To celebrate New York Fashion Week, Artnet announces an exciting auction that will feature an selection of fashion photography. The sale includes sought-after works, both classic and contemporary, by genre-defining innovators, including Ormond Gigli, Mario Testino, Melvin Sokolsky, Frank Horvath, Lillian Bassman, Barry Lategan, Terry O’Neill, Norman Parkinson, and Louis Faurer, among others.
Fashion Photography will be live for bidding September 8 through 17 on artnet Auctions.
Today, The Eye of Photography presents a selection of prints.
• Ormond Gigli / Girls in the Window, 1960
Est. 20,000–25,000 USD
In 1960, a row of brownstones on the brink of demolition across from Ormond Gigli’s studio inspired the artist to photograph 43 women in formal, stylish dresses, posed in the windows of the façade. After securing permission from the city and carrying out the shoot with friends and family as his models, this self-assigned image became Gigli’s signature piece, and is now considered one of the most iconic in the history of fashion photography. Gigli’s ability to earn his subjects’ trust in his vision, often during complicated, uncomfortable, even dangerous setups, was as important to the photos as his technical finesse with the camera.
Gigli gained prominence as an artist in the 1950s, recognized for his photographs of the theater, celebrities, dancers, and exotic people and places. His photographs and celebrity portraits were featured in prominent magazines, including Life, Time, Paris Match, Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and many others. During the 1970s and 1980s, Gigli worked in advertising photography in addition to continuing his editorial work. Today, his photographs appear in prominent galleries throughout the world.
• William Klein / Smoke & Veil, Paris (Vogue), 1958
Est. 4,000–6,000 USD
After a stint in the military, William Klein studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and after he studied abstract painting under Fernand Léger, who often encouraged him to leave the studio and observe life on the street. Soon his paintings caught the eye of a Vogue editor who offered him an art director job in New York. Klein was deeply inspired by what he saw on the streets of New York, or as he said “women with hats and harlequin glasses walking around with a shoe or a piece of cloth or something,” and an editor encouraged him to take photographs, thereby marking the beginning of an enduring and iconic body of photographic work. Klein went on to produce stunning documents of life and style in Rome, Moscow, Paris, and Tokyo, as well as New York.
• Lillian Bassman / Golden Fox, Blue Fox, Marilyn Ambrose, Boa by Frederica, Harper’s Bazaar, New York, November, 1954
Est. 6,000–8,000 USD
This image by Lillian Bassman depicts prominent model Marilyn Ambrose elegantly wrapped in a fur boa, by designer Frederica, her manicured hand resting in repose against her forehead. Bassman’s interest in light and shadow is made apparent by the stark black and white contrast and grainy texture of the image. A rare woman in the male-dominated workforce of the 1950s and 1960s, Bassman possessed an ability to capture her models in more open and candid poses, as evidenced by Ambrose’s casual demeanor.
Beginning in the 1940s, Bassman worked as a fashion photographer for Junior Bazaar and Harper’s Bazaar. Alexey Brodovitch, the magazine’s art director, encouraged her to photograph models in black and white, and his teachings inspired Bassman to develop her own style of photo manipulation, resulting in the romantic and atmospheric quality for which she is known and revered today. In addition to her work being frequently featured in Harper’s Bazaar throughout her career, Bassman’s work has also been the subject of major retrospectives worldwide.
• Mario Testino / Kate Moss, London, 2006
Est. 6,000–8,000 USD
Kate Moss has long been a close friend of fashion and celebrity photographer Mario Testino, and remains one of his favorite muses. Kate Moss, London is a classic and highly sought-after photograph, which captures an intimate fleeting moment that is at once glamourous, surreal, raw, and candid. Perched casually on a polished bathroom counter in a sheer black dress and a black mask pulled back and slightly askew, Moss seems caught unaware in the midst of a glamorous fête. It is precisely this contrast that makes Testino’s images so fascinating.
Testino’s work has been featured in various esteemed publications, including Vanity Fair, V, and Vogue. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society and the lifetime achievement award at the 2015 Infinity Awards in New York City, and his work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, among many others.
• Melvin Sokolsky / Over New York, 1963
Est. 5,000–8,000 USD
Over New York (1963) is from Sokolsky’s iconic series of photographs depicting models floating in plexiglass bubbles that were hung from a cable on a crane and situated in various locations around New York and Paris. Sokolsky designed the bubble for the surreal shoot in the spring issue of Harper’s Bazaar. The images were inspired by a particular section of Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1504), in which a nude man and woman are seen standing inside a clear bubble. Incredibly, the photographs from this well-known series were not retouched other than to remove the cable to create the illusion that the bubbles are floating, flying high above the city.
• Barry Lategan / Twiggy, 1966
Est. 15,000–18,000 USD
Originally taken as a free publicity shot for an exclusive hair salon in Mayfair, this image was subsequently published by London’s Daily Express as “The Face of 1966.” The photograph, taken by Barry Lategan, launched the career of the then 16-year-old Twiggy, who became an icon of swinging London’s androgynous style. Lategan would go on to photograph numerous international celebrities, including Paul McCartney, Calvin Klein, and Iman, for publications including Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. This work is a seminal image of the 1960s. Another impression of this print is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
• Marla Rutherford / Abandoned Housewife, 2003
Est. 3,000–5,000 USD
Marla Rutherford’s photographs present a dramatic and stylized version of reality, referencing everything from film stills to fetishes. The deserted locations that she chooses for many of her portraits create a surreal and bizarre atmosphere that is highlighted by her edgy use of lighting. This work is part of a series entitled Submit, which brings together the strange and the ordinary in vibrantly colored images.
Rutherford attended Boston University where she received a degree in psychology before enrolling in the Art Center College of Design. Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries worldwide and were featured in the traveling exhibition Regeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow. Rutherford has photographed for ESPN The Magazine, Los Angeles magazine, Time, People, Fletcher Martin, the USA Network, and more.
• Louis Faurer / Bowing for the Vogue Collection, 1972
Est. 6,000–8,000 USD
Mixing fashion with the everyday, photographer Louis Faurer amassed an impressive portfolio of works focused on commercial photography and candid moments on the streets of major cities. Both spontaneous and high fashion, this image is an example of Faurer’s experimentation with different photographic techniques, as the model’s dress becomes blurred in a swirl of movement.
Faurer’s modest career as a photographic technician blossomed after he moved to New York and made contacts with established photographers, including Robert Frank, Walker Evans, and Alexander Liberman. Faurer photographed for magazines such as Junior Bazaar, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Look, Life, Mademoiselle, and Glamour for over 20 years, but he is best known for his personal work from the 1940s to the 1960s in which he captured the restless energy of Philadelphia and New York.
