Quiggin Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 (edited) Alexey Brodovitch perhaps owes the command "Astonish Me" to Diaghilev, for whom he worked at set painting for a while, but so many photographers owe their film sense to Brodovitch himself. Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, Lillian Bassman, Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Leon Levenstein, Louis Fauer, and Hiro all worked with Brodovitch or took intense* classes from him. Harper's Bazaar in its 15 September 1940 issue describes him thus: "Alexey Brodovitch, the Bazaar’s art director, is Russian, and a man of iron shyness, with a gift like the Cheshire cat’s of fading in and out of this office of madly leaping females." From what I've seen of the catalogue, it looks as if Gary Winogrand's insightful 1950s photos of first night Met opera goers are included in the Barnes show, as most likely are Brodovitch's own long-shutter speed photographs of ballet performances of the late thirties, such as Balanchine's Cotillon and Massine's Seventh Symphony. https://www.barnesfoundation.org/brodovitch-astonish-me https://lapetitemelancolie.net/2015/08/05/alexey-brodovitch-ballet-1935-37/ * "exacting and ruthless": Bazaar in 1954 Edited March 4 by Quiggin Link to comment
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