#Fashion

“Through my work as a model I naturally became interested in photography.. fashion photography, and at the beginning it was from the magazines of the time. That’s how I discovered the photos of Avedon, Irving Penn, Newton or Guy Bordin. And then it was through opportunity, the long waits in the studios during the fashion collections, and the chance of having a Nikon on loan, that I was able to start shooting back stage, and outside. I would take shots of my model colleagues. Yes, after 50 years of activity I define myself as a photographer”

 

~ Sarah Moon  

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“I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well”

 

~ Gordon Parks
(1912-2006)

 

 

“My clothes are too chic for most women. If they want to wear them all right, but they’ve got to live up to them”

 

~ James Galanos
(1924-2016)

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“For me personally I believe in a feminine sensibility which is not necessarily exclusive to women”

 

~ Sarah Moon

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"I don’t think photography has anything remotely to do with the brain. It has to do with eye appeal”

 

Horst P. Horst
(1906-1999)

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“It’s about the body, it’s about the gesture, the feeling of being a woman. I can’t intellectualize what I do, and I don’t. A lot of it is purely instinctual"

 

~ Lillian Bassman
(1917-2012) 

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“Fortunately, or unfortunately for me, I am always at my best when I am unhampered, when I let myself go and have a little fun”

~ Elsa Schiaparelli

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“I think I was shy as a young woman and realized that photography was an ideal way to of expressing myself, of telling people what was going on without having to talk”

 

~ Martine Franck
(1938-2012)

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“Taking pictures of celebrities is exactly like taking pictures of non-celebrities. Compose the photograph properly, try to evoke something special or unique given the available possibilities. Above all do not be intimidated. Remember that even the most exalted celebrities brush their teeth at night before going to bed”

~ Elliott Erwitt
(1928-2023)

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“Photographs must be taken without an exchange of glances between the photographer and the subject. Without giving, without returning anything. I just shoot”

 

~ Marc Riboud
(1923-2016)

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"I create my images based upon stories and memories, in which I try to visualize the bond between man, spirit and nature. I love to use the contrast between light and dark and the twilight zone between them."

~ Ilona Langbroek

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“Somehow the earlier photographers had as yet not captured the attitudes and gestures that women assumed. They seemed to freeze in front of the lens as if posing for their portraits whereas the top fashion illustrators would render them as they actually saw them in real life. Was there no way of achieving the same results with photography?”

~ George Hoyningen Huene

“The dress must not hang on the body but follow its lines. When a woman smiles the dress must smile with her”

~ Madeleine Vionnet
(1876-1975)
French Fashion Designer

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“Memories, that’s the thing about photography.. I look at the contact sheet and it brings back everything.. Whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans”

 

~ William Klein
(1928-2022)

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“A new monumental dignity, a new displacement of space and time had taken hold of the visual arts. Antiquity celebrated its arrival on Montmartre to the sounds of a jazz band, Ionic columns rose next to smoking factory chimneys… Between the pedestals from which the gods of Greece looked naked and silently into the land between snorting horses and athletically built heroic figures, the ladies and gentlemen from Paris, London, New York and Biarritz sunned themselves”

~ George Hoyningen Huene

“A dress has no life of its own unless it is worn. As soon as this happens another personality takes over from you and animates it or tries to, glorifies or destroys it or makes it into a song of beauty”

~ Elsa Schiaparelli

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"The truly fashionable are beyond Fashion”

 

~ Cecil Beaton
1904-1980

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“You do things for yourself and you do things for other people and you hope that these things coincide”

 

~ William Klein
(1928-2022)

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“You should find these things yourself. You should never copy. I never look at other photographers’ work. You have to see it for yourself "

 

~ Horst P. Horst

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“The images and articles presented in Vogue reflected the interests of the modern woman and influenced her choices regarding where to shop and what to wear”

~ George Hoyningen-Huene

“Huene was a genius. The master of us all”

~ Richard Avedon

“You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older”

~ Anouk Aimée
(1932 - 2024)

“Dress shabbily and they remember the dress. Dress impeccably and they remember the woman.”

