Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13:2 (2022): 174-193 174

Subversive Beauty:
Reassessing the Surreal in 1930s American Vogue

Lynda May Xepoleas

Cornell University

Historians writing on Surrealism’s relationship with the American fashion

press have largely focused on the translation of surrealist imagery within late 1930’s
fashion advertisements.1 Following the emergence of Surrealism in America in 1936,
several major fashion magazines drew from Surrealism as a means of transforming
dreams into capital.2 According to Richard Martin, publications like American
Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar served as the primary points of dissemination for the
surrealist style during this period: “It was precisely Surrealism’s ability to juxtapose
the real and unreal that made it a primary form of advertising and media expression.
Merchandise, in its crassest form, could be seen; the dream of the consumer
product, whether fashion or otherwise, could also be envisioned.”3 The proliferation
of surrealist imagery in 1930s fashion advertising has led critics and scholars to link
the commercialization of Surrealism to the American fashion magazine.
While the appropriation of Surrealism in fashion advertisements threatened
its status as a form of high art in the United States, surrealist scholars have yet to
consider the creative direction of Vogue during the interwar period.4 Starting in 1929,
the magazine’s publisher, Condé Nast, initiated a series of changes that led Vogue
to become a site for surrealist intervention. That year, he hired Mehemed Fehmy
Agha as Vogue’s new art director, a Russian émigré who undertook the first major
redesign of the magazine and brought photography to the forefront. He also set
up photographic studios in London and Paris that allowed him to recruit avant-
garde artists and photographers who displayed surrealistic qualities within their
work: Georges Hoyningen-Huené, Cecil Beaton, and Horst P. Horst. These three
photographers along with Agha extended the aesthetic boundaries of the fashion
spread. For this reason, surrealist fashion photography is one of the most innovative
and experimental developments to occur within the magazine in the 1930s.
Vogue’s staff photographers brought the unusual elements and techniques

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Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 175

of surrealist photography to American audiences prior to Surrealism’s arrival in

the United States; however, scholars writing on Surrealism’s influence in American
fashion magazines reject the notion that surrealist fashion photography contributed
to the creation of new forms and ideas. Richard Martin, Susan Sontag, Dickran
Tashjian, and Sandra Zalman, among others, have written about Surrealism’s
influence on American popular culture, and have argued that fashion magazines
merely commercialized Surrealism in the 1930s.5 For Martin and Zalman, surrealist-
influenced fashion advertising became an effective means of promoting desire for
the commercial product.6 Other scholars view Surrealism’s rapprochement with the
fashion world as undercutting the Surrealists’ photographic legacy. Sontag claimed
that photograms, solarizations, and multiple exposures were marginalized once
they were appropriated by fashion photographers; Tashjian argued that mass media
interpretations of Surrealism were often shallow and misleading because the politics
of Surrealism had to be removed in order to appeal to a wider audience.7 I argue
that surrealist fashion photography was not just a visual manifestation of the dream
image, but rather an iteration of Surrealism put forward by the surrealist artist and
photographer Man Ray.8
Ray’s aptitude for commercial photography influenced Surrealism’s
engagement with the world of fashion. Prior to becoming a member of the surrealist
movement, Ray explored photography as a medium and as a commercial product
through his involvement in Dada. 9 His collaborations with Marcel Duchamp led him
to view the photographic medium as a means of de-contextualizing and subverting
commodity culture. From his assimilation of a range of ideas and technical
possibilities, Ray became a key figure in Surrealism and brought fashion photography
to the forefront of the surrealist journals. Interwar fashion magazines also endorsed
Ray’s photographic experimentations in that they offered a new way to depict fashion
on the printed page. Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar frequently reproduced his
experimental fashion photography.10 Ray also received additional fashion assignments
from other couture houses like Worth, Chanel, and Schiaparelli. Drawing from
his background in surrealist photography, Ray’s fashion oeuvre often expressed a
“surrealist style” and thus serves as a rich source for the intersection of Surrealism
and fashion on the printed page.
Apart from Ray’s photographic experimentations, readings of Surrealism
in American Vogue tend to focus on the use of surrealist imagery within fashion
advertising. In contrast I explore the incorporation of photographic surrealist
techniques within several fashion editorials. Unlike advertisements that appeared
in the front and back of each issue, Vogue’s editorial section gave creative license
to its staff photographers and art directors. Editorials in 1930s American, British,
and French Vogue reported on the latest fashions coming out of Paris, and
were considered to be the epitome of taste and elegance inside the magazine.11
Experimenting with photographic surrealist techniques, Vogue’s staff photographers
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 176

drastically changed the presentation of haute couture in the 1930s. They did not
produce advertisements but instead created images that at times called Vogue’s pursuit
of elegance and refinement into question.
In this essay I examine original issues of American Vogue along with editorial
correspondence to understand how Vogue’s staff photographers brought the unusual
elements and techniques of surrealist photography to the magazine’s editorial
section. I begin by discussing the transatlantic manifestations of surrealist fashion
photography and how American Vogue became suspectable to the aesthetic devices
of Surrealism prior to the Museum of Modern Art’s 1936 exhibition, “Fantastic
Art, Dada and Surrealism.” I then reassess three fashion editorials in American
Vogue illustrated by Hoyningen-Huené, Beaton, and Horst. During the interwar
period, Nast set up photographic studios in London and Paris and hired several key
photographers who were familiar with and/or involved in the surrealist movement.
Lastly, I identify how their specific uses of photographic surrealist techniques align
with the marvelous, a key concept of Surrealism that found expression within Ray’s
surrealist fashion photography. By experimenting with lighting, unusual angles,
and darkroom processes, I argue that surrealist-influenced fashion editorials in
1930s American Vogue were more than just a commercial endeavor. Vogue’s staff
photographers brought a surrealist sensibility to the magazine’s pages that briefly
challenged the commercial ethos of Vogue’s editorial section.

