Lillian Bassman was an American photographer and painter that amazed the world in her time with her sensual fashion pictures. Her work is primarily in black and white and has been published mostly in Harper’s Bazaar magazine from 1950 to 1965.
I found her work in a really sad way, reading about her dead in a magazine.. She was 94.
From Harper’s Bazaar November 1948 issue
From Harper’s Bazaar 1947
GINIA BELLAFANTE from NYT on Lillian Bassman photos: “The clothes have a structured beauty; the gloves are mandatory; the necks are long. Elegant men with cigarettes between their fingers occasionally enter the frame, encountering women who appear utterly indifferent to their attention. The perversions of inequality are absent; what appears instead is the glamour of a protracted cultural moment in which women were free from any expectation of sexual pursuit. The power of Ms. Bassman’s photographs is the power of a woman who is never moved to make a call.”
Gray and Colors 