Frida with Granizo by Nickolas Muray (1939)

Nickolas Muray Frida with Granizo, 1939 via

Nickolas Muray Frida with Granizo, 1939 via

Marvelous Portraits by Edward Weston

Edward Henry Weston (1886 – 1958) was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called:

“one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…” and “one of the masters of 20th century photography.”

Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a:

“quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography”

because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.

Weston was born in Chicago and moved to California when he was 21. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however, he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images.

In 1947 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and he stopped photographing soon thereafter. He spent the remaining ten years of his life overseeing the printing of more than 1,000 of his most famous images.

Edward Weston, Portrait of Ruth St. Denis, 1916 via

Edward Weston, Unidentified Woman, 1920 via

Tina Modotti, Glendale. Photograph by Edward Weston, 1921 via

Edward Weston. Frida Kahlo, 1930 via

Xenia Kashevaroff photographed by Edward Weston in 1931. This portrait is now in the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art via

Edward Weston, Charis Wilson, 1941 The Lane Collection
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston via

Amazing Portraits of Writers and Artists by Gisèle Freund

Gisèle Freund (1908  – 2000) was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book is Photographie et société (1974) about the uses and abuses of the photographic medium in the age of technological reproduction. In 1977, she became President of the French Association of Photographers, and in 1981, she took the official portrait of French President François Mitterrand.

She was made Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1982 and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, the highest decoration in France, in 1983. In 1991, she became the first photographer to be honored with a retrospective at the Musée National d’art Moderne in Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou).

Freund’s major contributions to photography include using the Leica (with its 36 frames) for documentary reportage and her early experimentation with Kodachrome and 35 mm Agfacolor, which allowed her to develop a “uniquely candid portraiture style” that distinguishes her in 20th century photography.

She is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, France near her home and studio at 12 rue Lalande.

Anouk Aimée by Gisèle Freund, 1962 via

Colette by Gisèle Freund, 1954 via

Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund via

Simone de Beauvoir by Gisèle Freund (The day of the Prix Goncourt, next to a window writing), Paris, 1954 via

Zsa Zsa Gabor, 1953 via

Evita Perón, doing her hair (Reportage for Life magazine, 1950) © Gisèle Freund via

Gisèle Freund, Self-Portrait via

Frida Kahlo and Emmy Lou Packard

Emmy Lou Packard was a Californian post-war artist known for painting, printmaking and murals. She had a passion for the cause of social justice and peace. She was born on April 15, 1914 near El Centro, California, to parents Emma and Walter Packard. Her father founded an agricultural cooperative community in the Imperial Valley and was an internationally known agronomist.

In 1927, the Packard family traveled to Mexico for Walter’s consulting job with the Mexican government working on agrarian and land settlement reform issues. Emmy was 13 years old during this trip and a very active artist; her mother introduced her to artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and this was the beginning of a long friendship and mentorship.

Frida Kahlo by Emmy Lou Packard, Mexico, 1941 via

Frida Kahlo and Emmy Lou Packard via

 

Frida Kahlo and Emy Lou Packard by Diego Rivera via

Female Portrait Photographs by Carl Van Vechten

Carl Van Vechten (1880 – 1964) was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.

In the 1930s, Van Vechten began taking portrait photographs.

Among the many individuals he photographed were Josephine Baker, Tallulah Bankhead, Theda Bara, Harry Belafonte, Leonard Bernstein,  Karen Blixen, Jane Bowles, Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Ella Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Martha Graham, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Horst P. Horst, Mahalia Jackson, Frida Kahlo, Eartha Kitt, Henri Matisse, W. Somerset Maugham, Elsa Maxwell, Henry Miller, Joan Miró, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Diego Rivera, Gertrude Stein, James Stewart, Alfred Stieglitz, Gloria Vanderbilt, Gore Vidal, Evelyn Waugh, Orson Welles and Anna May Wong.

