The Skinny -- Paul Himmel

Grand Central Terminal, NYC, 1947

Paul Himmel, an American fashion and documentary photographer, was born in 1914 in New Haven, Connecticut.  His parents were Ukranian immigrants.  They moved to Coney Island in 1922, and opened the country's first vegetarian restaurant.   

As a teenager, Himmel taught himself about photography.  But he went to school for science, and began teaching in 1932.  It wasn't his calling, though, and he then studied graphic journalism at the New School with Harper's Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch in the late 1940s (Brodovitch worked there from 1938-58).  

Himmel's portrait of Bassman

It was his relationship with Lillian Bassman, the love of his life, that most affected Himmel, though.  He met her in 1923, married her in 1935, and exhibited his first work in 1939 -- photos taken while on a trip to Mexico with her.  Bassman was also a fashion photographer, and is very well known in her own right.  They were married over 73 years.

He started to work as a professional photographer in 1945, and by 1947 he was working steadily as a fashion photographer for Bazaar and Vogue.  He was one of the very few who worked for both magazines.  Unfortunately, all his negatives from this time have been destroyed.

Bassman and Himmel, 2003

By the 1950s, bored with the commercialism of his fashion work, Himmel started his own art projects.  He looked to the human form for inspiration, focusing on people who used their bodies in their own work, like ballet dancers, circus performers, and boxers.  He experimented with grain structure in his negatives and prints, using a series of silhouetted and elongated forms abbreviated almost to the point of abstraction.  His photos are high-contrast, emphasizing the design and patterns contained in the image.

ballet in action, 1954

He published a book, ballet in action, in 1954.  It had an extensive foreword, written by George Balanchine, the lead choreographer of the New York City Ballet.  In 1955, some of his images were included in a show curated by Edward Steichen, called "The Family of Man" for MOMA.

ballet in action, 1954

Himmel took his last photograph in 1967, and by 1969, he became disenchanted with photography and retrained as a psychotherapist. He worked in psychotherapy for more than 25 years.  An exhibition at the New York Galleries, by Howard Greenberg and James Danzinger, in 1996 reintroduced his work; it was an instant success, and a new book of his work was published.

Abstract Nudes, 1954

Paul Himmel died February 8, 2009.

*Info from artnet.com, theworldofphotographers.com and Wikipedia

The Skinny -- That Bazaar-ly Funny Face

I'm sure you're well aware by now that we are classic movie super fans.  And that we looooove fashion from the 1940s, 50s, and up.  So, logically, the 1959 movie Funny Face really has it all for us.

Audrey, Astaire, and Avedon-worthy fashion photography.  What could get better than that?

But did you know that the movie really is based on the magazine, Harper's Bazaar? 

It's true.  Fred Astaire's character, Dick Avery, is modeled after Bazaar fashion photographer Richard Avedon.  Avedon worked at the magazine from 1945 - 1965.  He liked to show a woman's character in photographs -- making her move, telling a story, or just basically making a model more than a pretty woman in pretty clothes.  Selling fashion was about selling a lifestyle, and Avedon's photos captured that lifestyle.  Dick Avery in the movie says, "What’s wrong with bringing out a girl who has character, spirit, and intelligence?"  And that was Avedon all over.

An Avedon cover for Harper's Bazaar

Wait, though!  It goes even further.  Kay Thompson's character of Maggie Prescott -- the editor of Quality magazine -- was based on Harper's editor, Diana Vreeland.  Vreeland was editor from 1936 - 1962, and is pretty much thought of as the quintessential fashion editor.  She is said to have invented the word, "Pizzazz!", and made sweeping pronouncements about fashion.  You know, much like Maggie Prescott's opening number -- THINK PINK! -- and her constant complaints that things need "More pizzazz!"

Kay Thompson as Maggie Prescott

Well, to be honest, Maggie's close, but let's be more accurate. What Vreeland really said is, "I adore that pink...It’s the navy blue of India."

