Biography of Horst P. Horst
Horst P. Horst was born Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann in Weissenfels-an-der-Saale, Germany. In the late 1920's, Horst studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule Hamburg leaving there to study in Paris under the famed architect Le Corbusier. In 1940, Horst applied for United States citizenship, and joined the army on July 2, 194 as a photographer. In 1945 he photographed United States President Harry S. Truman, with whom he became friends, and at the invitation of the White House he photographed every United States First Lady in the post-war period. In addition to his fashion and portrait career, Horst produced an extensive collection of still-lifes and botanical photographs, a subject that he continued to pursue even in the later years of his life. In the 1960's he was encouraged by VOGUE editor Diana Vreeland to begin a series of photographs illustrating the lifestyle of international high society. He would continue to travel and photograph, and in the mid-1970's he began to work for House and Garden magazine as well as for VOGUE. Horst’s photographs have been exhibited and collected worldwide. In 2014, a retrospective exhibition of Horst’s work opened at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the exhibition has since travelled to the McCord Museum in Quebec (Canada), The Netherlands Photo Museum in Rotterdam, and the NRW Forum in Dusseldorf (Germany).
