Photo of the week

Princess Natasha Paley was a Russian aristocrat who, like Huene, fled her homeland to begin a new life in Paris. She became a well-known socialite and house model for the designer Lucien Lelong, marrying him in 1927. In this image for Vogue, she wears a spectacular feather and paillette cape by Lelong. She posed for Huene’s camera many times and starred with Horst P. Horst in a movie that Huene began shooting in 1932 but never finished.

Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene from 1933.

Photographer George Hoyningen-Huene met Joseph Pilates in New York and became a Pilates enthusiast. Huene took the photographs for the Pilates book 'Return to Life through Contrology', first published in 1945.

Photo: Huene exercising by the Pilates method, part of a series of similar self-portraits. Undated.

Published in Harper’s Bazaar, September 1939

Maggy Rouff (1896–1971), opened her couture house in Paris in 1929, and opened a London outpost in Park Lane in 1937. The New York Times praised the beautiful drapery of her late 1930s ‘romantic Greek evening gowns [which] glorify the very feminine, supple, amphora figure.’ Her many famous clients included Princess Margaret and Grace Kelly. This ivory rayon lamé dress was available to purchase in the US at Bergdorf Goodman.
Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene in 1939

Swipe to see - A version of the dress survives in the collection of the Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, Museum Number: 92.149.2

Serge Lifar and Olga Spessivtzeva as Bacchus and Ariadne

The Paris Opera premiered the ballet Bacchus et Ariadne in May 1931. The ballet was choreographed by Serge Lifar, one of the greatest dancers of the twentieth century. It was performed to a score by Albert Roussel within a set designed by Giorgio de Chirico. Huene photographed Lifar with his partner Olga Spessivtzeva, their angular limbs arranged to form a star-like composition at a moment of high drama.

Tilly Losch, 1933

For this portrait of Austrian-born performer and painter Tilly Losch, Hoyningen-Huene chose to focus attention on her expressive dancer’s hands and beautiful profile. She gazes upwards with wide eyes, her face veiled in black tulle studded with delicate white flowers.

The year 1934 was a turning point in Carole Lombard's career. She starred in several successful movies including the comedy Twentieth Century and Now and Forever with Gary Cooper. In this seductive portrait, she appears to be in character as the fan dancer Alabam Lee, from her film Lady by Choice.

Portrait by George Hoyningen-Huene in 1934.

Happy Birthday George Hoyningen-Huene!

Baron George Hoyningen-Huene (1900-1968) was a pioneering photographer whose elegant and carefully crafted images helped define the aesthetic character of an era. Known simply as Huene, he worked during the golden age of couture fashion and cinema.
Huene was born in St. Petersburg to a wealthy family, but they had to flee their home during the Russian revolution in 1917. Huene spent time in England before moving to Paris where he studied with the Cubist André Lhote. In 1926, Huene was employed to create photographs for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines and rapidly established himself as a visual innovator, fusing elements of neoclassicism and surrealism to create glamorous, arresting images. He befriended the stars of the artistic milieu in The City of Light, including Man Ray and Salvador Dalí, with both of whom he collaborated.
In 1935 Huene joined Harper’s Bazaar magazine, where he remained a contributor until 1946, regularly travelling the world on assignment. His sense of adventure and love of different cultures led to extensive travels through Europe and Africa. In the late 1940s he settled in California and embarked on a second career as a colour coordinator for Hollywood movies. Huene remains an enduring source of inspiration for today’s photographers, artists and filmmakers.

This handsome portrait was made in 1933 by his fellow Vogue photographer and good friend Cecil Beaton. The two spent time together in France, England and Tunisia, and Huene was at the peak of his career when this photograph was taken.

Happy Birthday Horst P. Horst. Born in 1906, this handsome young German arrived in Paris in 1930 and met George Hoyningen-Huene soon afterwards. They quickly became close and Horst posed for some of Huene's most iconic photographs of the early 1930s. Huene taught Horst everything he knew about photography and Horst became one of Vogue's star photographers himself, enjoying a career that spanned six decades.

Summer’s here! For seaside chic, follow the example of Hoyningen-Huene’s model wearing sunglasses rimmed with cornflower-blue petals. She reclines on a canvas sail in a Peter Pan dress of coffee-coloured linen. Her glossy red lips, nails and sandals add a vibrant pop to this Kodachrome shot.

Published in Harper’s Bazaar, 1939

In 1950, George Hoyningen-Huene created a new passport photograph for his friend Greta Garbo (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990). He took the portrait a few months before the Swedish star became a naturalized citizen of the United States. She must have liked the picture as she continued to use it for many years to come, including on a tourist card application for Colombia. Look closely and you will notice that the card gives her date of birth as 1909, four years after the real date!

NOTE: The image of the passport is taken from the Julien’s Auction website. The passport was sold in 2012: www.julienslive.com

Today is the birthday of nightclub sensation Josephine Baker. She became an icon of the roaring twenties thanks to her role in La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in 1925, which made her an overnight star. Baker was asked to join the Folies Bergère, the famous Parisian dance hall known for its burlesques. George Hoyningen-Huene took a series of photographs of the beautiful dancer in the 1920s. This photo was taken in 1929. Source: Condé Nast Archive.

Today we honor and salute Peter Johann "Johnny" Weissmuller, born June 2nd, 1904.

Piscine Molitor: The swimming pool where Tarzan was a lifeguard.

Piscine Molitor, once one of Paris's most fashionable public swimming pools. Just how chic the Piscine Molitor once was can be judged by the fact that the US Olympic gold medallist and future Tarzan actor, Johnny Weissmuller, was a lifeguard.
He'd won three gold medals at the 1924 Paris Olympics and two in Amsterdam in 1928 but spent a season at Molitor giving swimming lessons and rescuing bathers in distress.
Molitor's pool, rowing machines and punchballs, meanwhile, helped him stay in the right shape to land the Tarzan role a couple of years later.
Source AP.

The complex was built in 1929 and inaugurated by Olympic swimmers Aileen Riggin, Matthew Gauntlett and Johnny Weissmuller. The pool is known for its Art Deco designs and the popular introduction of the bikini by Louis Réard on 5 July 1946.
Source Wikipedia

Photo taken by George Hoyningen-Huene in 1930.

”Salvador Dali has been caught in one of his own dreams. Hoyningen-Huene has photographed Monsieur and Madame Dali enmeshed in a new still life called ”L’Instant Sublime”. It represents, says M.Dali, that sublime instant of a suspended time, just before things begin to happen. The light is about to fade, the drop of water is about to fall on the egg, the egg is about to break, the snail is about crawl up on the phone.....”

From Harper’s BAZAAR, April, 1939.

Today is the birthday of Salvador Dali (May 11, 1904 - January 23, 1989).

Today is the birthday of fashion model, photographer and photo journalist Elizabeth ”Lee” Miller (1907-1977) @leemillerarchives .

Lee was one of Hoyningen-Huene’s favorite models and later a distinguished photograper. For an account of her extraordinary life, see the biography by her son Anthony Penrose; The lives of Lee Miller.

Lee Miller, coiffure by Callon. Photograph by George Hoyningen-Huene in 1930.

Today is the birthday of Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977). Charlie Chaplin was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer. This portrait was taken by George Hoyningen-Huene in 1932.