Frank Horvat (28 April 192821 October 2020) was an Italian photographer who lived and worked in France. He is best known for his fashion photography, published between the mid 1950s and the late 1980s. Horvat's photographic opus includes photojournalism, portraiture, landscape, nature, and sculpture. He was the recipient of the Fondazione del Centenario Award in 2010 for his contributions to European culture.
He has collaborated with fellow photographers such as
Don McCullin
Sir Donald McCullin (born 9 October 1935) is a British photojournalist, particularly recognised for his war photography and images of urban strife. His career, which began in 1959, has specialised in examining the underside of society, and hi ...
,
Robert Doisneau
Robert Doisneau (; 14 April 1912 – 1 April 1994) was a French photographer. From the 1930s, he photographed the streets of Paris. He was a champion of humanist photography and with Henri Cartier-Bresson a pioneer of photojournalism.
Dois ...
,
Sarah Moon
Sarah Moon HonFRPS (born Marielle Warin; 1941) is a French photographer. Initially a model, she turned to fashion photography in the 1970s. Since 1985, she has concentrated on gallery and film work.
Biography
Marielle Warin was born in Vernon, ...
,
Helmut Newton, and
Marc Riboud. In the 1990s, he was one of the first major photographers to experiment with technology including photoshop.
Early life
Horvat was born in
Abbazia
Opatija (; it, Abbazia; german: Sankt Jakobi) is a town and a municipality in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County in western Croatia. The traditional seaside resort on the Kvarner Gulf is known for its Mediterranean climate and its historic buildings re ...
, Italy (now
Opatija
Opatija (; it, Abbazia; german: Sankt Jakobi) is a List of cities and towns in Croatia, town and a municipality in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County in western Croatia. The traditional seaside resort on the Kvarner Gulf is known for its Mediterranean ...
, Croatia), on 28 April 1928, into a Jewish family from Central Europe. His father, Karl, was a Hungarian general physician, and his mother, Adele, was a psychiatrist from Vienna. At the age of 11, in 1939, his family moved to
Lugano
Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...
in Switzerland, fleeing fascism in Italy.
He went on to study fine art at
Brera Academy
The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera ("academy of fine arts of Brera"), also known as the or Brera Academy, is a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Milan, Italy. It shares its history, and its main building, with the Pinacoteca di ...
in Milan.
Horvat lived in several countries including Switzerland, Italy, Pakistan, India, England, and the United States, before settling in France in 1955.
Career
The 1950s
Horvat started his career in the mid 1950s as a photojournalist in Paris, working to capture the 'sleaze and squalor' of the city, before going on to fashion photography. He acknowledged having been strongly influenced by French
humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as cap ...
. After meeting him in 1950, he followed his advice and replaced his
Rollei
Rollei () was a German manufacturer of optical instruments founded in 1920 by and in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras. Later products included specialty and nostalgic type films for the ...
with a
Leica camera and embarked on a two-year journey through Asia as a free-lance photojournalist. His photographs from this trip were published by
''Life'', ''
Réalités'', ''
Match
A match is a tool for starting a fire. Typically, matches are made of small wooden sticks or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by friction generated by striking the match against a suitable surface. Wooden matc ...
'', ''
Picture Post
''Picture Post'' was a photojournalistic magazine published in the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1957. It is considered a pioneering example of photojournalism and was an immediate success, selling 1,700,000 copies a week after only two months. ...
'', ''
Die Woche
''Die Woche'' (, "The Week") was an illustrated weekly newspaper published in Berlin from 1899 to 1944. It reported on popular entertainment, including "sensationalist crime stories", and covered celebrities in sports and show business. Its publish ...
'', and ''
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own dur ...
''. His photograph of an Indian bride under a veil, her face reflected in a mirror on her lap, was selected by
Edward Steichen
Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography.
Steichen was credited with tr ...
for ''
The Family of Man
''The Family of Man'' was an ambitious exhibition of 503 photography, photographs from 68 countries curated by Edward Steichen, the director of the New York City Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) Department of Photography. According to Steichen, ...
'' exhibit at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
which toured the world to be seen by 9 million visitors.
