Vanity Fair Portraits traces the cultural history of the 20th Century and its leading personalities in the pages of a magazine that helped usher in the modern age and which has itself become a benchmark of modern achievement. From Edward Steichen and Cecil Beaton to Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino, Vanity Fair: Portraits: A Century of Iconic Images celebrates 95 years of photographic history, with classic images commissioned and published first in the pages of Vanity Fair. These portraits have become, and continue to convey, the iconic likenesses of the best-known figures from the worlds of art, film, music, sports, business and politics. The book brings together more than 300 photographs from the two incarnations of Vanity Fair, and offers an authoratative roster of fame, talent and glamour. The first era - from 1913 to 1936 - is dominated by figures from the Jazz Age and covers subjects drawn from art, dance, music, film and world affairs, including luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, Amelie Earhart, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. The second era - from the reincarnation of Vanity Fair in 1983 up to the present day - includes Hollywood stars as well as writers, athletes, style icons, and titans of business and politics, with portraits of Robert De Niro, Arthur Miller, Madonna, Margaret Thatcher, and Rupert Murdoch among many others. Vanity Fair Portraits taps the energy of the magazine that once promised to "ignite a dinner party at fifty yards" and reveals why its pages have become the culture's grandest showcase for photographic iconography.
