Six decades of powerful, futuristic still-lifes, dream-like photographs of famous haute couture creations, unforgettable portraits of the most famous personalities of all times and sophisticated, sensual female nudes which have inspired a whole new generation of photographers. In observing the photographs of Horst P. Horst – a naturalised American, born Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann in 1906 in Germany – it is easy to see how those sophisticated plays of light and shadow, of chiaroscuro, of clever choreography and the subject’s unawareness of the presence of the camera, encompasses a profound and innate sense of the beautiful and the elegant; extraordinary sensitivity and boundless curiosity towards the most experimental artistic currents of the 20th century. Photographs that explore the female body, merging the most traditional of ideals with a surrealist interpretation of the world, a vision Horst developed in the thirties, a period in which he worked with the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalì. His many friendships with people of the calibre of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Madamoiselle Cocò Chanel, Diana Vreeland, Noel Coward, Greta Garbo and Bette Davis led to much fruitful collaboration and inspiration. “The elegance of his photographs … took you to another place”, commented the great photographer Bruce Weber about his work, “the untouchable quality of the people is really interesting as it gives you something of a distance … it’s like seeing somebody from another world … and you wonder who that person is and you really want to know that person and really want to fall in love with that person” (from the book “Horst Portraits, 60 Years of Style”, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2001). Today the exhibition “Horst: Photographer of Style” at the Victoria and Albert museum in London from 6th September 2014 to 4th January 2015 revisits the life, loves, travels and career of this photographer who took his first steps in the world of fashion with the famous magazine Vogue. A captivating display of his most famous and visionary photographs including that famous female silhouette taken from the back as she unlaces her corset: a photograph which was unforgettable for the pop star Madonna too who, in tribute fifty years later, replicated it on her video for her hit song “Vogue”.
Valeria Palieri
