ABSTRACT
Fashion photography established itself with the birth of high-end society magazines in the 1910s. By the 1930s, the genre was transformed by colour photography and outdoors shoots. Vogue's first staff photographer was Adolph de Meyer. Appointed in 1914, his images of actresses, dancers and aristocrats characterised 'a new social movement': the cosmopolitan coming-together of members of fashionable society with figures from literature, theatre and the visual arts. His work influenced another photographer celebrated for his portraits of society's elite, Cecil Beaton, who became renowned for his glittering portraits of debutantes and Hollywood stars posed in fantastical costumes and elaborate sets. One of the most exciting aspects of fashion photography in the late 1920s and 1930s was its crossover with the artistic avant-garde. Some of the most important images made by Surrealist photographer Man Ray, like Black and White, were made on assignment for French Vogue.
