'Vanity' Project

The current issue of H magazine has a nice piece on the history of Vanity Fair portraits, including this heavenly image of a 20-year-old Rob Lowe all but having sex with the camera, shot by Nan Goldin (who's my friend's cousin and does he have stories!). Vanity Fair -- featuring the work of Edward Steichen, Herb Ritts, Mario Testino, David LaChapelle and Annie Leibovitz -- has certainly provided some of the most memorable celebrity photos in recent memory, including Demi Moore pregnant, Demi in nothing but an artful coating of paint, Brad Pitt on a beach and Madonna as Marilyn, and Madonna pigtailed on a pink floating ring.

The article ties in with "Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913–2008" now on display at the L.A. County Museum of Art (through March 1), which is the only exhibition of photographs from the magazine’s historic archive, ranging from the early days (1913-1936) to the contemporary publication (1983- present). It also coincides with the magazine’s 95th birthday, as well as its 25th anniversary. As Graydon Carter, editor in chief, told H, making his selections was no easy task. “We had a remarkably vast archive to choose from,” mentions Carter. “David Friend, our editor of Creative Development, and I went through all 570-plus issues of the magazine…and selected several finalists. We focused on classic pictures; photographs that defined the subject, photographer, or time period and surprising, lesser-known images that felt especially fresh upon re-discovering them.”

Others I love:

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Joan Crawford by Nickolas Muray. Vanity Fair, October 1929

James Joyce by Berenice Abbott. (Unpublished) 1926

Gloria Swanson by Edward Steichen. (Originally shot 1924) Vanity Fair, February 1928

Jean Harlow by George Hurrell, 1934