Séeberger brothers

Fashion photography began with engravings reproduced from photographs of Leopold-Emile Reutlinger, Nadar and others in the 1890s. After high-quality half-tone reproduction of photographs became possible, most credit as pioneers of the genre goes to the French Baron Adolph de Meyer and the Luxembourgian Edward Steichen who, borrowing his friend’s hand-camera in 1907, candidly photographed dazzlingly-dressed ladies at the Longchamp Racecourse and who by 1911 had been assigned by the French magazine Art et Décoration to produce pictures of dresses by the Parisian designer Paul Poiret, competing with the drawings and pochoir prints earlier, and contemporaneously, used for fashion plates.