#1757 - Lillian Bassman

Paris Gala Night: Barbara Mullen in a Dress by Patou, Paris. Harper's Bazaar, 1949
September 4, 2025
#1757 - Lillian Bassman
“I wanted to transform the images from something that came from inside me.”

~ Lillian Bassman
(1917-2012)

There has never been anyone else quite like Lillian in the history of American fashion photography.
She photographed women in a much warmer, softer, more internal way than any of her male contemporaries. She was never interested in glamour for glamour’s sake.
As she often told me during our long and wonderful working relationship, we gave her her first West Coast exhibition: “I was a photographer of women. The fashion was always sort of secondary.”