Horst: Photographer of Style (Unabridged‪)‬

Fashion seems to an obsessive interest at the moment, weaving its way ever more into the high arts, a complement to the scholarly study of costume, which is an integral part of art history. The range is vast. Just an example or two: over a decade ago, Whistler, Women, and Fashion was a revelatory exhibition at the Frick, while just last year In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion at the Queen's Gallery, overtly intertwined politics with art. Combined with the ever growing museological and commercial interest in photography in general, with a genre nod to fashion for individual photographers, exhibitions have multiplied exponentially; just a few mentions would include the several Beaton exhibitions in London of the past few years, and at the NPG, Horst himself (2001), not to mention Man Ray, to David Bailey's Stardust. The examination of fashion and photography together is almost irresistible in terms of the combination of social and art historical scholarship that this potent relationship offers. Fashion can be seen as both an art and a compendium of social insights, and so can fashion photography.

The dazzling exhibition of Horst at the Victoria and Albert is particularly apt: classically trained in avant garde design and architecture, Horst was involved as a precociously successful photographer for Condé Nast publications, not only with the leading fashion houses, but the social and artistic élite. And he took sustained inspiration from the isms of art - past and present. In the thirties he photographed costumes by Dali and used props from Giacometti furniture. Dali designed a set for a photograph for Horst to take for American Vogue, with dresses by Hattie Carnegie. In the 1940s, he photographed models in the Dali room of Helena Rubinstein in New York.