11/ 1900s to 2010 - A Visual History

The following is a collection of Vogue covers since the early 1900s to 2010. These covers alone illustrate the enormous factors that have shaped fashion photography over the decades. These factors include much more than the evolution of fashion. The medium, lighting, styling, focus, use of text, graphics, props, posing, use of colour and of course digital retouching and manipulation all contribute to the evolution of the published image in fashion photography. These covers are also an indication of the digital technology was available at the time of capture and enforce various gender attributes reflective of the time of publication.

This research aims to help define the factors that have changed the nature of fashion photography since the 1900s. It forms the basis of research and does not aim to represent everything that was published in a particular era, that would be impossible to accumulate.

1910

1920s
1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Source: Lenssen, P 2006, Cover Browser, viewed 24 May 2010, [http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/vogue].