Fashion Photography

Fashion photography developed along with the new picture magazines. Confined at first to studio portraits of society women in their finery, it turned to professional models and professional photographers to enliven images and entice the reader. Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar magazines hired full-time staff photographers—most notably, American Edward Steichen and Englishman Cecil Beaton, both one-time pictorialists. These photographers began to use elaborate lighting schemes to achieve the same sort of glamorizing effects being perfected by Clarence Bull as he photographed new starlets in Hollywood, California. Martin Munkacsi initiated a fresh look in fashion photography after Harper’s Bazaar hired him in 1934. He moved the models outdoors, where he photographed them as active, energetic modern women.