Mention Erwin Blumenfeld and many fashion and photography fans will immediately conjure up in their minds visions of Lisa Fonssagrives balanced on the edge of the Eiffel Tower in 1939, or the iconic 1950 Vogue cover with model Jean Patchett reduced to a pair of red lips, a beauty mark and a pencilled eye.
Yet Blumenfeld wasn't just a pioneering photographer, but an intriguing Dada collagist as well, as an exhibition currently on at London's Osborne Samuel Gallery proves.
Curated by Lou Proud, "Erwin Blumenfeld: From Dada to Vogue" includes early works, some of them never seen before in the UK.
Blumenfeld tried his first photographic experiments when he was a child, taking at times self-portraits while wearing costumes.
His experiments continued even during the war, when he worked as an ambulance driver and met George Grosz, part of the Berlin Dada movement. Around the same time he started making collages under the pseudonym Jan Bloomfeld incorporating photographs and magazine cuttings. After the war he started taking pictures of the customers of his leather goods business, eventually becoming an active part of the Dutch art scene.
In 1936 Blumenfeld moved to Paris: French art magazines became an influence and so did the the work of other legendary figures such as Man Ray, as his early '30s images like the picture known as "Living Mummy" (a solarised print of a woman swaddled in silk) prove.
By then Blumenfeld had started carrying out further experiments apart from double and triple exposures, solarisations, high-contrast printing and projections and created unique effects by boiling the film or freezing it.
Struck by his innovative portraiture, Cecil Beaton introduced Blumenfeld to French Vogue and the magazine gave the photographer a year's contract in 1937. When the contract expired and wasn't renewed, Blumenfeld went to New York where he worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Look and Collier's establishing himself there after flying from France in 1941.
From then on he created stylised colour images and kept on experimenting, shooting pilots for beauty commercials between 1958 and 1964, and designed glamorously beautiful campaigns for cars, cigarettes and beauty brands, such as Elizabeth Arden and L'Oréal.
As the years passed and new photographers arrived on the scene, Blumenfeld moved out of fashion. He died in 1969, leaving behind a vast archive of prints, transparencies and collages.
The most famous covers for Vogue are not included in "From Dada to Vogue" that mainly features black and white silver gelatin prints, collages, drawings and personal objects.
His photographs in which he experimented with solarisation, multiple images and juxtapositions of positive and negative images - such as "Madeleine (Solarized and Cut)" (1937) and "Shadowed Silhouettes" (1953) - remain iconic examples of his work, but this event is more interesting for his Dadaist collages that proved to be inspiringly innovative.
Some collages refer to personal life and events, incorporating a swastika, a Star of David and religious figures with cabaret dancers, a drawing of Charlie Chaplin and assorted cuttings from a music sheet.
In "Madonna of War (Nun), Amsterdam" (1923), Blumenfeld combines the picture of a nun with photographs of battlefields, while one image of a headless woman on a crazy shopping spree is the mock collage for the final image published on Harper's Bazaar and credited to Herbert Matter (View this photo).
Photography fans who are familiar with Blumenfeld's fashion shoots will be able to make connections between the techniques he developed while working on his collages and his Vogue covers. The collages represent indeed almost the preparatory sketches for the photographs he published later on in his life that focused on disembodied bosoms and torsos under wet silk.
Yet there is one main difference: the collages were more avant-garde and more personal, while his fashion covers and shoots were obviously more stylized.
You like Blumenfeld's collages but prefer his colours and fashion shoots? Well, fashion-wise Jonathan Saunders moved from Blumenfeld for his Spring/Summer 2011 collection, and the bright and vivid hues employed by Blumenfeld in his magazine covers and ad campaigns proved an inspiration for Alessandro Dell'Acqua's S/S 17 Rochas collection.
The main palette - comprising luscious marigold, dusty pink, cornflower blue, lavender lilac, teal, nude and fleshy tones and bottle green - for Dell'Acqua's tulle party dresses (inspired at times from Haute Couture designs) was indeed entirely lifted from a number of outstanding shoots and covers Blumenfeld did for American Vogue, from 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1953.
At times also the silhouettes and accessories - mainly elbow-length knit gloves - seemed to call to mind the '40s and the '50s, but the odd colour combinations was definitely the most striking thing about this collection.
Blumenfeld's Vogue covers were about elegance and joy – think about his "Rage for Colour" shoot – and Dell'Acqua tried to project the same feelings through his designs that didn't seem to be characterized by any special decorative motifs, apart from the bold contrasts of colours from Blumenfeld's pictures.
The effect was pretty and charming, though at times repetitive with full and pleated tulle skirts (here and there sprinkled with polka dots….) worn with mismatched twinsets, alternating with one sleeve dresses matched with sensual opera gloves and sandals anchored to thick and towering wooden platforms.
As a whole the collection was feminine and maybe a bit too romantic, but it proved that in our digital age Blumenfeld is still extremely modern and incredibly inspiring.
"Erwin Blumenfeld: From Dada to Vogue" is at the Osborne Samuel Gallery, 23A Bruton Street, London W1J 6QG, UK, until 29th October 2016.
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