Fashion photographer Christie Zinner’s work displayed at USC Library


With the start of Women’s History Month and with Paris Fashion Week amongst us, what better time to look into the work of a game-changer and mover-and-shaker of the times: fashion photographer Christie Zinner.

Around 1943, when the world’s first fashion-week took place in Paris as an intended distraction from World War II, fashion photographer Christie Zinner produced portraits of American women living alone in San Francisco while their men served the military across the seas during the wake of World War II; a collection that contributes to American women and fashion history.

USC Libraries Special Collection hones a handful of the fashion photographers’ work, which was donated in 1998 by the artist herself.

The Frank and Betty Horton Rare Book Room Reserves in the USC Doheny Library homes her plenty historical contribution and recognizes the German-born still-film photographers’ work of all but thirty-years.

After World War II, having worked in San Francisco first as a model then a photographer, Zinner moved to open and run her own photography studio in Southern California where she made her mark and marked her territory having worked with Hollywood’s beloved Grace Kelly, Fred Astaire and Elizabeth Taylor among others and marrying Los Angeles prized film editor Peter Zinner.

The university library holds fine points of her work during the years 1940-1960; clips from The Sports Illustrated, Los Angeles Magazine and Seventeen and oeuvre throughout her career like photographs, proof sheets and negatives.

USC also show-cases “actress” a Zinner original bronze piece made in the 1970’s when drawing and sculpture took place of her camera.

Learn more about Zinner’s work here.