Stepping into Style: Fashion and the Art of Elegance

Holden Luntz Gallery presents, Stepping into Style, a summer exhibition that explores the intersection between photography’s intersection of lifestyle and fashion as one of the most influential ways the camera has shaped modern ideas of elegance, identity, glamour and self-expression. Bringing together works that originated from studio refinement, black and white film stock and large format equipment to later works of digital and handheld cameras that allow for spontaneity and easy, this exhibition expands on traditional ideas of fashion as clothing, to include languages of gesture, posture, attitude and movement. In the warmth and leisure of the summer season, these photographs present their subjects with a vitality and joie-de-vivre inviting viewers to enjoy images embodying beauty, confidence and allure.

Holden Luntz Gallery presents, Stepping into Style, a summer exhibition that explores the intersection between photography’s intersection of lifestyle and fashion as one of the most influential ways the camera has shaped modern ideas of elegance, identity, glamour and self-expression. Bringing together works that originated from studio refinement, black and white film stock and large format equipment to later works of digital and handheld cameras that allow for spontaneity and easy, this exhibition expands on traditional ideas of fashion as clothing, to include languages of gesture, posture, attitude and movement. In the warmth and leisure of the summer season, these photographs present their subjects with a vitality and joie-de-vivre inviting viewers to enjoy images embodying beauty, confidence and allure.

Beginning with the sculptural precision of Horst P. Horst and George Hoyningen-Huene and moving forward with the sophistication and creativity of Frank Horvat, Georges Dambier, Melvin Sokolsky, and William Helburn, Stepping into Style follows the evolution of fashion photography from the 1930s to the 21st century. Collectively, these photographers have transformed the genre of fashion and lifestyle from a record of garment and trends into a visual arena in which aspiration, elegance and the cultural avant-garde are pictured with imagination and authority.

This lineage continues in the work of Douglas Kirkland, Arthur Elgort, Albert Watson, Mario Testino, William Klein, Norman Parkinson, Jim Lee and Kali – each bringing a distinct visual language to photography. Through graphic creativity, cinematic energy, sensuality, glamour, and chromatic inventiveness these photographs expand fashion photography into the sub-genres of portraiture, celebrity, performance and lifestyle. Their creativity often expands their personal statements into a larger cultural arena illustrating photography’s power to define and mythologize taste.

Collectively the photographs in Stepping into Style off a visual journey into fashion, image making, and culture. Balancing discipline with spontaneity, fantasy with form, and sophistication with inventiveness this exhibition invites viewers to survey some of the great fashion photographs of the last 70 years.