Fonssagrives Bassman

Born 1917, Brooklyn, New York; died 2012, Manhattan, New York. Lillian Bassman became one of the most influential fashion photographers of the 1940s and 50s while working under the tutelage of the legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar. Her sense of artistry and movement redefined fashion photography and gave sophistication to what had been a fairly staid medium. In the 1970s she abandoned commercial work but continued to practice photography for the rest of her life. Bassman developed a unique style through her high-contrast black and white images and her dark room techniques in which she would blur and bleach the images, giving them a mysterious, dreamlike quality. In the 1990s she was asked to photograph the Haute Couture collection for The New York Times Magazine, marking her return to fashion photography and the renewed commercial interest in her style. Her art has enjoyed a revival that has placed her squarely at the forefront of the history of fashion art photography. Bassman’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Center for Photography, Woodstock, New York, among others.

Find a broad range of photography on 1stDibs today.

The first permanent image created by a camera — which materialized during the 1820s — is attributed to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The French inventor was on to something for sure. Kodak introduced roll film in the 1880s, allowing photography to become more democratic, although cameras wouldn’t be universally accessible until several decades later. 

Digital photographic techniques, software, smartphone cameras and social-networking platforms such as Instagram have made it even easier in the modern era for budding photographers to capture the world around them as well as disseminate their images far and wide. 

What might leading figures of visual art such as Andy Warhol have done with these tools at their disposal?

Today, when we aren’t looking at the digital photos that inundate us on our phones, we look to the past to celebrate the photographers who have broken rules as well as records — provocative and prolific artists like Horst P. Horst, Lillian Bassman and Helmut Newton, who altered the face of fashion and portrait photography; visionary documentary photographers such as Gordon Parks, whose best-known work was guided by social justice; and pioneers of street photography such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who shot for revolutionary travel magazines like Holiday with the likes of globetrotting society lensman Slim Aarons.

Find photographers you may not know in Introspective and The Study — where you’ll read about Berenice Abbott, who positioned herself atop skyscrapers for the perfect shot, or “conceptual artist-adventurer” Charles Lindsay, whose work combines scientific rigor with artistic expression, or Massimo Listri, known for his epic interiors of opulent Old World libraries. Photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron was given a Kodak camera as a child. Later, she shot on Polaroid film before buying her first 35mm camera in her teens. Barron's stunning portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol and other artists chronicle a crucial chapter of New York’s cultural history.

Throughout the past two centuries, photographers have used their medium to create expressive work that has resonated for generations. Shop a voluminous collection of this powerful fine photography on 1stDibs. Search by photographer to find the perfect piece for your living room wall, or spend some time with the work organized under various categories, such as landscape photography, nude photography and more.