Sokolsky

Melvin (1935). American photographer. In 1959 when barely 21 years old, he joined the staff of Harper’s Bazaar where he was confronted with the clean, linear images of the magazine’s big names. He invented a style that was closely tied to surrealist imagery, creating complex choreographies where elegant models, secured in a series of straps or inserted into giant transparent plastic bubbles, are released into the air as though in a fairy tale. He was influenced by great painters like Van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, Salvador Dalì, and Balthus. One of his fashion images for Harper’s Bazaar includes a mirror that portrays the photographer as he is taking the shot, just like in Velazquez’s Las Maninas. Particularly careful about the quality of his images, he is famous for his choice of film — a fine granular black-and-white and a Kodachrome 25 slide of very fine grain that enables him to obtain really saturated colors. These constitute his recognizably 1960s style that lies halfway between the classicism of Avedon and the inventiveness of Hiro. He is published in McCall’s, Esquire, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, and Ladies Home Journal and has produced various fashion campaigns using models such as Twiggy, Julie Christie, Ali McGraw, and Mia Farrow. In 2002, he published a monograph called Seeing Fashion. He lives in New York.