Transatlantic Manifestations of Surrealist Fashion Photography

Surrealist scholars have yet to critically engage with fashion editorials
illustrated by Vogue’s staff photographers. Those who have investigated the
incorporation of surrealist aesthetic devices in 1930s fashion photography focus
primarily on Ray’s fashion oeuvre.12 As one of the first members of the avant-
garde to crossover into fashion photography in the 1920s, Ray’s photographic
experimentations were featured throughout the pages of several avant-garde journals
and fashion magazines. His initial collaborations with Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s
Bazaar afforded him the opportunity to creatively arrange fashion onto photographic
paper.13 In fact, the first photograph he published in Bazaar demonstrated his
integration of photographic surrealist techniques in fashion photography. Published
in September of 1934, Fashions by Radio illustrated the latest fashions sent by wire
photo from Paris openings to New York (Fig. 1).14 Rather than focusing on the
garment’s design or construction, Ray used his cameraless photogram technique,
known as rayography, to produce an impression of the gown. By means of his
experimentation with different light sources and exposures, the model and garment
appear as if in the process of being transmitted to New York over radio waves.
Although Ray’s photographic experimentations brought about a new way
of representing fashion on the printed page, American audiences were unaware of
Surrealism’s influence on popular culture until the latter half of the 1930s. In 1936,
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 177

Fig. 1. Man Ray, Fashions by Radio from Harper’s Bazaar (September 1934: 45) © Man Ray 2015 Trust/
Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ADAGP, Paris 2020

the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr Jr., organized the first
major exhibition of surrealist art in the United States.15 Rather than discussing the
movement’s political agenda as it was put forward by the French writer and poet,
André Breton, Barr portrayed Surrealism as a “heterogenous mixture of art and
culture” and exhibited works by Dalí alongside cartoons of Disney characters.16 His
representation of Surrealism as a visual manifestation greatly affected the American
public’s perception of Surrealism. In fact numerous advertising campaigns drew
from Surrealism’s association with dreams the following year.17
In comparison to Barr’s representation of Surrealism as an escape from
reality, surrealist practitioners sought to address social and psychic repression
operating under capitalism. In Europe, Surrealism was dominated by Breton; he
published the “First Manifesto of Surrealism” in 1924 and thus effectively founded
the movement.18 Throughout the interwar period Breton influenced the direction
of Surrealism, contributing to numerous avant-garde publications in France.
Drawing from Sigmund Freud’s analysis of dreams and the unconscious, he defined
Surrealism as an “absolute liberation of the mind.” 19 For him, the unconscious
was the voice of a truer, better reality that was more receptive to one’s desires.
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 178

Breton believed artists could render a state of “pure psychic automatism” and elude
conscious control through a variety of automatic writing techniques.20 In 1929,
he combined his view of Freud and psychoanalysis with the theoretical basis of
Marxism in order to challenge rationalism and repression within bourgeois society.21
Surrealism had then become a way of looking inward in order to change the
principal problems of life through the unconscious and dreams.
Breton’s political agenda led the Surrealists to engage with the world
of fashion. Surrealism was not passive nor did American fashion magazines
unknowingly or unwillingly appropriate it. Instead, the Surrealists consciously
explored fashion for its visual, semantic, and cultural contradictions throughout the
‘20s. In 1925, the Surrealists published a fashion photograph on the cover of La
Révolution surréaliste (Fig. 2). The photograph in question depicts a fashion mannequin
at the foot of a grand staircase, wearing a silk chiffon slip dress designed by Paul
Poiret. Originally conceived for French Vogue, the image was taken by Ray at the
1925 “Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes” in
Paris. 22 Main Bocher, the editor of French Vogue, commissioned him to photograph
the latest fashions shown on display at the Pavillon d’Élégance. This particular
photograph captivated Bocher and led him to promise Ray the title page of the
August issue. The manner in which he photographed Poiret’s design, however, also
intrigued the Surrealists who took an interest in the fashion mannequin. Breton
convinced Ray to publish the fashion photograph on the cover of their journal one
month prior to its publication in French Vogue. Bocher had to pull the August cover
but agreed to reproduce several other photographs by Ray inside the issue.
In French Vogue, the images documented the latest styles by Poiret, Lucien
Lelong, and Louise Boulanger, among others, while the Surrealists chose to exploit
the photograph’s connection to the material world. In placing the image between the
words: “‘et guerre au travail” (and war on work), the mannequin was transformed
“from an icon of ephemeral beauty into an exemplar bohemian satire” that spoke
to the dangerous lures of the commodity.23 Removed from its original context,
the photograph became a means of disseminating Surrealism’s social and political
aspirations. Based on its growing position in commodity culture, fashion had become
one of the most salient mediums for surrealist creation. This was not however
understood by the American public nor reflected in Barr’s exhibition.
Breton’s repositioning of Surrealism following his second manifesto
effectively ended the French Surrealists preoccupation with the world of fashion;
however, several of Vogue’s staff photographers continued to explore surrealist-
influenced fashion photography within the magazine’s American, French, and British
editions. This was largely due to Nast’s endorsement of avant-garde practices, one
that allowed modernist conceptual and artistic devices to infiltrate the magazine’s
pages during the interwar period. Unsatisfied with the quality of illustrations in
Vogue, Nast devised a plan that would allow avant-garde artists and photographers
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 179

