Lillian Bassman & Paul Himmel - Photographers

[ellastica]

cont.

 

[Wicked Halo]

sadly, Lillian Bassman passed away last week

http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2012/02/lillian-bassman-iconic-photographer-died.html

 

[Stereo_Flo]

So sad... R.I.P.

Harper's Bazaar Russia April 2012 HQs


Scanned by Stereo_Flo

 

[DesireeM]

A Woman's Camera in a Woman's World

Just came over this lovely article about Lillian Bassman!

Source: basepath.com

 

[Miss Dalloway]

What a treat, thanks a million for posting.

 

[justaguy]

GQ September 1972
GQ Listening | Gone With the Hiss
Photo Lillian Bassman
Text Julian S. Martin
Models Denis LaMarsh, Matt Collins, Unknown


condé nast via blueorchid

 

[justaguy]

actuphoto

Lillian Bassman (June 15, 1917 – February 13, 2012) was an American photographer and painter.

Early life and background
Her parents were Jewish intellectuals who emigrated to the United States from Ukraine (then in Russia) in 1905 and settled in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village, New York, and studied at the Textile High School in Manhattan with future artist Alexey Brodovitch and graduated in 1933.

Career
From the 1940s until the 1960s Bassman worked as a fashion photographer and art director for Junior Bazaar and Harper's Bazaar where she promoted the careers of photographers such as Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Louis Faurer and Arnold Newman. Under the guidance of the Russian emigrant, Alexey Brodovitch, she began to photograph her model subjects primarily in black and white. Her work was published for the most part in Harper's Bazaar from 1950 to 1965.

By the 1970s Bassman's interest in pure form in her fashion photography was out of vogue. She turned to her own photo projects and abandoned fashion photography. In doing so she tossed out 40 years of negatives and prints—her life's work. A forgotten bag filled with hundreds of images was discovered over 20 years later. Bassman's fashion photographic work began to be re-appreciated in the 1990s.

She worked with digital technology and abstract color photography into her nineties to create a new series of work. She used Photoshop for her image manipulation.

The most notable qualities about her photographic work are the high contrasts between light and dark, the graininess of the finished photos, and the geometric placement and camera angles of the subjects. Bassman became one of the last great woman photographers in the world of fashion. A generation later, Bassman's pioneering photography and her mentor Alexey Brodovitch's bold cropping and layout innovations were a seminal influence on Sam Haskins and his black and white work of the sixties

Bassman was featured in the 2010 Swedish Halle of Femmes book, Hall of Femmes: Lillian Bassman, and even after her death her work has been exhibited internationally.

Bassman died on February 13, 2012, at age 94.

Personal life
She first met her future husband, photographer Paul Himmel (born 1914), at Coney Island at age six. They met again at 13, and started living together when she was 15. They were married in 1935, and had two children. Himmel died in 2009 after 73 years of marriage.
wiki

 

[justaguy]

LILLIAN BASSMAN

THE MISTRESS OF THE DARKROOM

Lillian Bassman (American, June 15, 1917–February 13, 2012) was a photographer, art director, graphic designer and painter best known for her work in fashion photography. She is considered to be one of the most important fashion photographers of the 20th century.

In the 1940’s working as a graphic designer she was ‘discovered’ for her visual talent by Photographer Richard Avedon and encouraged towards a career in photography.

​

Her sophisticated style evolved and was bold, moody and elegantly expressed in fashion photography in Harper’s Bazzaar from the late 1940s to the early 1960s’. Her romantic images revolutionized fashion photography and her talent was highly sought after. Vanity Fair magazine singled her out as one of photography’s “grand masters”. ‘Full of mystery, sensuality, and expressionistic glamour, Bassman’s dramatic black and white photographs capture secret moments and dream memories’.

Lillian Bassman
It's a Cinch Carmen, New York, Harper's Bazaar,1951 ​

Over the ensuing 25 years, Bassman shot a wide variety of consumer ads– “everything that could be photographed,” she told The New York Times– but especially glamorous models for lingerie advertising. She frequently shot fashion spreads for Harper’s Bazaar as well.

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In the 1970s, Bassman was discouraged with the changing fashion industry and high-maintenance models, “I got sick of them,” she told The Times in 2009. “They were becoming superstars. They were not my kind of models. They were dictating rather than taking direction.” Disappointed with the profession she abruptly closed her studio, abandoned photography – destroyed her commercial negatives and dumped the editorial ones in bin liners in a nook of her home. Instead, for private satisfaction, she photographed semi-abstracts.

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For years, her famous dramatic images stayed dormant. And then in the early 1990’s a friend of hers discovered her long lost negatives and encouraged her to pursue photography again. With the passage of years, she was ready to redefine her photography work.

Portrait of Lillian Bassman in New York City 2011 by Photographer Michael Somoroff​

At 87 years old her interest in darkroom techniques transferred into a fascination for Photoshop and she embraced the digital and began creating interesting effects and variations of images she had captured years ago. Her reinterpretations, as she called them, found a new generation of admirers.

These reinterpretations were so admired that she returned to photograph the Paris collections for the New York Times magazine in 1996 and worked for Vogue until 2004. She had exhibitions across Europe and in the US. Books of her “painting with light” were published in 1997 (Lillian Bassman), 2009 (Lillian Bassman: Women) and this year (Lillian Bassman: Lingerie).

Lillian Bassman who passed away last year in February at age 94, is truly an inspirational artist. In an era where women were not recognized in the arts and design, she was. And as an 87 year old woman she embraced digital, learned technical skills, and revitalized her work in a new way.
mjberistain