Alexey Brodovitch

Alexey Brodovitch is remembered today as the art director of Harper's Bazaar for nearly a quarter of a century.He played a major role in introducing the United States to a radically simplified, “modern” graphic design style. Through his teaching, he created a generation of designers sympathetic to his belief in the primacy of visual freshness and immediacy. Fascinated with photography, he made it the backbone of modern magazine design, and he fostered the development of an expressionistic, almost primal style of picture-taking that became the dominant style of photographic practice in the 1950s.Brodovitch is virtually the model for the modern magazine art director. He did not simply arrange photographs, illustrations and type on the page; he took an active role in conceiving and commissioning all forms of graphic art, and he specialized in discovering and showcasing young and unknown talent.