-Telegram from Richard Avedon on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition at the ICP, New York.

Richard Avedon's tribute to George Hoyningen-Huene indicates the seminal importance of his fashion photography on succeeding generations. Photographers such as Horst and Irving Penn have been influenced by the theatricality and the austere elegance of Huene's photographs.

Born in St. Petersburg in 1900, the son of an equerry to the Czar and an American mother, Huene was forced to flee to Sweden during the Russian Revolution. After fighting for the White Russians in the Crimea, he returned to France where he worked for a while as a sketch artist in his sister's dressmaking business. then studied with the Cubist Painter Andre Lhote, whose carefully constructed paintings consisting of abstract lines and curves gave to Huene, as it did to another pupil Cartier-Bresson, an unerring sense of composition. With Man Ray he produced a portfolio of the most beautiful women in Paris, which caught the eye of Vogue's Paris editor, and led to Huene's being hired as an illustrator and designer. Not until 1925 did he take up photography, almost by chance when he had to stand in for a photographer who failed to turn up in time. During the next ten years he created a style of his own which synthesized elements from cinema, theatre and painting in a simple but striking manner.

The main influence on his development was Edward Steichen about whom he wrote: "Steichen's models were alive, as if about to step out of the pages of the magazine. His control of solid blacks, brilliant accents of light and overall flood which penetrated into the shadows was something new and dynamic".

In Huene's photographs dynamism was achieved through lighting and design, not through movement, and the artificiality of the studio was exploited to create unreal, theatrical worlds in which the models appeared like goddesses or statues. His photographs include this element of fantasy, even if they don't possess the fancifulness of Beaton's Photographs.

What contained and gave shape to his imagination was the strong sense of form and geometry which he derived from his study of classical architecture and art. Apart from his use of all the paraphernalia of classical culture statues, urns, columns etc., his photographs are classically composed.

"I had to compose in the ground glass of the 13 x 24 cm camera upside down. This had the advantage of viewing the composition as a series of abstract elements".

Hallmarks of Huene's style are the simplicity and clarity of his elegant constructions, the disposition of the model and the skilful, sensuous lighting which isolates, illuminates and casts deep pools of shadow. William Ewing, the curator of the exhibition writes: "His work is characterized by a sense of studied casualness, and by his use of light and shadow to suggest moods". In this respect the influence of silent cinema is most apparent with its atmospheric, dramatic lighting. (It is interesting to note at this point that contemporary photographers such as Brian Griffin and Robert Mapplethorpe have created styles in which light is used in a similarly imaginative, emotive, and geometric way).

The fashions themselves corresponded perfectly with this decor, possessing the simplicity, elegance and flowing line which characterise the photographs. Schiaparelli, Gres, and Vionnet were some of the distinctive designers whose clothes Huene displayed to their best advantage.

Although his work never possessed the spontaneity and flamboyance of Martin Munkacsi, Huene's photographs of swimming costumes are characteristic of an era in which outdoor sports came into vogue. Technical virtuosity never became an end in itself but in two of these photo- graphs there is something which brings the picture alive. The simple tilt- ing of the camera creates a sense of vertigo in the one, whilst the illusion of two people staring out to sea in the other is created by photographing them on a rooftop with the balustrade wall out of focus and appearing to re- cede into the distance.

When Huene moved to America in 1934, to join Harpers Bazaar, under the energetic art direction of Alexey Brodovich, his style became freer, less studio bound and also less effective. As the fashions changed, so Huene's style went out of fashion. The natural look was incompatible with his desire to create artificial worlds in which emotion was stylised and the models carefully posed, so that they became as graceful as statues. Many of the models were in fact Society Ladies whom Huene, like the great Baron de Meyer, preferred to photograph.

Huene became increasingly affected by the constrictions which he had himself created, and eventually he turned to travel photography. To this he brought his highly developed eye for light and composition, treating architecture with the same formal and idealising care as he had treated the models with whom he had worked. 'I wanted to interpret ancient buildings and ancient sites, and glamorize them, just as I had done with beautiful women'. He sought the ideal not in human guise, but in the ancient ruins of Greece and Egypt. His photographs of the Acropolis are interesting to compare with those of his idol, Steichen and his friend, Herbert List, and they succeed in conveying something of the grandeur of the place.

In 1946 Huene moved to Hollywood where he taught photography and acted as a colour consultant to the film director George Cukor. There he continued to take portraits of celebrities, but in effect he had by then given up taking photographs. He died in 1968, a much respected figure whose fashion photographs are as fascinating now as they were then.

This exhibition, organised by the International Centre for Photography in New York, covers the whole range of Huene's fashion, portrait and travel photography, and we are especially grateful to William Ewing for providing us with the chance to see the work of one of the greatest and most influential of photographers.

For further information on this and past exhibitions, visit our Archive and Study Room.