“As an art director for Harper’s Bazaar and Junior Bazaar, Lillian Bassman changed the way we see fashion. As a photographer, she changed the way we see women. And as an artist, she changed the way we see the world” (Glenda Bailey, editor-in-chief 2001-2020, Harper’s Bazaar)
Lillian Bassman was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1917 and grew up in the Bronx. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia who allowed their daughter - at the age of 15 - to move in with photographer Paul Himmel. He later became her husband, and they were married for more than 70 years. Lillian Bassman first studied fashion illustration at the renowned Pratt Institute in 1939, before completing a graphic design apprenticeship with Alexey Brodovich - the legendary art director of Harper's Bazaar - in 1941. Bassman then took classes at Alexey Brodovitch's Design Laboratory alongside renowned photographers such as Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Lisette Model, Garry Winogrand, and her future husband Paul Himmel. She increasingly turned her attention to photography.
Lillian Bassman became the art director of Junior Bazaar in 1945 working with photographers who would later become famous, including Richard Avedon, Louis Faurer, and Robert Frank. During this period, she also established herself as a fashion and advertising photographer, primarily working for Harper's Bazaar. Her fashion photographs were characterized by a beguiling elegance and subtle gestures, as well as a distinctly artistic and experimental character. Thanks to her darkroom manipulations, the works took on a painterly, almost impressionistic quality. “You have an emotional response to her photographs – you can almost smell the lily, hear the phone ring, feel the fur. Lillian is a poet of photography” (Glenda Bailey)
In her photographs, Lillian Bassman captured the essence of women “à la parisienne”: elegant, sophisticated, charming, and graceful. One of her muses was the super model of the 1940s and 50s, Barbara Mullen, who was known for her “20-inch waist.”
In 1969, Lillian Bassman abandoned fashion photography. She packed her negatives into bin bags and stored them in her converted coach house on the Upper East Side, then forgot about them. It was not until the early 1990s that the photo historian Martin Harrison discovered the remaining part of her editorial work from the 1940s to the 1960s while staying at Lillian Bassman's house. Lillian Bassman then began reworking and reinterpreting the long-lost negatives in both the darkroom and using digital technology. Following her international comeback, the grande dame of fashion photography received major commissions again in her old age, including from the New York Times Magazine (1996), German Vogue (2004), as well as from fashion designer John Galliano, who was enthusiastic about Bassman's «painterly strokes of light».
©2025, Birgit Filzmaier