Photo: Isri Halpern. Design: Menusi-Benoish. Styling: Nurit Bat-Yaar

Photo: Isri Halpern. Design: Menusi-Benoish. Styling: Nurit Bat-Yaar
All Photos & contents in this blog are protected by copyrights.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

"Glimpses of Glamour - Fashion Photography in a Mirror of a Century

Hi, before writing the album-book "Israel Fashion Art 1948-2008" (Resling), while I was still working at "Yedioth Ahronoth" as its fashion editor - I was invited by Arie Sagi, Manager and chief curator of the Israeli Photography Museum of Tel-Hai's industrial park to be the curator of an international exhibit about fashion photography during the 20th century.
Since the exhibit's cataloge is still available at the Museum shop - Jochai Rosen's Viewfinder  website  has decided to publish a post about this unique exhibition and catalog.
Hebrew readers are invited to view it via the link: http://www.viewfinder.co.il/?p=1787 which includes 5 unique rare photos featured both in the exhibit and in the catalog.

For my dear English readers I'm enclosing the following post which is a shortened version of the Hebrew one:
 "GLIMPSES OF GLAMOUR -FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY IN A MIRROR OF A CENTURY"
In 1999 I was invited by Arie Sagi head of Israel Museum of Photography at Tel-Hai to curate an international exhibition of fashion photography in the twentieth century which will reflect both overseas and local fashion photography. The exhibit which opened Dec. 25, 1999 celebrated the new millennium in the museum built by visionary industrialist Stef Wertheimer as part of an Industrial Park integrating industry and art.

Fashion Photography as a Mirror of an Era, Social Transformation and Defying Conventions
The exhibition as well as its catalog took the viewer on a journey in the time tunnel, a journey in a world of fantasy and glamour full of color, flair, aesthetics, images, artistic compositions and adventure. The exhibition showed the varied exciting ways fashion had been documented in the twentieth century….But the myriad ways in which fashion had been captured reflects more than the aesthetic aspects or smart designs. Underneath the veil of glamour the picture that surfaces reflects social, economical and political transformations. It reveals the development of the woman from a fragile, delicate figure reminiscent of the protagonist in the legend The Princess and the Lentil whose sleep was disturbed by a lentil placed under the ten mattresses on which she lay – to the omnipotent millennium woman.

The exhibit featured hundreds of visuals by leading world photographers such as
Richard Avedon, Patrick Demarchelier, , Helmut Newton, Norman Parkinson, Irving Pen, Herb Ritts, Ellen Von Unwerth, Bruce Weber, and many others. Leading Israeli fashion photographers included Gerard Alon, Sami Ben-Gad, Gadi Dagon, Mula Eshet, Daniel Hakim, Peter Herzog, Isri Halpern, Ron Kedmi, Ben Lam, Anni Landes, Menahem Oz, Yaki Halperin, to name a few.

The exhibit's catalogue is bi-lingual with texts in both English and Hebrew.
Designers represented in it include Christobal Balenciaga, Victor Balaish for Roberto Cavalli, Balmain, Pier Cardin, Alber Elbaz for Guy Laroche, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Kenzo, Calvin Klein, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Versace, as well as many leading Israeli ones such as Gottex, Gideon Oberson, Fini Leitersdorf for Maskit etc.

In the catalog one can meet Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Kim Basinger, Twiggy, Veruschka, Naomi Campbell, Brook Shields, Michaela Bercu, Tami Ben-Ami, Maayan Keret, Shiraz Tal, Galit Gutman, Galia Albin, and many other international and Israeli beauties.

On the catalog cover is an Irving Pen for Versace image modeled by super-model Christy Turlington.

The catalogue can be purchased via the Tel-Hai Open Museum of Photography's shop. sarath@omuseums.org.i
http://www.iparks.co.il/Museum/sitePage.aspx?pageID=801&Place=2
Photos rights of the exhibit and catalog belong to their owners and any commercial or other use of them is strictly forbidden without a written permission given by their owners.

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