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Showing posts with label Harper's Bazaar September 1955. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harper's Bazaar September 1955. Show all posts
"In the beginning, according to Hindu mythology, the god Shiva danced the world into being. It is a charming story of creation, and it gives dancing a significance unknown in the Western world."
"The Indian dancer is more than an entertainer; she discovers in the rhythm of the dance the oneness of all things mind and matter, spirit and flesh, that is at the core of Hindu religious thought. She communes - and communicates - in a language older than the spoken word: The language of gesture. This ancient vocabulary, incredibly varied and complex, is capable of expressing the most subtle and abstract ideas. A wave of the hand may symbolize a bird on the wing or, in another context, one of the intangible qualities of a god."
"The great Indian dancer, Shanta Rao, has at her command no less than three hundred such gestures - seven for the eyelids alone. With these she encompasses her story, endlessly improvising on the classic Hindu myths, within the rules of a syntax laid down centuries ago. Here, wearing the gaudy, elaborate plumage of her calling, she is photographed in some of the gestures of the dance. With her hands she conveys the action - the actual happenings of the story. Her feet, jingling with bells, set the rhythm. And ... with the glance of her eyes, she establishes the mood: happy or raging or, as often happens, pure coquette." The Language of Gesture Harper's Bazaar September 1955 Photography: Richard Avedon
"Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England 19 1904. Blessed with a cleft chin and an urbane voice, he has been everything from a Coney Island stilt-walker to a cardboard lover in Operetta. He has aslo, for two decades in films, been an impressive box-office lure. His current come-on: To Catch a Thief."
"Fred Astaire. one of Hollywood's most enduring charmers was born Fred Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, fifty-six years ago. because of his perfect taste, precision and elegance, he has danced on the crest of the wave since 1025 when his talents (and his sister Adele's) first became apparent in Lady Be Good."
"Henry Fonda, another Nebraskan, vintage 1905, is a smooth effortless actor. His experience as an apprentice seaman. upped to Lt., j.g. in World wAR II, was the ideal training for his role of Lt. Roberts, member of Cargo Ship A.K. 601 which he played for 1.157b performances on Broadway, continues to play ad infinitum on film."
"James Cagney was fifty-one years old this year. His early days in vaudeville as a comedian and hoofer culminated in his appearance a quarter of a century ago in Public Enemy which very nearly typecast him permanently as a roughneck - a role which is the antithesis of the soft-spoken offstage Cagney."
The Quinquagenerarians Harper's Bazaar September 1955 Photography: Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon’s collaboration with Dovima on the pages of the foremost fashion magazines of the time created a union that provided some of the most spectacular and iconic fashion photographs in history. His photograph “Dovima with Elephants,” featured the first evening dress designed by Yves Saint Laurent, then a young assistant to Christian Dior. It remains one of the most anthologized of fashion photographs.
Avedon took the photograph at the Cirque d’Hiver, Paris in August 1955 and the image was first published, along with a second, similar image, in the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
The grace of the slight and elegant figure of Dovima juxtaposed with the commanding power of the elephants was a daringly unique backdrop for the smooth and sophisticated lines of the designs being showcased. The second, less referenced image of Dovima in white with the elephants astride her, was only printed once, in the September issue. The negative no longer exists. Avedon has said of the original negative, “it disappeared mysteriously.”
He also spoke of the more heralded photograph as being less than perfect. “The sash isn’t right,” he said years later. “It should have echoed the outside leg of the elephant to Dovima’s right.”
Throughout the decades of fashion photographs created after this seminal work, there is probably no fashion photographer of note that has not been influenced by the freedom afforded him or her to explore any incongruous setting after having absorbed this photograph.
DOVIMA
The Big Beautiful Hats of Paris
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
The Hats of Paris by Day
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Paris by Night
Desses
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Paris by Night
Patou
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Givenchy's Swansdown Greatcoat
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Dior's Polo-Coat for Evening
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Paris: Evening Ivory
Lanvin-Castillo
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
London: Chalky Lace
Cavanaugh
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Gres' Close-Molded Crepe
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Griffe's Spiraled Chiffon
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Dior's Back-Buttoned Coolie Jacket
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Dior's Back-Trailing Hemline
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Paris: The Red and the Black
Balmain
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Paris by Night
Balenciaga
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Balenciaga
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Givenchy
RICHARD AVEDON
DOVIMA
Lanvin-Castillo
RICHARD AVEDON
Born Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba in Jackson Heights, Queens, Dovima was one of the fashion world’s original supermodels. She used the name Dovima, constructed from the first two letters of her three given names and originally created for an imaginary companion dreamed up as a child when bedridden with rheumatic fever.
While Dovima found great success as a model, her love life was less so. Her second husband, Alan Murray, with whom she had a daughter Alison, often beat her so severely that she could not show up for bookings. The model Carmen Dell’Orefice confirmed that “Sadly she could only be with men who beat her. I’d find her on my doorstep black and blue and I’d take her in to live with me.” Escaping Murray for Los Angeles in pursuit of an acting career, Dovima ultimately divorced him but lost custody of her daughter.
Dovima appeared on screen as the quirky fashion model, Marion in 1957’s ‘Funny Face’ starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Astaire plays the fashion photographer ‘Dick Avery’ loosely based on photographer Richard Avedon who was hired as special visual consultant for the movie and supplied the fashion photography used in the film.
Richard Avedon-Fred Astaire
on the set of Funny Face
David Seymour
Harper's Bazaar August 1956
Explaining their magic together as photographer and muse, Dovima said “we became like mental Siamese twins, with me knowing what he wanted before he explained it.”
DOVIMA
EMBA MINK
DOVIMA
Jo Copeland of Pattullo
SAKOWITZ
DOVIMA
Hockanum Woolens
DOVIMA
Dynel - Fiber of Your Future
DOVIMA
Larry Aldrich
As one of the most important mannequins of the mid-century, Dovima worked tirelessly travelling the globe at a time when commercial air-travel was still in its nascent stage. As well as filling the editorial pages often shot at exotic locations or the fashion capitals of the world, Dovima’s image was used to represent a plethora of fashion and household advertisements as those from this issue of Harper’s Bazaar, October 1955, lay testament to.
At the peak of her career, as one of the fashion world’s highest paid models, Dovima was making $60 per hour. She left modeling at the age of 35, saying, “I didn’t want to wait until the camera turned cruel.”
Her later years were spent in Fort Lauderdale where she worked as a restaurant hostess, occasionally inviting close friends to pour through her trunk of photographs from her past life.
She died in 1990 at the age of 63.
Said Avedon, “she was the last of the great elegant, aristocratic beauties” and “the most remarkable and unconventional beauty of her time.”
In the today of the Supermodel, Evangelista, Crawford, Moss et als; the financial rewards and the comforts afforded them as they work their craft, make Dovima’s body of work all the more remarkable.
Were Dovima to have inhabited today’s fashion journals in the same profusion, she would have retired a very wealthy woman.
