Horst P. Horst

Horst P. Horst (born August 14, 1906 in Weißenfels as Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann ; † November 19, 1999 in Palm Beach Gardens , Florida , USA ) was an American photographer of German origin. He became known for his photos for the fashion magazine Vogue and for his portraits of famous contemporaries. He is counted among the most important fashion photographers of the 20th century .

life and work

Horst was born as Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann, the second son of the wealthy businessman Max Bohrmann and his wife Klara (née Schönbrodt). Because of mild tuberculosis , he spent a year in a Swiss sanatorium in the early 1920s. After abandoning his studies in Sinology in Frankfurt am Main , he worked as an employee in an import / export company. At the end of the 1920s, he studied architecture at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts .

In 1930 he continued his studies in Paris with the architect Le Corbusier . He met the chief photographer of French Vogue George Hoyningen-Huene (1900–1968), whose lover and frequent model he became for a few years and through whom he came to photography. In the same year, 1931, a full-page advertisement appeared in French Vogue, for which he photographed a model in black velvet. While visiting London with Hoyningen-Huene, he met the photographer Cecil Beaton , who asked him to work for the British edition of Vogue. His breakthrough as a photographer came with the appearance of the first British edition of Vogue on March 30, 1932, for which he photographed a full-page portrait of the daughter of James Hamet Dunn , an art patron and supporter of surrealism . In the following years he worked for this fashion magazine in the most important fashion centers of the time (Paris, London, New York).

In 1935 he moved to the United States at the same time as Hoyningen-Huene, served as a sergeant in the US Army from 1942 to 1945 during World War II, and acquired American citizenship. At the same time he took the name Horst P. Horst. In 1947 Horst moved into his house in Oyster Bay on Long Island . In 1938 he met the British diplomat Valentine Lawford (1911-1991), with whom he lived until the end of his life and who became his biographer. The couple adopted a son, Richard J. Horst. In 1977 he was involved in documenta 6 in Kassel , organized by Manfred Schneckenburger . He directed and photographed many celebrities such as Marlene Dietrich , Yves Saint Laurent , Gloria Vanderbilt and the Duke of Windsor. His nude photographs are less well known.

literature

• Thomas Osterkorn. Andreas Petzold: (Ed.) Horst P. Horst , Stern Spezial Fotografie, Volume 24, 2001 ISBN 978-3-5701-9295-5 .
• Martin Kazmaier (Ed.): Horst P. Horst. Photographs from six decades , Schirmer / Mosel, 1995 ISBN 978-3-8881-4748-7 .
• Reinhold Misselbeck (ed.) U. a .: Horst P. Horst , Art Forum & Horst Studio, New York, 1992 ISBN 3-9803109-0-6 .
• Valentine Lawford: Horst . Exhibition catalog for the exhibition about the photographer Horst P. Horst, Idea Books Edizioni, 1987 ISBN 978-8-8701-7046-7 .
• Valentine Lawford: Horst: His Work and His World , Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1983, ISBN 978-0-3945-2171-8 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Horst P. Horst in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official website
• Cathy Horyn: Horst P. Horst, Photographer Of Fashionable, Dies at 93 , obituary in the New York Times November 19, 1999
• Veronika Bock and Ulrich Biermann: November 18, 1999 - Anniversary of the death of the photographer Horst P. Horst WDR ZeitZeichen on November 18, 2014 (podcast)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Caryn E. Neumann: Horst P. Horst , at glbtc archive
2. ↑ Horst P. Horst titelerg = Marlene Dietrich (1942). Retrieved December 3, 2017 . 
3. ↑ The Best of the Best Part 2 ( Memento from July 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
4. ^ Photographer Horst P. Horst at Bernheimer: Mode and other nudes. Accessed April 30, 2020 .