The Lillian Bassman of Michael Somoroff

Portraits of Lillian Bassman.

Where we begin is at the end. Lillian Bassman died in her Manhattan home on February 13th 2012. The chair, now vacated. Where Michael Somoroff shot her portraits.

She was decades ahead of her time. She knew that fashion could be art, and she held to this, even when her work went out of fashion. Even when she, too, got fed up and disposed of it. She advanced the notion that a photographer takes a picture twice: in the photo shoot and in the darkroom.

In the end, however, she was the picture.

"She is as important to fashion photography as Richard Avedon and Irving Penn ... She just didn't get the recognition they got."

"Because she was a woman bringing up kids in the Fifties she wasn’t allowed to be [a] careerist."

~Peter Fetterman
From Recapturing her Moments and Photographer Lillian Bassman Dies

As a student of the legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch, Ben Somoroff [Michael Somoroff's father] introduced Michael at an early age to Brodovitchʼs revolutionary philosophy, which influenced a generation of photographers, artists and designers including Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Robert Frank, Louis Faurer, Lillian Bassman, Henry Wolf and Milton Glaser, encouraging him to make unexpected images and push the boundaries of conventional ways of seeing. Brodovitch urged his students to "Show me something I haven't seen before.", thus creating an exciting period of experimentation and innovation in media of all kinds. His influence remains a dominant force, even today, in all areas of cultural production.

From Michael Somoroff's Biography