Lisa Fonssagrives ~ The First Super Model

Lisa Fonssagrives is considered by many to be the world’s first supermodel. Her image appeared on over 200 Vogue covers

Fonssagrives was born in Sweden  and raised in Uddevalla. As a child, she took up painting, sculpting and dancing. She went to Mary Wigman's school in Berlin and studied art and dance. After returning to Sweden, she opened a dance school. She moved from Sweden to Paris to train for ballet and worked as a private dance teacher with Fernand Fonssagrives, which then led to a modeling career, and she would say that modeling was "still dancing". While in Paris in 1936, photographer Willy Maywald discovered her in an elevator and asked her to model hats for him. Fonssagrives' photographs were then sent to Vogue, and Vogue photographer Horst took some test photographs of her. (She was rather short at 5'7" compared to today's super models.)

Before Fonssagrives came to the United States in 1939, she was already a top model. Her image appeared on the cover of many magazines during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including Town & Country, Life, Time, Vogue, and the original Vanity Fair. She was reported as "the highest paid, highest praised, high fashion model in the business".The down to earth Fonssagrives once described herself as a "good clothes hanger".

She worked with fashion photographers including George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Horst, Erwin Blumenfeld, George Platt Lynes, Richard Avedon, and Edgar de Evia. She married Parisian photographer Fernand Fonssagrives in 1935; they divorced and she later married another photographer, Irving Penn, in 1950. She went on to become a sculptor in the 1960s and was represented by the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan.

Fonssagrives died, aged 80, in New York, survived by her second husband, Irving Penn and her two children: her daughter Mia Fonssagrives-Solow, a costume designer, and her son, Tom Penn, a designer.

The Elton John photography collection auction held by Christie's on October 15, 2004 sold a 1950 Irving Penn photograph of his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, for $57,360 [via wiki]

Sand Fence, Lisa Fonssagrives 1930s



Lisa Fonssagrives at Paddington Station, London, 1951



Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn © Irving Penn, 1949

Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, February Vogue © Irving Penn, 1950

 Irving Penn, New York, 1949

 Irving Penn

Irving Penn

“It is
always
the dress,
it is never,
never
the girl.

I’m just a
good
clothes
hanger.” 

Lisa Fonssagrives

By Irving Penn,  Paris, 1950





Horst

Lisa With Harp, 1939 , Irving Penn

This Irving Penn Harlequin Dress print of Lisa sold for $131,450 in 2011
Penn began reprinting in the 1960s a large majority of his work with the platinum palladium process. The registration bar at the top of the photograph as seen in this example, was common for Penn’s work. It allowed multiple negatives, each containing a particular portion of the photographic scale, to be printed on one sheet of paper. The process of multiple exposures created an image that would not be possible with a single exposure.  

Irving Penn: Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in Balenciaga, 1950

Irving Penn

Irving Penn


Horst P. Horst Lisa Fonssagrives' Hands, New York, 1941


Horst P. Horst Lisa Fonssagrives, New York, 1940



Lisa Fonssagrives by Erwin Blumenfeld



Lisa Fonssagrives for Vogue, 1939, by Erwin Blumenfeld

Lisa Fonssagrives  by Lillian Bassman

Lisa Fonssagrives 1947 - photo by John Rawlings. 

Photographer Profile ~ Toni Frissell

Toni Frissell, (1907 -1988) was an American photographer, known for her fashion photography, World War II photographs, portraits of famous Americans and Europeans, children, and women from all walks of life.

In the beginning of her career, she was an apprentice to Cecil Beaton and was advised by Edward Steichen. Conde Nast himself was instrumental in her start at Vogue. Frissell was one of Vogue's first female photographers. As her career evolved, Frissell was commissioned by several corporations, such as Gulf Oil and Life.

Frissell stretched the boundaries of the privileged world into which she was born and became one of the most innovative photographers of her time. She conceived the fashion photograph as a snapshot, in the manner of Munkacsi, and brought a freshness and particularly American style to the genre. Her battle front photojournalism captured some of the most unforgettably compelling images of World War II.

Lisa Fonssagrives was a Swedish fashion model widely credited as the first supermodel.

Michael Todd (June 22, 1909 - March 22, 1958) was an American theatre and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. He is also well known as the third of Elizabeth Taylor's seven husbands.

Jacqueline Bouvier on her wedding day

John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier on their wedding day, 1953

The Kennedys

Portrait of Winston Churchill, his son Randolph, and his grandson Winston, circa 1950s

Medieval street in Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal, ca. 1946

 Bomb shelter in a London Underground station, during The Blitz, WW2

London 1945

During World War II she was commissioned by the Women's Army Corps to photograph the movements of the Red Cross. Her subsequent photographs are some of the most harrowing of the war and detail it's very real human cost.

Berlin, October 1961

 Lilli Marie Peiser, German actress

 Liz  Taylor, Liza Todd and Mike Todd. Photograph by Toni Frissell, signed and dated 1957

 Toni Frissell with child model

Toni Frissell

Toni Frissell showing kids her camera

Portrait of Toni Frissell