"Do American Girls Like Freedom?" in Junior Bazaar
On loan to The Met
This work of art is currently on loan to the museum.Never exclusively fashion-focused, Junior Bazaar aimed to edify. Stories about Merce Cunningham and Albert Camus kept company with style coverage, encouraging girls to be as well read as they were dressed. To illustrate Simone de Beauvoir’s essay—a skeptical take on the sheltered American college experience—Bassman montaged flags, photographed by Paul Himmel, with stock glamour shots. In print, she swapped the serene profile seen in her preparatory mock-up (2025.889.3) with a more optimistic young face, as if to underscore the title’s irony.
Artwork Details
- Title: "Do American Girls Like Freedom?" in Junior Bazaar
- Artist: Lillian Bassman (American, Brooklyn, New York 1917–2012 New York)
- Artist: Paul Himmel (American, 1914–2009)
- Art Director: Lillian Bassman (American, Brooklyn, New York 1917–2012 New York)
- Art Director: Alexey Brodovitch (American (born former Russian Empire, now Belarus), Ogolitchi 1898–1971 Le Thor, France)
- Publisher: The Hearst Corporation
- Date: March 1946
- Medium: Photomechanical reproduction
- Dimensions: 12 1/4 × 17 1/2 in. (31.1 × 44.5 cm)
- Classification: Periodicals
- Credit Line: Collection of Vince Aletti
- Rights and Reproduction: Courtesy of Harper’s BAZAAR/Hearst Magazine Media, Inc.
- Curatorial Department: Photographs