The exhibition presents a glam, golden-hour version of summer in beautiful places populated by beautiful people.
If any one exhibition this summer celebrates sunlit photo moments, it has to be Holden Luntz Gallery’s group show, “Summer Snapshots: A Celebration of Sunlit Moments.” It’s a gorgeous showcase of vintage photos taken by iconic photographers like Terry O’Neill, Arthur Elgort and Elliott Erwitt hung in the perfect locale for an exhibition of this type: Palm Beach. What you’ll find here is a glam, golden-hour version of summer. And not just that, but a perfectly populated summer: there’s Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Faye Dunaway and Robert Redford, among other icons of screen and stage.
“Each photograph is a testament to the timeless allure of summer, inviting viewers to bask in the glow of sunlit moments and rediscover the joy of the season,” writes the gallery. Yet there iis a freshness to all the photos on view. Yes, it’s polished and glossy, without the sweat, humidity and frizzy hair the season can bring, but it still feels somehow attainable—if not now, then in some summer to come. Each photo is timeless and tells a story about summers of the past.
A major highlight of the exhibition is the work by fashion photographers that captures summer in all of its gleaming, aspirational glory. Norman Parkinson, a photographer who shot for Vogue from the 1940s to the late 1970s, has several stunning photos in the show. One regular character in his work was his wife, Vogue model Wenda Parkinson, who was his lifelong muse. She traveled the globe with Parkinson, but after decades of globetrotting, the couple relocated to Tobago in 1963. There is one photo of Wenda in Tobago that captures the simple glamor the couple exuded together.
The work by British shutterbugs is another highlight of the exhibition. Celebrity photographer Terry O’Neill captured Hollywood icons like Audrey Hepburn in 1966, when she influenced fashion with her bright colors, capri pants and Dior gowns—all still legendary. O’Neill’s famous photo of Faye Dunaway at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1977 is also in the exhibition. It’s an editorial photo of the actress with her “Network” Oscar, which has been rightly called an iconic Hollywood moment for its fabulous depiction of post-award-party morning-after ennui. Notable is the fact that O’Neill and Dunaway married a decade later in 1983, but that relationship only lasted a few years. Another of O’Neill’s photos depicts Frank Sinatra walking through Miami’s Hotel Fontainebleau with his bodyguards, all of whom are wearing three-piece suits in what the oppressive Florida heat.
The American photographers don’t disappoint. The photos here by Arthur Elgort capture the photographer’s pop culture significance. Those of an age will remember she shot Kate Moss in 1995 at the peak of her supermodel fame. A photo he took of supermodel Stella Tennant—here, she dives into a pool, faceless from our perspective, fully clothed in a suit and wellies, as part of a Vogue shoot, but hers is a sad story. Unbeknownst to Elgort, he was part of the telling of a tale of a strong, accomplished woman who died from suicide in 2020. It’s silencing and leaves many unanswered questions.
The French American photographer Elliott Erwitt, known for his work with the Magnum Photo agency, also has several photos in the exhibition, including his beach shots from the 1950s in St. Tropez and along the French Riviera. He died in 2023, leaving behind a sixty-year career that was largely humanitarian in nature, and captured both fleeting moments and historic snapshots in his photojournalism for Life Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.
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Other photographers in the show include Lawrence Schiller, who shot Marilyn Monroe, Rodney Smith and Georges Dambier, the pioneering French photographer who first took models out of the studio and into the streets—a forbearer of the street style photography movement.
Sadly, the eras covered in the show weren’t particularly friendly to women photographers—it was very much a time when photography was very often defined by the female form captured by the male gaze, but at least they were classier in those days. We see blissfully unedited triumphs of light and composition, and each photo in the show can and should be considered its own masterclass. It was a classy lens through which people saw the world, and this exhibition captures that aptly.
“Summer Snapshots: A Celebration of Sunlit Moments” runs until August 24 at Holden Luntz Gallery in Palm Beach, FL.
