Horst: Photographer of Style runs from 6 September 2014 - 4 January 2015 at the V&A. Tickets on sale from 12 May.
6 September
2014 – 4 January 2015
This autumn
the V&A will present the definitive retrospective of the work of Horst P.
Horst (1906-99), one of the 20th century’s master photographers. In a career
that spanned six decades, Horst photographed the exquisite creations of
couturiers such as Chanel, Schiaparelli and Vionnet in 1930s Paris , and helped to launch the careers of
many models. In New York
a decade later, he experimented with early colour techniques and his
meticulously composed, artfully lit images leapt from the magazine page.
The exhibition
will display Horst’s best known photographs alongside unpublished and rarely
exhibited vintage prints, conveying the diversity of his output, from surreal
still lifes to portraits of Hollywood stars, nudes and nature studies to
documentary pictures of the Middle East . It
will examine his creative process through the inclusion of original contact
sheets, sketches and archive film footage.
V&A to showcase
Exhibition set to
explore German photographer's 60-year career including famous Dietrich
portraits featured in Vogue
Mark Brown
The Guardian, Friday 2 May 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/02/v-and-a-horst-exhibition-photography
Portrait of model Muriel Maxwell putting on
lipstick. Photograph: Horst P. Horst/Vogue
He is best known for some of the finest
fashion photography of the 20th century and for his astonishing, arresting
images of stars of stage and screen, but there is a lot more to Horst P Horst,
the Victoria and Albert
Museum will argue.
The museum will announce today that it will
stage the biggest ever UK retrospective of Horst's photography, exploring a
career that lasted 60 years and one which took in fashion, art, reportage,
design and high society.
The show will include some of his most
famous photographs for Vogue including the Mainbocher Corset and his fabulous
image of Marlene Dietrich.
"We've written a whole chapter in the
book just about that one image of Dietrich," said Susanna Brown, the
V&A's curator of photographs. "There is so much going on in that
photograph that I love. The chair is one of several different pieces of
furniture that he created still-life photographs for, in order for them to be
translated into embroidery. It is quite amazing."
Horst was born in Germany but worked predominantly in Paris and New
York and the V&A said it planned to explore many
aspects of his life and work. "We tend to think of him as a fashion
photographer when actually there is so much else going on in his work,"
said Brown.
The surprises in the autumn show will
include lesser-known nude studies, his Patterns from Nature pictures of flowers
and shells and his "incredible travel pictures" from the Middle East,
said Brown, including images he took from Iran where he travelled in the late
40s to be with the man he fell in love with before the war, the British
diplomat Valentine Lawford who was stationed in Tehran.
Horst and Lawford were a couple for more
than 50 years, living in an amazing house in Oyster Bay, Long
Island .
Brown said Horst was one of the true greats
of photography. "What is really extraordinary about him and quite rare
within the 20th century is that he really straddles prewar and postwar
fashions. There aren't many photographers who produced such excellent work on
both sides of the war and also managed to make the transition so successfully
from black and white to colour."
There will be more that 250 photographs on
display as well as his diaries, film footage and magazines. Because the V&A
has such a fine costume archive there will also be haute couture frocks by
leading couturiers who were his friends and collaborators, people such as Coco
Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli.
The show will also examine his legacy.
"It is hard to overstate his influence really," said Brown.
"Every subsequent generation of photographers – not just fashion – have
looked to him for inspiration."
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