Louise Dahl-Wolfe

Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Isamu Noguchi, New York, 1955. Louise Dahl-Wolfe Archive/ Gift of the Louise Dahl-Wolfe Trust.
© 1989 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents. 85.102.14

Louise Dahl-Wolfe (United States, 1895–1989) is best known as a fashion photographer. Her tenure at Harper’s Bazaar from 1936 until 1958, a period when the journal was at the vanguard of dramatic changes to the style and content of women’s magazines, provided her with particular prestige. Although she is generally recognized for her astute and early use of color photography to illustrate fashion, a closer examination of Dahl-Wolfe’s body of work reveals a much more complex photographer. Through masterful combination of artistic skill, art historical knowledge, cultural consciousness, and aesthetic refinement, Dahl-Wolfe created images that constitute important contributions to the history of photography.

Dahl-Wolfe enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1914, studying design, composition, art history, and color theory, among other topics. By 1919, she began to focus on photography, working in the Bay Area and traveling to Europe and North Africa. She met and married Meyer Wolfe, and the two returned to his home state of Tennessee in 1932. There, Dahl-Wolfe photographed rural life during the Great Depression. These images launched her career: a selection of them was published in Vanity Fair, and four were included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

Joining the staff of Harper’s Bazaar in 1936, Dahl-Wolfe arrived at an ideal time: major changes in magazine publishing and fashion photography were underway, and there was ample room for creative innovations. Throughout Dahl-Wolfe’s tenure at Harper’s, she benefited from successful collaboration with the staff there, including Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief; art director Alexey Brodovitch; and fashion editor Diana Vreeland. Dahl-Wolfe was remarkably prolific, contributing 86 covers during her 22-year tenure, as well as hundreds of color and many more black-and-white images. As she perfected her signature aesthetic style—straightforward and clear in focus with strong elements of composition and design—she received extensive editorial feedback and guidance. Her style characterized the look of the magazine for two decades.

Similarly, Dahl-Wolfe herself displayed fortitude in her professional decisions: she left Harper’s Bazaar when a new art director tried to exert influence on her work, choosing to give up her career rather than relinquish her creative freedom. The Louise Dahl-Wolfe Archive at the Center for Creative Photography includes about 450 prints, along with papers, photographic materials, and memorabilia. It holds contact prints and negatives of fashion illustrations for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Sports Illustrated, as well as family and personal photographs, portraits and correspondence with other photographers, artists, and fashion personalities such as Irving Penn, Cecil Beaton, Carmel Snow, Diana Vreeland, Carson McCullers, and Edith Sitwell.

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