Melvin Sokolsky: Seeing Fashion

Melvin Sokolsky: Seeing Fashion by Sokolsky, Melvin. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781892041364.

At the age of twenty-one, photographer Melvin Sokolsky joined the prestigious staff of Harpers Bazaar, whose art department was then led by legendary art director Henry Wolf. Sokolskys unique take on fashion was quite different from fellow photographers like Hiro, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon. His work took the mundane and transformed it into the marvelous, in a style that today seems ethereal and otherworldly. Women in bubbles floating across the Seine or flying uncontrollably through the air, rooms constructed as to appear upside down, household objects magnified to colossal proportions-these are all elements of the bizarre universe of Sokolskys memorable fashion photographs. Covering the years 1959-1971, these images have a distinctly 60s "look," but they also point to the work of current photography stars like David LaChapelle and Bruce Weber. Among the fashion and screen personalities included are Mia Farrow, Ali McGraw, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Dustin Hoffman, Chet Baker, Lena Horne, Natalie Wood, Shere Hite, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, Suzie Parker, Julie Christie, Lee Remick, and numerous others. This book, bound in simulated pink fine grain leather, is the first retrospective of Sokolskys fashion photography, and represents another major rediscovery of one of Americas finest image-makers.