 

Frida wearing a Tchuantepee gourd by Carl Van Vechten, 1932 via

Tallulah Bankhead by Carl Van Vechten, 1934 via

 Anna May Wong by Carl Van Vechten, 1935 via

Josephine Baker by Carl Van Vechten via

Gertrude Stein by Carl Van Vechten, 1935 via

Lillian Gish by Carl Van Vechten, 1937 via

Theda Bara by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 via

Karen Blixen by Carl Van Vechten, 1959 via

Frida Kahlo Photographed by Toni Frissell (1937)

Toni Frissell (1907 – 1988) was an American photographer, known for her fashion photography, World War II photographs, and portraits of famous Americans and Europeans, children, and women from all walks of life.

Her initial job, as a fashion photographer for Vogue in 1931, was due to Condé Montrose Nast personally. She later took photographs for Harper’s Bazaar. Her fashion photos, even of evening gowns and such, were often notable for their outdoor settings, emphasizing active women.

In the 1950s, she took informal portraits of the famous and powerful in the United States and Europe.

In later work she concentrated on photographing women from all walks of life, often as a commentary on the human condition.

The pictures of Frida Kahlo where taken during a Vogue Magazine photo shoot in 1937 entitled “Señoras of Mexico”, while Frissell was a staff photographer.

Frida Kahlo seated next to an agave plant in 1937. For Vogue by Toni Frissell via

Frida Kahlo standing next to an agave plant in 1937. For Vogue by Toni Frissell via

A Collection of Photos Feat. Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund (1950s)

Gisèle Freund (1908 –  2000) was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists.

In 1950 Freund´s photocoverage of a bejewelled Eva Peron for Life Magazine caused a diplomatic stir between the United States and Argentina —  the ostentatious photographs went against the official party line of austerity. Life Magazine was blacklisted in Argentina and Freund had to escape the country.

Freund embarked on a two-week trip to Mexico, but she wouldn’t leave until two years later. There she met the legendary couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Welcomed into their home, she immersed herself in their private lives and the cultural and artistic diversity of the country, taking hundreds of photographs (source).

Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund, 1950 / 1952 via

Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund, 1950 / 1952 via

Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund, 1950 / 1952 via

Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund, 1950 / 1952 via

Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund, 1950 / 1952 via

Frida Kahlo by Gisèle Freund, 1950 / 1952 via

Vintage Photos Feat. Surrealist Artist Jacqueline Lamba

Jacqueline Lamba (1910 – 1993) was a French painter who participated in the Surrealist Movement between 1934-1947. Very few of Jacqueline Lamba’s surrealist works have survived to this day. They are mainly objects, collage and collective drawings, in which appears the abstract tendency of all her later work.

After studying art during the 1920s Lamba, lost her mother to TB. She then decides to earn her own living. She becomes a French teacher in Cardiff, in Greece, works as a interior decorator in the Trois Quartiers Parisian store, and at night she is a water-dancer at the Coliseum, a cabaret in Pigalle.

On August 14th 1934 she married André Breton, after having met each other the same year. Alberto Giacometti is the bride’s witness, Paul Eluard the poet’s, and Man Ray is the photographer. Jacqueline, who had already published experimental photographs in the ‘Du Cinéma’ review, takes part in the meetings and exhibitions of the surrealist group, with small works, transfers, watercolours, surrealist objects and collective works.

With Breton she had a daughter, Aube Elléouët Breton. She and Breton separated in 1943 and Lamba marries David Hare, an American sculptor. In April 1944 her first personal exhibition is organised.

After her son Merlin is born in New York 1958, her work changes: she breaks away from surrealism and even destroys some of her paintings. In 1955 she brakes up with David, and goes back to settle in Paris with her son in the Latin quarter.  It is a time of liberation and pictorial expression. She goes to the art classes of the Grande Chaumière, paints from still lives and models. She also takes part in a great number of collective exhibitions.

Jacqueline Lamba dies on July 20th 1993. On her tomb, in Saché (Indre-et-Loire), are engraved the following words: Jacqueline Lamba 1910-1993 the night of the sunflower.

Jacqueline Lamba by Man Ray, 1930 via

 

In 1938 Jacqueline goes to Mexico with Breton for a series of conferences; there she meets Diego Rivera, Trotsky, and becomes friends with Frida Kahlo via

Lamba and Kahlo via

Lamba by Man Ray, 1930s via

Jacqueline Lamba by Rogi André via

Jacqueline Lamba via