Lisa Fonssagrives ~ The First Super Model

Lisa Fonssagrives is considered by many to be the world’s first supermodel. Her image appeared on over 200 Vogue covers

Fonssagrives was born in Sweden  and raised in Uddevalla. As a child, she took up painting, sculpting and dancing. She went to Mary Wigman's school in Berlin and studied art and dance. After returning to Sweden, she opened a dance school. She moved from Sweden to Paris to train for ballet and worked as a private dance teacher with Fernand Fonssagrives, which then led to a modeling career, and she would say that modeling was "still dancing". While in Paris in 1936, photographer Willy Maywald discovered her in an elevator and asked her to model hats for him. Fonssagrives' photographs were then sent to Vogue, and Vogue photographer Horst took some test photographs of her. (She was rather short at 5'7" compared to today's super models.)

Before Fonssagrives came to the United States in 1939, she was already a top model. Her image appeared on the cover of many magazines during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including Town & Country, Life, Time, Vogue, and the original Vanity Fair. She was reported as "the highest paid, highest praised, high fashion model in the business".The down to earth Fonssagrives once described herself as a "good clothes hanger".

She worked with fashion photographers including George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia. She married Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in 1935; they divorced and she later married another photographer, Irving Penn, in 1950. She went on to become a sculptor in the 1960s and was represented by the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan.

Fonssagrives died, aged 80, in New York, survived by her second husband, Irving Penn and her two children: her daughter Mia Fonssagrives-Solow, a costume designer, and her son, Tom Penn, a designer.

The Elton John photography collection auction held by Christie's on October 15, 2004 sold a 1950 Irving Penn photograph of his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, for $57,360 [via wiki]

Sand Fence, Lisa Fonssagrives 1930s



Lisa Fonssagrives at Paddington Station, London, 1951



Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn © Irving Penn, 1949

Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, February Vogue © Irving Penn, 1950

 Irving Penn, New York, 1949

 Irving Penn

Irving Penn

“It is
always
the dress,
it is never,
never
the girl.

I’m just a
good
clothes
hanger.” 

Lisa Fonssagrives

By Irving Penn,  Paris, 1950





Horst

Lisa With Harp, 1939 , Irving Penn

This Irving Penn Harlequin Dress print of Lisa sold for $131,450 in 2011
Penn began reprinting in the 1960s a large majority of his work with the platinum palladium process. The registration bar at the top of the photograph as seen in this example, was common for Penn’s work. It allowed multiple negatives, each containing a particular portion of the photographic scale, to be printed on one sheet of paper. The process of multiple exposures created an image that would not be possible with a single exposure.  

Irving Penn: Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in Balenciaga, 1950

Irving Penn

Irving Penn


Horst P. Horst Lisa Fonssagrives' Hands, New York, 1941


Horst P. Horst Lisa Fonssagrives, New York, 1940



Lisa Fonssagrives by Erwin Blumenfeld



Lisa Fonssagrives for Vogue, 1939, by Erwin Blumenfeld

Lisa Fonssagrives  by Lillian Bassman

Lisa Fonssagrives 1947 - photo by John Rawlings. 

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Interview with Master Photographer ~ Horst P. Horst

See Horst's work here

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Photographer Profile ~ Horst

Horst was Born in Weissenfels, Germany, 14 Aug 1906. After briefly studying in Frankfurt, he entered the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg, where from 1926 to 1928 he designed and made furniture. Following this he went to work as an architectural assistant to Le Corbusier in Paris. There he met George Hoyningen-Huene, who worked as a photographer for Vogue , and through him iconic photographer Cecil Beaton. In 1931 he himself began working as a photographer for Vogue.

His photographs soon achieved an individual style  characterized by their striking light effects and sensual use of the models. In 1932 he spent several months working for American Vogue in New York, but his employment was terminated before the end of his six-month contract. He emigrated in 1935 to the USA, again working as a photographer for American Vogue while continuing to contribute to the French edition until the late 1940s. He spent much of his time in New York and Paris, photgraphing celebrities such as Salvador Dali, Marlene Dietrich, Warhol,  and the  designer Coco Chanel.

"The elegance of his photographs took the viewer to another place, very beautifully; his ability to give his models the untouchable quality is really interesting as it gives you something of a distance; it's like seeing somebody from another world and you wonder who that person is and you really want to know that person and really want to fall in love with that person". 
~ Photographer Bruce Weber

 Horst with Writer and poet Gertrude Stein

 Horst with Nikon F2

 Dali

 Coco Chanel

 Coco Chanel

 Coco Chanel

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