Swiss photographer Michel Comte seeks beauty like an anthropologist. His portraits are like topographic studies. Everything is collected accurately and naturally.

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Norman Parkinson was the prototypical British gentleman. Colonial moustache, vests in strong colours, impeccable suits, a trained eye and, of course, a Morgan as a means of transport.

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There are people who go two steps ahead, so those who are behind reap the fruits. That was the case of Carmel Snow, editor of Harper’s Baazar and discoverer of Diane Vreeland.

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Photography is part of his life. It closes the circle of his professional and artistic universe. You cannot see life without viewfinder. He looks at the fashion world through the lens of the camera.

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He is possibly the closest you can get to the great Irving Penn. Just like the maestro he works in black and white with photos saturated with insurmountable qualities. Peter Lindbergh is also the man who all great models love, because he knows how to treat them and establishes a “feeling” that makes his portraits very close to reality.

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The life of photographer Edward Steichen covers half of the history of photography itself, i.e. almost 70 years. Born in Luxembourg, he was the father of the great American photography.

In the early twentieth century, Steichen experimented with pictorial photography and photoengraving, actively participating both as a photographer and designer as well as broadcaster of modernism in the mythical Camera Work magazine founded by Alfred Stieglitz in 1903. He was also a painter and Steichen witnessed the invention of the autochrome exploring the processes of colour photography. The first colour cover of Vogue was his.

His works as a pictorialist where he exploited the poetic quality of the blurriness are crepuscular and enigmatic. One of his pictures “The Pond Moonlight” was auctioned at Sotheby’s for $ 2.6 million making it the most expensive photograph in history.

With Stieglitz he learned the virtues of precision and the pictorial mist vanished from his works giving way to a clear and direct style.

Using this newfound descriptive power while parting from the Puritanism of Stieglitz, he tried to live with the new mass media that according to his friend invalidated the artistic potential of photography.

In 1923, after a stay in Paris, Steichen returned to New York as chief photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue, becoming a sought-after portrait photographer. Thanks to a very clever lighting and positioning of the models, Steichen produced images that were not only stylish, but possessed a graphic force always improved on the printed page.

Conde Nast’s decision to hire a new chief photographer, made the work of Baron De Meyer seem outdated. His pictures treated with a realism called “sharp photos» freed from the famous “flou”, chiaroscuro and other mechanisms used by De Meyer, resulted in ethereal moments of every photo which created a new style. There were real women, sitting with crossed legs, leaning on a doorframe or a column while looking at the camera with confidence.

Steichen also introduced natural light through the windows of the studio. Natural light was previously blocked out as something that spoiled the composition. Using white on white and natural poses, he took some of the pictures and most iconic fashion photographs of all time.

Steichen managed to make fashion photography something beautiful in itself and not just a mere presentation of a suit. He used all environmental factors (framing, lighting, composition, etc.) achieving a “complete” aesthetics. The clothes became another element of the photo and the vehicle to communicate with the viewer.

With Marion Morehouse, one of the first professional models, he took several of his best photographs. Years later, during a course given in Vogue, art director Alexander Liberman showed the young photographers a photo taken by Steichen of Morehouse in 1927. The image of a young sophisticated woman whose smile exudes confidence and whose hands rest on her hips showing a dazzling dress by Madame Chéruit. “This was the key to modern fashion photography”, Lieberman told the students. “Fashion is shown very clearly, but the photograph has something even more important: it is the image of a woman at her most attractive moment”.

Word of Liberman, word of the king of fashion photography. The fashion of the 30s and 40s had an artist: Edward Steichen.

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In a white Parisian morning, the eyes of the French designer Andrée Putman became black. Her two colours that led her to success.

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When I went to see the documentary The September Issue, I wasn’t dazzled by the protagonist but by the creative director of Vogue. A strong woman who also allowed herself the luxury of questioning her boss.

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She was inspired by nature and machines, bowed to Le Corbusier and convinced him with her humanity and talent. She was modern, primitive and nonconformist. Always free; to create and to live. She climbed the mountains and found her physical and emotional balance.
The 1928 Chaise Longue, a design classic often attributed to Le Corbusier, was actually designed in collaboration with Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret. The now iconic chair was shaped by Perriand from the image of herself. Perriand together with Lilly Reich and Eileen Gray, besides giving a feminist interpretation of modernist design, offered both utility and comfort with a dimension of incisive materials, emphasizing their brilliance and transparency as well as their degradation and vulnerability.
Perriand was born in Paris in 1903, the daughter of a tailor and a seamstress. She graduated from the School of the Central Union of Decorative Arts. She was always interested in interior design and furniture and at 24 she exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1927 and her work was well received by critics.
She knew exactly what she wanted. That same year she had the courage to knock on the door of the studio of Le Corbusier who sent her away with a somewhat caustic irony: we don’t embroider cushions here.

Perriand later made him eat his words when his cousin and collaborator Pierre Jeanneret took him to see the exhibition of Perriand. Le Corbusier was surprised and decided to give her a job in his studio, of course without pay, as the person in charge of “the shelves, chairs and tables”. Until then Le Corbusier had furnished spaces with objects that were not made by him. From that moment, the spaces were Charlotte’s responsibility and she proposed that the pieces should be inspired by that time, borrowing ideas from the automotive and aerospace industry. These creations later proved to be of a great importance in the history of design, and were signed by the three partners: Le Corbusier, Jeanneret and Perriand.
When Perriand’s daughter came with her to Le Corbusier’s studio she found it a cold and distant place and preferred the afternoons they spent in the study of Leger.

In 1937 Charlotte Perriand left the studio after 10 years and turned her attention to more traditional materials and organic forms. She was dedicated to research in terms of prefabricated houses and collaborated with Jean Prouvé, another of the greats.
In 1940 she travelled to Japan to work in the Ministry of Trade and Industry. In Japan she gave a series of lectures and made multiple visits to studios and workshops and organized an exhibition called “Selection-Tradition-Creation”. She had a great influence on Japanese design.
Her house in Japan was just in front of the Imperial Palace. During her stay (1940-1946) she refined her interpretation merging Eastern and Western elements making tradition and modernity reach a noticeable connection with nature. His love of stones and woods was such that came to talk with nature.
She was a strong and intelligently optimistic woman who began building modernity in the 1920s after entering the studio at Rue de Sèvres in Paris, beginning what was going to be a ten year collaboration with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret.
Rational people adapt their wishes to the reality. Those who are not, adapt the world to their desires. Progress always comes from the heads and hands of the latter.

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In the 1930’s a photographer named Martin Munkácsi who had come to America to escape the Nazis, was highly respected through his work in Harper’s Baazar and was the highest paid photographer in history. He never worked indoors and always in black and white.

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