In 1955, Horvat moved from London to Paris and found that the mood of its streets and its inhabitants had little in common with the somewhat romantic vision of the so-called humanist photographers. In 1957, Horvat shot fashion photographs for ''Jardin des Modes'' using a 35-mm camera and available light,
[Camera, monthly international magazine about photography, éd. C. J. Bucher, Lucerne, Swiss, 1957.] which formerly had rarely been used for fashion. This innovation was welcomed by ready-to-wear designers, because it presented their creations in the context of everyday life. In the following years, Horvat was commissioned to do similar work for
''Elle'' in Paris, ''Vogue'' in London, and ''
Harper’s Bazaar
''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the st ...
'' in New York.
[
]
The 1960s and 1970s
Between 1962 and 1963, Horvat turned to photojournalism and took a trip around the world for the German magazine ''Revue''. Then he experimented with cinema and video. In 1976, he decided to "become his own client" by producing three personal projects: ''Portraits of Trees'' (1976–82), ''Very Similar'' (1982-86) and ''New York Up and Down'' (1982–87), which he called his "triptych".
The 1980s
In this period, Horvat went on towards color photography including his series ''New York Up and Down,'' where he extensively shot portraits of passengers on New York's subway systems and coffee shops. This was also period when his eyesight started to fail from an eye disease. It was then that he began a new project, a series of interviews with fellow photographers, such as Edouard Boubat, Robert Doisneau
Robert Doisneau (; 14 April 1912 – 1 April 1994) was a French photographer. From the 1930s, he photographed the streets of Paris. He was a champion of humanist photography and with Henri Cartier-Bresson a pioneer of photojournalism.
Dois ...
, Mario Giacomelli
Mario Giacomelli (1 August 1925 – 25 November 2000) was an Italian photographer and photojournalist in the genre of humanism.
Biography
Giacomelli was born in the sea-port town of Senigallia in the Marche region of Italy into a family of modes ...
, Josef Koudelka
Josef Koudelka (born 10 January 1938) is a Czech-French photographer. He is a member of Magnum Photos and has won awards such as the Prix Nadar (1978), a Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1989), a Grand Prix Henri Cartier-Bresson (1991), ...
, Don McCullin
Sir Donald McCullin (born 9 October 1935) is a British photojournalist, particularly recognised for his war photography and images of urban strife. His career, which began in 1959, has specialised in examining the underside of society, and hi ...
, Sarah Moon
Sarah Moon HonFRPS (born Marielle Warin; 1941) is a French photographer. Initially a model, she turned to fashion photography in the 1970s. Since 1985, she has concentrated on gallery and film work.
Biography
Marielle Warin was born in Vernon, ...
, Helmut Newton, Marc Riboud, Jeanloup Sieff and Joel-Peter Witkin
Joel-Peter Witkin (born September 13, 1939) is an American photographer who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work often deals with themes such as death, corpses (and sometimes dismembered portions thereof), often featuring ornately decorated ...
. They were published in France under the title ''Entre Vues''.
The 1990s
In the 1990s, Horvat became interested in computer technology and produced ''Yao the Cat'' (1993), ''Bestiary'' (1994), and ''Ovid’s Metamorphoses'' (1995). He transgressed the Cartier-Bressonian rule of the "decisive moment" by combining parts of images shot at different times and in different places. Several years later, he produced ''A Trip to Carrara''.[ ] This was also the period that he was one of the first photographers to experiment with Photoshop.
Themes
Women played a central thematic role in his fashion journalistic works, with a focus on realism. Speaking about women in his photography and his emphasis on natural looks, he said, “I was interested in women. I wanted to show what I liked about them. They would spend two hours in the makeup chair, and I’d try to get them to remove it so they’d look more natural.” In his own words, he kept away from pictures of war, disease, and suffering, "not out of indifference to these misfortunes, but because I feel neither the moral justification nor the physical courage to face such situations as a photographer.” However, his early photojournalistic works of Paris, had him focus on the city's seedy underbelly to counter the 'heavily romanticized' depictions of the city.
Later years
Horvat's later projects were perhaps his most personal. ''1999'' is a photo-diary of the last year of the millennium, shot with a tiny analog camera designed for amateurs. ''Entre Vues'' and ''La Véronique'' were taken with the first digital Nikon within a 30-meter range, either inside his home in Provence or in its immediate surroundings. ''Eye at the Fingertips'', which was started in 2006, was photographed with a digital compact camera. His latest enterprise was an iPad application called ''Horvatland'', which contains more than 2,000 photos produced over the course of 65 years with ten hours of commentary. He received the Fondazione del Centenario Award (based in Lugano
Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...