~ Coco Chanel

 

“For years Madame Chanel had firmly refused to allow her dresses to be photographed, let alone herself, for Vogue. But one day in 1937 to the frank astonishment of Vogue’s Paris office, she sent word that she would consent to be photographed - on one condition, that I should be the photographer”

~ Horst P. Horst

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"And so from that time, I was bitten, and investigated and read and collected... and bought a lot."

 

~ Sir Elton John
(On his love of photography)

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“Photographing women is like capturing poetry in motion. Their beauty unfolds like verses and each frame reveals a new stanza of their story”

 

~ Lillian Bassman
(1917 - 2012)

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“I’m known for fashion photography but in America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that. I went from New York to Paris and New York was my America”

 

~ William Klein
(1928-2022)

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“When one takes a photograph, one doesn’t think about saying anything in particular. One doesn’t think about making a statement but rather of creating something visual which can later bear a meaning that one didn’t intend to transmit-depending on the viewer’s interpretation but not necessarily on the photographer’s”

~ Manuel Álvarez Bravo
(1902-2002)

“I create situations that do not exist. I seek the truth from fiction.”

 

~ Sarah Moon

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“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.”

 

~ Maya Angelou

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“A good photograph becomes something more than just a good photograph. It has meaning and value that extends beyond the medium itself. Something spiritual that reveals something about life”

 

~ William Klein
(1928-2022)

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"I believe that the greatest creativity stems from the childlike nature that one has retained"

~ Sarah Moon

We are excited to return to New York next week for AIPAD 2024, at one of our favorite venues - the Park Avenue Armory. 

Is there a photograph that catches your fancy on our website that you would like to see in person? We are happy to arrange special VIP appointments at the fair. To discuss further and schedule a viewing, please contact peter@peterfetterman.com

Explore our online preview for featured works by Henri Cartier Bresson, Jeffrey Conley, Sarah Moon, Anastasia Samoylova, and George Tice.

BOOTH PREVIEW

We are thrilled to share that the “The Power of Photography” exhibition has been met with a wonderful reception! The Naples Press recently covered the exhibition in their Arts and Leisure section. Harriet Howard Heithaus's review for the paper is shared below.

Visit the exhibition online

There's still time to see the exhibition. The exhibition of 122 original prints curated by collector and gallerist Peter Fetterman, is on view now until April 28th 2024. For more information on visiting the museum, please see below for tickets and more information.

The Power of Photography Exhibition
Naples Art Institue
585 Park Street
Naples, FL 34102

Naples Art Institue and Gallery Store
Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Tuesday/Thursday: 10 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Sunday: 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.

"I have often been asked what I think of that photo. What I think, to quote Proust, is that it is charged with something of the “transparent substance of our best moments,” those that we shared while we were young. Boubat and I, before the course of life made us drift apart, caught upon the spell that we were living under back then and what can only be called a poetic adventure.”

~ Lella, 1987
(Great muse of artist Edouard Boubat)

'Never give all the heart for love'

Never give all the heart for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss:
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright.
For they, for all smooth lips can say
Have given their heart up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost
For he gave all his heart and lost

~ W B Yates
(1865-1839)

“I have often felt that beauty is the only language worth speaking”

~ Cig Harvey

“The models are friends of mine. These photographs involve moments of complicity that only a friend could accept. If there is no fondness between the model and the photographer, this kind of work cannot be done”

 

~ Flor Garduno

“You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what’s around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy”

 

~ Eliott Erwitt

“Photography is an alibi, a pretext to see everything, to go everywhere, to communicate with everyone”

 

~ Sabine Weiss
(1924-2021)

“You see, when models work with men, they strike up a pose and so on…..with me they were always totally relaxed. I was just a woman photographing another woman who was very relaxed as well”

 

~ Lillian Bassman
(1917 - 2012)

"I create my images based upon stories and memories, in which I try to visualize the bond between man, spirit and nature. I love to use the contrast between light and dark and the twilight zone between them."

 

~ Ilona Langbroek

“It never entered my mind that I was going to make it, but as I look back on my life I can see why I did. I made it because I had to always do something a little different. I made it because my taste was never bad. I had undying energy. If I did a picture, I couldn’t wait to see it. I always wanted to get things done as fast as possible. It’s going to be the way I want it. The model will meet my approval. They’re never going to force anybody down my throat. Every picture should be as good as I could make it.”

