Fifteen photographers who shaped fashion photography
Culture · 30 October 2026 · 6 min read
Almost every fashion image made today, from a global campaign to a product page, borrows something from a small group of photographers who changed the rules. Some took fashion out of the studio, some put models in motion, and some made the photograph itself the idea. Here are fifteen of them, in roughly the order they appeared, each with a link to see their work.
Edward Steichen
In April 1911, Steichen photographed gowns by the couturier Paul Poiret for the French magazine Art et Décoration, pictures now described as the first modern fashion photographs to be published. From 1923 to 1938 he was chief photographer for Condé Nast's Vogue and Vanity Fair. He later ran the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he curated The Family of Man, an exhibition seen by around nine million people.
See the work: The Estate of Edward Steichen
Martin Munkácsi
A Hungarian sports photographer, Munkácsi brought the energy of action pictures to fashion. In 1933, for Harper's Bazaar, he photographed the model Lucile Brokaw running along a beach with her cape flying behind her, one of the first fashion photographs to show a model in motion. Richard Avedon later paid tribute to him with a 1957 picture titled Carmen (Homage to Munkácsi).
See the work: Michael Hoppen Gallery
Toni Frissell
Frissell started at Vogue writing captions, and the fashion editor Carmel Snow encouraged her to take up photography. She photographed fashion for Vogue from 1931 and later for Harper's Bazaar, and was one of the first fashion photographers to work outside the studio, often showing active women outdoors, even in evening gowns. "I don't know how to photograph in a studio," she once said. The Library of Congress now holds a collection of around 340,000 of her images.
See the work: the Toni Frissell Collection, Library of Congress
Horst P. Horst
German-born Horst published his first photograph in French Vogue in December 1931, the start of a long association with the magazine. His most famous image, The Mainbocher Corset, was taken in Vogue's Paris studio in 1939, and designers still cite it as an inspiration today.
See the work: Horst P. Horst, curated by the Horst Estate
Louise Dahl-Wolfe
As a staff photographer at Harper's Bazaar from 1936 to 1958, working with the fashion editor Diana Vreeland, Dahl-Wolfe set a new standard for colour fashion photography. She also took fashion on location, to places from South America to Africa, in what became known as "environmental" fashion photography. One of her best-known covers is the March 1943 Harper's Bazaar cover of an 18-year-old Lauren Bacall.
See the work: National Museum of Women in the Arts
Irving Penn
Penn was working in Vogue's art department when the art director Alexander Liberman asked him to try photography. His first photographic cover for the magazine appeared in October 1943, and he went on to work for Vogue throughout his career, photographing fashion, portraits and still lifes. In 1947 he met the Swedish model Lisa Fonssagrives at a shoot, and they married in 1950.
See the work: The Irving Penn Foundation
Richard Avedon
At 22, Avedon began working as a freelance photographer, mainly for Harper's Bazaar, and under the art director Alexey Brodovitch he quickly became its lead photographer. His 1955 picture Dovima with Elephants, taken at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris with the model in a Christian Dior evening dress, is one of the best-known fashion photographs of the century. The 1957 film Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire as a fashion photographer, was a fictional take on his early career. He joined Vogue in 1965 and stayed for more than twenty years, and in 1992 he became the first staff photographer at The New Yorker.
See the work: The Richard Avedon Foundation
Gordon Parks
In the 1940s Parks worked as a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue under Alexander Liberman, and developed a style of photographing models in motion rather than in static poses. A 1948 photo essay won him a staff job at Life, where his fashion assignments included the magazine's Paris collections coverage. He went on to become one of the great photojournalists of his time, as well as a writer, composer and film director, best known on screen for Shaft in 1971.
See the work: The Gordon Parks Foundation, Fashion 1948 to 1961
Sarah Moon
Moon worked as a model in London and Paris in the 1960s, taking pictures of her fellow models, before turning to photography full time. A long collaboration with the French label Cacharel built her reputation, and commissions followed from Chanel, Dior, Comme des Garçons and Vogue. Her pictures are known for their soft, ethereal quality, and in 1972 she became the first woman to photograph the Pirelli Calendar.
See the work: Michael Hoppen Gallery
Arthur Elgort
Born in Brooklyn in 1940, Elgort made his debut in British Vogue in 1971 and caused a sensation. His "snapshot" style, with its emphasis on movement and natural light, is credited with loosening up fashion photography, and he is best known for his long association with Vogue.
Peter Lindbergh
Lindbergh's January 1990 British Vogue cover, which brought together Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford, is often credited with beginning the supermodel era. He worked mostly in black and white and resisted heavy retouching. "Refusing to bow to glossy perfection is Peter Lindbergh's trademark," the journalist Suzy Menkes wrote in 2015.
Herb Ritts
Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Ritts made black-and-white pictures that helped define the look of the late 1980s and 1990s. His 1989 portrait of Stephanie Seymour, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz and Naomi Campbell for Rolling Stone is one of the era's defining images. He also directed music videos, starting with Madonna's "Cherish" in 1989 and including Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" with Helena Christensen. In 2012 the J. Paul Getty Museum held an exhibition of his career, Herb Ritts: L.A. Style.
See the work: Herb Ritts Foundation
Paolo Roversi
Born in Ravenna in 1947, Roversi moved to Paris in 1973 and has worked there ever since. He is known for shooting on large-format 8x10 Polaroid film, and has photographed campaigns for houses including Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and Dior. In 2024 the Palais Galliera, the fashion museum of the City of Paris, devoted a major exhibition to his work.
Inez and Vinoodh
Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin met as fashion students in their hometown, Amsterdam, at a school called the Fashion Academy Vogue. They have worked together since 1986, and have shot for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, W and Vanity Fair and campaigns for Chanel, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton and Miu Miu. In 2010 the Foam photography museum in Amsterdam staged a retrospective of 25 years of their work.
See the work: Inez and Vinoodh
Tyler Mitchell
Born in 1995 and raised in Georgia, Mitchell began by making short films at home, then studied cinematography at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. In 2018, at 23, he photographed Beyoncé for the September issue of American Vogue and became the first African American photographer to shoot a cover for the magazine. A year later he had his first solo exhibition, at Foam in Amsterdam, and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery acquired one of his portraits of Beyoncé.
What they have in common
Each of these photographers found a new way to show clothes and the people wearing them: in motion, outdoors, in colour, or simply as themselves. Their pictures still turn up on mood boards and in briefs, so knowing their work helps models and clients talk the same language on set. For the faces in front of the camera in the 1990s, see our guide to the 90s supermodels.