Hamiltons Paris Photo 2014 exhibition featured masterworks by Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jeanloup Sieff, as well as works by contemporary artists Murray Fredericks, Cathleen Naundorf, Guido Mocafico, Albert Watson, Erwin Olaf and Jacob Fellander.
A particular highlight was a room dedicated to the platinum prints resulting from the extraordinary sixty-year career of one of the 20th century’s pre-eminent fashion and portrait photographers, Horst P. Horst. As representatives of Horst’s work since the 1980s, this highlight complemented Hamiltons’ current exhibition in London, Horst Vintage, which showcases 35 rare vintage prints from the 1930s to 1950s. This also coincides with the Victoria & Albert Museum’s landmark retrospective Horst: Photographer of Style.
Horst’s archive of work is large and diverse, spanning the opulent salons of pre-war Paris to extravagant studio set-ups as Vogue’s primary photographer, to post-war New York and outside the studio, unearthing his inexorable interest in the visual. His work was revolutionary, revealing a unique mastery of light and composition.
Hamiltons also exhibited new works of Horst’s friend and protégé, Cathleen Naundorf; a fitting accompaniment to Horst’s photography. In the 1990s, Horst encouraged Naundorf to experiment with fashion photography; his work clearly influenced Naundorf and served as a point of departure for her signature seductive fashion imagery today.