The Story Behind the Unsung Woman Who Transformed Fashion Photography

In one of those ironies that border simultaneously on absurdity and tragedy, men have long dominated the trades that make and sell women’s clothing. From Baron Adolph de Meyer to Bill Cunningham, men have also dominated fashion photography as surely as they have fashion design. While a Tuscan noblewoman, the Countess of Castiglione, commissioned the first fashion photographs in 1856, it was a man who took them. And so it’s mostly remained.