Legends of photography
Oliver Atwell looks at Bert Stern’s legacy in helping to de ne the aesthetic of fashion photography
There’s something to be said for autodidactic creatives. So many times, in the ‘Legends’ column, we’ve looked at the careers of significant photographers and seen that it was their lack of formal education in photography that meant they were free of the restrictive shackles of institutional tutoring. This isn’t meant as a dig at photography courses. It’s simply to say that when photographers are free to find their own paths, when they evade indoctrination, true creative magic can flourish.
One who fits into this model is Bert Stern (1929-2013), a photographer of true significance in the world of fashion photography. Stern’s beginnings in photography were simple. His father was a photographer, specialising in portraits of children. At the age of 16 he dropped out of school, found himself working in the mail room of Look magazine and, loosely as a result of meeting filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (he would go on to work with him on several occasions), managed to wangle a job as an assistant to Look’s art director Hershel Bramson. The experience he gained there saw him being offered the position of art director at Mayfair magazine. A little later he re-joined Bramson when working at the L.C. Gumbiner advertising agency. It was during this time that he created what we would now think of as the definitive style of fashion photography.
Through his own experience and creative vision, Stern built an aesthetic that favoured uncluttered and emotionally direct images, ones in which the figure was central and the model was allowed to express and emote in a way previously unseen. Stern’s reputation and his aesthetic quickly took hold. He worked for numerous commercial companies, such as Revlon, and he was sought after by magazines such as Vogue (he shot numerous covers for them) and his list of sitters is mindblowing: Truman Capote, Twiggy, Marilyn Monroe, Vanessa Redgrave, et al.
Dynamism
As can sometimes happen, rather than bending to the commercial whims of mainstream culture, Stern forced the mainstream to adapt to his methods. His work is unique in the truest sense of that word.
There is certainly a dynamism to his work that isn’t easily identifiable in the fashion photography produced prior to his landing on the scene. Even now, rather than looking overly familiar or out-of-date, his work feels contemporary and fresh. His use of colour is beautiful. It bursts off the page (or screen), largely as a result of his simple and minimalist high-key-lit backgrounds. In a sense, his works acts as a counter to Richard Avedon’s, who used the same minimalism to enhance his black & white works.
Perhaps Stern’s most famous images were of Marilyn Monroe. Those works were collected in a book published in 1982 called The Complete Last Sitting. The name should be taken at face value. Just six weeks after the images were shot, Monroe was found dead. Stern himself died in New York in June 2013. Thankfully, his legacy has not been posthumous. It was secure pretty much the moment he first unveiled his unique aesthetic to the world of fashion photography.