I believe the physical effort of making a photograph, the virtuous ability, should not be revealed in the result. As with a professional dancer, whose hours of intensive practice in perfection of technique should not be apparent to the audience, the photographer should present to his or her audience the beauty and feeling, motion and emotion, not the technique.
~ Frances McLaughlin-Gill
(1919-2014)
I met “Franny” McLaughlin-Gill towards the end of her life. With her amazing style and energy,
she managed to break through the glass ceiling of a mostly male-dominated field and was the
first female fashion photographer to be put under contract with Vogue by Alexander Liberman.
She was only 24 at the time. McLaughlin-Gill made photos with enormous energy and wit in a naturalistic style. Her approach was completely fresh and she made her models look so normal in the scenarios she devised for them. As Liberman said: “Not only was Franny’s work for Vogue classic, it was pure, the kind of photographic vision which bordered on improvisational theater, catching the model’s face at a sensitive moment rather than following an artificial grammar inherited from the European fashion photographers who were the stars of the moment. Her pioneering concepts made her a key photographer." She passed away in 2014, aged 95. One of the greats.