Fig. 2. Man Ray, Pavilion of Elegance, 1925, commissioned by Main Bocher for the August issue of
French Vogue in 1925, yet published on the cover of La Révolution surréaliste one month prior; © Man
Ray 2015 Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/ ADAGP, Paris 2020
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 180

to bring their innovative vision to the magazine. In 1916, he launched a British

edition.24 Until then no American publication or newspaper had established a foreign
presence beyond a small export of its press run.25 Vogue was the first American
magazine to have a foreign edition produced and edited locally. Nast later launched
a French edition in 1920 that allowed him to recruit a number of photographers
living in Paris, namely, Man Ray, Georges Hoyningen Huené, and Horst P. Horst.26
Vogue’s expansion exposed American readers to the work of avant-garde artists and
photographers whose understanding of Surrealism had developed in relation to
Breton’s philosophies and not with Dalí’s vision of the fantastic and dreamlike.
In 1929, Nast hired Agha to redesign American Vogue. 27 Drawing from
design innovations introduced in European publications like Die Wiener Mode
(Vienna Fashion), Die Form (The Form), and Neue Dekoration (New Decoration),
Agha drastically changed the magazine’s design and layout.28 He placed photography
at the center and creatively arranged photographs on the fashion page, “removing
their frames, enlarging them and filling whole pages and double spreads.”29 He also
used multiple sizes and angles, tilting, overlapping, or scaling photographs to create
dynamic collage-like layouts.30 In bringing photography to the forefront of American
Vogue, Agha’s innovations in graphic design and layout ultimately heightened the
effects of surrealist fashion photographs.
From the outset fashion photography held a prominent position within
Surrealism. As Richard Martin points out, “Fashion and its instruments were at
the heart of the Surrealist metaphor, touching on the imagery of women and the
correlation between the world of real objects and the life of objects in the mind.”31
The Surrealists’ publication of Ray’s fashion photograph on the cover of La
Revolution surréaliste demonstrates an initial engagement with the world of fashion,
while Hoyningen-Huené, Beaton, and Horst continued to experiment with the
principles and techniques of surrealist photography inside American Vogue. Through
their use of framing and darkroom manipulation, they effectively extended the
aesthetic boundaries of the fashion spread. Vogue’s ties to the European avant-garde
led the magazine to become something more than just a vehicle that sold haute
couture. It also put forward new forms of artistic exploration and more specifically,
the marvelous. In what follows I analyze key works by Hoyningen-Huené, Beaton,
and Horst. I show how their specific uses of photographic surrealist techniques
brought Surrealism’s revolutionary character to American Vogue before Surrealism
became known by the American public as a means of prompting desire for the latest
fashions. I also interpret how the magazine’s editors co-opted the surrealist effects of
surrealist fashion photography in the late 1930s.

Surrealist Fashion Photography within 1930s American Vogue

Hoyningen-Huené was the first Vogue staff photographer to use new and
radical photographic techniques in the 1930s. The importance of his style lies in
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 181

Fig. 3. Georges Hoyningen-Huené, Bas Relief from Vogue (U.S. edition, November 15, 1931: 44-45) ©
Condé Nast Publications

his new compositions and surrealist effects. These can be seen in his illustration
of an editorial that ran in the November issue of American Vogue in 1931, and
which brings together the classical and the contemporary body (Fig. 3). Entitled Bas
Relief, this photograph shows the same model wearing a pale pink crêpe pajamas by
Madeline Vionnet positioned before a black, empty background.32 Drawing from
Vionnet’s reference to Greek sculpture, Hoyningen-Huené used different light
sources to call attention to the model’s figure that then emerges from beneath the
fabric as a kind of second skin, while the white satin textile gives the appearance
of her flesh as marble. His decision to photograph the model as though she were
floating in empty space disrupts the illusion of physical reality. She instead appears
as a mysterious entity that emerges from the classical past. Hoyningen-Huené’s
reference to classicism is reiterated within the title and the text below it, both of
which describe Vionnet’s pyjamas [sic] as an embodiment of Grecian grace and
simplicity.
Hoyningen-Huené’s meticulous, formal composition exemplifies his aesthetic
style. In not photographing the model in an elaborate studio set-up or decorative
interior, he would often use simple lighting effects and strong graphic elements to
evoke a particular mood or setting. As Hoyningen-Huené explained:
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 182

I would plan backgrounds and introduce various props, then in the

middle of a sitting I would discover that they hindered me and I
would instantly discard them, no matter how much I planned the
overall effect, and once I freed myself of all unessential contraptions,
I would return to the simplicity and calm of an unencumbered scene
and concentrate on the mood.33

