“Nor did he hesitate to touch them up ruthlessly.” “If both sides of Grace Kelly’s face were the same as the right half, she wouldn’t be on the screen,” Beaton wrote in his diary, describing said half as “very heavy, like a bull calf.” Though harsh, his appraisals were always in service of capturing his subjects at their very best: “He observed faults and then worked to eliminate them,” writes Hugo Vickers, editor of Portraits and Profiles. He was brutally honest about his subjects. Beaton studied each of his sitters closely and remained bitingly critical, no matter how elegant or strikingly beautiful he or she might have been. His 1954 illustrated book, The Glass of Fashion, which focuses on designers such as Balenciaga, Chanel, and Dior, was just reissued after many years out of print - and his 1948 Vogue shot of models clad in pastel gowns was the poster for the Costume Institute’s recent show “Charles James: Beyond Fashion.”īelow, five things to know about Beaton - click through the slideshow for some of his most famous portraits alongside quotes from Portraits and Profiles about the people who sat for them. The legendary fashion photographer is the subject of Cecil Beaton: Portraits and Profiles, a new anthology pairing some of his most iconic images with personal diary entries about his subjects, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor.
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