PHOTOGRAPHS
Horst, Horst P.
Germany / U.S. (1906 - 1999)
Marlene Dietrich, New York
1942
Gelatin silver print
19 x 15 1/8 in. (48.3 x 38.4 cm) image size; 25 5/8 x 21 15/16 in. (65.1 x 55.7 cm) mount board size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company
FA 97.80

Living in Paris by 1930, Horst was apprenticed to George Hoyningen-Huene, then chief photographer for French Vogue. Hoyningen-Huene had pioneered a theatrical style involving models in artificial poses, in dramatically lighted studio environments. Horst quickly mastered this approach, and by the mid-1930s was photographing for fashion periodicals and, notably, the publicity departments of European and American film studios. Here, Horst’s choice of a strong raking light and architectural frame, highlight and support Marlene Dietrich’s masculine masquerade—creating a very different image than Cecil Beaton’s soft, sexualizing and feminine picture of the same subject.

-- Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: Selections from the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, July 12 to November 10, 2002.