Stop 1650

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MALE NARRATOR: Vogue Magazine called Horst P. Horst “photography’s alchemist,” perhaps because he was able to transform light, set, and subject into an image that seemed…magical. His fashion photographs are a precise arrangement of lights, props, and models that create enigmatic atmospheres. This photograph, taken in 1947, is titled Birthday Gloves. David Fahey, owner of Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, donated this print to the Getty Museum:

DAVID FAHEY: Birthday Gloves is a photograph that wasn’t like any other photograph made in the late 40s. It pulls you to the surface and makes you want to go beneath. What is this about? What is it saying? What am I supposed to do when I look at this? Really, what you’re supposed to do in this particular photograph is probably buy those gloves. If you’re a designer and you commission a photographer, you want to hire that photographer that can make an image that stops people, makes them look, makes them look twice, makes them look a third time. The more they look, the more they see, and the more they may be drawn to the image. Birthday Gloves has kind of an unusual quality in that it obscures the beauty of the face. It really focuses on the special object this woman is holding while wearing gloves. This mess of fabric in front of it is just confusing to the eye. You don’t really understand what it's coming from. And out of this fabric comes these elegant hands and this gesture of presenting, giving us something and making an offering to us, the viewer. I think not showing this face, in a stylistic photograph that’s fashion, is pretty revolutionary for the time. That was what Horst was known for: making revolutionary and different photographs, and I think that’s why he stood out so much in his world.

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