Unseen Vogue goes beyond the cliches and often repeated greatest hits of fashion photography and tells a completely new story. Drawn from the archives of British Vogue, an immense resource of over 1,000,000 images, the book presents hundreds of images never seen before – the killed pictures, rejects and out-takes – to form a fresh, new history of fashion photography. Featuring the first attempts of many now internationally famous photographers, great pictures by forgotten masters, out-takes from famous shoots and many other extraordinary and sometimes controversial pictures. By showing contact sheets and unedited film Unseen Vogue opens up the process of making fashion images, previously the reserve of fashion's inner circle.
Barbara Jacobs Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.
Whatever happened, you might ask, to Twiggy and Bianca Jagger and Jean Shrimpton, among other supermodels of yesteryear? British Vogue creative director Derrick and sidekick Muir sifted through 1.5 million images housed in the magazine's library to produce a multidecades-long tribute to the artists, photographers, and beauties parading through its pages. It starts at the earliest, in the 1920s, with a black-and-white picture of three aristocratic women; all photographs, at the very least, identify the photographer, the subjects, the credits (hair, outfit, cosmetics)--and at the very best, tell some fascinating stories. Like Vivien Leigh's sensitivity about her large hands. Or Marlene Dietrich's amazing knowledge about lighting, printing, and photography. Even a politely heated exchange between editor Audrey Williams and Cecil Beaton about his then most current project. Fantastical, ethereal, yet a very real portrait of many ages.
People Magazine Best in Gift Books
“… a stunning visual catalog of fashion as seen by some of the great photographers of our time.”
Newsday
“… just when you think you’ve seen everything there is to see, there’s always something else.”
Booklist
“Fantastical, ethereal, yet a very real portrait of the ages.”
Library Journal
“The photos, running from 1930s to 2001, are richly showcased…. A great addition to any fashion collection.”
From the Publisher
For all the fashion pictures that make it to the pages of Vogue, there are those that don’t. Not because of poor composition or execution, but because the fashion was too oblique, the styling too inventive, the camera technique too pioneering or frequently because the magazine simply ran out of space. Selected from one–and–a–half million images archived at British Vogue, Unseen Vogue presents fashion photographs you have never seen until now. There are unknown works from great photographers: Cecil Beaton, Horst, Norman Parkinson and Lee Miller — these unseen pictures tell the secret history of fashion photography. Every important fashion photographer is represented here, including David Bailey, Irving Penn, Patrick Demarchelier, Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, Steven Meisel, Juergen Teller and Mario Testino.
Paperback. 352 pages.