His use of empty space and lighting imparts a sense of ambiguity and
mystery. In the photograph, Hoyningen-Huené transcended the four walls of Vogue’s
Paris studio and created a visual manifestation of the model emerging, as a classical
figure, onto photographic paper.
As one of the realist mediums, photography should have been rejected by the
Surrealists who sought to render reality from the point of view of the unconscious.
Rosalind Krauss, however, demonstrated how the Surrealist’s exploration of different
photographic techniques allowed them to create new images that did not cohere to
reality.34 Instead, their manipulations of the photographic image—whether through
photographic framing, collage, or darkroom processes—disrupted the simultaneous
presence of reality while preserving the unity of a single print. According to Krauss,
the Surrealists’ manipulations of the camera lens or photographic image related
to free association and dreams, and estranged the representation of the world to
reveal the hidden universe of unconscious desires and dreams that lie underneath.35
Rather than evolving from a state of consciousness, they challenged or refuted
photography’s traditional temporal instantaneity: the photographic image becomes
not an instantaneous recording of physical reality, but the result of unconscious
creation. Through their use of photographic framing and manipulation, Vogue’s staff
photographers also refuted the illusion of reality that photography typically offers.
In Bas Relief, Hoyningen-Huené’s use of the camera lens, lighting, and
darkroom processes led him to transform the model into an ethereal and gracious
form on the fashion page.36 His use of lighting exploited the model’s features
and silhouette, while his use of empty space alluded to a dream-like scene that
displaced the model from reality. Through his use of complex lighting and a
surrealist depiction of the element of space, Hoyningen-Huené produced a kind
of metamorphosis that blurs the boundaries between her body and the relics of
the classical past; she is contained, limited, and depersonalized in a mysterious and
dream-like setting. Oscillating between a state of the inhuman and the living, he
created a new creature that doubles the human body and evokes the marvelous.
The particular placement of this image within American Vogue’s Vanity issue
further disoriented the viewer and her reading of Bas Relief as a fashion editorial.
Hoyningen-Huené’s photograph was placed alongside several other images and
articles that offered beauty advice to the magazine’s readership. “Vogue’s Eye View”
stated:
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 183

Fig. 4. Cecil Beaton, Shadow Her from Vogue (U.S. edition, December 1, 1935: 70-71) © Condé Nast
Publications

We are too intelligent, we twentieth-centuarians [sic], to think that

beauty is a gift of the Gods—something you either have or haven’t.
We belong to a generation that believes anything is achievable—any-
thing can be self-made—that an ugly duckling is ugly only through
her own fault.37

This issue was meant to provide American women with new ideas and methods for
improving their self-image. Hoyningen-Huené’s transformation of the model into
a depersonalized relic, however, departed from the magazine’s intention of putting
forward a new kind of beauty viewers could imitate. His imaginative use of light
and perspective offered new ways of rendering fashion and the female body, thereby
challenging canons of beauty and gender that were central to Vogue’s core mission.
The same might be said for the chief photographer of British Vogue, Cecil Beaton.
Towards the latter half of the ‘30s Vogue’s editorial staff questioned the use
of photographic surrealist techniques in editorial fashion photography, a response
that was primarily a reaction to Beaton’s work.38 Following several visits to Vogue’s
Paris studio in the early ‘30s, Beaton began to incorporate surrealist motifs in his
photography, most notably incongruous juxtapositions and strong shadows.39 On
December 1, 1935, he published a photograph entitled Shadow Her in American Vogue
that depicts two models in an empty studio, wearing the latest fringed gowns by
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 184

Lucien Leong (Fig. 4).40 These women are accompanied by six debonair phantoms
dressed in tuxedos. Beaton used backlighting to project their silhouettes onto a white
muslin screen, which can be seen behind the models. These men appear as ghost-like
shadows emerging from the unconscious, projected onto the models’ bodies.
While Beaton is known for his romantic backgrounds, Shadow Her
demonstrates his penchant for surrealist effects. He would often recreate a surreal
mise-en-scène in Vogue’s London studio by building up an intricate layering of
shadows or featuring irrational juxtapositions.41 Beaton described:

We worked in the studio with large transparent screens of stretched

white muslin, which enabled us to indulge in a great variety of shad-
ow effects; and by placing strange objects, and even strange people,
on the far side of the screen, we produced a background of fantastic
silhouetted shapes.42

Beaton’s projection of the male models onto a white muslin screen creates a hal-
lucinatory scene that makes the women strange; they appear as Grecian goddesses
arising from the abyss, and isolated in a sea of male suitors. With their repeated
shadows and doppelgänger silhouettes, these constructed entities open up the image to
a surrealist interpretation.
Beaton’s juxtaposition of ghost-like figures with live models produced a
moment of “fission.” Krauss uses this term to describe when the addition of a
copy exposes the fallacy of the original: “For it is doubling that produces the formal
rhythm of spacing—the two-step banishes the unitary condition of the moment,
that creates within the moment an experience of fission.”43 Beaton’s transformation
of male models into silhouettes disrupts the illusion of photographic reality and
leads the reader to consider the conundrum with which they are presented, or, the
“fissure” within reality before them. In Shadow Her, Beaton creates a new image that
blurs the distinction between surrealist creation and fashion photography. These
female figures are shown oscillating between different states, the living and the
dream, and not within a decorative interior.
Beaton’s photograph was featured within Vogue’s report on the Paris
openings, in an issue that included a number of articles on winter sports and
holiday gift ideas. Placed as it is between several illustrations and how-to-articles,
the photograph confronts Vogue’s readers with an ambiguous scene that does not
conform with other images or articles in the issue. With Beaton’s photograph, the
reader no longer receives the image as a good consumer. Rather they are puzzled
with uncertainty and must stop to analyze it. Instead of selling haute couture or gift
ideas, this image explodes the reader’s expectations. As is the case in other surrealist
photography, Beaton revealed new realities that, by picturing women in extremes of
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 185

terror, challenge collective perceptions of feminine beauty.

