Louise Dahl-Wolfe, born in San Francisco in 1895, was one of the greatest photographers of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. Her work inspired Horst, Avedon, Penn and many more great photographers. She experimented with use of natural light, taking the set outside for fashion photographs and portraits. She started working in fashion photography in the golden age of Harper’s Bazaar and she had an impact on the European canons of aesthetics and elegance with a new, typically American concept. Louise Dahl-Wolfe says about her art: “I believe that the camera is a medium of light… Photography, to my mind, is not a fine art. It is splendid for recording a period of time, but it has definite limitations, and the photographer certainly hasn’t the freedom of the painter. One can work with taste and emotion and create an exciting arrangement of significant form, a meaningful photograph, but a painter has the advantage of putting something in the picture that isn’t there or taking something out that is there. I think this makes painting a more creative medium.”
Louise Dahl-Wolfe, born in San Francisco in 1895, was one of the greatest photographers of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. Her work inspired Horst, Avedon, Penn and many more great photographers. She experimented with use of natural light, taking the set outside for fashion photographs and portraits. She started working in fashion photography in the golden age of Harper’s Bazaar and she had an impact on the European canons of aesthetics and elegance with a new, typically American concept. Louise Dahl-Wolfe says about her art: “I believe that the camera is a medium of light… Photography, to my mind, is not a fine art. It is splendid for recording a period of time, but it has definite limitations, and the photographer certainly hasn’t the freedom of the painter. One can work with taste and emotion and create an exciting arrangement of significant form, a meaningful photograph, but a painter has the advantage of putting something in the picture that isn’t there or taking something out that is there. I think this makes painting a more creative medium.”