The Beauty Message

In beauty stories, Bassman dramatized the ritual of mundane routines. Her camera lingered on long necks and attenuated fingers, poised here as if before a mirror. Works like this, for Town and Country, may seem to anticipate the aesthetic performance of contemporary "self-care," but they take cues from the history of art.

As young adults, Bassman and her husband spent much of their free time at The Met. She credits her preoccupation with gesture to long hours in the paintings galleries, where artists like El Greco captured her eye. "For me, it was always the very long throats, the slightly sloping shoulders, and the hands that moved beautifully," she recalled. "When I started to shoot, this is what I looked for."