Focus The secret, sexy, sometimes sordid world of fashion photographers

Review by New York Times Review

IF THERE IS one group of the creative class that deftly inhabits the clichés built around them, it is fashion photographers. They are drama queens, they are ultracompetitive, they are serial womanizers; they constantly redefine the term "debauched." Michael Gross's new book, "Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers," does not skimp on the gossipy goods. There are descents into madness, prolific drug use, orgies, blackmail photos and suicide attempts, successful and otherwise. There is so much womanizing that the theme of infidelity is basically a subplot, and pretty much boils down to the following: A stunning model walks into a photographer's studio; a marriage dies. But this book, which concerns itself with the years 1947-97 - what the author views as fashion photography's golden age - is also smart, well researched and written with an insider's eye. This is not a comprehensive history, and Gross - whose books include "Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women" - states from the outset that it isn't meant to be. It focuses, he writes, on those photographers "who were unavoidable, who changed the conversation, who lived the life of fashion photography to its fullest." Of all the characters here from the decades the book covers - Irving Penn, Bert Stern, Steven Meisel, Bruce Weber - Richard Avedon looms largest. Both as a talent and as a personality: Before Avedon, models were simply faces, hangers for beautiful clothing. He encouraged them to inhabit their personalities. After researching and planning his shoots, Avedon "would work just as hard with his models, demonstrating how he wanted them to pose, leaping about if that was called for, chattering at them, joking with them, ... encouraging them to express themselves." He also felt threatened by any photographer he perceived as even approaching him in stature. His rivalry with Irving Penn spanned decades and existed on planes both artistic and petty. As did his rivalry with Bert Stern: Stern once dismissed his taste in music by saying, "Avedon was playing Sinatra." With glamour and debauchery came the inevitable casualties: Some passages from the book read like an especially affecting episode of VH1's "Behind the Music." There was Stern, who in 1965 at the age of 35 was billing advertising and magazine clients $500,000 a year and in 1962 photographed the memorable "Last Sitting" with Marilyn Monroe. Stern went on to become a speed freak who lost everything and spent a good portion of his last years all but homeless. And there was Bill King, who exercised an unheard-of control over his studio - assistants were not allowed to speak during shoots and were required to wear white lab coats - but lost control in his off-hours, exploring New York's darkest underground gay sex scene, indulging in quaaludes and cocaine, and eventually dying of AIDS at 48. The time Gross spends here dissecting the magazine business's various characters and mores is engaging and on point. We meet the legendary Diana Vreeland, with her outsize vision and embrace of the jolie laide or "Vogue ugly" model; Condé Nast's Alexander Liberman, considered a genius by some, a phony by others, but all-powerful by all; and Hearst's similarly influential Alexey Brodovitch, who ran the important Design Laboratory. The book is canny about the industry's move to a business model more concerned with pleasing advertisers than producing compelling editorial. This, weirdly, led to photographers getting to do their more creative work for advertisers. Gross's focus is stunningly light on female photographers, but then again, so has been the profession. But just because the giants of the field have all been men doesn't mean that women haven't made an impact, and a few - Corinne Day, Deborah Turbeville - do get their (brief) moment in the limelight here. Still, one can't help wishing for more, and wondering if their absence has more to do with their stories being less dishy than those of their louche male counterparts. KIM FRANCE writes the blog Girls of a Certain Age. She is the founding editor of Lucky magazine.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 14, 2016]

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Review by Booklist Review