Shadow Her created a dilemma for the editorial staff of American Vogue.
Fashion photographs were to offer women a look they could recreate; they were
to capture the line of a new look or the essence of a collection.44 Yet Beaton’s
experiments with lighting, shadows, and framing effectively hindered the viewer’s
reading of the garments. In his correspondence to Nast on January of 1937, Agha
wrote,
Last year, for instance, [Beaton] tried to introduce surrealistic meth-
ods in his work. He started with something which was extremely
interesting, but unfortunately, also very dangerous for Vogue. His first
surrealistic photographs were based on the idea of placing elegant
women in extremely unelegant [sic] surroundings.45

Agha’s concern about Beaton’s use of surrealist photographic techniques demon-

strates the impact of surrealist fashion photographs on the magazine’s American
edition. Surrealist-influenced fashion photography diverted from the magazine’s
intent to provide its readership with “a clear and precise representation of the prod-
ucts they promoted.”46 This diversion was compounded by the fact that the maga-
zine would often publish the same content within its British, French and American
editions.
By 1928, French Vogue began to endorse visually disorienting imagery
that addressed a French audience already exposed to Surrealism through
various publications and exhibitions organized by surrealist practitioners. 47 The
transatlantic exchange between Vogue’s French and American editions thus allowed
the disorientating effects of surrealist fashion photography to appear before the
magazine’s American readership. However the reception of surrealist fashion
photography changed after American department stores and advertising campaigns
appropriated surrealist motifs during the late 1930s. Surrealist fashion photography
moved from the sidelines of American Vogue’s editorial section to the forefront of
the magazine.
In January of 1937 Agha declared Surrealism’s affinity for commercial
advertising at the Advertising and Marketing Forum in New York City: “Surrealism
deals primarily in the basic appeals so dear to the advertiser’s heart. It capitalizes on
fear, disgust, wonder, and uses the eye-catching, bewildering devices which we all
know are the basis for many a sound advertising campaigns.”48 Vogue’s editorial staff
soon interpreted the surrealist effects of fashion editorials so as to follow Agha’s
newfound understanding of Surrealism as an effective tool for advertising. This new
interpretation can be seen in a spread Horst illustrated for the magazine’s report on
the Paris openings of the following year (Fig. 5).49
Published in August of 1938, Mammoth Tricorn and Miniature Tricorn captures
the latest styles of tricorn hats designed by Suzy and Elsa Schiaparelli. To the left, a
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 186

Fig. 5. Horst P. Horst, Mammoth Tricorn and Miniature Tricorn from Vogue (U.S. edition, August 15, 1938:
54-55) © Condé Nast Publications

model wears Suzy’s large tricorn hat “folded obliquely, trimmed with Brandenburg
braid, worn sideways with musketeer bravado.”50 To the right another model is
shown wearing Schiaparelli’s miniature tricorn hat with “a brim processed into a
blunted triangle and a crown covered with black satin bow-knots.”51 Rather than
showing the hats or jewelry as part of an ensemble, Horst conceals the models’
bodies behind geometrical architecture. His use of dramatic lighting further disrupts
the reader’s view of the models’ facial features and limbs. Only their eyes, head, and
hands remain visible amidst the various props and accessories.
Horst honed his skills in the photographic studio of French Vogue under the
guidance of Hoyningen-Huené.52 His signature characteristics include his striking use
of black, dramatic lighting, and geometrical forms.53 While previous photographers
avoided using shadows in fear that the final image would be dull and unclear,
Horst often used spotlights, floodlights, and reflectors to create deep shadows and
highlights in order to accentuate specific features.54 As he described:

My first pictures were loaded with background. I was continually

Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 187

dismantling palaces, hauling in small forests and entire hothouses

meant to enhance but really crushing the little woman in their midst.
Finally I realized the incongruous effect and began a series of strong
black compositions that made a big inky splash on the magazine page
blotting everything else out.55

Horst used this technique in both Mammoth Tricorn and Miniature Tricorn to remove
distracting elements and draw attention to the detailing of the hats and jewelry. In
doing so, the images begin to dismember reality by disembodying the model as well
as the architecture.
Horst’s use of lighting and architectural forms mimics the angled look, a
technique the Surrealists used to isolate objects from their traditional contexts and
everyday associations.56 In focusing on either an unfamiliar angle or on a fragment
of the whole, they removed the female body from its corporeal reference.57 In
disrupting the viewer’s reading of the female body, the angled look showed women
as sites of desire and not as of objects of desire. Horst’s exploration of studio
lighting and photographic framing brought a surreal interpretation of the female
body to Vogue’s pages. Dismembered and separated from the rest of their bodies,
the models appear distorted and unbalanced and thus removed from physical reality.
Instead of standing in for the female consumer, they became props similar to the
fashion mannequin.
While Horst’s photographic manipulations were extreme in their
dismemberment and fragmentation of the female body, Vogue’s editor-in-chief
Edna Woolman Chase interpreted Horst’s surrealist fashion photography for
the magazine’s readership.58 Both images were published in Vogue’s August issue
dedicated to the promotion of the latest Parisian fashions. Many of the pictures
inside the magazine showed women what to wear and how to create ensembles. At
first glance, Horst’s spread appears to stand out and disrupt the viewer’s habitual
expectations situated as it is between several illustrations and straightforward fashion
photographs. Upon further examination, however, it becomes clear that Chase
addressed the exchange between Surrealism and fashion in this particular issue. In
“Vogue’s Eye View,” she wrote: “Significant things are beginning to emerge from
behind the wall of the future. First to come into sight are the new hats.”59 Her
description was published alongside another image by Horst that featured the same
model wearing Schiaparelli’s ostrich-tipped hat. 60 In drawing attention to Horst’s use
of dramatic lighting and of the angled look, Chase undermined the very effect of
such experimentations. The reader’s eyes are instead drawn to Schiaparelli’s design,
emerging from behind the column. Hence, surrealist-influenced fashion editorials
had been co-opted by the magazine’s editorial staff by the end of the 1930s and
ceased to disrupt the flow of the magazine.
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 188

