Louise Dahl-Wolfe
| Louise Dahl-Wolfe | ||
| Background information | ||
| Birthdate: | Nov 19, 1895 | |
| Alma Mater: | California School of Fine Arts | |
| Occupation: | Fashion photographer | |
| Spouse(s): | Meyer Wolfe (1928 - 1985) d | |
| Nationality: | American | |
Louise Emma Augusta Dahl-Wolfe (November 19, 1895 – December 11, 1989) was an American photographer. She is known primarily for her work for Harper's Bazaar, in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland. At Harper's Bazaar she pioneered a new standard in color photography.
Background
Louise Emma Augusta Dahl was born on November 19, 1895, in San Francisco, California, to Norwegian immigrant parents; she was the youngest of three daughters. In 1914, she began her studies at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Institute of Art), where she studied design and color with Rudolph Schaeffer and painting with Frank Van Sloan. Over the next six years, she took courses in life drawing, anatomy, figure composition, and other subjects. After graduating, Dahl worked in designing electric signs and interiors. "That's when I became interested in photography," she said, "because I was so bored." In 1921, Dahl met photographer Anne Brigman, who inspired her to take up photography. Her first dark-room enlarger was a makeshift one she built herself, using a tin can, an apple crate, and part of a Ghirardelli chocolate box for a reflector. In 1923, she studied design, decoration, and architecture at Columbia University in New York. Following the death of her mother in a car accident in 1926, Dahl traveled in Europe and North Africa with photographer Consuelo Kanaga from 1927 to 1928, who furthered her interest in photography. While on her travels, she met American sculptor Meyer Wolfe. They married in 1928, and he constructed the backgrounds for many of her photos. Dahl-Wolfe shared her husband's interest in sculptural form, and from the 1920s onward, her photographs demonstrate a concern with architecture, antiquity, and negative space. Her first published photograph, known as Tennessee Mountain Woman, was published in November 1933 under the title The Smoky Mountaineer in Vanity Fair (U.S. magazine 1913–36).
Career
In the early 1930s, Dahl-Wolfe and Wolfe briefly relocated to Tennessee, where she refined her photographic skills on local subjects, including the Tennessee neighbor featured in "Tennessee Mountain Woman." After several months in East Tennessee in the Smoky Mountains, the couple relocated to New York in 1933. From 1933 to 1960, Dahl-Wolfe operated a New York City photographic studio on the corner of 6th Avenue and 57th. From there, she undertook freelance advertising and fashion work for stores such as Bonwit Teller and Saks Fifth Avenue. From 1936 to 1958, she was a staff fashion photographer at Harper's Bazaar, producing portrait and fashion photographs that totaled 86 covers, 600 color pages, and countless black-and-white shots.
She favored portraiture over fashion photography. Notable portraits include Mae West, Vivien Leigh, Cecil Beaton, Eudora Welty, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Carson McCullers, Edward Hopper, Colette, and Josephine Baker. She is known for her role in discovering a teenage Lauren Bacall, whom she photographed for the March 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar. One of her favorite subjects was model Mary Jane Russell, who is estimated to have appeared in about thirty percent of Dahl-Wolfe's photographs. She greatly influenced photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. One of her assistants was fashion and celebrity photographer Milton H. Greene.
In 1950, she was selected for "America's Outstanding Woman Photographers" in the September issue of Foto. From 1958 until her retirement in 1960, Dahl-Wolfe worked as a freelance photographer for Vogue, Sports Illustrated, and other periodicals.
Dahl-Wolfe spent many of her later years in Nashville, Tennessee. She died in New Jersey of pneumonia in 1989. The full archive of Dahl-Wolfe's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which also manages the copyright of her work.
In 1999, her work was the subject of a documentary film entitled Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Painting with Light. The film featured the only surviving modern footage of Dahl-Wolfe, including extensive interviews. It was written and directed by Tom Neff, edited by Barry Rubinow, and produced by Neff and Madeline Bell.
Style
Among the celebrated fashion photographers of the 20th century, Louise Dahl-Wolfe was an innovator and influencer who significantly contributed to the fashion world. She was most widely known for her work with Harper's Bazaar. Dahl-Wolfe was considered a pioneer of the 'female gaze' in the fashion industry and was credited with creating a new image of strong, independent American women during World War II.
From 1943, Dahl-Wolfe introduced the "New American Look" to fashion photography, which Vicki Goldberg describes as "all clean hair, glowing skin and a figure both lithe and strong." Dahl-Wolfe was known for taking photographs outdoors, utilizing natural light in distant locations from South America to Africa, in what became known as "environmental" fashion photography. The outdoor settings helped evoke "a mood of freedom and optimism" associated with women's liberation. Her photographs brought a new naturalism to fashion photography, which had previously been dominated by a stiff and haughty "European" or "Germanic" studio style. Dahl-Wolfe described it as "that heavy, heavy look, with everybody looking very clumsy." Her methodology of using natural sunlight and shooting outdoors became the industry standard even today.
Her models appear to pose candidly, almost as if Dahl-Wolfe had just walked in on them. In fact, the poses are highly constructed with an "almost abstract formal perfection," which she credited partly to the influence of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Dahl-Wolfe innovatively used color in photography and was mainly concerned with the qualities of natural lighting, composition, and balance. Compared to other photographers at the time who were using red undertones, Dahl-Wolfe opted for cooler hues and also corrected her own proofs, as exemplified by her repeatedly pulling proofs to change a sofa's color from green to a dark magenta.
World War II
When the Nazi occupation of Paris began on June 14, 1940, the Fashion Group in New York City promoted and protected the fashion business by calling a meeting to discuss the impact it would have on American commerce. Having just recovered from the economic devastation of the Great Depression, fashion manufacturers found themselves cut off from French designs. Some were hesitant to continue without the guidance of Europe, but many were determined to survive through the war by promoting a unique “American Look.” Louise Dahl-Wolfe was characterized by the "American Look," which set a beauty standard and trend in fashion.
“She is the most important woman, fashion photographer of the first half of the 20th century,” according to photographic expert Terrence Pepper, and for Valerie Steele, the vitality and dynamism in Dahl-Wolfe's work “were a big part of the rise of the American look."
In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the entire month of March as “Red Cross Month,” and the campaign raised $125 million for the war fund. This campaign demanded the largest amount of money in American history. Alongside the tough circumstances, contemporary American women and professionals in the fashion industry joined together to form a new style.
- Louise Dahl-Wolfe gallery
External links
- Museum of Contemporary Photography Collection
- Louise Dahl-Wolfe Profile at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
- Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Painting with Light at the DOC: The Documentary Channel
- Louise Dahl-Wolfe FindingAid at the Center for Creative Photography
- Louise Dahl-Wolfe Images Online Center for Creative Photography (CCP) CCP at the University of Arizona has released a digital catalog of all Dahl-Wolfe's images.
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Louise_Dahl-Wolfe ]
Chat rooms • What links here • Copyright info • Contact information • Category:Root