George Hoyningen-Huene

(American/Russian, 1900–1968)

George Hoyningen-Huene was an American-Russian fashion photographer known for his elegant black-and-white works. He was notably one of the first photographers to take pictures of his models from a higher vantage point, often giving his models the quality of a Classical Greek sculpture. Born Baron George Hoyningen-Huene on September 4, 1900 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, his father was a Baltic nobleman and his mother the daughter of an American diplomat. During the Russian Revolution, Hoyningen-Huene and his family fled to London before settling in Paris after World War I. In 1925, the young artist was working his way up the ranks as a photographer for French Vogue, where he met the German-born photographer Horst P. Horst. A decade later, Hoyningen-Huene moved to New York where he signed an exclusive contract with Harper’s Bazaar. In the years that followed, the photographer relocated to Los Angeles where he worked in the film industry as a color consultant and celebrity portraitist. Hoyingen-Huene died on September 12, 1968 in Los Angeles, CA. Today, his photographs are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.