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Skiing the Haute Route

Toni Frissell
  • $40.00

SHIPPING FOR FRAMES ONLY AVAILABLE WITHIN U.S.

SHIPPING FOR FRAMES ONLY AVAILABLE WITHIN U.S.

Add Custom Frame

SHIPPING FOR FRAMES ONLY AVAILABLE WITHIN U.S.

Add Custom Frame

SHIPPING FOR FRAMES ONLY AVAILABLE WITHIN U.S.

Add Custom Frame

SHIPPING FOR FRAMES ONLY AVAILABLE WITHIN U.S.

Add Custom Frame

SHIPPING FOR FRAMES ONLY AVAILABLE WITHIN U.S.

Add Custom Frame

SHIPPING FOR FRAMES ONLY AVAILABLE WITHIN U.S.

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.

+ Limited-edition, exclusive to 20x200
+ Museum quality: archival inks, 100% cotton rag paper unless noted
+ Handcrafted custom-framing is available

Our quoted dimensions are for the size of paper containing the images, not the printed image itself. We do not alter the aspect ratio, nor do we crop or resize the artists’ originals. All of our prints have a minimum border of .5 inches to allow for framing.

Moab Lasal Exhibition Lustre

10"x8" | Edition of 10
14"x11" | Edition of 200
20"x16" | Edition of 50
24"x20" | Edition of 10
40"x30" | Edition of 5

Artist - Toni Frissell

Toni Frissell

Antoinette Frissell Bacon, known as Toni Frissell, was born in New York City in 1907. She trained as an actress and worked in advertising before beginning her career in photography in the early 1930s. Mostly self-taught, Frissell found work at Vogue first as a caption writer, then as a fashion photographer. From 1941 through 1950, she worked for Harper’s Bazaar, but her work for the American Red Cross and later the Women’s Army Corps during World War II encouraged her toward photojournalism. It was her varied experiences and her unconventional background in photography that led her to bring models out of the studio and into the outdoors. Frissell’s style felt fresh, spontaneous, and active in a fashion world used to large format cameras and subjects standing still. Her “action-fashion” photographs were the beginning of a new trend in postwar fashion imagery. Frissell eventually tired of fashion photography, and shifted her career into more lifestyle and sports work for the likes of LIFE, Look, Vogue, and Sports Illustrated until her retirement in 1967. In 1971, she donated her photographs to the Library of Congress, making them available to the public. Frissell died due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease in 1988, but her legacy lives on in her incredible work.

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