Portrait of Diana Vreeland

I'm sure we'll get more in depth with Vreeland and Avedon on a later date, but for today, with a tropical storm dumping rain on us -- I'm just loving the thought of a movie marathon.  Starting with Funny Face...

The Skinny: Martin Munkasci

I had planned to write about Richard Avedon. I will, someday. But today is all about the man who inspired Avedon, Martin Munkasci.

"Woman on boulder with bicycle", 1936

Multiple sources cite him as "the father of fashion photography." I had never heard of him before today. It turns out that a lot of people have never heard of him. In fact, after his death in 1963, his archives were offered to multiple museums. Nobody wanted them.

1940s Harper's Bazaar

He was a Hungarian Jew (actually born in Transylvania) who got his start as a sports photographer in his native country for a newspaper called Az Est. He was an adventurer, often called "Crazy Angle" by his colleagues. Instead of standing behind the fence to photograph the races, he would be on his knees in a puddle on the side of the track. One source claims that he strapped himself to the side of a race car in order to photograph it in motion around the track.

Munkasci, on a car

European motorcyclist, 1920s

Martin moved to Berlin, where photography was booming, and ended up working for several German publications in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He even photographed Hitler (no small feat for an Eastern European Jew in Nazi days). When the atmosphere in Germany started to get a little rough for people of Munkasci's roots, he took an overseas assignment in America for Biz, one of his German magazines. While in New York, he agreed to do a photo shoot for Carmel Snow, budding editor for Harper's Bazaar, and that was the day he made history. Not only was it the first outdoor fashion shoot, it was the first motion fashion shoot. Until then, models were posed and primped on carefully regulated sets in carefully regulated studios. With Carmel Snow, Martin Munkasci shot his model on the beach. He didn't speak English, and his interpreter was having a difficult time of it, but the model, Lucile Brokaw, understood perfectly. He wanted her to run. To move around. To splash. Looking at the photographs, you would never know that the day was actually miserably cold and damp, the model shivering.

Lucile Brokaw, Harper's Bazaar 1933

The shoot was such a success that Carmel Snow offered him a job. The next year, he moved to America to become one of the most groundbreaking photographers of the time. He was one of the first photographers to put nudes in a mainstream magazine (tastefully, of course).

Harper's Bazaar, 1935

 He continued to pioneer the art of motion photography for Harper's Bazaar, Life, and Ladies Home Journal before turning his eye to Hollywood. His work gave us one of the most well-known pictures of Fred Astaire in motion. At his peak in the mid-1930s, his annual salary was $100,000. He lived in a Long Island estate with art from the Masters on his walls.

Fred Astaire; Life, 1936

Katharine Hepburn

In 1939, his luck took a hike. His wife (the second of three) divorced him. He lost a lot of money. Then, his daughter died of cancer. While he was still in mourning, Ladies Home Journal gave him a cross-country series assignment called "How America Lives." The stress of driving from city to city, day after day, caught up with him, and his pictures weren't good anymore. They fired him. He had  a heart attack. Another wife, and another divorce, led him to poverty. He was finally reduced to loitering in the hall outside Harper's Bazaar, hoping for some work. He finally had to pawn all of his camera equipment. His last published photograph was for that magazine, in July of 1962. A year later, he died of a heart attack. The only food in his refrigerator was an open can of spaghetti with a fork sticking out of it.

1936, "Peignoir in Soft Breeze"

New York World's Fair, Harper's Bazaar 1938

People finally came around, and several decades later, interest in his work renewed. Someone discovered a series of undeveloped negatives, and an exhibit of "lost" photos was born. A few books were written, with quotes from photographers that Munkasci inspired, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon. I think my favorite is Avedon's remembrance of his 11-year old self discovering  Munkasci magazine cover and gluing it to his bedroom ceiling: "His women [strode] parallel to the sea, unconcerned with his camera, freed by his dream of them, leaping straight-kneed across my bed."

The Puddle Jumper

Bathing Beauties



Information obtained from: http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/news-features/TMG8597512/Martin-Munkacsi-father-of-fashion-photography.html; http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/04/decisive-munkacsi-moments