Subversive Beauty
Surrealism influenced all areas of American Vogue, not just advertising. The
fashion photographers I’ve discussed were the primary photographers who took
up photographic surrealist techniques in the magazine’s American edition. They did
not photograph models against fantastical backgrounds or in relation to surrealist
artworks, as was the case in fashion advertising of the late 1930s. Hoyningen-Huené,
Beaton and Horst alternatively created new pictures that transgressed the boundaries
of fashion photography. Their manipulations of lighting, perspective, and the camera
lens disrupted the identity of the wearer, along with the magazine’s general intent
of delivering pertinent information about the latest styles. Models were given new
assignments in surrealist fashion photographs; they were seen emerging from the
unconscious and onto photographic paper.
Vogue’s creative direction also brought a surrealist sensibility to the magazines’
design. Nast encouraged photographers to draw from experimental photographic
techniques while Agha’s innovations in graphic design and layout heightened the
effects of their work. Previous scholarship has viewed surrealist fashion photography
in isolation, largely ignoring its integration in the mass media fashion magazine.
An analysis of the placement of the photographs inside each issue reveals how
disruptive they were to Vogue’s overall narrative: like surrealist photographs they
initially caused disbelief and uncertainty on the part of the viewer.
Surrealist fashion photography not only altered the presentation of fashion
in photography but also that of the professional model. Prior to the ‘30s fashion
photography was conservative and standardized, despite the wide range of artistic
experimentation that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century.61 Under
Nast’s direction the magazine became a series of incongruous visual juxtapositions
of dreamlike ambiguity and mystery. The sophistication of fashion production at the
time also required a certain degree of knowledge that led fashion photographers to
employ professional models with beautiful faces and perfect bodies.62 As anonymous
figures, these women were not selected based on their ability to promote fashion
through their social status. They rather became mere silhouettes against backdrops
or hangers onto which garments were displayed, casting aside traditional points of
emphasis in fashion editorials of the previous decades. Similar to the transformation
of everyday objects pictured in the pages of the surrealist journals, these models
were metamorphosed into mysterious figures of haute couture.63
While each of the three fashion editorials I’ve discussed transgressed the
boundaries of fashion depiction, they were received differently by Vogue’s editors
and readership once Surrealism fully arrived in America. By the late ‘30s the
disorienting effects of surrealist fashion photographs gave way to surreal-like settings
that featured models in fantastical studio set-ups or against the backdrop of Dalí’s
paintings. In fact, Dalí became the most widely exhibited surrealist artist in the
United States.64 Just three months after Barr’s exhibition opened, American Vogue
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 189

published a number of works by Dalí alongside several evening gowns for sale at
Bonwit Teller and Bergdorf Goodman.65 Dalí’s Surrealism was a revolution against
monotony which better reflected Nast’s intention to “portray not just beautiful
women in clothing but every detail of how that clothing was constructed and worn”
in that his figurative artworks generally left behind the visual ambiguity of the
surrealist fashion photographs.66
The reception of 1930s surrealist fashion photography has been confined to
the fantastical, mysterious, and dreamlike. More specifically, in the early ‘30s Vogue’s
staff photographers Hoyningen-Huené, Beaton and Horst introduced the unusual
elements and techniques of surrealist photography to the magazine’s editorial pages.
They did not merely exploit Surrealism as a marketing ploy. They created new
pictures that for a time disrupted the conventions of mass culture, and from inside
of the American fashion magazine itself.
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 190

