January 16–May 3, 2009
Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937
An exhibition of 175 works by Edward Steichen drawn largely from the Condé Nast archives, this is the first presentation to give serious consideration to the full range of Steichen's fashion images. Organized by the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis, in conjunction with ICP, the exhibition will open at ICP after an extensive tour in Europe. Steichen’s approach to fashion photography was formative and over the course of his career he changed public perceptions of the American woman. An architect of American Modernism and a Pictorialist, Steichen exhibited his fashion images alongside his art photographs. Steichen’s crisp, detailed, high-key style revolutionized fashion photography, and his influence is felt in the field to this day—Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Bruce Weber are among his stylistic successors.
Edward Steichen: In High Fashion features the finest examples of his fashion and celebrity portraiture made for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Much of the exhibition is drawn from the Steichen Archive at Condé Nast, which contains more than two thousand original vintage prints. A select group of prints from the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester will be shown only at ICP. Some of the images in the exhibition are well-known, iconic images in various histories of photography. Never before, however, have more than a modest selection of these prints been exhibited or published. The exhibition will be accompanied by a book devoted to images from Steichen's Condé Nast years. The book's authors are William A. Ewing, Carol Squiers, and Nathalie Herschdorfer, co-curators of the exhibition along with Todd Brandow, and Tobia Bezzola. The exhibition is traveling to ICP after presentations in Paris, Zurich, Madrid, and Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now
This exhibition, organized by Carol Squiers and Vince Aletti, will present the most innovative fashion photography of the last few years, from photographers who draw on a range of influences, including art, sexuality, narrative, digital media, and youth culture. It will also consider the impact of graphic design on the way that fashion photography is presented. Along with original photographic prints, the exhibition will feature hundreds of tear sheets and magazine covers from both mainstream and independent publications, by a range of photographers including Steven Meisel, Cindy Sherman, Mario Sorrenti, Nick Knight, Steven Klein, Miles Aldridge, Paolo Roversi, and Sølve Sundsbø, along with video displays.
This Is Not a Fashion Photograph
This Is Not a Fashion Photograph, organized by guest curator Vince Aletti, is an exhibition drawn largely from the permanent collection of ICP that looks at the non-fashion sources of contemporary fashion photography. Because many young fashion photographers are more interested in authenticity than artifice, they are looking closely at work by Weegee, Lisette Model, André Kertész, and Danny Lyon. It may not have been the intention of these photographers to make fashion images, but their work touches on style as a means of personal expression. With photographs by Gordon Parks, Bruce Davidson, Walker Evans, Samuel Fosso, Doris Ulmann, Mark Cohen, Marc Riboud, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ben Shahn, and others.
May 15–September 6, 2009
Richard Avedon: Fashion Photographs, 1945–2000
Richard Avedon (1923–2004) revolutionized fashion photography starting in the post-World War II era and redefined the role of the fashion photographer. Anticipating many of the cultural cross-fertilizations that have occurred between high art, commercial art, fashion, advertising, and pop culture in the last twenty years, he created spirited, imaginative photographs that showed fashion and the modern woman in a new light. He shook up the chilly, static formulas of the fashion photograph and by 1950 was the most imitated American editorial photographer. Injecting a forthright, American energy into a business that had been dominated by Europeans, Avedon’s stylistic innovations continue to influence photographers around the world.
This exhibition will be the most comprehensive exploration to date of Avedon’s fashion photography during his long career at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Working closely with The Richard Avedon Foundation, ICP curator Carol Squiers and guest curator Vince Aletti will present new scholarship on the evolution and extraordinary, ongoing impact of his work. The exhibition will feature more than 200 works by Richard Avedon, spanning his entire career, and will include vintage prints, contact sheets, magazine layouts, and archival material.
David Seidner: Paris Fashion, 1945
In 1944, the war-battered French couture industry decided to revive its international reputation by conceiving a small exhibition entitled Théâtre de la Mode. The exhibition organizer enlisted the major fashion designers of the day, including Jeanne Lanvin, Lucien Lelong, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Pierre Balmain to create outfits for small wire-frame dolls just over two feet tall.
The exhibition of over 230 dolls, displayed in artist-designed sets, opened in Paris on March 27, 1945 at the Museum of Decorative Arts. It was an instant sensation, and traveled to London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Vienna, New York, and San Francisco. With the return of the French fashion industry, the dolls had completed their work and were donated to the Maryhill Museum near Portland, Oregon, where they disappeared from view.
Under an extraordinary set of circumstances in 1990, the dolls were rediscovered and returned to Paris, recoiffed and restyled for an exhibition at the Musée de la Mode. Because of his pioneering work with French fashion and historical gowns, David Seidner was asked to photograph the little dolls. Working in the rough interior of an abandoned theatre set, Seidner captured the essence of French style in dolls dressed in designs made on the eve of Christian Dior's New Look, which radically changed fashion in 1947. ICP will exhibit fifteen of Seidner's color photographs from the David Seidner Archive in the Permanent Collection, along with one of the original dolls.
