horst | photographer of style

on saturday, rebekah, annalies, claire and i headed off to the victoria and albert museum in south kensington, for a bit of culture. i'd been given a pair of tickets to the horst exhibition that had been on my list of "things to do sometime" for a while now, and so saturday seemed as good a time as any. i will admit that i did not know too much about the guy before we headed over, but i did know of his notoriety and knew of a few of his most famous pictures. things i did not know about that man could fill a whole exhibition... *staring face emoji*

five minutes in the exhibition, i was floored by the man's genius photography and composition style. a true master of lighting (imagine him in the #selfie generation!) and "atmospheric illusion", every single one of the photos from his sixty-something year career conjured a world of sophistication, glamour, and eleganza. breathtaking, truly.






he truly was an international man of mystery figure in the photography game, and his extraordinary work included more than just photos. the exhibition included a huge collection of prints, drawings, notebooks, scrapbooks and letters that were so carefully preserved throughout his life, as well as a few rare glimpses of him in action from the conde nast film archives. it was spectacular.

the exhibition was split into ten main themes; haute couture - which was glimpses of his time shooting for vogue across the globe; surrealism - from a whimsical time he worked alongside artists like salvadore dali and designers like elsa schiaparelli; stage and screen - from coco chanel to joan crawford, bette davis and ginger rogers, horst had captured them all; travel - from his time spent... travelling; patterns from nature; from when i assume he was introduced to drugs; the studio - behind the scenes glimpses of him at work; fashion in colour - the first colour photographs from the mid thirties; living in style - horst's unique and uniquely decorated styled homes; nudes - does what it says on the tin, and platinum - a new way of printing art from the eighties.

it was really fantastic to see all those incredible pieces in one place. i guess that's the point of exhibitions, haha, oh dear. after we'd had enough of wandering the exhibition, we headed into to the gift shop to get our souvenir shop on. annalies love to buy 'souvenirs' from museums, it's the funniest thing ever. with her v&a membership card we managed to score an extra 10% off our £1 postcard prints, which kind of made me feel a bit sad, but also incredibly happy at the same time. you lot know i love a bargain!

so tell me, have we plans to visit the horst exhibition now at all?