Gross (House of Outrageous Fortune, 2014) delivers a juicy history of the scandalous lives of fashion photographers. He is nearly encyclopedic in his approach, covering a dizzying number of photographers, including the pioneering Richard Avedon, top dog at Harper's Bazaar; Bert Stern, who shot a steamy session with Marilyn Monroe for Vogue; and Terry Richardson, whose over-exposed, edgy style made him famous, but whose sordid relationship with models made him unsavory. Gross travels more or less chronologically through the industry's transformations, from fashion trends like the emergence of androgyny and cross-dressing to the shift of creative control from the photographer to the designer, employing quotes from his own interviews to dish on the enormous egos, volatile relationships with models and editors, and emotional turbulence that seem to be nearly ubiquitous among the industry's professionals. Gross' focus on minutiae and he said, she said tales detract at times from a larger perspective, but anyone interested in fashion and/or photography will find Gross' full immersion fascinating.--Grant, Sarah Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Gross (Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women) opens this paradoxically unfocused book with an interesting exegesis on the grandfathers of fashion photography, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. These men practically invented the oeuvre, with technical and stylistic innovations, including seamless backdrops and candid snapshots, "in direct contrast to what was being done" by others in the industry. Their segue from portraiture and penury into successful careers as fashion photographers is a study in upward mobility in America. But after a strong start, the text devolves into an endless litany of photographers, models, photo shoots, and magazine layouts. Far too much attention is given to magazine publishers and the various editors at Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, including Edna Chase, Carmel Snow, Diana Vreeland, and finally Anna Wintour. The parts involving art directors Alexei Brodovitch and Alexander Liberman are fascinating in their own right, but they dim the book's already faltering emphasis on fashion photography. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Since the 1940s, fashion photographers have competed for the prestigious covers of such magazines as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. At the top of their game, these notoriously ambitious players include "game changer" Richard Avedon-as well as Terry and Bob Richardson, Bert Stern, Irving Penn, Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, and Mario Testino. The -selection of artists is based on Departures contributing editor Gross's (House of -Outrageous Fortune) own criteria: those "who were unavoidable, who changed the conversation...but also ones who I am drawn to and whose stories were somehow accessible." Along with tales of famous shoots and industry backstories during the "glory days" of the genre, Gross writes of the sexual promiscuity and recreational drug use of these (mostly male) photographers in this exposé. Although the subtitle is a bit on the nose, the subject matter will be historically significant to those who are concerned with the photo artist's role in the golden age of modern fashion photography. -VERDICT Recommended for enthusiasts of fashion and fashion photography.-Shauna -Frischkorn, Millersville Univ., PA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The reality of fashion photography "can be murky, often decadent, and sometimes downright ugly."In a gossipy expos focused less on aesthetic vision than biographical dirt, journalist Gross (House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World's Most Powerful Address, 2014, etc.) follows the careers of the talented, arrogant, philandering, combative, self-aggrandizing photographers whose work appeared in, and defined, such iconic fashion magazines as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Glamour, and Elle from 1947 to 1997. Richard Avedon (1923-2004) gets major attention, since he was the darling of Harper's Bazaar before Diana Vreeland lured him to Vogue in 1962. Avedon, writes Gross, created "a hybrid of street photography that sought to capture reality and the elegant remove of past fashion photography." As successful as he was, the overbearing, egotistical Avedon saw all other photographersmost notably Irving Penn ("the abiding genius of Vogue")as rivals. When he chose a model, no one else could use her. "He was one of the great contributors to fashion," said photographer Melvin Sokolsky, "but he had no space for anybody but himself. If anybody else took a picture, he couldn't give it credit." Gross portrays Penn and Avedon as divas, but they were not alone. Gilles Bensimon, "chief shutterbug" of French Elle, was another: he liked to twirl his penis in public. "The biggest dick in the business," commented a fellow photographer. Sex, consensual or not, permeated the business. Bert Stern, who took a notorious series of photos of Marilyn Monroe, nude, shortly before she died, used "those images of Monroe at the end of her rope" to sustain himself for the rest of life, as his career tanked, his marriage to long-suffering ballerina Allegra Kent ended, and drug addiction landed him in hospitals. Interviews, some conducted for Model, Gross' previous foray into the fashion industry, reveal piles of sometimes-tangy, often scurrilous gossip. Not a pretty picture of sex, drugs, beautiful women, and raw ambition. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Focus Chapter 1 "A WITNESS" A chilly rain was falling on November 6, 1989, when several generations of New York's fashion and social elite gathered in the medieval-sculpture hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a memorial celebrating Diana Vreeland, the fashion editor, curator, and quintessence of self-creation. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, for whom Vreeland was a fashion godmother, and Lauren Bacall, who'd been discovered by her, both arrived alone. Dorinda Dixon Ryan, known as D.D., who'd worked under Vreeland at Harper's Bazaar, was seated next to Carolyne Roehm, one among many fashion designers in attendance. Mica Ertegun and Chessy Rayner, the society decorators, sat with Reinaldo Herrera, holder of the Spanish title Marqués of Torre Casa, whose family estate in Venezuela, built in 1590, is said to be the oldest continuously inhabited home in the Western Hemisphere. One of Vreeland's sons delivered a eulogy, as did socialite C. Z. Guest; Pierre Bergé, the business partner of Yves Saint Laurent; Oscar de la Renta, the society dressmaker; Philippe de Montebello, then the museum's director and Vreeland's final boss when she ran its Costume Institute; and George Plimpton, who cowrote her memoir, D.V. But the afternoon's most telling fashion moment came in between Montebello and Plimpton, when photographer Richard Avedon, who'd worked with Vreeland from the start of his career, took the stage. Avedon was a giant in fashion and society, an insider and an iconoclast, a trenchant critic of the very worlds that had made him a star, arguably the most celebrated photographer of the twentieth century. Never one to mince words or spare the feelings of others ("Oh, Dick, Dick, Dick is such a dick," a junior fashion editor once said), he used his eulogy as a gun aimed at Vreeland's latest successor at Vogue, Anna Wintour. Though he never once mentioned her name, he sought to wound Wintour, who'd arrived at the memorial with her bosses, the heads of Condé Nast Publications, S. I. "Si" Newhouse Jr., the company's chairman, and Alexander Liberman, its editorial director. Just a year earlier, they'd let Wintour replace Avedon as the photographer of Vogue's covers. Only a few in the audience knew that Avedon had actually shot a cover for the November 1988 issue, Wintour's first as editor in chief of Vogue, and that no one had bothered to alert him that Wintour had replaced it with a picture by the much-younger Peter Lindbergh. Avedon only found out when the printed issue arrived at his studio. He never shot for Vogue again. A year later, Avedon served up his revenge dressed in a tribute to the woman he'd sometimes refer to as his "crazy aunt" Diana. Avedon recalled their first meeting in 1945 when he was twenty-two and fresh out of the merchant marine. Carmel Snow was about to make true his short lifetime's dream of taking photographs for Harper's Bazaar, the magazine she edited that he'd first encountered as the son of a Fifth Avenue fashion retailer. Newspaper and magazine stories about the Vreeland memorial would linger on in Avedon's recollections of their first meeting, how he watched her stick a pin into both a dress and the model wearing it, "who let out a little scream," he remembered. Vreeland turned to him for the very first time and said, "Aberdeen, Aberdeen, doesn't it make you want to cry?" It did, he went on, but not because he loved the dress or appreciated the mangling of his name. He went back to Carmel Snow and said, "I can't work with that woman." Snow replied that he would, "and I did," Avedon continued, "to my enormous benefit, for almost forty years." But that charming opening anecdote was nothing compared to what followed. Avedon extolled Vreeland's virtues, "the amazing gallop of her imagination," her preternatural understanding of what women would want to wear, her "sense of humor so large, so generous, she was ever ready to make a joke of herself," and the diligence that made her "the hardest-working person I've ever known. . . . "I am here as a witness," Avedon concluded. "Diana lived for imagination ruled by discipline, and created a totally new profession. Vreeland invented the fashion editor. Before her, it was society ladies who put hats on other society ladies. Now, it's promotion ladies who compete with other promotion ladies. No one has equaled her--not nearly. And the form has died with her. It's just staggering how lost her standards are to the fashion world." Sitting at the front of the audience between her two bosses, wearing a Chanel suit that mixed Vreeland's signature color, red, with the black of mourning, the haughty Wintour, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses, gave no hint that she knew Avedon was speaking to her. But even though he saw her ascendance as a sign of the fashion Apocalypse, it's unlikely that even the prescient Avedon could have foreseen all the other, related forces then taking shape that would, in little more than a decade, fundamentally alter the role--fashion photographer--that he'd not only mastered but embodied. Excerpted from Focus: The Sexy, Sordid, Secret World of Fashion Photographers by Michael Gross All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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