1 For scholarship on Surrealism’s proliferation in 1930’s American fashion magazines, see

Nancy Hall-Duncan, The History of Fashion Photography (New York: International Museum of Photog-
raphy, 1979); Richard Martin, “Surrealism and the World of Fashion” in Fashion and Surrealism (New
York: Rizzoli, 1987), 217-225; Dickran Tashjian, “Surrealism in Service of Fashion,” in A Boatload
of Madmen: Surrealism and the American Avant-Garde (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 66-90;
Hannah Crawford, “Surrealism and the Fashion Magazine,” American Periodicals: A Journal of History,
Criticism, and Biography 14, no. 2 (2004): 212-246; Sandra Zalman, “The Vernacular as Vanguard: Alfred
Barr, Salvador Dalí, and the US Reception of Surrealism in the 1930s,” Journal of Surrealism and the
Americas 1, no. 1 (2007): 44-67; Sandra Zalman, “Surrealism Between Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” in
Consuming Surrealism in American Culture (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2015), 11-46.
2 The first exhibition dedicated solely to Surrealism in the United States was held at the Wadsworth
Antheneum in 1931 and later on displayed at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932. Yet, Sandra Zalman pro-
poses that the first major exhibition of Surrealism to be held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936
informed the American public’s understanding of Surrealism as a visual manifestation by transcending
the boundaries between art and mass culture. Zalman, “Surrealism Between Avant-Garde and Kitsch,”
11.
3 Richard Martin, Fashion and Surrealism (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), 11.
4 Helena Lewis proclaimed that Surrealism was depoliticized in the United States and stripped of its
ideological content. This was largely due to the fact that American audiences were not able to engage
with the theoretical and political underpinnings of surrealist creation through their publications; it
wasn’t until the 1940’s that surrealist texts were widely translated from French to English. Helena
Lewis, The Politics of Surrealism (New York: Paragona House, 1988).
5 For scholarship on the commercialization of Surrealism within America, see Keith L. Eggener, “‘An
Amusing Lack of Logic’: Surrealism and Popular Entertainment,” American Art 7, no. 4 (1993): 30-45;
Dickran Tashjian, A Boatload of Madmen: Surrealism and the American Avant-Garde (New York: Thames
and Hudson, 1995); Angela Miller, “‘With Eyes Wide Open’: The American Reception of Surrealism”
in Caught by Politics: Hitler Exiles and American Visual Culture, eds. Sabine Eckmann and Lutz Koepnick
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 61-94; Zalman, Consuming Surrealism in American Culture.
6 Martin, Fashion and Surrealism, 218; Zalman, “The Vernacular as Vanguard,” 51.
7 Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 52; Tashjian, A Boatland
of Madmen, 75.
8 Andy Grundberg has written about the different avenues of surrealist scholarship: those who view
Surrealism as a singular, historical moment between the wars, as one “thread” among many others in
the history of modern art, or as a pulse of revolt that continues to reoccur throughout the history of
modernism. In his essay, Grundberg specifically viewed the self-conscious cropping, collaging, and
refiguring of reality in contemporary photography as a marker or reoccurrence of surrealist photog-
raphy. In this paper, I view surrealist fashion photography as an independent reoccurrence brought
forth by Vogue’s staff photographers whose photographic experimentations were not openly acknowl-
edged by other surrealist practitioners, yet still produced instances of the marvelous within the editori-
al pages of American Vogue through their photographic experimentations. Andy Grundberg “On the
Dissecting Table: The Unnatural Coupling of Surrealism and Photography” in Overexposed: Essays on
Contemporary Photography, ed. Carol Squiers (New York: New Press, 1999), 123-133.
9 Launched as a reaction to the First World War, Dada was an avant-garde movement that experi-
mented with various materials and techniques in order to comment on modern society’s shortcom-
ings. The Dadaists were particularly drawn to photography and developed photomontage, pasting
cuttings from newspapers and commercial magazines together to form a chaotic, explosive image; a
provocative dismembering of reality. Ray first recognized commercial photography as a vehicle for
artistic exploration through his collaborations with Duchamp on the single-issue art journal, New York
Dada, that assimilated the size and format of the commercial magazine. Dawn Ades, Photomontage
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 191

(London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1986), 13.

10 Man Ray and John Esten, Man Ray: Bazaar Years (New York: Rizzoli, 1988). In 1922, Frank
Crowninshield, Vanity Fair’s editor- in-chief, published four of Ray’s rayographs in the magazine’s No-
vember issue that captivated the Surrealists including André Breton who described Ray’s photograms
as “pre-Surrealist by virtue of his subconsciously derived, refractured visual imagery” in his inaugural
manifesto. Neil Baldwin, Man Ray: American Artist (New York: C. N. Potter, 1988), 124.
11 Martin Harrison, Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945, ed. Mark Holborn (London: Jonathon
Cape Ltd., 1991), 15.
12 For scholarship on Man Ray’s fashion oeuvre, see Man Ray and John Esten, Man Ray: Bazaar Years
(New York: Rizzoli, 1988); Willis Hartshorn, Merry Foresta, and John Esten, Man Ray in Fashion (New
York: International Center of Photography, 1990); Margaret Sundell, “From Fine Art to Fashion: Man
Ray’s Ambivalent Avant-Garde” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2009).
13 Harper’s Bazaar underwent a publishing transformation in the early thirties. In 1934, Carmel Snow,
Bazaar’s editor-in- chief, hired Alexander Brodovitch to redesign the magazine and persuaded Ray to
join the magazine the following year. Ray, Man Ray: Bazaar Years, 12-13.
14 Man Ray, “Fashions by Radio,” Harper’s Bazaar (September 1934): 45.
15 Even though “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism” was not the first exhibition of surrealist art in the
United States, Zalman argued that this exhibition spoke to a wide audience and captivated the Ameri-
can public. Zalman, “Surrealism Between the Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” 11.
16 Ibid., 19.
17 Zalman has written about numerous advertising campaigns that either drew from surrealist strate-
gies or directly appropriated surrealist artworks following MoMA’s 1936 exhibition, including but not
limited to the department stores Bonwit Teller and Macy’s. Zalman, “The Vernacular as Vanguard,”
49-51.
18 Briony Fer, “Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis,” in Realism, Rationalism, and Surrealism: Art
Between the Wars, eds. Briony Fer, David Batchelor and Paul Wood (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1993), 172-173.
19 Ibid.
20 André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 2012), 26.
21 Fer, “Surrealism, Myth, and Psychoanalysis,”180.
22 Hartshorn, Man Ray in Fashion, 16-17.
23 Ulrich Lehmann, “Stripping Her Bare: The Mannequin in Surrealism” in Addressing the Century: 100
Years of Art and Fashion, ed. Peter Wollen (London: Hayward Gallery, 1998), 92.
24 Norberto Angeletti and Alberto Oliva, In Vogue: The Illustrated History of the World’s Most Famous
Fashion Magazine (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), 26.
25 Ibid.
26 Vogue’s staff photographers were well acquainted with Ray’s fashion oeuvre. In fact, Hoynin-
gen-Huené and Ray were close friends. They collaborated on a fashion portfolio of the most beautiful
women in Paris: “Man Ray was to take the photographs and I was supposed to supply the sitters as
well as the props and background.” Shortly after, Hoyningen-Huené was given an exclusive con-
tract for his illustrations and became the chief photographer of Vogue’s Paris studio in 1925. George
Hoyningen-Huené and International Center of Photography, Eye for Elegance: George Hoyningen-Huené
(New York: International Center of Photography, 1980), 10-11.
27 For scholarship on Agha’s influence on the layout and design of Vogue magazine, see Roger R.
Remington and Barbara J. Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1989); Stephen J. Eskilson, Graphic Design: A New History, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2012), 247–8; Antje Krause-Wahl, “American Fashion and European Art—Alexander Liberman
and the Politics of Taste in Vogue of the 1950s,” Journal of Design History 28, no. 1 (2015): 67-82.
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 192

