Lilian Bassman_Photographer

On February 13 died the american photographer Lilian Bassman. Born in New York (1917), she emerged in the 50′s world of fashion photography, mainly for the Harper’s Bazaar magazine. A time that, constrained by the customs and a widespread sense of modesty (agencies requested that the faces of the models should be hidden for the pictures of lingerie), encouraged experimentation and creativity.

Bassman so develops a subtle and elegant approach. Her work in the darkroom allows her to emphasize on the contrasts and the fuzzinesses giving to the images an oneiric, even phantasmagoric, dimension. The next decade marks the advent of new stylists obsessed with the physique. This simplification of the visual language exasperates Bassman who decides to destroy her commercial films and to leave fashion. She then allows her, for pleasure, a personal photography, sometimes close to abstraction.

This withdrawal leads to a certain oblivion but, during the 90′s, historian Martin Harrison founds old plates that Bassman starts to reinterpret and work digitally. This revival is strongly spotted in such a way the New York Times and Vogue invite her, at the end of the century, to cover the Paris shows.