With more than three hundred works (photographs, magazines, drawings…), this exhibition at the Palais Lumière in Evian gives a retrospective look at the history of fashion photography in the beginning of the 20th century in France, whose evolution is closely linked to that of women’s place in society.
The beginnings of fashion photography are timid and not very audacious. Many magazines were publishing fashion at the beginning of the 20th century, but drawing was the prominent medium. In the media, the place of fashion photography experienced a similar boom to that of photography in general. Until the 1920s, the constraints related to printing techniques did not favor its use.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a “New Vision” was needed. Photographers like Jean Moral, Maurice Tabard, and André Steiner practiced a decisively modern and different type of photography. During the interwar period, photography and magazines accompanied and supported the empowerment of women. They offered a new image of the woman, more free. True jack-of-all-trades, these photographers, recruited by the fashion world, offered their proven savoir-faire to magazines and contributed to the publicizing of the image of a modern, chic, dynamic, and urban femininity.
Le chic français – Images de femmes 1900 – 1950
Palais Lumière
Quai Albert-Besson
74500 Evian
France
