This image is one of the imaginative fashion photographs taken at Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida. Toni Frissell was born into a wealthy New York City family and took up fashion photography professionally only after she got fired as a caption writer for Vogue. Even though her work spans the spectrum from society photography (amongst others, the Kennedy - Bouvier wedding) to social issues (ranch life in Texas and Argentina; Frissell also volunteered for the American Red Cross during World War II), she is remembered as a fashion photographer and recognized for her stark imagery and as being among the first to take fashion models out of the studio into nature, as this 1947 picture at the newly opened Weeki Wachee Springs roadside attraction shows.

Remembered today principally for her high-fashion photography for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, Toni Frissell (1907-1988) volunteered her photographic services to the American Red Cross, Women's Army Corps, and Eighth Army Air Force during WWII. On their behalf, she produced thousands of images of nurses, front-line soldiers, WACs, African-American airmen, and orphaned children.

She is noted for taking fashion photography out of the studio into the outdoors, thus placing an accent on the active woman. She is also known for the imaginative angles, both physical and metaphorical, from which she covered her subjects.

Frissell's leap from fashion photography into war reportage echoed the desires of earlier generations of newswomen to move from "soft news" of fashion and society pages into the "hard news" of the front page. On volunteering for the American Red Cross in 1941, Frissell said: "I became so frustrated with fashions that I wanted to prove to myself that I could do a real reporting job." Using her connections with high-profile society matrons, Frissell aggressively pursued wartime assignments at home and abroad, often over her family's objections.

Frissell's work usually involved creating images to support the publicity objectives of her subjects. Her photographs of WACs in training and under review by President Franklin Roosevelt fit into a media campaign devised to counter negative public perception of women in uniform. Likewise, Frissell's images of the African American fighter pilots of the elite 332nd Fighter Group (Tuskegee Airmen)were intended to encourage positive public attitudes about the fitness of blacks to handle demanding military jobs.

Toni Frissell donated her entire life's work to the Library of Congress. The Toni Frissell Collection consists of 340,000 items covering 1930-69.

Medium : The film negative is the source for this photographic print

Created/Published : 1945

Creator : Toni Frissell, photographer, 1907 - 1988

Part of the Toni Frissell Collection housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

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Product #: ppmsca10079