Louise Dahl-Wolfe (November 19th, 1895 - December 11th, 1989) was an American photographer most well known for her work for Harpers Bazaar, a women’s fashion magazine. Louise was born in San Francisco to Norwegian parents and was the youngest of three daughters. In 1914, she began studying at the California School of Fine Arts where she studied design and color and painting. She took courses in life drawing, anatomy, and figure composition over the next six years. It is what she learned in this time that would lead her to start to study the subject of the human form through photographs. Her first enlarger for the darkroom was a makeshift version that she made herself with a tin can, apple crate, and a part of a chocolate box to be used as a reflector. Louise traveled alongside Consuelo Kanaga who made her interest in photography grow even more. Her first published photograph was in Vanity Fair. Dahl-Wolfe was known for photographing outside with natural light. Her photographs in South America to Africa later gained the title, “Environmental Fashion Photography”. She would later go on to photograph many recognizable faces such as Mae West and Cecil Beaton. Louise and her work has inspired me in the way that it makes me want to try and merge commonly distinctly separate forms of photography. When you think about environmental photography and fashion photography, you wouldn't usually put the two of them together, let alone try and combine them within your own work. She took chances within her work and I admire that a lot. Also, her ability to capture women in the middle of what they're doing is pretty cool. None of her photos look staged, but rather very natural and thats something I would definitely love to get better at.
All work courteous of Louise Dahl-Wolfe.