When the camera lies

There are some wonderful photos in the new Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery - but just because it is the camera at work doesn't mean there's no fantasy involved.

And that's precisely why photographic portraits are so successful: not because they tell the absolute truth about the sitter (as is often supposed) but because what they reveal is taken to be truth when often it is a carefully constructed artifice.

Indeed, Vanity Fair was the first general interest magazine to treat photographic portraits as fine art - its driving force to champion innovation in the arts.

It had two incarnations. It was first launched in 1913 as Dress and Vanity Fair (they dropped the Dress part a year later). In 1936, the magazine was suspended. It lay dormant for nearly half a century until, in 1983 amidst another period of decadence, it was resurrected.

The exhibition brings the two periods together and, given the intervening years, it is surprising that there is not a greater disjunction between the earlier and later portraits. The magazine's photographic portraiture remains as prescient, vibrant and cutting edge today as it was in the jazz era of the '20s and '30s.

Vanity Fair arrived with the birth of modernism, a period of innovation in the arts, letters and music. The magazine featured writings by significant writers of the day, and also portraits of celebrity from the worlds of theatre, music, film, and literature.

When it was launched the first time round, it provided a new way of thinking about portraiture. The photographs were a new approach to the traditional society portrait - sitters were portrayed not because of their wealth (as was the traditional relationship between portrait painter and sitter), but because of their status - be that cultural, political or intellectual - or, indeed, purely aesthetic.

Photographers were chosen not just for their editorial work but their contribution to the art world. Ambitious portraits emerged of groups - in particular the Hollywood spreads for which the magazine is now famed - and portraits of sports figures, writers, actors, musicians and power brokers from the worlds of politics, media and business.

The cosmopolitan spirit of the 1980s persuaded Conde Nast Publications to bring the magazine back to life in 1983 - marking another period of economic and cultural confidence ready to once again celebrate celebrity in its many incarnations.

But the strength of the magazine's portraiture did not fade as the world plunged into a prolongued period of uncertainty post September 11.

As before, the magazine focused on leading figures in literature and the arts but it did not shy away from commissioning portraits of those involved in the changing world - portraits such as President George W Bush and his 2001 War Council and Jonas Karlsson's group portrait of the firefighters at Ground Zero.

The signature of both eras lies in the work of the chief photographer. Steichen, who photographed Gloria Swanson (pictured above left) amongst hundreds of others, was appointed to the role in 1923.

60 years later, as the magazine once again hit the newsstands, Annie Leibovitz took over the dusty mantle.

Of the several hundred shoots she has taken for the magazine, a mere fraction appear in the exhibition - and they dominate the show.

Leibovitz is expert at weaving a carefully constructed image that appears real. The brouhaha over her recent portrait of the queen has laid bare the way in which she works.

In BBC film footage Leibovitz asks the queen to remove her jewels to make the scene look a little more 'real'. The queen declines the offer, pointing out that her robes are themselves not exactly casual wear - aware perhaps of how peculiarly unreal state portraits are, painted or otherwise.

Her 2001 Hollywood cover Hollywood Legends (a part of which is shown above, left) featuring Kate Winslet, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren and Cate Blanchett, appears to be one grand group portrait when in fact it was shot in three different locations (London, New York and LA).

Interestingly in the background are 19th century painted portraits of society ladies, perhaps hinting that the construction behind her own photographic portrait is not that far removed from the social constructions associated with traditional painted society portraits.

And she's not alone in referencing the legacy of the painted portrait - some are far more conspicuous homages.

Michael Thompson depicts Julianne Moore as Ingres's Grand Odalisque (pictured above, right). The smooth veneer of flesh for which the painter made his name is evident in the immaculately conceived portrait of Moore.

David Seidner's 1995 portrait of the Miller Sisters, meanwhile, captures the looser style of American portraitist John Singer Sargent - conspicuously imitating his 1899 portrait of the Wyndham Sisters. It's a fitting homage, referencing the sitters social - and financial - standing as daughters of wealthy businessmen.

Sometimes the construction behind the portrait is immediately evident - for example architect Philip Johnson pictured by Josef Astor with a skyscraper on his head, or Run DMC photographed by Jonas Karlsson in 2005 floating in an amphibious car in the waters surrounding Manhattan (pictured top).

Some of the portraits from the vintage era you will have seen before; they are definitive portraits of the jazz age and many are now signature images of the sitters - a chiaroscuro Noel Coward smoking, the newly married Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera, Louis Armstrong with his brass, Jean Harlow (pictured, left) acting the siren...

And iconic images from Vanity Fair continue to make the news, be that a whimsical photo of the Reagans dancing, Annie Leibovitz's provovative cover shot of Demi Moore, naked and seven months pregnant, or Mario Testino's black and white portrait of Diana taken in 1997 shortly before she died.

As Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery says, the exhibition is "an essential who's who of the past hundred years."

It's now a familiar format - widely imitated in glossy magazines. But in today's celebrity obsessed society where magazines like Heat and Grazia parade warts and all paparazzi shots of the rich and famous (images the public would never have seen in the early part of the last century) the creativity and imagination behind even the most straightforward Vanity Fair portraits is clearer than ever.

The Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition opens on 14 February 2008 and runs until May 2008. For more information contact the National Portrait Gallery.

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