Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Photographer Profile ~ Toni Frissell

Toni Frissell, (1907 -1988) was an American photographer, known for her fashion photography, World War II photographs, portraits of famous Americans and Europeans, children, and women from all walks of life.

In the beginning of her career, she was an apprentice to Cecil Beaton and was advised by Edward Steichen. Conde Nast himself was instrumental in her start at Vogue. Frissell was one of Vogue's first female photographers. As her career evolved, Frissell was commissioned by several corporations, such as Gulf Oil and Life.

Frissell stretched the boundaries of the privileged world into which she was born and became one of the most innovative photographers of her time. She conceived the fashion photograph as a snapshot, in the manner of Munkacsi, and brought a freshness and particularly American style to the genre. Her battle front photojournalism captured some of the most unforgettably compelling images of World War II.

Lisa Fonssagrives was a Swedish fashion model widely credited as the first supermodel.

Michael Todd (June 22, 1909 - March 22, 1958) was an American theatre and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. He is also well known as the third of Elizabeth Taylor's seven husbands.

Jacqueline Bouvier on her wedding day

John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier on their wedding day, 1953

The Kennedys

Portrait of Winston Churchill, his son Randolph, and his grandson Winston, circa 1950s

Medieval street in Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal, ca. 1946

Bomb shelter in a London Underground station, during The Blitz, WW2

London 1945

During World War II she was commissioned by the Women's Army Corps to photograph the movements of the Red Cross. Her subsequent photographs are some of the most harrowing of the war and detail it's very real human cost.