In Coco Chanel’s legendary studio at 31 rue Cambon in Paris, the walls of the majestic staircase connecting the designer’s private home to the haute couture salon were lined with mirrors. They offered a clear and fragmented view of everything that was happening at the parades, which the dressmaker used to take advantage of by sitting hidden on the steps. Concentrated in this maze of deliberations, she watched every detail of the show with the stealth of a spy. Thus, cowering in the shadows, she was surprised by another great voyeur, determined to penetrate and interpret life through her own gaze: Frank Horvat (Abbazia, Italy, now Croatia, 1928 – Paris, 2020). After identifying the prominent figure reflected in one of the mirrors, the photographer fired his camera. He created an image that is as precise as it is fragile, expressed through absence, and could well reflect the moment in which this enigmatic fallen goddess lived, tending to carefully recast her legend once her connection to the Nazis came to light.
The photo is part of the Frank Horvat exhibition. Paris, le monde, la mode, which runs until September 17 at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. This is the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist, who after his death left behind a vast, little-known body of work that goes beyond the handful of iconic images that cemented his reputation. Heterodox, he never identified with a style and never allowed his photographic instincts to be constrained by the imperatives of photojournalism or by the more aesthetic rules of fashion photography. Horvat was the perennial outsider, always willing to leave his own mark where things weren’t given to him.
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Designer Coco Chanel watched her show backstage in 1958. Frank Horvat
In fact, the photograph with which the author is presented on the museum’s main facade, Chapeau Givenchy (1958) – one of his most iconic images – is perhaps the one with which the artist least identified himself. In it, a model reveals her face behind the cascade of folds and silk flowers that adorn her white headdress amid top hat men looking through binoculars. “This image never convinced him,” assures his daughter Fiammetta Horvat, who currently manages the photographer’s archive, to EL PAÍS. “It was the idea of Jacques Moutin, the artistic director of the Jardin de Modes magazine, who designed the composition. For Horvat, every photograph is about a single moment, to capture something that will not happen again, and that shot could be repeated at any time. If you look at the contacts, they are really boring. It is an image that is too elaborate and too aesthetic. My father liked the accident. He lacks the human element that drives his work,” he says.
Deborah Dixon and Federico Fellini, after a fashion show in Rome in 1962. Frank Horvat
About 170 photographs make up an impressive exhibition that invites the viewer to discover the author’s little-known and unpublished images, as well as the most emblematic. It is a necessary revision of this master of sensuality, for which photography was not a testimony but something close to poetry, driven by an introspective search and an inextinguishable desire to experiment as a way of life.
The exhibition focuses exclusively on the first 15 years (from 1950 to 1965) of a career spanning almost seven decades, a period in which the author’s talent was reaffirmed by collaborations with important magazines of the time and prompted him to delve into other cultures. He will also participate in the acclaimed exhibition “The Family of Man” at MoMA in New York, delving into the heartbeat of the cityscape as a pioneer in the use of the telephoto lens, and demystifying the image of the models he takes out of the studio to pose in real-life settings. Nouvelle Vague icon Anna Karina posed in the crowded Les Halles market and then-model Nico was surrounded by uniformed children in the Bois de Boulogne.
The model Monique Dutto photographed in 1959 at the exit of the Paris subway for the magazine “Jours de France”. Frank Horvat
Artificiality and reality combined in a staging full of freshness and naturalness, comparable to that broadcast by William Klein at the time (it was Horvat who introduced the American to the use of the telephoto lens, while Klein introduced him to the world of fashion). However, there was “never any criticism or complaints” about Horvat’s work, emphasizes Virginie Chardin, curator of the exhibition, in statements to this newspaper.
“He was interested in faces, also in the linework that he finds in the city, but there isn’t the rawness that we find in Klein. Horvat was gentler and more respectful. More elegant and introspective. Throughout his career, he used his work to question himself,” he says.
Model Deborah Dixon on the steps of Plaza de España, dressed in haute couture, for Harper’s Bazaar magazine, 1962.
“My eclecticism had its downsides. Some questioned my sincerity. “Some found it difficult to recognize my photos,” Horvat admitted in one of his many writings. “He thought of himself as an outsider,” his daughter warns: “To a certain extent he lived under the sign of the wandering Jew. As a child, he had to seek refuge in Switzerland with his mother and brother. Lived in six countries. He thought, spoke and wrote in four languages. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, not even within the photo. But back then he knew he had a mission in life and while he felt misunderstood, he was never an angry man. He was very optimistic. He didn’t care about the criticism. He didn’t want teachers either.
“Not even Henri Cartier-Bresson, the only photographer he really admired throughout his life,” Chardin warns. “When he finally got his wish to be part of the Magnum agency, it only took a year. He felt it wasn’t his place. He was like that all his life. His relationship with museums was also difficult. “That’s probably why there hasn’t been a retrospective before,” he comments.
A wild night in a restaurant for the magazine “Jardin des Modes”, 1957. Frank Horvat
At Le Sphinx, a strip club in Pigalle, Paris, the photographer manages to gain the strippers’ trust. Yet, frame by frame, the figure of a lonely voyeur alongside a bottle of champagne becomes the key element of the narrative. “The loneliness of the voyeur becomes the main theme of the series,” warns the curator: “Here you see the real Horvat.” Always respectful. He didn’t like stealing, he didn’t like feeling violent or pushy. He was shy and kept a distance that is reflected in all of his work.
Frank Horvat photographed by Helmut Newton in Paris in 1965.Helmut Newton
For Horvat, photography was also a way of understanding women through metaphor. In search of “the real woman” he recruited the models through their voices on the phone. Always women with strong personalities, like those who surrounded him in real life and whom he constantly photographed in private. Thus, the image of his first wife, Mate Lorenzetti, with his first child represents the strength of a Renaissance Madonna, while in the final part of the exhibition the theme of love emerges through photographs that highlight the relationship between the two sexes. “He’s interested in women, but also how men feel about beauty. Is it love?” Eroticism? Or something more complex and desperate?” Chardin wonders as he approaches the image of a young couple in Sydney, whose grief is also palpable in their sincere embrace. “For me, Horvat speaks of the impossibility of love,” emphasizes the curator. “He had a very human and sentimental look. It is clear from his diaries that he was in love to the end. Love was probably the quest of his life.
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