Horst P. Horst
Mainbocher corset
1939
Gelatin silver print, printed 1980s. 45.5 x 24.4 cm (50.5 x 40.7 cm). Photographer's blindstamp in the margin lower right. Signed, dated, titled and technical notes in pencil on the verso. - Matted.
Horst P. Horst, who came to Paris as a young German architect to work for Le Corbusier, but then turned to fashion photography through his acquaintance with the Vogue photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, is regarded as a master of dramatic lighting. With his inclination towards classicism - he is said to have spent hours in the Louvre studying ancient statues - he quickly advanced to become one of the leading fashion photographers for haute couture of the 1930s in Paris, before moving to New York in 1935. His perfectly planned, Art Deco style studio shots correspond to the taste of elegant Parisian society: cool staging of feminine beauty in which no detail is left to chance.
Horst shot the Mainbocher Corset for the exclusive fashion house Mainbocher, specialised in evening dress. It is the last photograph taken in his Paris studio before he went to New York in 1939. 'I had never before taken a photograph of a corset. It's not easy. The light in the picture is more complex than it appears. It looks as if there were only one light source. But reflectors and other spotlights were added. I don't know how I did it. I couldn't reproduce it. It came out of emotion.' (as cited by Martin Kazmaier, Horst P. Horst, photographer, in: Horst-Tardiff/Schirmer, loc.cit., p. 24)
Provenance
From the photographer to the present owner
Literature
Valentine Lawford, Horst. His Work and his World, New York 1984, ill. p.184; Richard J. Horst-Tardiff/Lothar Schirmer (ed.), Horst. Photographien aus sechs Jahrzehnten, Munich i.a. 1991, plate 8; Reinhold Mißelbeck et al. (ed.), Horst P. Horst, New York i.a. 1992, ill. p. 109; Horst P. Horst, Form: Horst, Altadena 1992, ill. p. 36; Reinhold Mißelbeck (ed.), Horst. Magician of Light, Heidelberg 1997, ill. p. 55; Susanna Brown (ed.), Horst. Photographer of Style, London 2014, ill. pp. 76