Lisa Fonssagrives ~ The First Super Model

Lisa Fonssagrives is considered by many to be the world’s first supermodel. Her image appeared on over 200 Vogue covers

Fonssagrives was born in Sweden  and raised in Uddevalla. As a child, she took up painting, sculpting and dancing. She went to Mary Wigman's school in Berlin and studied art and dance. After returning to Sweden, she opened a dance school. She moved from Sweden to Paris to train for ballet and worked as a private dance teacher with Fernand Fonssagrives, which then led to a modeling career, and she would say that modeling was "still dancing". While in Paris in 1936, photographer Willy Maywald discovered her in an elevator and asked her to model hats for him. Fonssagrives' photographs were then sent to Vogue, and Vogue photographer Horst took some test photographs of her. (She was rather short at 5'7" compared to today's super models.)

Before Fonssagrives came to the United States in 1939, she was already a top model. Her image appeared on the cover of many magazines during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including Town & Country, Life, Time, Vogue, and the original Vanity Fair. She was reported as "the highest paid, highest praised, high fashion model in the business".The down to earth Fonssagrives once described herself as a "good clothes hanger".

She worked with fashion photographers including George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia. She married Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in 1935; they divorced and she later married another photographer, Irving Penn, in 1950. She went on to become a sculptor in the 1960s and was represented by the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan.

Fonssagrives died, aged 80, in New York, survived by her second husband, Irving Penn and her two children: her daughter Mia Fonssagrives-Solow, a costume designer, and her son, Tom Penn, a designer.

The Elton John photography collection auction held by Christie's on October 15, 2004 sold a 1950 Irving Penn photograph of his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, for $57,360 [via wiki]

Sand Fence, Lisa Fonssagrives 1930s



Lisa Fonssagrives at Paddington Station, London, 1951



Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn © Irving Penn, 1949

Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, February Vogue © Irving Penn, 1950

 Irving Penn, New York, 1949

 Irving Penn

Irving Penn

“It is
always
the dress,
it is never,
never
the girl.

I’m just a
good
clothes
hanger.” 

Lisa Fonssagrives

By Irving Penn,  Paris, 1950





Horst

Lisa With Harp, 1939 , Irving Penn

This Irving Penn Harlequin Dress print of Lisa sold for $131,450 in 2011
Penn began reprinting in the 1960s a large majority of his work with the platinum palladium process. The registration bar at the top of the photograph as seen in this example, was common for Penn’s work. It allowed multiple negatives, each containing a particular portion of the photographic scale, to be printed on one sheet of paper. The process of multiple exposures created an image that would not be possible with a single exposure.  

Irving Penn: Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in Balenciaga, 1950

Irving Penn

Irving Penn


Horst P. Horst Lisa Fonssagrives' Hands, New York, 1941


Horst P. Horst Lisa Fonssagrives, New York, 1940



Lisa Fonssagrives by Erwin Blumenfeld



Lisa Fonssagrives for Vogue, 1939, by Erwin Blumenfeld

Lisa Fonssagrives  by Lillian Bassman

Lisa Fonssagrives 1947 - photo by John Rawlings. 

Photographer Profile ~ Lillian Bassman

Lillian Bassman was born in 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. She reigns today as the doyenne, one of the last great women photographers of the post war period. She was married to Paul Himmel in 1935 and is one of the truly great artist couples, literally of the last Century, they have been married for more that 73 years!

Lillian Bassman’s work in black and white is the experimental and romantic vision, as seen mostly in Harper’s Bazaar in the 1950’s that brought a sophisticated, new aesthetic to print photography. From the 1940’s Bassman was at the cutting edge of fashion working as both fashion photographer and art director for Harpers Bazaar. At Junior Bazaar she worked with young photographers such as Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Louis Faurer, Arnold Newman and Paul Himmel. Then under Russian émigré and Modernist guru Alexey Brodovitch (and while using George Hoyningen-Huene’s darkroom), Bassman started shooting pictures herself – diffuse, moody images with an idiosyncratic vocabulary of gestures and an unsettling edge. With their blurred silhouettes and unusual compositions – a gown modelled in a window to resemble a butterfly, a dramatic lingerie model covering her face, a pair of arms hugging naked shoulders- Bassman’s images flirts with abstraction and conjures up a sensuous dream world. Bassman soon was in constant demand and, in addition to her editorial work shot campaigns for Chanel and Balenciaga.

By the 1970’s Bassman’s interest in pure form began to clash with fashion’s changing aesthetic. Her increasing disenchantment led her to abandon fashion photography in favour of her own projects. In a bold attempt to free herself creatively from the past, she jettisoned 40 years of negatives and prints – her life’s work. Over twenty years later, luck resurrected a forgotten bag, brimful of hundreds of images. Now Bassman is enjoying a resurgence at fashions forefront, with exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide. At 87, she is now working with digital technology and abstract colour photography to create a new series of work. Her work stands testimony to one of the great creative personalities of our time.

(Text by Martin Harrisson, Lillian Bassman, 1997)
~ for Andrea

Bassman's Abstract Work. 

Lillian Bassman

Lillian was married to fellow photographer Paul Himmel. They inspired each other artistically and creatively.  She spent her life together with her husband for 66 years, having a relationship that spanned for 77 years. She first met him when she was 6, and he was 9. When she saw him again a several years later, she fell incurably in love, and they lived together when she was 15. They married when Ms. Bassman was 25, and were together until his death in February 2009 at 94. “He never bored me,” she said. Great love story. (AA)

Lillian and Paul