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Virginia Thoren in an undated photo. “You were a camera and eyewitness to a golden age — the rebirth of Paris after the war,” the New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham once wrote to her.Credit...Virginia Thoren Collection, Pratt Institute Libraries
By Sam Roberts
November 2, 2017
Virginia Thoren, an advertising designer who had no formal training behind a camera but became a leading fashion photographer in New York and Paris in the mid-20th century, died on Oct. 27, 2017 in Manhattan. She was 97.
Her death was confirmed by her friend and archivist Betty Guernsey.
Embracing the preference of her mentor, Toni Frissell, for natural light and realistic settings, Ms. Thoren photographed Julie Andrews, Vivien Leigh, Lee Radziwill and other celebrities, as well as models like Carmen Dell’Orefice, Dorian Leigh, Barbara Mullen, Suzy Parker, Mary Jane Russell and Anne St. Marie in what she characterized as “relaxed portraiture” for magazine covers and advertisements.
“She chased beauty through the eye of the camera,” Gaby Basora, the designer and owner of the Tucker clothing line, told the Council of Fashion Designers of America in an interview on its website this year.
Beatrice Virginia Thoren was born on April 29, 1920, in South Orange, N.J., to Swedish immigrants. Her father, Julius Thoren, was a chauffeur. Her mother, the former Gerda Gustaffson, was a seamstress.
She enrolled in a liberal arts curriculum at St. Lawrence University in upstate Canton, N.Y., but transferred to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she earned a certificate in advertising design in 1942.
Her work earned a certificate of excellence from the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Rejecting an offer from the Museum of Modern Art, she was hired by the art department of Vogue magazine, where she befriended Frank Crowninshield, the editor and art critic, became Ms. Frissell’s assistant and developed her affection for photography.
While her artistic talent for watercolors and drawing was recognized when she was a child, she considered photography too technical. She later learned that shutter speeds and lens openings could be delegated to an assistant.
“Virginia’s photographic style is unmistakable and easily recognized,” Patricia Cutright, of Central Washington University, wrote in a monograph on Ms. Thoren’s work in 2011. “She saw a good photograph as a marriage between photographer, assistant, model, light and location.”
In 1944, Ms. Thoren joined the Manhattan advertising agency Albert Woodley & Company, which represented fashion and retail clients, including Christian Dior, Pierre Balmain and Emba furs. It was among the first agencies to regain a foothold in Paris after World War II.
Armed with her Rolleiflex and Speed Graphic cameras, Ms. Thoren represented the agency in Paris as fashion coordinator and art director in 1946. She photographed Yves Saint Laurent’s first collection for Christian Dior.
“You were a camera and eyewitness to a golden age — the rebirth of Paris after the war,” the New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham later wrote to Ms. Thoren.
When a photographer missed an assignment to shoot the latest fall collections, she filled in and submitted her work to American and French magazines, which gladly published it. That lucky break helped start her career.
She received a Certificate of Excellence from the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1954.
When Ms. Thoren returned to New York in the early 1950s, she opened her first studio, on East 25th Street in Manhattan. She later moved to a West Village brownstone, which became her studio and home.
Her collection was curated by Ms. Guernsey and donated to the Pratt Institute Libraries in 2007. Her work is represented by June Bateman Fine Art in Manhattan.
Ms. Thoren married Robert Rice, a former Navy fighter pilot, in 1960. Their marriage ended in divorce. (He died in 2006.) They had one son, Gordon, who died in 2010. No immediate family members survive.
nytimes.com
