I’d like to continue the photography thread I started yesterday in this post by rediscovering the work of illustrator and photographer Jerry Plucer-Sarna.
I first heard about Plucer-Sarna in the late 80s, while, leafing through a photography magazine, I discovered a feature about him.
The piece was written by a journalist who visited him in his Parisian house in Bois de Boulogne.
The journalist was supposed to interview Plucer-Sarna about his work as photographer, but, upon entering the house, he found himself surrounded by the smell of paint.
There were quite a few paint tubes scattered around the house and many paintings by Plucer-Sarna himself were hung on the walls.
Soon the interviewer discovered the artist wasn’t just a photographer and, thanks to his feedback, he started putting together a sort of puzzle about art, photography, illustration and advertising in the first half of the 1900s.
Jerry Plucer-Sarna was born in Rome in 1904, from an Italian father and a Polish mother.
As soon as he grew up, he moved to Paris where he took part in 1935 in a competition for an advertising campaign launched by the daily Le Jour.
After winning the competition, one of the most famous advertising agencies of those times, Dorland International, offered him a job as creative director.
In 1937, the artist created some illustrations for Weill’s furs and his drawings ended up on the Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar’s desks.
Here editor Carmel Snow and art director Alexey Brodovitch fell in love with the images and offered a contract to the young illustrator who, in 1938, left his job at Dorland to focus on his work for the popular fashion magazine.
Plucer-Sarna's job allowed him to follow the Paris catwalk shows with Carmel Snow.
The editor chose the creations the illustrator had to draw and, at times, she also suggested him to modify some of their details to make the designs more attractive to the American readers.
At the time Harper’s Bazaar was a very influential magazine and almost had the same function of our modern style and trend offices.
The publication, for example, suggested fabric manufacturers which colours were going to be popular for the next seasons, while the fashion drawings published in its pages were often used as the starting point for the designs created by many Fifth Avenue tailors and dressmakers.
Every issue of Harper’s Bazaar featured from four to eight pages of drawings by Plucer-Sarna, published together with George Hoyningen-Huene’s fashion photographs and Brassai’s pictures.
After the war broke out, Plucer-Sarna moved to the States and became a full-time collaborator of Harper’s Bazaar.
The illustrator used to work in a rather unique way: he would ask his models to pose in real places such as a theatre, a park or a street, as if he were a photographer taking a picture.
As the years passed, Plucer-Sarna started understanding that something was changing in the fashion industry.
Photography was slowly yet relentlessly becoming more popular and, from 1943, he decided to make a career leap and started working as a photographer.
At the time all the fashion photo shoots published by Harper’s Bazaar were taken inside the magazine's studios.
Inspired by his work as illustrator, Plucer-Sarna suggested Carmel Snow to take fashion out of the studio and into the street, but she refused.
Yet the illustrator turned photographer managed to introduce some important innovations in his work all the same, taking pictures of models and famous women, such as Mrs William Randolph Hearst, or Hollywood actresses like Olivia de Havilland and Marlene Dietrich.
One of his most important portraits remains an image of Lauren Bacall.
Plucer-Sarna had managed to take in his studio an iconic portrait of this young and still unknown woman who looked stubborn and sensual.
The image showed her leaning against a wall of his studio, a pose that went against the rules of the times when an upright pose was considered to be the epitome of elegance.
Spellbound by this portrait, director Howard Hawks decided to cast Bacall as a Humphrey Bogart’s partner in his 1944 film To Have and Have Not (an interesting connection between fashion photography this time, rather than just fashion, and cinema).
After the Second World War, Plucer-Sarna also focused on advertising campaigns, working for important clients such as Ford, Elizabeth Arden and Triumph.
After moving back to France in the early 60s, he continued working for the advertising industry, though he never abandoned his passion for painting, drawing and photography.
His chic, elegant and at times glamorous work still represents today a perfect balance between creativity and commercial viability (think about his advertising campaigns about smoking or for Triumph lingerie - sixth and seventh image in this post) and I think this is just one of the reasons why this artist should be rediscovered.
Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary of Jerry Plucer-Sarna's death and I hope that, in 2011, a museum or gallery will dedicate an exhibition to this artist and rediscover his illustrations, fashion photography and advertising campaigns.
I guess such a journey through the images Plucer-Sarna created would be interesting from a historical point of view since it would help us understanding how fashion illustration developed and changed throughout the years, but it would also be inspiring for all those young artists, photographers and illustrators who would like to work one day in the fashion industry.
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I would like to hear more of what you have to say about Jerry (my father) I am quite impressed w/ you accuracy and respect. If you have any questions? Lorand Sarna
Posted by: lorand Sarna | December 27, 2010 at 03:07 PM