A mannequin in a yellow summer ensemble matched with a wide brimmed hat sits in front of a wall covered with multi-coloured geometrical tiles. Fashionistas who are into glamorous vintage magazines, may spot the connection between this installation and the June 1953 cover of Harper's Bazaar that featured a picture of a model in a similar yellow ensemble shot by Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895 - 1989).
Yellow was the American photographer's favourite shade, so the organisers of the first major retrospective of her work in the UK, that opened today at the Fashion and Textile Museum (FTM; 83 Bermondsey Street) in London (and will be on until 21st January 2018) naturally opted to recreate the mood and colours of this cover in the spaces dedicated to Louise Dahl-Wolfe. Also the museum walls were painted in a sort of lime shade, to remind visitors that Dahl-Wolfe found skin easier to photograph when it had a sort of yellowish or gold glow, like in the case of Liz Gibbons.
Born in San Francisco, Dahl was the youngest of three daughters of Norwegian immigrants. She studied design, composition, art history and colour theory at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1914 and took special courses in life drawing, painting, and anatomy over the next six years.
After a stint working as electric sign designer, in 1923 Dahl moved to New York City to study interior decoration and design before returning to work in San Francisco at an interior decorating firm. When her mother was killed in a car accident in 1926, she travelled with her friend Consuelo Kanaga, a photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle, visiting Europe and Tunisia. In 1928 she married sculptor Meyer "Mike" Wolfe (who later on built and painted the backgrounds of many of his wife's fashion photographs).
In 1932, the Dahl-Wolfes were living near the Great Smoky Mountains, it was here that Louise took a picture of a woman that was published in Vanity Fair in 1933 by editor Frank Crowninshield. In the same year the couple moved to New York City, where, in 1936, after a few years producing advertising and fashion photographs for Woman's Home Companion, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bonwit Teller, Dahl-Wolf became a staff photographer for Harper's Bazaar.
Working with editor Carmel Snow, art director Alexey Brodovitch, and fashion editor Diana Vreeland, Dahl-Wolfe produced many iconic portraits and fashion photographs: she created 86 covers, 600 colour pages (she started experimenting with Kodachrome in 1937) and over 2,000 black-and-white portraits.
The photographer often travelled to locations - from North and South America, to Europe, Africa, Hawaii, and the Caribbean - to take pictures outdoors and shot memorable images of what became known as "environmental fashion photography" in exotic countries.
Dahl-Wolfe's images featured the iconic supermodels of those years - Suzy Parker, Jean Patchett, Barbara Mullen, Evelyn Tripp, Mary Jane Russell, Lisa Fonssagrives, Lizzie Gibbons and Liz Benn - in French couture designs by Chanel, Balenciaga and Dior, but also sporting American fashion innovators Claire McCardell and Clare Potter.
Dahl-Wolfe also created striking portraits of society and literary figures and art world celebrities, such as W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Jean Cocteau, Edith Sitwell, Colette and Carson McCullers and sculptor Isamu Noguchi, plus a major portfolio of Hollywood stars from Bette Davis, Carole Lombard and Vivien Leigh to Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake and Orson Welles.
After her resignation from Harper's Bazaar in 1958, Dahl-Wolfe worked for Vogue and Sports Illustrated before retiring from photography in 1960.
The FTM exhibition chronicles the highlights of her career while exploring the influence of Dahl-Wolfe on photographers Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, and her friendship with with Martin Munkasci, George Hoyningen-Huene and Horst P. Horst.
All her images look extremely modern and fresh: from the twins poetically resting on a beach in Nassau in 1949 to Suzy Parker in Balenciaga dreamily posing in Paris; from sensual nudes on sand dunes with parasols creating delicate shadow tattoos on soft skin to architectural shots of Evelyn Tripp with the trulli houses in the background or Jean Patchett in Granada, her minimalist and geometrical look creating a wonderful contrast with the eleborate tiles behind her.
Dahl-Wolfe's black and white images show a fascinating interplay of shadows and lights, while the hues in her colour shots are characterised by strikingly elegant shades (the event includes early tearsheets and covers that document her colour photography). Most of the images featured in the exhibition should be filed under the "style" rather than "fashion" category as they are timeless pictures chronicling historical changes in the life of American women.
Her couture images mainly focused on the work of French couturiers, but the photographs featuring American designers looked indeed at women's independence and active lives and presented them in a surprising, irreverent, informal and carefree yet impeccable manner. Dahl-Wolfe wasn't indeed interested in clothes (her tortoise-shell glasses with dark lenses were the only trademark element in the photographer's style...), but in documenting the style of an era, and in focusing on three main aspects - anatomy, colour and light. "Her fashion pictures are the definition of elegance and beauty. They present an aspirational portrait of the mid-century woman as she newly wished to be: independent, self-assured and in control of her own destiny," states Celia Joicey, Head of the Fashion and Textile Museum in a press release for this event.
Maybe overlooked in the last few decades, Dahl-Wolfe now gets the retrospective she deserves, an event that will hopefully help reshifting the attention on all those women who have made a significant contribution to the art of photography.
The FTM exhibition is also combined with a minor display celebrating Harper's Bazaar's 150th anniversary and highlighting key moments and images in the magazine history.
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