Arthur Elgort was born in New York City in 1940. As a teenager, he attended Stuyvesant High School and subsequently studied painting at Hunter College. Finding the solitary nature of painting unfulfilling, he turned to photography and soon discovered his vocation. His early photographs of ballet dancers in motion established his signature aesthetic: natural, unposed and full of life. His 1971 debut in British Vogue caused a sensation in the fashion world, where his soon-to-be iconic 'snapshot' style, with an emphasis on movement and natural light, transcended the norms of fashion photography. He soon began shooting for American Vogue,working closely with fashion editor Grace Coddington, who later recalled: “He brought such freshness and life to fashion photography”. Elgort quickly became one of the world's most renowned photographers, shooting for prestigious magazines such as American, British, French and Italian Vogue, Interview, GQ, Life, and Rolling Stone, as well as working on advertising campaigns for clients including Chanel, Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent. Elgort discovered Christy Turlington when she was a 16-year-old model who had just arrived in New York City, and he worked with many other key supermodels, including Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, and Kate Moss.
Arthur Elgort published his first book, Personal Fashion, in 1983. This was followed by the worldwide bestseller Models Manual in 1994, during the supermodel boom of the 1990s. In 2014, he published a retrospective book of his work titled The Big Picture, followed by I Love... in 2019. His latest publication is “Azzedine Alaïa. Arthur Elgort. Freedom”, which coincided with his 2023 exhibition at the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa in Paris.
His photographs have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, to name a few.