Rose Hartman
Incomparable: Women of Style
with an introduction by Alistair O’Neill
ACC Editions 9781851496990
Hardback € 38,00
300 mm x 237 mm
160 pages, 200 colour illustrations

Features more than 100 photographs, including rare vintage silver prints developed by Hartman in her home studio, as well as a group of never-before-seen images of New York City’s underground style icons.

Chronicling a world of beauty and style, photographer Rose Hartman has captured fashion’s trendsetters for three decades, and in so doing has helped to define what we remember most about glamour and those who create it.

Incomparable Women of Style is a book for fashion aficionados, photographers, popular culture fans and those fascinated with celebrity. This gorgeous volume spans more than 35 years and includes both iconic and rarely seen pictures of celebrated women known for their unparalleled taste and style: Nan Kempner, Jerry Hall, Marisa Berenson, Jackie O., Brooke Astor, Grace Jones, Anna Wintour, Paloma Picasso, Lauren Hutton, Diane von Furstenberg, Candace Bushnell and Daphne Guinness among many others.

Rose Hartman’s lens has given order to the chaos of openings, runway shows, and couture’s triumphs and tragedies, by letting the viewer see the substance behind the form. With her photographs appearing worldwide in books and magazines, she has distinguished herself as a photographer whose eye is so keen - even her candid work has the finish and insight of portraiture. What one fails to realise is that many of the photographs associated with a style, an event, and an era, have belonged to Hartman, whether it is Bianca Jagger on a white horse as she enters Studio 54, or Isabella Rossellini at a private dinner in the Hamptons.

The Ravestijn Gallery will show about 20 original prints from November 4th till December 23, 2012.

Rose Hartman was born in Manhattan’s East Village. She started patrolling the night scene in 1975 as an arts and society columnist at the SoHo Weekly News. Her first big break was a photo shoot of Joan Hemingway’s wedding in Sun Valley, Idaho where she managed to induce Ernest Hemingway’s wife, Mary, to pose for her relaxing in a hammock. Her photos have been published in Vogue, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Art & Auction, Art News, Harper’s Bazaar, Panorama, Der Spiegel, Elle, and many other magazines. Her first book, Birds of Paradise: An Intimate View of the New York Fashion World (Delacorte Press), remains recognised as much as a collection of photographs, as a history of the era it records.

Alistair O’Neill is a reader in Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, London. He is the author of London - After a Fashion (Reaktion Books, 2007) and is currently completing a book on fashion photography. He is a regular contributor to the academic journals Fashion Theory and Photography and Culture and is a member of the Editorial Board of Costume, the journal of The Costume Society of Great Britain.