Fashion Photography: History, Photographers and Techniques

Apr 18

What is fashion photography?

Fashion photography presents clothes, accessories and the people who wear them. It appears in magazines, advertising campaigns, catalogs, lookbooks and, today, on brand websites and social media. A fashion picture sells a garment, but it also creates a mood or a story around it.

Main approaches

Editorial. Stories for magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. The photographer, stylist and editor have more creative freedom, and the pictures often follow a theme.
Advertising. Campaigns for fashion houses. Guy Bourdin made strange, often unsettling advertisements for the shoe designer Charles Jourdan from 1967 to 1981.
Catalog and e-commerce. Clear pictures of clothes on a plain background, made in large numbers.
Street style. Pictures of what people actually wear in the city. Bill Cunningham photographed fashion on the streets of New York for The New York Times from the late 1970s.
Conceptual and staged. Elaborate sets and digital work, as in the colorful, pop-inspired pictures of David LaChapelle.

History

In 1911 Lucien Vogel, publisher of La Gazette du Bon Ton, challenged Edward Steichen to treat fashion as art. Steichen photographed gowns by the couturier Paul Poiret for the magazine Art et Décoration, in what are often called the first modern fashion photographs. From 1913 Baron Adolph de Meyer worked as the first full-time photographer for Vogue, with soft, romantic light. In the 1920s and 1930s Steichen returned as chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair and brought a sharper, modern style.

In 1939 Horst P. Horst made The Mainbocher Corset in Vogue’s Paris studio, one of the best-known fashion photographs. After the Second World War, Richard Avedon let models move, jump and laugh. In August 1955 in Paris he photographed Dovima in a Dior dress between circus elephants for Harper’s Bazaar. At Vogue, Irving Penn made quiet, precise pictures in the studio, often against a simple gray background.

From the 1970s, Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin made fashion pictures that were provocative and full of tension. In the 1980s and 1990s Herb Ritts became known for black-and-white pictures of models and celebrities. Digital cameras, online shops and social media later changed the business: brands now need far more pictures, faster, and some models and designers publish their own.

The industry has also faced questions about how it treats models. In 2018 several male models accused Mario Testino and Bruce Weber of sexual misconduct, which both men denied. Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue, stopped commissioning new work from them.

Techniques

Light. Studio fashion uses large softboxes, beauty dishes and reflectors. On location, photographers often mix daylight with flash.
Teamwork. A fashion picture is made by a team: photographer, stylist, hair and makeup artists, model, art director and assistants. Planning, mood boards and clear communication matter as much as the camera.
Movement and pose. Clothes look alive when they move. Photographers direct the model, use fans or ask for walking and turning, and shoot many frames.
Retouching. Most fashion pictures are retouched. Many photographers and magazines now try to keep skin and bodies natural, and some countries require labels on retouched advertising images.

How to start

Many fashion photographers begin with test shoots: unpaid collaborations with new models, stylists and makeup artists, so that everyone builds a portfolio. Study fashion magazines and campaigns, learn to work with one light, and practice directing people. Always get a signed release from models before you publish or sell their pictures.

Books to start with

Helmut Newton. SUMO (Taschen). The large survey of Newton’s fashion and portrait work.
Herb Ritts: Men/Women. Ritts’s black-and-white pictures of men and women.
David LaChapelle: Heaven to Hell (Taschen). LaChapelle’s staged, colorful pictures.

Legacy

Fashion photography has shaped how people see beauty, the body and celebrity for more than a century. Many of its photographers, such as Steichen, Avedon and Penn, are also counted among the great portrait and art photographers, and their fashion pictures now hang in museums.

Discover fashion photographers · Fashion photography in the Photopedia Dictionary

Last updated: November 2026

Photopedia

Horst P. Horst

Horst P. Horst (1906 to 1999) was a German-born American photographer. He is known for his Vogue fashion pictures and portraits, and above all for Mainbocher Corset (1939).

Alberto Korda

Alberto Korda (1928 to 2001) was a Cuban photographer. He worked in fashion and advertising, then documented the Cuban Revolution. He is best known for his 1960 portrait of Che Guevara, Guerrillero Heroico.

Agnese Strode

Agnese Strode is a Latvian artist working across photography, art direction and styling. She is the author of the photobook Body and Frame and the series Surrogate Flesh.

Edward Steichen

Edward Steichen was a Luxembourg-born American photographer and curator. He moved from soft art prints to modern fashion and star portraits for Vogue and Vanity Fair, and later made The Family of Man at MoMA.

Frederik Rüegger

Frederik Rüegger is a German documentary photographer based in Berlin. His first book, I Am a Stranger in This Country (Kehrer Verlag, 2025), follows Traveller families at horse fairs in Britain and Ireland.

Alberto Tandoi

Alberto Tandoi is an Italian photographer based in London. His self-published book 400km gathers portraits of strangers he met while walking 400 kilometres through the city.

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Martin Kaninsky

Martin is the creator of About Photography Blog. With over 15 years of experience as a practicing photographer, Martin’s approach focuses on photography as an art form, emphasizing the stories behind the images rather than concentrating on gear.