The 1950s, a golden period for fashion photography, introduced the world to names such as Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman and William Klein. On the other side of the camera, a generation of models was emerging – women who were well-paid and continually photographed, and yet (unlike their counterparts of later decades) remained largely anonymous outside fashion circles. None perhaps more so than the American Barbara Mullen, who has died aged 96.
Models then were encouraged to have a recognisable, signature look. But Mullen was never considered a conventional beauty (“eyes slightly too prominent ... tiny head, long neck and delicately elongated torso”, as the Vogue editor Jessica Daves described her) and did not think of herself as “photogenic”, as she told me when I interviewed her in 2013. Instead, she transformed herself for each job: a sleek, confident Manhattanite for Francesco Scavullo; a dreaming swan for Bassman, lost in the magic of French couture; a tongue-in-cheek clown for Klein, puncturing Vogue’s gloss with a scowl and a cigarette.
