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Variant of Twenty-Four Hour Fashion

1957
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 852
Throughout the 1950s, Bassman refined the style that she had begun developing in Paris. On location at El Rancho Vegas, she reprised some signature moves. As in earlier photographs, she embraced atmospheric distortion, clouding top model Evelyn Tripp in a smoky haze. For Bassman, cigarettes were both evocative props and printing tools. In the darkroom, she sometimes blew smoke beneath the enlarger to diffuse the light and add an element of blur.

Slinging cards and stacking chips, Tripp embodies the Bazaar’s evolving vision of femininity (embellished, perhaps, for the Vegas frontier). But even as magazine mores began to shift, Bassman’s lexicon of glamour—the curving neck, the tossed head—would persist for years to come.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Variant of Twenty-Four Hour Fashion
  • Artist: Lillian Bassman (American, Brooklyn, New York 1917–2012 New York)
  • Date: 1957
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: 14 × 11 in. (35.6 × 27.9 cm)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gift of Lizzie and Eric Himmel, 2025
  • Object Number: 2025.889.33
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Estate of Lillian Bassman
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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