~ William Helburn
(1924-2020)

“You see, when models work with men, they strike up a pose and so on…..With me they were always totally relaxed, I was just a woman photographing another woman. And who was very relaxed as well.”

 

~ Lillian Bassman

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“I believe that the greatest creativity stems from the childlike nature that one has retained”

 

~ Sarah Moon

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“I do not use the word “genius” lightly but if David Bowie is not a genius, then there is no such thing”

 

~ Mick Rock

 

“As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself”

 

~ David Bowie

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"A dress is a piece of ephemeral architecture, designed to enhance the proportions of the female body. The detail is as important as the essential is."

 

~ Christian Dior

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"The photograph came off as planned. What had seemed to some as too dangerous or difficult to accomplish, became my fantasy fulfilled, and my most memorable self–assigned photograph."

~ Ormond Gigli
(1925 - 2019)

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"The key point is not the technique of how the image was made, but the idea and the vision."

 

~ Melvin Sokolsky
(1933 - 2022)

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EXHIBITION OPENING

Sheila Metzner : Objects of Desire
November 4th, 2023 - January 5th, 2024

“I want to find an echo between myself and the world, a resonance”

 

~ Sarah Moon

“The work is grounded. It’s solid and it hasn’t changed.. I have, but not the photographs.. I have great admiration for whoever I was, whoever the person was that did the work somehow in that time”

 

~ Sheila Metzner

"The awful truth is that I love all of cowboying, even when everything has gone wrong and it's not looking to get any better. Sometimes I especially like it that way."

~ Kurt Markus

“The idea was that if I could light the cone and the sphere, the girl and the clothes would look alright”

~ Sheila Metzner

“I moved very well in front of the camera. My arms, my legs - I seemed able to do anything with them - I felt absolutely wonderful when I moved with Lillian. It was like being free - it was like being in heaven"

~ Barbara Mullen
(1927-2023)

“There are models that are not models but muses. She had everything marvelous: a beautiful neck, grace, the ability to respond to me”

~ Lillian Bassman
(1917-2012)

We are looking forward to the opening of “The Power of Photography” exhibition at the Bowers Museum this Saturday! This exhibition will feature a selection of over 70 original prints curated by collector and gallerist Peter Fetterman, on view October 7th, 2023 to January 14th 2024. The museum will also be hosting a number of events around the exhibition including a lecture and book signing by Peter Fetterman on October 7th at the Bowers Museum. To attend the event online or at the museum please see below for tickets and more information.

"It's just seeing - at least the photography I care about. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Anyone can learn how to develop. It's how you organize what you see into a picture."

 

~ Elliott Erwitt

“In my personal quest for my family history, my aim is to make photographs that are not bound by time. Using the atmosphere of the past, I want to make history tangible and recognizable in the present”

 

~ Ilona Langbroek

“Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work."

 

~ William Klein

‘’Fashion designers offer one of the last refuges of the marvelous.They are in a way, the masters of dreams”

~ Christian Dior

“For me photography is pure fiction, even if it comes from life”

~ Sarah Moon

"In a machine age, making clothes is one of the last refuges of the human, the personal, the inimitable”

~ Christian Dior

"Long necks. The thrust of the head in a certain position. The way the fingers work, fabrics work. It’s all part of my painting background."

~ Lillian Bassman

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life is."

~ William Klein

"Fashion is not frivolous. It is a part of being alive today."

 

~ Mary Quant
(1930-2023)

“I think I like seeing honesty and I like seeing the truth, and I think I bring that to my films and I bring that to my stills as much as I can. I don't like superficial-looking things.”

~ Jerry Schatzberg

Peter Fetterman Gallery is proud to present The Fashion Show and The Flower Show. The exhibitions will be on view between June 17th, 2023 – October 7th, 2023. An opening reception will be held today, Saturday, June 17th from 3:00 – 6:00 PM.

We look forward to seeing you this evening and sharing these two beautiful exhibitions with you all.

Please join us at:

Peter Fetterman Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave, Suite A1
Santa Monica, CA
90404

View The Fashion Show online 
View The Flower Show online

"What I try to achieve is to set up concepts using the human body as a base, while not making it the main focus of the picture. The result is a still image that is built around a person, but all parts of the whole are of equal importance. I reduce my pictures to content, composition, and form because this minimalist approach allows me to put equal emphasis on the idea behind the artwork and the entirety of the image. Portraying a sense of calmness with images that are built up based on geometric shapes is a recurring theme of my work."

