Karen Radkai
(1919–2003)
Born in Munich, Karen Radkai spent her childhood in Italy and moved to the US in the late 1930s. She started shooting fashion for Bazaar in 1949, barely a year and a half after she had taken up photography, having previously managed her husband’s studio. Her images for the magazine, which include a romantic, sepia-toned portrait of Elizabeth Taylor clutching a bouquet of flowers and throwing her head back in laughter, have a fresh, spontaneous quality that disguises the complexity of their composition; models are shown smoking cigarettes or sipping drinks, as if caught off guard, but the glamorous world they present is the result of a carefully studied set-up.