#Woman

“My images reach dimensions words cannot touch. My quest, through the magic of light and shadow is to isolate, to simplify and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity. To indicate ideal proportion, to reveal sculptural mass and the dominating spirit is my goal”
~ Ruth Bernhard

“While you’re on stage, the audience is standing and applauding and yelling. But when you get home, you take off all your clothes and get into bed alone and that can really do something to your head and your heart.

~ Nina Simone


"Time can pass and everything can change in the world except the emotion you get from a photograph”

~ John Simmons

“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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“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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"Perhaps the most important thing to note about this haunting photograph is that it was not fabricated by the artist. The woman was a waif who had been given shelter by the caretaker of a remote ranch in Big Sur. It was a favorite site for Bullock and he had become friends with her, occasionally giving her work as a model. Earlier in the day, Bullock had been shaken by a strong premonition that she would eventually be forced to give up her son. When she put him on the bed for a nap and then moved to the edge of it, the premonition seemed to come to life before his eyes. It should also be noted that the book on the window sill that gives the photograph its title is a classic text on how to make one’s way across dark waters."

 

~ Chris Johnson and Barbara Bullock-Wilson
from Wynn Bullock: 55, Phaidon Press, 2001

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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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“I try to be aware of light at all times, I am always watching for it. I am not looking at light because I am a photographer. I am photographing because I am deeply involved with light”

 

~ Ruth Bernhard
(1905-2006)

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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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“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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“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)

“You don't have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you”

~ Lee Friedlander

“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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"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

“At the moment of shooting (composition) can stem only from our intuition, for we are out to capture the fugitive moment, and all the interrelationships involved are on the move……. It very rarely happens that a photograph which was feebly composed can be saved by reconstruction of its composition under the darkroom’s enlarger. The integrity of the vision is no longer there”

 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908 - 2004)

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

“I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty. I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth. I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives. I am a woman and I wanted to know about women”

 

~ Eve Arnold
(1912-2012)

“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

“There is an orchestra outside my window”

 

~ Cig Harvey

“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)

“I want to express our dignity, beauty, suffering and resistance. This is the force of our gender."

 

Flor Garduño

“I said to her, "Do something with the spirit of the studio corner" and she started to move on the sofa. She just made a movement. I took only two photographs. No need to shoot a hundred rolls like people do today. People in motion are wonderful to photograph. It means catching the right moment - the moment when something when something changes into something else”

~ Andre Kertész

 

“Whatever we have done, Kertesz did first. We all owe something to Kertesz”

 

~ Henri Cartier Bresson

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“Staff photographers, freelancers and everyone who owned a camera, were all hoping to get published in LIFE Magazine. It was like getting one week of fame instead of the 15 minutes Andy Warhol talked about”

 

~ Allan Grant 

(1909-2008)

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“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 was driving around Yorkshire and stopped by the bridge. I pretended to be photographing the buildings and switched at the last minute to catch the girls. I met one of the ladies in the picture fifty years later when the BBC did a little film about an exhibition I had in Wakefield. She rang The BBC and said “I’m the girl in the picture”. We were both invited to the studio to meet on air”

 

~ John Bulmer

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"I never, ever, went out without my camera, even to buy bread."

 

~ Willy Ronis
(1910 - 2009)

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"If you ever saw me on a set—not now that I'm 94, but when I photographed for real, you know, on my feet—the moment I got interested in what I was doing, my shoes went off. I would get on the paper, dance barefoot, dance for the models, move in the way I wanted them to move, really dance barefoot in front of the camera, take on the body movements that I felt would get them to move—actually to dance in front of the camera."

 

~ Lillian Bassman
(1917 - 2012)

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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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“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 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

“When I'm taking pictures I even forget that I have a camera. When I shoot I forget about everything. Light comes, death comes, people go in and out in costume—and it's like a play.”

 

~ Graciela Iturbide

“Always keep your eyes open. Keep watching. Because whatever you see can inspire you.”

 

~ Grace Coddington

“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

Photo Basel Switzerland’s first and only international art fair dedicated to photography based art, now in its 8th edition, is open!

The fair takes place during Art Basel week from June 12^th – 18^th  at Volkshaus Basel, just a short walk from Art Basel at the convention centre.

"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

We are happy to join with our esteemed colleagues at LA Louver (Venice, CA) to celebrate this summer the beauty and power of botanicals in our two exhibitions, The Flower Show.

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

~ Richard Avedon
(1923-2004)

“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

“If you look the right way, you can see the whole world is a garden"

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
(1849-1924)

"I make clothes. Women make fashion."

~ Azzedine Alaïa

"As a rule I do not like to explain my photographs, I want my pictures to be read and explored. I believe a good picture is open to many individual (subjective) associations. I am usually pleased when a viewer finds interpretations that I myself had not been aware of."

 

~ John Gutmann
(1905-1998)

“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 try to be aware of light at all times. I’m always watching for it. I am not looking at light because I am a photographer. I am a photographer because I am deeply involved with light”

~ Ruth Bernhard

“I believe in and make no apologies for photography. It is the most important graphic medium of our time. It does not have to be -indeed cannot be compared to painting. It has different means and aims”

~ Edward Weston

“My work begins with recording an image, but it is not finished until I have made a fine print. That is my photograph. A lot goes into a finished documentary photograph, a very personal view of life, a knowledge of technique and of course information. It is the information that grabs the viewer but it is the photographers’s art that holds them."

~ George Zimbel

"Mother's love, that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it."

~ Louisa May Alcott

“Men photograph a female nude as if she belonged to them. I photograph a woman as part of the universe”

 

~ Ruth Bernhard

“I decided to photograph her as another friend had described her
“Georgia, her pure profile calm, clearer sleek black hair drawn swiftly back into a tight knot at the nape of her necktie strong white hands, touching and lifting everything, even the boiled eggs, as if they were living things-sensitive slow moving hands, coming out of the black and white, always this black and white".

 

~ Yousuf Karsh
(1908-2002)

“It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve. To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.”

 

~ Georgia O’Keefe
(1887-1986)

“A picture is like a prayer”

 

~ Harry Callahan
(1912-1999)

"One day in a second-hand shop near Covent Garden, I found a 70 year old wooden Kodak. I was delighted. Like nineteenth-century cameras it had no shutter, and the wide-angle lens, with an aperture as minute as a pin-hole, was focused on infinity. In 1926, Edward Weston wrote in his diary “The camera sees more than the eyes, so why not make use of it”. My new camera saw more and saw it differently. It created a great illusion of space, an unrealistically steep perspective and it distorted. When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera and instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed."

~ Bill Brandt
(1904-1983)

“My work begins with recording an image, but it is not finished until I have made a fine print. That is my photograph. A lot goes into a finished documentary photograph, a very personal view of life, a knowledge of technique and of course, information. It is the information that gets the viewer, but it is the photographer’s art that holds them."

~ George Zimbel