harper\u2019s Bazaar and has shot international advertising campaigns for designers like Dior, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Ralph Lauren, might change hands for around $8,000 and rise to around $15,000 for a large image.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the case of both of these photographers, however, prices can go well above $100,000 for their most popular images,\u201d Ms. Staley said, referring to Mr. LaChapelle and Mr. Demarchelier.<\/p>\n

Then there are the six-figure prices regularly paid for classic works by Penn and Avedon. In April, a signed, limited-edition 1950 Irving Penn gelatin silver print, \u201cBlack and White Fashion With Handbag,\u201d featuring the model Jean Patchett, sold at Phillips for $106,250, far above its estimate of $50,000 to $70,000.<\/p>\n

At the Sotheby\u2019s May sale in London, an Irving Penn selenium-toned silver print, signed and printed in September 2005, showing a Chanel feather hat designed by Philip Treacy and worn by the model Nadja Auermann, sold for $107,766, more than triple the presale high estimate of $31,350.<\/p>\n

But for decades, fashion photography was largely ignored. \u201cThere was this mind-set that fashion photography was separate because it was done for a client in a commercial world,\u201d said Andy Grundberg, an art critic and professor at the Corcoran College of the Arts and Design, part of George Washington University. \u201cIt was thought by artists and dealers to be somehow less pure. But that has been challenged and overturned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today aesthetic appreciation is driving the new commerce of fashion photography. Christopher Mahoney, head of Sotheby\u2019s photographs department, said the photography was significant \u201cnot just as documentation of fashion, but really as art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason that happened is because the work of a handful of photographers like Penn and Avedon, working in the \u201940s, \u201950s, \u201960s and \u201970s, really pushed fashion photography beyond its editorial purpose \u2014 or advertising purpose \u2014 and pushed it into the realm of fine art,\u201d he said. \u201cThey broke the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the overarching appeal? \u201cFashion photographs are visually beautiful, and you don\u2019t have to work too hard to understand them,\u201d Ms. Staley said.
\nThere is something else, too. \u201cThey are also culturally and historically full of signification, making it a really interesting thing to collect and show,\u201d Mr. Grundberg said.<\/p>\n

Vanessa Hallett, senior director and worldwide head of photographs at Phillips auction house, said of the photos: \u201cWhat I love is there\u2019s so much thought that goes into them. It\u2019s not just a snap of a picture of a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuances make the works desirable for even connoisseurs of fine-art photography. \u201cIrving Penn, for instance, is fascinating,\u201d Mr. Mahoney said. \u201cHe does interesting things that you wouldn\u2019t think would work, but they work beautifully \u2014 the inclusion of the edge of a backdrop, the edge of the seamless paper in the studio \u2014 something that is typically designed to dissolve into the background.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cIt gives you a sense of the space of the studio, placing you in the studio, while at the same time presenting these impossibly beautiful models and these impossibly beautiful fashion designs, which look completely otherworldly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Penn incorporates \u201ca certain grit and dirt in his images \u2014 the unswept floor that you see in a part of the image, the less-than-perfect-looking backdrop, a crushed cigarette,\u201d Mr. Mahoney said. \u201cThe inclusion of that sort of detail might have thrown a photo editor into a conniption fit, but it throws the beauty of the fashion and the model into greater relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

So much goes into what makes a print valuable, said Daile Kaplan, a vice president at Swann Auction Galleries<\/a> in New York. \u201cThere\u2019s the reputation of the photographer,\u201d she said, \u201cthe celebrity or status of the subject, the size of the photo, the edition size of the photo, the technique, the provenance of who owned it previously, and if the photographer signed it or has notations on the back of the image and, of course, if you want to live with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Images printed close to the time the camera shutter clicked are valued by collectors, especially those never published by a magazine and new to the market, Ms. Foresta added. Rivaling them are later platinum or palladium prints by photographers like Penn, recognizable by their matte surface, rich tone and wide range of grays.<\/p>\n

Even uncredited fashion images, called vernacular photographs, are becoming a \u201chot, hot new genre right now,\u201d Ms. Kaplan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can be commercial studio photos, or images that are cool and curious, and we might not even know who the photographer was because they are uncredited, but the image rises to the top and is very much a compelling picture, a statement, an observation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

At the most recent Swann sale, a group of three fashion images taken by an unknown photographer in the late 1950s to \u201960s sold for $975. \u201cThey\u2019re just marvelous and fun,\u201d Ms. Kaplan said.<\/p>\n

And collecting has certainly been fun for Larry and Melissa Lax. The true worth of their collection, they say, is how the photos make them feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve become attached to each one,\u201d Ms. Lax said. \u201cI love them all. They make me smile.\u201d<\/p>\n

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