CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/26/2015

Vogue: Like a Painting

This 2014 still life by Grant Cornett is reproduced from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza's gorgeously giftable Vogue: Like a Painting, a collection of the magazine's most painterly fashion photographs of the last 70 years. Photographers must create an illusion, Lucy Davies writes, yet "steer clear of dishonesty. They must tell some of the story, but not all of it, so that the viewer will join in the game, completing what has been started, recognizing hints and citations — even if only subconsciously. All this so viewers can envisage themselves in the scene, and take a vested interest in its contents. They end by seeing what they should, rather than what is really there, because the photographer has painted ‘not the thing, but the effect it produces,’ in the words of poet Stéphane Mallarmé." See more from our 2015 Holiday Gift Guide. >>