28 Krause-Wahl, 69.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Martin, Fashion and Surrealism, 11.
32 Geroges Hoyningen-Huené, “Bas Relief,” Vogue U.S. edition, November 15, 1931: 44-45.
33 William A. Ewing, The Photographic Art of Hoyningen-Huené (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986),
13.
34 Rosalind Krauss, “Photography in Service of Surrealism” in L’Amour Fou: Photography & Surreal-
ism, eds. Rosalind Krauss, Jane Livingston and Dawn Ades (Washington, D.C.; New York: Corcoran
Gallery of Art, 1985), 7.
35 Ibid., 35.
36 In 1930, Jean Cocteau asked Hoyningen-Huené to work on his first cinematic production, Le Sang
d’un Poète (The Blood of a Poet). He declined Cocteau’s offer. Ewing, The Photographic Art of Hoynin-
gen-Huené, 34.
37 “Vogue’s Eye View,” Vogue U.S. edition, November 1, 1931: 39.
38 Barron-Duncan discussed Vogue’s editorial response to surrealist imagery in 1930s fashion photo-
graphs. She specifically noted Agha’s displeasure with Cecil Beaton’s work in his correspondence with
Condé Nast and Edna Woolman Chase. Rachel S. Barron-Duncan, “Marginal Dislocations: Fashion-
ing Surrealism within the Pages of Interwar French Vogue” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2015), 86-87.
39 Hall-Duncan, The History of Fashion Photography, 108, 112.
40 Cecil Beaton, “Shadow Her,” Vogue U.S. edition, December 1, 1935: 70-71.
41 Ibid., 112.
42 Cecil Beaton, Photobiography (London: Odhams, 1951), 97.
43 Rosalind Krauss, “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” October 19 no. 1 (Winter, 1981):
24.
44 Harrison, Appearances: Fashion Photography Since 1945, 15.
45 Barron-Duncan, “Marginal Dislocations,” 86-87.
46 Sophie Kurkdjian, “The Emergence of French Vogue: French Identity and Visual Culture in the
Fashion Press, 1920-1940,” International Journal of Fashion Studies 6, no. 1 (2019): 70.
47 Rachel Barron Duncan has examined the ways in which Surrealism was portrayed within French
popular culture, including fashion magazines during the interwar period. Rachel S. Barron-Duncan,
“Transatlantic Translations: Surrealist Modes of Advertising in France and the United States of
America,” Visual Resources 34, no. 3-4 (2018): 232-264. In addition, Sophie Kurkdjian has analyzed the
competing visions of Vogue’s editorial staff. She argued that the magazine’s French edition pursued a
more artistic approach to fashion illustration during the interwar period, while Vogue’s American edi-
tion undertook a more commercial, industrial approach to the advertisement of fashion. Kurkdjian,
“The Emergence of French Vogue: French Identity and Visual Culture in the Fashion Press, 1920-
1940,” International Journal of Fashion Studies 6, no. 1 (2019): 63-82.
48 M. F. Agha, quoted in “Links Surrealism and Ads,” The New York Times, January 23, 1937: 32.
49 Horst P. Horst, “Mammoth Tricorn and Miniature Tricorn,” Vogue U.S. edition, August 1, 1938:
54-55.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Susanna Brown, Horst: Photographer of Style (New York: Rizzoli, 2014), 11.
53 Prior to serving as the chief photographer of French Vogue, Horst studied architecture under Le
Corbusier. His architectural knowledge informed his fashion work. Angeletti, In Vogue, 77.
54 Brown, Horst: Photographer of Style, 12.
55 George Davis, Horst, Photographs of a Decade (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1944), 10.
56 Fer, “Surrealism, Myth and Psychoanalysis,” 227.
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 13: 2 (2022) 193

57 Ibid., 229.
58 Hannah Crawford has suggested that Vogue’s interpretation of surrealist fashion photography im-
pacted the surrealist effects of such images on the fashion page. Crawford, “Surrealism in the Fashion
Magazine,” 242.
59 “Vogue’s Eye View—The Autumn Forecast,” Vogue U.S. edition, August 1, 1938: 29.
60 Horst published four additional photographs using the same props in Vogue’s August issue, includ-
ing his illustration of “Vogue’s Eye View—The Autumn Forecast.”
61 Hall-Duncan, The History of Fashion Photography, 13.
62 Angeletti, In Vogue, 116-188.
63 It is important to note that by shifting attention away from real women to the commodity,
Hoyningen-Huené, Beaton, and Horst’s experimentations ultimately led to the demise of surrealist
fashion photography moving forward into the late 1930s.
64 Miller, “With Eyes Wide Open,” 63-64.
65 “Vogue’s 3 Man Show,” Vogue U.S. edition, March 15, 1937: 82-85.
66 Angeletti, In Vogue, 88.