Horst
1939
From Paris Corset with Back Lacing

Gelatin silver print
9 10/16 x 7 13/16 ins
 
Victoria and Albert Museum
The printed ad copy links the city of romance, bondage, and art with the expectations of nighttime pleasures: "Paris puts you back in laced corsets and here they are. Detolle made the extreme, back-lacing corset . . . To bind you in for the Velasquez silhouette. This corset is specifically for evening."
 
Vogue (September 15, 1939), 76; cited in Nancy Hall-Duncan, The History of Fashion Photography (New York: Alpine, 1979), 64.
 
For an analysis of this photograph: Juliet Hacking (ed.), 2012, Photography: The Whole Story, (Prestel), pp. 264-265
 
LL/33279