Gallery: Arthur Elgort's Photos
Though not a journalist by training—he grew up in New York City and studied painting at Hunter College—Elgort travels light, always has a camera in hand, and has a newsman's eye for catching an unexpected moment. He is driven by a love for dance and jazz, and in his photography those twin enthusiasms emerge as a passion for expansive movement and improvisation.
"He just sort of keeps talking and shooting, and eventually the models' defenses break down and they're just quite happy to leap over a wall."
On shoots, Elgort will watch, chat—and, most important, wait. On a Vogue magazine shoot back in 1995, an entire afternoon's worth of photographs led to a spectacular splash when model Stella Tennant, hot and tired from working in winter tweeds under the summer sun—which is so often the case in an industry that gallops along six months ahead of the rest of us—took a leap into a pool of water, still dressed in her designer duds. Now that was the picture Elgort had been waiting for!
"He just sort of keeps talking and shooting, and eventually the models' defenses break down and they're just quite happy to leap over a wall," says his longtime friend and collaborator, Grace Coddington, the flame-haired Vogue editor made famous in the 2009 documentary The September Issue.
Elgort's patience also pays off in small, sweet ways. There was nothing more charming than his recent photograph, again for Vogue, of model Liya Kebede alongside her husband and two children. Elgort stole a precious moment when Kebede's little daughter peered curiously under the hem of her mother's long dress.
"He brought joy to fashion photography," Coddington says. Indeed, the eye doesn't linger on the dress' fanciful floral print or even on Kebede's lyrical features. Instead, Elgort captures the pleasures of fashion through the light-hearted curiosity of childhood.
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