Skiing the Haute Route by Toni Frissell
10"x8" ($40) | 14"x11" ($85) | 20"x16" ($275) | 24"x20" ($675) | 40"x30" ($1,950)
Skiing the Haute Route was taken in 1961, the same year that Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color premiered on NBC, making newly-available color TV sales skyrocket. It’s fitting, then, that this is our first color edition of canonized photographer Toni Frissell’s work. The subject’s chic cherry red outfit and sky blue skis pop out of the largely monochromatic white environment with all the impressive impact color images were having on the visual culture of 1960s America. Before the 1963 introduction of the Polaroid, expensive and complicated to develop color film was usually only accessible to the advertising industry and, to a lesser extent, fine art photographers.
Like with many newly introduced modes of expression centered around technological innovation, the fine art world of the early 1960s was reticent to accept that color work existed on an equal artistic plane with black and white photography. People had to see themselves and their reality captured by slice-of-life artists like William Eggleston and Saul Leiter to warm to the idea that fine art photography could be about more than composition, tonality, structure, narrative and form–AND that these elements could, in fact, be brought to life with a different palette. With her background in fashion and editorial photography, Frissell had been straddling the fine art and commercial worlds for years already and had the access to and experience with color film to be an early adopter herself.
Skiing the Haute Route isn’t just a fabulous image of glamorous leisure, it’s a humorous one, too–the skier’s white hat makes it appear as if she might be half snowman, and the picture’s use of the term “haute” in the title is surely a play on words that references the fiery hue donned by the subject (aside from being a nod to her aforementioned fashion background). Also, instead of skiing, she’s reclining as if she doesn’t have a care in the world.
As always, Frissell’s stunning positioning of the human form is front and center. If you squint, reducing your view of the photograph to fuzzy shapes in your field of vision, something like an Ellsworth Kelly or Willem de Kooning composition emerges. The skier’s body becomes a defiant swipe of crimson, her skis an energetic line of blue. This photograph is a stellar example of Frissell’s triumphant control of the most haute trend to ever change the face of photography.
More work by Toni Frissell:
A couple walking along the Seine River in Paris
Frida Kahlo standing next to an agave plant
Floating
Fashion Models in Swim Suits
