Melvin Sokolsky

Melvin Sokolsky was born and raised in New York City in 1933, where he began his career as a still life photographer. He began his career at Harper's Bazaar in 1959 at the age of 21. Melvin's work is particularly influenced by art: the surrealists Paul Delvaux, Salvador Dali, Francis Picabia and the Flemish masters such as Jan Van Eyck, Rogier Van der Weyden, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel. As in Balthus' painting, he is interested in the movement of the body under clothing, the woman in front of the lens rather than fashion. The '' Women in Bubble '' series produced during the spring collections in Paris in 1963 for Harper's Bazaar is one of his most famous achievements. The inspiration comes to him from the memory of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, in which we can observe characters in transparent bubbles. All that remains is to find the tips for the magic to work. Melvin goes to Long Island to have the plexiglass bubbles made by aeronautical engineers, plastic spheres joined together with enough space between the two parts to allow air to pass through. The hinge system is inspired by Fabergé eggs with articulations located on the top of the bubble to allow easy access to the mannequin. The bubbles are suspended from a crane by aircraft cables, the traces of which he scrapes off the negative of the film creating the perfect illusion. As for the casting, it is a question of finding models who would bear to enter the bubble without panicking or suffering from claustrophobia, and it is naturally towards his favorite model, Simone d'Aillencourt that the photographer turns. Plexiglas bubbles drifting on the Seine, models that have become tiny by placing them next to gigantic furniture - a reference to Alice in Wonderland, levitating mannequins, furniture fixed to the ceiling overturning weightlessness and numerous portraits of celebrities are all clichés that have marked the history of photography.