Fashion photography has been an art unto itself. Because it recorded styles and sold products, it long was thought to be compromised, unable to make pure aesthetic statements. But in the last quarter century of analysis, fashion photography has held up remarkably well, often revealing visions of significant artistry and sensibility.
If not inseparable from commercial motives, 20th Century fashion photography has nonetheless had lensmen who brought to their efforts a high degree of social and aesthetic perception. Works by a few of them are assembled here.
All have the charm of documents that tell us how people different from us have lived. But they additionally present a quality of image-making that time has treated ever more kindly, getting us to see that such pictures are seldom as frivolous as they first might have seemed.
