Vogue: Like a Painting

Photographers: Camilla Akrans, Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Cecil Beaton, Erwin Blumenfeld, Guy Bourdin, Clifford Coffin, Grant Cornett, Patrick Demarchelier, Horst P. Horst, Steven Klein, William Klein, Nick Knight, Annie Leibovitz, Peter Lindbergh, Glen Luchford, Sheila Metzner, Erwin Olaf, Irving Penn, Paolo Roversi, David Sims, Edward Steichen, Michael Thompson, Deborah Turbeville, Mariano Vivanco, Tim Walker y Yelena Yemchuk Vogue like a painting explores the relationship between fashion photography and painting through a selection of images from the archive of Vogue magazine. Taken by leading names in classical fashion photography and the most prominent photographers of the past decade, these pictures display characteristics that are traditionally attributed to painting. All of them, in one way or another, reflect devices commonly used by painters: theatrical settings, dramatic chiaroscuro, carefully devised compositional schemes and special emphasis on the beauty of the figures, their poses and the décor. The exhibition, structured around the major genres of portraiture, landscape and interiors, features photographs that recreate still lifes and conversation pieces—eighteenth-century British group portraits— or show women en deshabillé. These images bring to mind paintings from various periods in art history, either as direct references to masterpieces, such as Erwin Blumenfeld’s version of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, or because they recall artists such as Zurbarán, Hogarth, Millais, Sargent, Gauguin, Dalí, Magritte and Hopper. In some the source of inspiration is much more subtle, even subjective.