Monday’s Muse: Louise Dahl-Wolfe

Best known for her work with Harper’s Bazaar, in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland, American photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe joined the staff of Harper’s Bazaar at an ideal time. Major changes in magazine publishing and fashion photography were underway, and there was ample room for creative innovations. Preferring to take photographs outdoors with natural light in distant locations from South America to Africa, Louise Dahl-Wolfe created what became known as “environmental” fashion photography. Her work is said to have had enormous impact on photographers such as Horst, Avedon, and Penn.

With numerous portraits of society figures and art world celebrities against her name, including designer Christian Dior and sculptor Isamu Noguchi, Dahl-Wolfe is also celebrated for “discovering” Lauren Bacall, who at the time was a young actress, working as a model, only seventeen years-of-age. It was Dahl-Wolfe’s photos of Bacall that film producer Harry Warner saw, and subsequently asked Bacall that she come to Hollywood for a screen test. As a result, Bacall was cast opposite Humphrey Bogart in the film To Have and Have Not (1944).

It is because of this instinctual approach to her work, bravely sticking to what she believed to be relevant and fresh, that makes Louise Dahl-Wolfe an absolute muse.