Vogue Like a Painting

About

In the period from the 1930s to today, photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Sheila Metzner, Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst and others were among the world’s most influential fashion photographers, and all were associated with Vogue. The exhibition VOGUE Like a Painting focuses on the inspiration that fashion photography drew from the world of painting and various art historical periods. What links do the photographers make between fashion, photography and painting? This exhibition offers some possible answers, and invites the audience to delve into Vogue’s archives down through the years.

VOGUE Like a Painting is a pleasure trip through various aesthetic expressions, presented in spellbinding large-scale photographs that enter into dialogue with the classical exhibition rooms at GL STRAND. Through more than 60 iconic works by 28 photographers, visitors can explore the dialogue of photography with the visual arts, with inspiration from familiar works of art. You can for example see Erwin Blumenfeld’s re-creation of Johannes Vermeer’s iconic Girl with a Pearl Earring from 1665, and Michael Thompson’s portrait of supermodel Carmen Kass in an interpretation of the famous painting by the Spanish baroque painter Zurbaran of Saint Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal. 

Since the beginning of the 20th century, fashion photography has been inspired by other cultural expressions, including the sensual and painterly. VOGUE Like a Painting explores this connection between photography and painting. Besides illustrating ideals of beauty the works in the exhibition show how fashion photography also has an aesthetic agenda that makes links between beauty, fashion and cultural trends.