Robert Klein Gallery brings seminal fashion photographer Lillian Bassman to Boston 

Robert Klein Gallery is pleased to host an exhibition of photographs by iconic fashion photographer, LILLIAN BASSMAN. The exhibition takes place in our Newbury Street location, and runs from Tuesday, September 6 until Saturday, October 29. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, Se ptember 10 from 2:30 to 5pm.

Born in 1917 in Brooklyn, New York, LILLIAN BASSMAN began her career as an artist's model, a textile designer, and a fashion illustrator. Under the tutelage of famed art director Alexey Brodovitch, Bassman herself would become art director of Junior Bazaar from 1945 until its closing in 1948. During her tenure with the magazine, she regularly employed a number of notable photographers including Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, and Arnold Newman.  In 1946 Bassman picked up the camera and made the transition from art director to fashion photographer. With her first photograph being published in 1947, Bassman's work would continue to run through the pages of Harper's Bazaar through the 1960s.

LILLIAN BASSMAN,  Barbara Mullen, New York, c. 1958

By the early 1970s, Bassman, disenchanted by the state of the commercial world of fashion photography, destroyed the majority of her negatives and prints. After discovering a box of negatives twenty years later, she began re-interepreting her work. She was a master technician in the darkroom, and in her later life, was an early adopter of digital technology to alter her images. Her use of blurred motion, soft focus, heavy vignetting, and other techniques resulted in a unique aesthetic that remains fresh today. 

LILLIAN BASSMAN lived and worked in New York until her death in 2012. Renewed interest in her work among curators, editors, and collectors has lead to solo exhibitions of her photographs in London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Munich, New York, and Paris. In 1996, Bassman received the Agfa Life Time Achievement Award and the Art Directors Club Award. Her images have been reproduced in multiple monographs including Lillian Bassman: Lingerie (2012), Lillian Bassman: Women (2009), and Bassman and Himmel, which accompanied a major retrospective at Haus der Photographie Deichtorhallen Hamburg in 2009. Bassman's photographs are held in major public and private collections worldwide.

 

For further information and press images, please contact Hank Hauptmann at [email protected] or 617.267.7997.