The Glass of Fashion

After four lackluster years at Westminster, Norman Parkinson started his career in 1931 as an apprentice in the studios of a staid court photographer. By the end of the decade he had revolutionized the look of fashion pictures. Models had previously appeared cold, static, and studied; Parkinson aimed to "unbolt their knees," and to suggest action and playfulness by taking "moving pictures with a still camera"—nothing like his snap of Pamela Minchin in sunglasses and a 1939 Fortnum and Mason swimsuit, leaping arms outstretched in front of the breakwaters on the Isle of Wight, had ever been seen in the fashion magazines.

He got them out of the studioand onto the street, where he seemed to have caught them on the way to work (or at least a lunch date); into the muck of farm fields; and even onto the backs of ostriches and among herds of slumbering wild elephants ...