[iluvjeisa]

IMO - Chris von Wangenheim is one of the greatest fashion photographers of all time.

Excerpt from Wiki

Chris von Wangenheim (February 21, 1942 – March 9, 1981) was a top fashion photographer of the late 1960s through early 1980s. He was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) and moved to New York in 1965 where he worked as a photographer's assistant until 1967. He began working for the American edition of Harper's Bazaar in 1968 and at the Italian edition of Harper's Bazaar from 1970. In 1972, American Vogue became his primary outlet but he also worked for the German, French and Italian editions of Vogue as well as for Esquire, Playboy, Interview (magazine) and Viva. He is also well known for his successful advertisements for Christian Dior, Calvin Klein and Revlon. At the peak of his success Chris von Wangenheim died in a car crash in April 1981.


Italian Bazaar 1978 w/ Gia (sbm) and two pix from Staley-Wise.

[Bellissima]

He made his images quite riveting. Here are a few more-











http://www.staleywise.com/collection...angenheim.html

[iluvjeisa]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bellissima He made his images quite riveting. Here are a few more- http://www.staleywise.com/collection...angenheim.html

I wholeheartedly agree. Riveting!

Here are two shots from an old Vogue Patterns magazine from 1976. The cover is with Clotilde, I THINK, and the second is an unusually subtle pic with a Dior outfit.

[Bellissima]

Just wanted to post a few more pictures.....




and the man himself-


source livejournal

[iluvjeisa]

popphoto.com has a wonderful feature of the most underrated photographers, featuring CvW. Here's an excerpt from their tribute:

Quote:

Originally Posted by popphoto.com For just a few years, tragically cut short by his death in a car accident in 1981, Chris von Wangenheim was riding high as a fashion, editorial, and advertising photographer. His hard, sexy, decadent images survive among the most exemplary illustrations of the high-glamour look of the 1970s. Von Wangenheim found his form early in the decade. His sensibility precisely matched the new fashion trends, whose most distinguished photographic exponents were Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. Born the son of an aristocratic German officer in Berlin in 1942, von Wangenheim infused his work with the strong influence of his German roots. His pictures, like those of his hero and mentor—and fellow Berliner—Newton, carry echoes of the decadent aspects of Weimar Berlin. There are references to German Expressionist cinema in his use of low lights that cast dramatic shadows, and there is a cool, even cruel edge to his scenarios that hints at an element of cultural and personal trauma. Von Wangenheim’s father was a champion steeplechaser who won a gold medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, struggling to the finish after breaking his collarbone in a fall. His feat is depicted in Leni Riefenstahl’s famed documentary film of the Games. Lieutenant von Wangenheim was captured in 1944 on the Russian front and committed suicide, still a prisoner, in 1953. Chris von Wangenheim did not know his father, but the circumstances of the father’s life surely marked the son’s creative spirit. A feature for the June 1975 issue of Italian Vogue casts the models as Olympic athletes. On other occasions horses were brought into the studio for a number of archetypal von Wangenheim images—arguably as surrogates for the absent male figure in his life. He described one image as “a symbolic family portrait.” A cold sexism, often with a sadistic edge, defines von Wangenheim’s preference in depicting women. All these elements come together in a 1975 Italian Vogue “Pelle” supplement cover in which the sleek, groomed model, described as an “intrepid rodeo amazon,” wears a leather-and-metal horse’s bridle by Hermès. Von Wangenheim was drawn to photography from an early age, but he chose to study architecture. Following his first passion, however, he went to New York in 1965 to learn photography as an assistant. By 1968 he had set up his own studio and had started to work for Harper’s Bazaar. From 1969 he was also making pictures for Vogue, first the Italian edition, then, from 1972, the American. He was a good-looking man, ambitious, with energy and charm, and was soon in regular demand in New York and Europe for fashion and advertising work. Von Wangenheim created strong and memorable images, often with disconcerting ingredients: One for Vogue featured an elegant foot in a high-heeled shoe kicking in a television screen; another, for Dior, showed a model with her arm locked in the jaws of a savage-looking dog. In 1970s New York he became closely enmeshed in a self-indulgent, hedonistic scene that gravitated around the parallel pursuits of style and thrills—the starstruck world of Studio 54 and Andy Warhol’s Interview. In the winter of 1975–76, the Rizzoli Gallery staged an exhibition titled “Fashion as Fantasy,” which caught the emerging characteristics of this glamour-obsessed moment, and it was inevitable that von Wangenheim should take part, alongside artists as diverse as Richard Bernstein, Jim Dine, Rudi Gernreich, David Hockney, Karl Lagerfeld, Robert Motherwell, and the ubiquitous Warhol. Von Wangenheim photographed key icons in this milieu. He made dramatic portraits of such beauties and divas as Bianca Jagger, Grace Jones, and Diana Ross for Interview, and a striking cover and set of pictures of Raquel Welch for the December 1979 Playboy. As the magazine explained, “His photos show the dangerous side of beauty.” The 1978 film Eyes of Laura Mars, a sinister New York story of fashion photography and murder, drew ideas from the work of a number of photographers, von Wangenheim foremost among them. Von Wangenheim brought his personal history, his passion, and his fixations to his work as a fashion, advertising, and portrait photographer. He succeeded in constructing an illusory yet distinctive and persuasive world of brittle, dangerously seductive glamour. “A good fashion photograph,” he wrote in 1980, “makes a promise it can never keep.”

[iluvjeisa]

Some pix from popphoto.com:

1) Bitten Knudsen and unknown.
2) Lisa Taylor and others.
3) Raquel Welch for Playboy December 1979.
4) do.
5) Gia Carangi for American Vogue 1979.
6) Eva Voorhis for American Vogue.
7) Apollonia for Interview 1973.
8) Dior ad.
9) American Vogue
10) Gia Carangi 1979.

[fredo]

sorry for the poor quality of the scan

[BerlinRocks]

so he's the photographer that made the shoot with Gia behind the fence...
(i remember the movie about Gia, we see the shooting!)
i love photos from the 70s!

[La bordélique]

maomag.com

Vogue Paris December 1973
Styling and makeup: Patrick Hourcade
Hair: Maniatis


vogue.fr

[iluvjeisa]

Ohlala, that man was a genius Thank you La bordelique

[kissmesweet]

Wow! I've admired his work for years, but I never really got around to find out his name! Thanks for the thread!

His photos are sexy, but still classy. (Unlike say, Ellen von Unwerth?)

[iluvjeisa]

One of his wonderful Dior ads, Fitting is your Dior....from 1979! Scanned by me.

[hfgl]

He's in my top 4 of fave photographers.His Dior ads!

[SusanSuperstar]

he was so talented

[MilOGuy]

Gia Carangi




source: www.giacarangi.org