Dolores del Rio

George Hoyningen-Huene moved to Paris in 1920 and joined the city's rich cultural life, making friends with avant-garde artists and working odd jobs before finding a steady position as a fashion illustrator for French Vogue. When the magazine opened its first photographic studio in 1926, Huene was responsible for drawing backdrops, but was quickly reassigned to make photographs instead. His fashion photographs tended toward a classicized, reassuring Surrealism that often portrayed the (female) body in unfamiliar views or included sculpture as props. The disembodied head of Dolores del Rio, a Mexican-born silent film star, serves here as a sort of sculpture in itself, resting on a table and crowned by a flowered cap that recalls a laurel wreath. Huene, who greatly admired del Rio, remarked of her features as a model, "The bone structure of her head and body is magnificent. Her skin is like ripe fruit."