Unseen Vogue: The Secret History of Fashion Photography

From Booklist
Whatever happened, you might ask, to Twiggy and Bianca Jagger and Jean Shrimpton, among other supermodels of yesteryear? British Vogue creative director Derrick and sidekick Muir sifted through 1.5 million images housed in the magazine's library to produce a multidecades-long tribute to the artists, photographers, and beauties parading through its pages. It starts at the earliest, in the 1920s, with a black-and-white picture of three aristocratic women; all photographs, at the very least, identify the photographer, the subjects, the credits (hair, outfit, cosmetics)--and at the very best, tell some fascinating stories. Like Vivien Leigh's sensitivity about her large hands. Or Marlene Dietrich's amazing knowledge about lighting, printing, and photography. Even a politely heated exchange between editor Audrey Williams and Cecil Beaton about his then most current project. Fantastical, ethereal, yet a very real portrait of many ages. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


People Magazine Best in Gift Books
“… a stunning visual catalog of fashion as seen by some of the great photographers of our time.”


Newsday
“… just when you think you’ve seen everything there is to see, there’s always something else.”


Booklist
“Fantastical, ethereal, yet a very real portrait of the ages.”


Library Journal
“The photos, running from 1930s to 2001, are richly showcased…. A great addition to any fashion collection.”


From the Publisher
For all the fashion pictures that make it to the pages of Vogue, there are those that don’t. Not because of poor composition or execution, but because the fashion was too oblique, the styling too inventive, the camera technique too pioneering or frequently because the magazine simply ran out of space. Selected from one–and–a–half million images archived at British Vogue, Unseen Vogue presents fashion photographs you have never seen until now. There are unknown works from great photographers: Cecil Beaton, Horst, Norman Parkinson and Lee Miller — these unseen pictures tell the secret history of fashion photography.  Every important fashion photographer is represented here, including David Bailey, Irving Penn, Patrick Demarchelier, Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, Steven Meisel, Juergen Teller and Mario Testino. Unseen Vogue is a survey of fashion photography unlike any other previously published.


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The world of fashion has been both romanticized and criticized for its ability to project a vision of ideal beauty onto runways, magazines, and fashion books such as this one. But unlike other publications, this one seems to take its cue from the public debate about whether fashion magazines are contributing to the image problem of today's youth by using retouching that turns unusually beautiful women into impossibly perfect ideals. Highlighting the photos "left out" from the pages of British Vogue, the book gives readers a tour of how fashion magazines both choose their photos and change them. While British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman uses her introduction to highlight the gems of the book, Derrick and Muir take a slightly different approach, focusing on fashion photography as art and the history of the Vogue franchise, respectively. Most important, the photos, running from the late 1920s to 2001, are richly showcased: large color prints fill up the page and are accompanied by the name of the photographer, the model, the year, and a small but informative history of the shoot. A great addition to any fashion collection, large or small.-Rachel Collins, "Library Journal" Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.


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