Not a Book Review

I had to roll the dice on this month’s blog, the original idea was music-related, but I procrastinated too long to get the images ready in time. The second idea (this one) is somewhat fashion photography related, and what do I know about fashion photography you may ask?…. Jack……Shit!

I purchased the eBook version of “Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, Micheal Gross” about a year ago, I have within the past month finished it.

I always enjoyed documentaries, behind the scenes type books, and movies, this particular book was right up my alley. It was like a road map of the who’s who in the modeling industry from the 1920s to early 2000s. I have to admit, some of my favorite parts were about some of the iconic photographers, such as Avedon threatening to quit on 2 separate occasions and editors caving in to his demands, or Peter Lindbergh suggesting to Linda Evangelista cut her hair in a boyish way, and her career took off. Then there is Steven Meisel, I got to know his work when he shot the images for Madonna’s book Sex, which I own. Bought it back in 1992, One of the passages I truly enjoyed in Michael Gross book however was how Meisel got his start as a fashion photographer, below is an excerpt from the book:

“Meisel had never worked in a studio, he was really insecure. He had good reason. An assistant-who was promised tons of work by Kezia Keeble to show Steven (Meisel) how to do it would set the lights and the camera says someone that watched them work. ““Kezia didn’t know the front of the camera from the back. She wanted a photographer she could mold. He was her boy. He would tape Avedon spreads to the floor of the of the studio and say “Light it this way” and “pose that way” all he would do was push the button. Christopher Baker,, another assistant, says that all Meisel owned was one Nikon and one 105 mm lens” “He didn’t care. it was weird”, Baker said “He was like chosen”.

-Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, Micheal Gross”

Which led me to another discovery, This one on eBay. While searching for all things Avedon, I came across a listing for some medium format negatives by fashion photographer Ray Solowinski, the listing read that Mr. Solowinski was an associate/assistant to Richard Avedon, Wow! this was quite a find; at least to me. The negatives and Mr. Solowinski seem to line up with much of the publications Avedon would shoot for, such as Life, Vogue, Photoplay, and Seventeen magazines around the 1950s and 1960s. Other tidbits I uncovered was he was married to Ford model Brynne Shaw (1923-2017), she modeled for Ford 15 years and later retired to take care of her family.

I received approximately 60 medium format negatives, with 2 letters of transfer of ownership and copyright, what was interesting was every thing I researched on him he would be using a Rolleiflex camera, half of what I received supports this, the other negatives were shot with a Hasselblad camera; Hasselblad’s “V”system leaves a distinctive “V”notch on the left side of every image shot with their cameras. I’ll scan some of the images for a later blog.