Lillian Bassman
In collaboration with Peter Fetterman Gallery, Los Angeles
Lillian Bassman was an American photographer and painter born in Brooklyn, New York in 1917. Bassman’s unique graphic style of photography illustrates feminine mystique and glamour, as well as a courageous artist blurring the boundaries between fashion photography and fine art. Having worked as the art director of Bazaar magazine in 1945, she helped launch the careers of many notable photographers of the century including Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Arnold Newman, and Paul Himmel. Soon after, Bassman began to photograph the models she worked with and quickly developed a body of work that was unlike any other fashion images of the period. Bassman experimented in the darkroom using various bleaching, filtering, and softening techniques, painting with light to achieve her mysterious aesthetic, reflecting the inner grace of her subjects. Along with her contemporaries Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, Bassman’s creative efforts elevated the genre of fashion photography up and out of the art world shadows.
