John French:(1907-66), often overlooked in surveys of British fashion photography of the 1950s and 1960s in favour of his two famous one-time assistants, David Bailey and Terence Donovan. Yet this quintessentially English gentleman took fashion photography to a mass audience with the elegant, graphic images he published not only in fashion publications like Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and The Tatler, but also in newspapers. Recognizing Fleet Street editors' desire for contrasty pictures, but also aware of the aesthetic limitations of printing them on cheap newsprint, French saw that low-contrast, ‘high-key’ prints—where most of the detail was in the lighter areas—would reproduce best. To do this, he rejected popular direct tungsten lighting for softer daylight photography, bouncing light off reflector boards. Taking few of the photographs himself, French preferred to work closely with his models (including Pauline Stone and Jean Shrimpton), calmly instructing his assistants to make the exposures.
(Swinging Sixties, Getty Images, The Fashion Book)
