Horst P. Horst: 60 Years and Still in Vogue

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 1998

The subtitle of this video portfolio of famed fashion photographer Horst P. Horst is a deliberate play on words that depicts his career perfectly. At the age of 87, his skills have not diminished; his photos are as honored today as they were in the 1930s and 1940s; and he continues to work for Conde Nast's Vogue.

Horst, the first photographer honored with an exhibit at the Louvre in Paris, was the fashion and portrait photographer of pre-world War II Europe. His studies of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, designer Coco Chanel, playwright/artist Jean Cocteau. and movie icons Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, and Paulette Goddard filled the editorial pages of the French Vogue as Horst's high-contrast, almost geometric black-and-white shots dominated its ads and fashion pages.

Horst fled to America in 1939 at the onset of the war and joined the U.S. Army, though his duty was confined to photographing generals and Pres. Harry S. Truman. Following the war, Horst's career bloomed once more, and his unabashedly homosexual lifestyle melded perfectly with his social milieu, his home a constant buzz with such noted guests as opera singer Maria Callas, playwright Noel Coward, movie stars Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman, and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Most recently, his photos served as inspiration for Madonna's "Vogue" video, which mimicked the images Horst had created decades earlier, most prominently the Mainbocher corset shot, the last photo he made in Paris in 1939.

Ample examples of his work and commentary from designers, models, and museum curators pay tribute to Horst in this stunning video. The best descriptions come from Horst himself, though. His uncensored comments of the art scene, the people he has worked with, and his lifestyle provide a fascinating, unvarnished look at the man and his career.