De Meyer: Father Of Fashion Photography

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The images that will be compared in this essay are Two Models at a Table by Baron Adolf De Meyer and Atelier Couture by Paolo Roversi.
Baron Adolf De Meyer is considered by many to be the founder of fashion photography. De Meyer was born in 1868 in Paris, France. He studied in Germany during a time when photography was being revitalized by increasingly vibrant and cultured artistry in photographic salons and exhibitions and by technical advances. In the 1890s, he was active in amateur pictorialist circles. In 1893 he joined the Royal Photographic Society and moved to London in 1895. In 1899, De Meyer married Olga Caracciolo. His marriage to Olga brought him the title of Baron and a position in London's society. Once inside these social circles, …show more content…

Where once fashion photography was awkward and stiff, he introduced dreamy, beautifully lit works, to better to flatter his clients. De Meyer focused on light, differential focus, and tonal gradations as a means of conveying the emotional tone of the photograph. He began backlighting his models, using light to define the line of a jaw. He pioneered the use of artificial light, employing, mirrors, low flash, floodlights, and reflectors as techniques for achieving his wistful interior portraits and still lives. Paolo Roversi’s images are portraits that are both tender and respectful. Thanks to a wide knowledge of the history of photography his images are sometimes closer to work of the nineteenth century than contemporary fashion. If it wasn’t for Baron Adolph De Meyer fashion not have changed as drastically as it did. His work is inspiration for contemporary fashion photographers. The two images “Two models at a table” and “Atelier Couture” are very similar images even though they were taken almost ninety years apart. The two images both have a woman in the center looking at the camera, wearing a long and flowing white dress and a headpiece of some sort. Both images include a large amount of plant life and have a light and airy feeling to them. The two women who are looking at the camera even have similar facial

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