~ Noell Oszvald

“Lillian made visible that heart breaking invisible place between the appearance and the disappearance of things.”

~ Richard Avedon
(1923-2004)

“For me, photography is a subtractive process. If you're making a drawing, you add lines until you've finished, so that's an additive process. If you're making a sculpture out of marble, you subtract and keep chipping away until you have what you want. In the same way, in a world of infinite possible objects to photograph, I eliminate everything I don't want in a frame until I'm finally left with what I do want.”

 

~ Ralph Gibson

“In winter, the elegant ladies wore fur coats that were fitted and cut in such a unique manner, that one could immediately recognize each designer's signature. In the summer, printed dresses made of Lyon silk, combined in rare color harmonies, impeccably made-up faces, protected by flowery capelines illuminated the grey-blue city after sunset. Fragrance trails accompanied these beautiful passers-by. Chanel's N°5 or Guerlain's Chant d'Arômes. To decipher and to recognize them was a magical feeling. The proportions, the balance, the refinement, the purity of the lines of the French creations embodied a rare harmony.”

~ Janine Niépce
(1921 – 2007)

“I am a photographer. I’m not an artist. I’m just a witness of what I see.”

~ Gianni Berengo Gardin

"I make clothes. Women make fashion."

~ Azzedine Alaïa

“Would you like to have an adventure now or would you like to have your tea first?”

~ J.M. Barrie
“Peter Pan”

“Long necks. The thrust of the head in a certain position. The way the fingers work. It’s all part of my painting background”

~ Lillian Bassman
(1917-2012)

“I can’t recall anyone at Picture Post Magazine mentioning the ethics of photo journalism. It was just understood, a code of behavior which reflected the seriousness of the magazine”

~ Thurston Hopkins

(1913-2014)

 

“This Royal Throne of Kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi paradise
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war
This happy breed of men, this little world
This precious stone set in a silver sea
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands
This blessed plot, this earth
This realm, This England”

~ William Shakespeare
(Richard II)

"It’s up to us, as mothers and mother-figures, to give the girls in our lives the kind of support that keeps their flame lit and lifts up their voices — not necessarily with our own words, but by letting them find the words themselves.”

~ Michelle Obama
(Former First Lady of the United States)

"Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever."

 

~ Unknown

“A good editor, a good stylist and a good model are what makes a good fashion photograph. That and having a good rapport with your subject. If they are comfortable with you they’ll be comfortable in front of your camera”

~ Arthur Elgort

 

“Being the muse of the photographer is what I like about this profession”

 

~ Nadja Auermann

“I grew up not wanting to grow up. Growing up seemed terrible. To me it was awful. Children were free and sane and grown ups were hideous”

~ Mary Quant
(1930-2023)

“It is given to a fortunate few to be born at the right time, in the right place with the right talents. In recent fashion there are three. Chanel, Dior and Mary Quant”

~ Ernestine Carter

“At 16 I was a funny, skinny little thing, all eyelashes and legs. And then suddenly people told me I was gorgeous. I thought they had gone mad”

~ Twiggy

“If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”

 

~ Eve Arnold

“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”

~ Michelle Obama

“He put a little bit of himself into every picture. He was humble, very quiet, very kind. It was as if he didn’t understand or couldn’t connect to the fact that he held a major place in fashion history and photographic history”

 

~ Carol Alt
(Model)

“For some people the word “elegance” has acquired objectionable, snobbish connotations. But I myself prefer to regard elegance as an attractive and admirable - if admittedly rare - human attribute: a form of physical and mental grace that has nothing to do with pretension or over refinement or an excess of money to spend. Unlike Huene, who had absorbed an infallible sense of elegance from his upbringing, I had to invent it on my own: more exactly, to learn gradually to recognize elegance in others and try to portray it in my photographs.”

~ Horst P Horst

"When you're observant, inspiration can show up in the most unusual places, triggering a new idea to appear.”

~ Noell Oszvald

"Everything I know, see or hear, every part of my life is transformed into dresses."

~ Christian Dior

"I like taking photographs because I like life. And I like photographing people best of all because most of all I love humanity."

~ Horst P. Horst