Essay - Horst P. Horst:

Horst P. Horst, the doyen of international master photographers, has helped to shape all modern fashion and portrait photography. Born in Weissenfels near Weinar in 1906, Horst developed his sensibility in response to the major avant-garde movements of the 1920s – Bauhaus, Neue Sachlichkeit, Art Deco – and to the heady social climate of Paris in the 1930s. Here, the legendary George Hoyningen-Huene, Baltic Baron and Vogue photographer, introduced him to the fashionable beau monde of artists, actors, couturiers, aristocrats and intellectuals.

Horst succeeded Hoyningen-Huene at Vogue in 1935, and quickly became world famous: for his extravagant fashion plates, exquisite still lifes and nudes; and especially for his renowned portraits of such luminaries as Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, and Coco Chanel. When he left France for New York in 1939, Horst was already amongst the elite of Vogue photographers.

Vogue in all its various incarnations is his magazine. He has photographed for its pages, and for those of its sister publication House and Garden, from the 1930s right up to the present day. Paris fashion shows, the palaces and villas of high society, international VIPs, all jostle in his magnificent portfolio with commanding studies of the foreign countries that continue to fascinate him.

Martin Kazmaier