, Switzerland) in 2010, for his contribution to European culture.
Horvat's latest book, ''Side Walk'', showcasing life in New York city in the 1980s, is to be published on 26 October 2020. He died on 21 October 2020 at the age of 92.[
]
Publications
* 1957: ''La capture des éléphants sauvages''. Louvois, Paris. .
* 1962: ''J'aime la télévision''. Rencontre, Lausanne, Switzerland. Text by Max Egli. .
* 1962: ''J'aime le strip-tease''. Rencontre, Lausanne, Switzerland. Text by Patrik Lindermohr. .
* 1979: ''The Tree''. Aurum, London and Little, Brown, New York. Text by John Fowles. .
* 1982: ''Goethe in Sicilia''. Novecento, Palermo, Italy.
* 1990: ''Entre vues''. Nathan, Paris. .
* 1991: ''Degas sculptures''. Imprimerie nationale, Paris. .
* 1992: ''Yao le chat botté''. Gautier-Languereau, Paris. .
* 1994: ''Arbres''. Imprimerie nationale, Paris. .
* 1994: ''Le Bestiaire d’Horvat''. CNP; Actes Sud. .
* 1996: ''Paris-Londres''. London-Paris, Ville de Paris. .
* 1996: ''De la Mode et des Jardins''. Imprimerie Nationale, Paris. .
* 1998: ''51 Photographs in Black and White''. Dewi Lewis
Dewi Lewis (born 10 March 1951) is a Welsh publisher and curator of photography.
Career
In 1975, Lewis was the founding director of the Bury Metropolitan Arts Association which operates the Met.
Lewis also founded and was the first director o ...
, Manchester. .
* 1999: ''Very Similar''. Dewi Lewis, Manchester. .
* 2000: ''Frank Horvat''. Photopoche no 88, Delpire; Nathan, Paris. .
* 2000: ''1999: A Daily Report''. Dewi Lewis, Manchester. .
* 2001: ''Figures romanes''. Seuil, Paris. .
* 2002: ''Homenatge a Catalunya''. Foundation Privada Vila Casas, Barcelona.
* 2004: ''Time Machine – a trip around the world''. 1962–1963. OFF, Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
* 2004: ''La Véronique, thirty meters around my house in Provence''. OFF / Horvat, Boulogne-Billancourt, France. With an introduction by Renaud Camus.
* 2005: ''Horvat photographie Couturier''. Gallimard and Musée Maillol, Paris. .
* 2006: ''The Horvat Labyrinth''. Chêne, Hachette, Paris. .
* 2008: ''De bocche-tette-culi-cazzi-e-mone''. illustrations to the erotic poems by Zorzi Baffo, a Venetian aristocrat of the 18th century. OFF / Horvat, Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
* 2009: ''Adele Edelstein (About My Mother)''. OFF / Horvat, Boulogne-Billancourt, France.[
* 2009: ''Dr. Karl Horvat (About My Father)''. OFF / Horvat, Boulogne-Billancourt, France.][
* 2009: ''New York Up and Down''. OFF / Horvat, Boulogne-Billancourt, France. With a text by ]Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...
.[
* 2009: ''Masken und Mandarinen''. OFF / Horvat, Boulogne-Billancourt, France. with texts by the German poet Ingrid Mylo.][
* 2013: ''House of Fifteen Keys''. Terre Bleue. With texts by ]Jean-Noël Jeanneney
Jean-Noël Jeanneney (born 2 April 1942, in Grenoble) is a French historian and politician. He is the son of Jean-Marcel Jeanneney and the grandson of Jules Jeanneney, both important figures in French politics.
Education
After his secondary scho ...
. .
Exhibitions
* 2014 : ''House of Fifteen Keys'', retrospective exhibition, Palazzo Mediceo di Seravezza, Seravezza Lucca, Italy.
Filmography
* ''Le Procédé Fresson'' (1986) – by Jean Réal with Michel Fresson, Bernard Faucon, Bernard Plossu, Horvat, etc.
* ''Frank Horvat, 1999'' – at Arte Television
* Fashion Horvat : Frank Horvat Exhibition in North Vancouver, 2012
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Horvat, Frank
1928 births
2020 deaths
Fashion photographers
Humanist photographers
20th-century Italian Jews
Italian photographers
People from Opatija