Nick Knight Explores Post-War Fashion Photography With Clifford Coffin's 1947 Photo, 'Renaissance'
The SHOWstudio found talks with “Vogue 100: A Century of Style” curator, Robin Muir.
For National Portrait Gallery’s “Vogue 100: A Century of Style” exhibition, acclaimed photographer and SHOWstudio founder, Nick Knight, and the exhibition’s curator, Robin Muir, spend 10 minutes discussing Clifford Coffin’s 1947 photo, Renaissance. While the exhibition itself focuses on the remarkable range of photography that has been commissioned by British Vogue since its founding in 1916, Knight and Muir begin their conversation around post-war fashion photography and the lack of quality shooters available at that time. After setting the time period, the two dive right into Coffin’s photo, one that stars model and future wife of Norman Parkinson, Wenda Rogerson, in a bombed-out mansion, as a likely tribute to fashion’s ability to recover, even after a devastating world war. We then discover Coffin was a pioneer of the ring light, thanks to his dentist, and had a collection of homoerotic photography that has either been lost or burned, no one knows for sure.
“Vogue 100” is running until October 30, 2016.