Horst P. Horst was a German-American fashion photographer. He studied architecture and his career in photography began after he met photographer George Hoyningen-Huene and by 1931 he started shooting for French Vogue Magazine, Shortly after taking his most famous shot, depicting a model wearing an unraveling corset (Mainbocher Corset) he moved to the United States. He started shooting in New York and captured many portraits of famous people such as Harry S. Truman, Coco Chane Marlene Dietrich, and Jacqueline Kennedy.
His works are in Black and white and a sense of ambiguity and mystery dominates his photographs through the anonymous treatment of models. In his photographs, his emphasis is shifted from the model to the forms, light, textures, and lines and I think that comes from his architectural studies. Many photographers rely on the model to give their pictures personality and character, but in Horst photographs models are acting as hangers for the clothes somehow, almost like models are only there to just fill in the clothes and move a certain way to create a nice composition.
His early works are heavily influenced by Hoyningen-Huene but quickly he developed an original style through his innovative lighting that enhanced his subjects’ best features. I see his photography of legs and I see how he masterfully has captured the lines and curves of the legs, making them look like a finely polished greek sculpture.
Horst is one of the most influential photographers in fashion with his experimentations with radical compositions, nudity, and many more avant-garde techniques that he used to produce iconic fashion images, such as Mainbocher Corset and Lisa with Harp. What makes his images memorable is a mixture of surrealism, romanticism, and neoclassicism and focus on form, mystery, and sensuality which separates his works apart from the other fashion photographers.
