Frank Horvat’s photo, Paris for STERN Shoes and Eiffel Tower, 1974
© FrankHorvat
Frank Horvat was among the world’s greatest fashion professional photographers. He helped raise the medium into high art, and with his thoughtful pictures, altered how we look at fashion completely.
Now, his latest masterpieces are on view in a solo exhibition at the Leica Galerie Wetzlar, opening on February 3, and running up until April 30 in Wetzlar, Germany. The exhibit is called Please Don’t Smile, something he would inform his subjects prior to snapping their pictures.
The exhibit highlights the fashion photography from the photographer who had a 70 year profession. He showed the world how style photography was more than simply a way to offer purses, keeping in mind that: “Without stories to inform, fashion would never have actually interested me,” he notoriously said throughout an interview.
Horvat is understood for his fashion photos, which were published in Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Fair. Based in Paris, he caught the city in all its romantic glory, from foggy night scenes to non-traditional shots of the Eiffel Tower.
And yes, he did own a Leica cam, and was introduced to the brand by his good friend and fellow professional photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (who now has his own name museum in Paris).
Horvat was born in Croatia, lived in Italy, and relocated to Paris in 1955. He began working as a style professional photographer in 1957, doing picture strives style publications in Paris, London and New York City, up until 1962. He operated in black-and-white film, and some of his best photos were recorded throughout this time, like his shots of Coco Chanel, Jean Cocteau and Yves Saint Laurent.
After working as a business photographer, he then began working on image books, like New York Up And Down, a homage to the city’s street life, and Please Don’t Smile, which was released in 2015.
He not just told models to refrain from smiling, but likewise told them to be themselves. “Later on, when there was this natural type, the lady next door, I didn’t like it any longer, since it had likewise become a stereotype,” he stated in an interview in 2015. “I have a good time showing something that only I see. Showing something that the model wishes to reveal does not intrigue me.”
Italian-born photographer Frank Horvat postures throughout the opening of his exhibition “A Trip Through A … [+]
AFP through Getty Images