From high style to the street: Norton exhibit showcases 90 years of fashion photography

I met the famous photographer Richard Avedon in 1961, when I was 5, and he was shooting Clairol’s groundbreaking “Does she or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure” advertising campaign. He needed a child with natural blond hair to pose with a Clairol-blond model.

The model and I posed in a haystack. The image never appeared in an ad, and I grew up.

Twenty years later, Avedon walked into The Denver Post, where I worked, and I stopped him and told him he had once photographed me.

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He looked at my face and scrutinized my features.

“Ahhh, yes!” he said after a few moments staring at the 25-year-old me. “I photographed you in a haystack.”

How did he recognize me? He possessed a photographer’s greatest skills: the ability to pay attention, and the artistry to compose and capture decisive moments.

Norton Museum's new exhibit

These skills are on spectacular display in the most notable collection of fashion photographs ever exhibited together in the United States, “A Personal View on High Fashion & Street Style: Photographs from the Nicola Erni Collection, 1930s to Now,” which opens Saturday at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach.

The images by nearly 100 photographers tell the story of how fashion photography evolved, from the earliest Vogue photo covers of the 1930s, to the Twiggy years of the 1960s, to the supermodel era of the 1980s and the street fashion snaps taken by roving reporters such as Bill Cunningham, Vivian Maier and Amy Arbus.

Some of the images are among the most famous fashion photographs of all time, such as Horst P. Horst’s “Mainbocher Corset,” showing a starkly lit model from the back, the ribbons of her corset dripping from her body. The German-born Horst, who died in Palm Beach Gardens in 1999 at age 93, made this photograph on his last day in Paris in 1939. He left his studio and all his possessions to escape the war hours later. Horst’s image inspired Madonna, who used the same pose in her 1990 music video, “Vogue.”

Amy Arbus snapped an unknown Madonna — in ratty hair and stained overcoat — on a New York City street in 1983, and that photo is featured in the exhibit, too. That full-circle moment is why fashion photography matters: In the several rooms exhibiting Erni’s collection, grouped in themes, such as “Sex & Provocation,” “Revolution!” and “Unfiltered,” the photographs show how women’s roles have evolved, from props in a still life to creators of their own destinies.

Two sets of Helmut Newton’s large-scale prints from 1981 prove this dichotomy best. The first set shows four women dressed in their shoulder pads and power suits. The second shows them standing in the same positions but stark naked.

Nicola Erni Collection

Erni’s fascination with fashion photography began when she was a teen and she’d rifle through racks of prints of models and celebrities. When she started collecting in the late 1990s, fashion photographs were affordable. Today, vintage prints by photographers such as Avedon are as pricey as oil masterpieces. In 2010, a huge print of “Dovima With Elephants” — the photograph Avedon took of the model in a Dior evening dress at a Paris circus in 1955 — sold for nearly $1.15 million. On display at the Norton is a wall-sized gelatin silver print of this work, printed in 1979.

That photo is stunning — but the true marvels of this exhibit are the photos showing the work behind the work, the moments before the magic, such as the art director’s proof of a Harper’s Bazaar cover of model Jean Shrimpton. Notes attached to the image are scribbled with instructions on what color to make the magazine logo and type.

Keep in mind that this image was taken by Avedon in 1965 — way before digital technology.

These “backstage” pieces are gems of Erni’s collection, which is making its debut appearance at the Norton in large part because of the 30-year friendship between Ghislain d’Humières, the Norton’s Kenneth C. Griffin director and CEO, and Stefan Puttaert, CEO of the Nicola Erni Collection, which is based in Switzerland.

Erni, whose husband is a billionaire investor, is one of ARTnews’ Top 200 collectors for 2022. She has a private museum in Zurich and is building an additional space, but she wasn’t sure about an exhibit at a public institution until “about 600 emails later, our ‘what-ifs’ turned to ‘why-not,’” said d’Humières. Next year, the show heads to the Netherlands.

“It gives me great joy to mix fashion and street-style photography in order to visualize their differences and similarities,” Erni writes in the exhibit’s catalog. “I am truly honored to show this exhibition to a broader audience.”

Erni’s eye for charm elevates the experience. One of my favorite works is a collage of 17 prints of Diana Vreeland, showing the “Old Empress D.V.,” as photographer Deborah Turbeville calls her, in various poses of gesticulating, speaking and smoking. Turbeville scattered the images of the legendary fashion editor on homemade paper for an urgent and raw feeling. It’s in shades of black, white and gray — but I could hear Vreeland shrieking “think pink!”

Another cool magazine cover mock-up is Erwin Blumenfeld’s 1950 Vogue cover of Jean Patchett’s left eye, arched eyebrow and red lips — with crop marks and the handwritten note: “Photo is retouchable with ease.”

That same cover is featured in a wall-size collage of magazine covers in the final room of the exhibit — set apart on the second floor of the Norton — celebrating the models and the designers featured in the images.

These photographs are the bridge — the connectors between fantasy and reality — and an emotional finale to a wonder-filled exhibit.

By showing the creators who bring fashion to life, the exhibit exhales with an inspiration to all of us: it’s time to throw away those old pandemic sweatpants and dress up again. 

“A Personal View on High Fashion & Street Style” runs from Saturday to Feb. 12 at the Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S. Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach. The museum’s shop features photography books and merchandise specifically chosen to complement this exhibit, including collections by Richard Avedon, Horst P. Horst and Bill Cunningham. Palm Beach County’s public school children will be part of the “street fashion” action in a competition and exhibition featuring their own fashion photography. The students’ exhibit, “Dress Codes: Photographing Cultures and Identities Through Fashion,” runs from Dec. 16 to May 7. 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Norton Museum of Art exhibit showcases  90 years of fashion photography