Contact Sheet for "It’s a Cinch"
Testing out poses, Carmen Dell’Orefice enacts a lingerie ballet across this contact sheet. Bassman encouraged models to dance before the camera, prizing their unchoreographed gestures and elegant lines. At bottom right, a punch hole denotes a favorite frame, for which Bassman made a test print (2025.889.25). Ultimately selecting a different image from this sheet for Harper’s Bazaar, she diffused it in the darkroom, then cropped it to meet the magazine’s strict code of decorum.
Artwork Details
- Title: Contact Sheet for "It’s a Cinch"
- Artist: Lillian Bassman (American, Brooklyn, New York 1917–2012 New York)
- Date: 1951
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 8 x 10 inches
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Gift of Lizzie and Eric Himmel, 2025
- Object Number: 2025.889.26
- Rights and Reproduction: © Estate of Lillian Bassman
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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