Please don't smile

« What to me seems essential, is to say that this book is more about women - or rather about a certain feminine ideal of an almost pathologically heterosexual photographer - than about fashion. »
Frank Horvat

Shining in numerous genres, Horvat (*1928 in Abbazia, today's Opatija, Croatia) likes to transgress boundaries, disregarding the comme il faut in his fashion photographs. As early as the fifties, he went out onto the street, brazenly positioning a model in the middle of a vegetable market (1959) for Jours de France, later experimenting with boldly cropped motifs or amusing film quotes. Mostly dispensing with artificial light, Horvat shoots many of his fantastic pictures with a 35 mm Leica from the hip, so to speak. He works for Elle, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and other major magazines, with famous models and celebrities, and is the first photographer ever to use Photoshop for his work. A clear respect for the portrayed women and palpable endearment distinguish Horvat's sensual, elegant pictures from those by all other photographers in the fashion scene.