Horst

Celebrated Vogue fashion photographer Horst P. Horst defines an attitude, a genre, with his studies of women--icons of elegance, unattainable goddesses--captured with calm detachment. This tony tribute to the work of the German-born, New York-based photographer is studded with portraits of figures from 1930s' Paris--Coco Chanel, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Janet Flanner, etc. The book includes a multitude of portraits--many predictable, others revealing--of luminaries such as W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, Katherine Hepburn, Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, Brooke Shields, Harry Truman, the Duchess of Windsor. Horst's still lifes and stagey fashion ads often border on kitsch, but every so often he turns out a strong, original beauty like the raindrop-stained Still life with Tulips (1950), radiant, sincere and gorgeous. Kazmaier is a German dramatist and photography critic. (Sept.)