The era of supermodels would be unthinkable without him: American photographer Arthur Elgort created some of the most iconic fashion shots of the time and is considered an early supporter of Christy Turlington. The American was discovered as a model at the age of 14 and received a contract with the renowned agency “Ford Models”. At one of her first castings in New York, she met Arthur Elgort and was photographed by him in his studio. “I just knew she would be a star,” says Elgort, now 84, in the Apple TV+ documentary “The Super Models”. A short time later, he hired Turlington for a photo shoot for “Vogue”, even though the booker recommended another model. “The agent said: ‘Do you like Christy? We have better ones.’ So I said: ‘You’ve done your job, I want Christy,'” Elgort recalls.
The photographer recognized the teenager’s potential – the beginning of Turlington’s global career. Along with Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Tatjana Patitz, she was one of the “Big Five” supermodels in the 80s and 90s. Elgort photographed all of the women countless times, especially for various issues of the fashion magazine “Vogue”. Turlington describes Elgort’s style in the Apple documentary as natural and free. “He taught me how to feel comfortable in front of the camera and how to move,” she says.
Exhibition with photographs by Arthur Elgort
In fact, Arthur Elgort became a pioneer of so-called “open-air photography” in the early 1970s. Unlike what was common at the time, he did not photograph his models in rigid studio settings, but encouraged them to move naturally outdoors. This often resulted in dynamic and authentic snapshots – a radical contrast to the studio photography that was common at the time with artificial light, static backgrounds and stiff poses. Elgort, who studied painting before becoming a photographer, took the Impressionists as his role model. They too broke with convention by leaving the studio and depicting “the real world” outdoors.
A selection of Elgort’s supermodel photographs can be seen in the virtual showroom of the Berlin gallery “Camera Work” from July 30 to September 19, 2024. Interested parties can click through the individual works on the screen at any time. Many of the photographs have never been seen in public before. For this reason alone, the virtual exhibition visit is worthwhile.
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
