Arthur Elgort
ON THE MOVE
December 9, 2022 - January 28, 2023
This exhibition spans the photographer Arthur Elgort’s five-decade career, offering an all-encompassing view of Elgort’s celebrated work and showing him as the original artist who introduced the ‘’snapshot’’ style of fashion photography featuring models with wit, freedom of movement, and reportage influence. It includes images known by many that have defined fashion through the decades, as well as new images pulled from the photographer’s archive that have never been printed or exhibited previously.
The photographs of Arthur Elgort created a sensation in his 1971 debut in British Vogue when a breath of fresh air wafted into the world of fashion photography. His free and easy style freed his models to move. His models wore less make-up, were more casual and lively and moved about freely in outdoor locations such as city streets, pools, and beaches which characterized his style.
‘’When my career was just beginning, I noticed that most of the magazines had plenty of studio photographers – All I saw were models standing still. So I decided to do something else. I took my models out on the streets of New York, Paris, or wherever I was, and the magazines liked it. It felt different.’’
Elgort quickly became one of the best known and most emulated photographers and his influence changed the face of photography.
Arthur Elgort was born in 1940 and raised in New York City. He studied painting at Hunter College and transitioned into photography. He attributes much of his spontaneous and liberated style to his lifelong love of music and dance, especially jazz and ballet. In his long career he has worked on major advertising campaigns, as well as on French, Italian, British, and American Vogue. His work has 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, among others.