Photo: Marine Vacth. Italian Vogue . 2008
It’s been a long time coming, and it has finally arrived: Beyond Blonde (Prestel), the first monograph by iconic fashion photographer Steve Hiett since the 1976 publication of Pleasure Places. For the past fifty years, Hiett has influenced our ideas of style with his inimitable blend of mystery, color, and passion. There is a rich, luxurious intensity in each image that recalls the work of photographers as diverse as Mark Cohen, Guy Bourdin, and William Eggleston, luxuriating in the purely formal properties that make photography an utterly exquisite object to behold.
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Hiett reveals, “I don’t think of myself as ‘a photographer.’ O think of myself as someone who uses the camera to create images that I see in my head.” It is this connection to imagination that elevates Hiett’s work to the realm of art. No longer a mere vehicle to illustrate and advertise clothes, Hiett is creating visual poems and songs that build and cascade throughout the book. The result is a symphonic hymn of sensual pleasure. Hiett’s flawless use of color reveals a depth of sensitivity to the power it bestows, his cool, elegant blues and rich, resonant reds, each vibrating to a frequency that Hiett orchestrates.
French Elle . 1979
Hiett observes, “I started photography a long time before I became a photographer. In 1957 I went to Worthing Art School to be a painter. This was my dream, but in 1959 I saw and American Art Directors Annual in the college library. That made me want to be a graphic designer instead. So I hanged to Brighton Art School. It was there that I met Dermot Goulding. He taught photography one afternoon a week and he changed everything for me. He showed that photos could be as exciting as music.”
Then, one day in 1968, a chance encounter on the streets of London lead Hiett to his destiny. He had been in a bad, and the band had called it quits. A fried asked,, “Why don’t you try fashion photography?” Hiett had been considering the very idea that morning, and the suggestion clinched the deal. He rang up Zandra Rhodes, a good friend from his Royal College of Art days, and went to her flat for tea. It is here that Hiett began his work , taking “Woolworths fashion pictures” in Zandra’s home. The results of this first excursion into a new realm reveal Hiett’s intuitive gifts. Though taken nearly fifty years ago, these first works are right on time, revealing Hiett’s continuing influence on style.
Lise Brandt . Linea Italiana . 1979
Organized chronologically, and narrated by Hiett throughout, Beyond Blonde is a seminal volume of photography. With shoots from Vogue Italia, Vogue Paris, British Vogue, Sunday Times Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Mirabella, and The Face, among others, the book presents an exquisite selection of Hiett’s greatest hits to be savored time and again. When taken as a whole, Hiett’s instinct for beauty and glamour delightfully transcends the limitations of time while simultaneously shaping five decades of women, giving us a wonderful sense that we are Alice and this is Wonderland.
All photos: ©Steve Hiett, courtesy of Prestel.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
