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Lot Essay
Even today, I remain convinced there is a life going on in another world behind a transparent glass. We are doubles.
—Erwin Blumenfeld
Over a most illustrious career that spanned across thirty years and which crowned him as one of the most coveted fashion photographers in the world, Erwin Blumenfeld created a prolific body of work, breathtaking in its unrelentingly innovative spirit. His proclivity to reject the status quo mode of photography in favor of a more experimental approach could be traced to his early days in Berlin during the 1910s, when the young Jewish man catered to the artistic elite who would patronize the fashion boutique where he worked. Besotted with their Dadaist approach, the young Blumenfeld felt encouraged to break artistic conventions an adopt far more unorthodox techniques that included layering multiple images; combining positive and negative images; photomontages; photo collages; weaving reflections and shadows; photographing through veils and grates; incorporating double exposures, and solarizing, to name some of the more salient and successful approaches used throughout his career. The resulting images were invariably mesmerizing, and over half a century later, still refreshingly engaging.
In 1941 Blumenfeld left his native Europe and moved to the United States of America. A chance visit from the celebrated photographer Cecil Beaton helped the young German émigré land a contract at Vogue, paving the way for a spectacular career. Indeed, from that point on, Blumenfeld ushered in a new era in figural photography, one that was typified by abstraction. Gone were the staged tableaus and the stiff poses that had been commonly found in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. His images were characterized by a natural ease and a fresh abstraction that straddled a fine line between fantasy and reality. His commitment to continually abstracting the image extended throughout his career, such as the one seen in the current lot, created in 1958. Like many of Blumenfeld’s images from that period, this image transcends reality to present what the artist termed ‘psychological portraiture’, used as a means to dig beneath the surface and allude to the thoughts, desires and minds of his subjects.
In the current lot viewers behold an arresting image of a young woman, shot from behind a veil. Her sideways look endows her with a meditative and contemplative aura, and the spotlight on the upper right corner dramatically reduces her to a grainy chiaroscuro composition. Her figure dissolves into the background while the graceful contours of her face and shoulders starkly stand out. More than a study of likeness, she is an apparition, or perhaps more so, a psychological portrait of womanhood. She is not glamorized nor objectified. Rather, she is a freely wandering mind caught unguarded. The inscription on the mount to Cecil Beaton implies that Blumenfeld was proud of the image, intending to impress his early champion with a photograph that captured the best of his work—a pensive, somber and elegant psychological portrait.
—Erwin Blumenfeld
Over a most illustrious career that spanned across thirty years and which crowned him as one of the most coveted fashion photographers in the world, Erwin Blumenfeld created a prolific body of work, breathtaking in its unrelentingly innovative spirit. His proclivity to reject the status quo mode of photography in favor of a more experimental approach could be traced to his early days in Berlin during the 1910s, when the young Jewish man catered to the artistic elite who would patronize the fashion boutique where he worked. Besotted with their Dadaist approach, the young Blumenfeld felt encouraged to break artistic conventions an adopt far more unorthodox techniques that included layering multiple images; combining positive and negative images; photomontages; photo collages; weaving reflections and shadows; photographing through veils and grates; incorporating double exposures, and solarizing, to name some of the more salient and successful approaches used throughout his career. The resulting images were invariably mesmerizing, and over half a century later, still refreshingly engaging.
In 1941 Blumenfeld left his native Europe and moved to the United States of America. A chance visit from the celebrated photographer Cecil Beaton helped the young German émigré land a contract at Vogue, paving the way for a spectacular career. Indeed, from that point on, Blumenfeld ushered in a new era in figural photography, one that was typified by abstraction. Gone were the staged tableaus and the stiff poses that had been commonly found in the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. His images were characterized by a natural ease and a fresh abstraction that straddled a fine line between fantasy and reality. His commitment to continually abstracting the image extended throughout his career, such as the one seen in the current lot, created in 1958. Like many of Blumenfeld’s images from that period, this image transcends reality to present what the artist termed ‘psychological portraiture’, used as a means to dig beneath the surface and allude to the thoughts, desires and minds of his subjects.
In the current lot viewers behold an arresting image of a young woman, shot from behind a veil. Her sideways look endows her with a meditative and contemplative aura, and the spotlight on the upper right corner dramatically reduces her to a grainy chiaroscuro composition. Her figure dissolves into the background while the graceful contours of her face and shoulders starkly stand out. More than a study of likeness, she is an apparition, or perhaps more so, a psychological portrait of womanhood. She is not glamorized nor objectified. Rather, she is a freely wandering mind caught unguarded. The inscription on the mount to Cecil Beaton implies that Blumenfeld was proud of the image, intending to impress his early champion with a photograph that captured the best of his work—a pensive, somber and elegant psychological portrait.