Gleb Derujinsky | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 19, 1925 New York City,New York, U.S. |
| Died | June 9, 2011(2011-06-09) (aged 86) Durango, Colorado, U.S. |
| Occupation | Photographer |
| Website | http://www.glebderujinsky.com/ |
Gleb Derujinsky (March 19, 1925–June 9, 2011) was an American fashion photographer. He worked forEsquire,Look,Life,Glamour,Town and Country andThe New York Times Magazine, before shooting extensively forHarper’s Bazaar.[1]Eileen Ford, founder ofFord Models agency, described him as an “early visionary on a path that others were to follow”.[2]
Gleb Derujinsky was born inNew York City in 1925,[3] and named after his fatherGleb W. Derujinsky, ananti-communistWhite emigre descended from theRussian nobility and a successful sculptor.[4] The Derujinsky family served theHouse of Romanov since the reign ofPeter the Great, and their relatives included the composerNikolai Rimsky-Korsakov[5] and the painterMikhail Vrubel.
Derujinsky’s mother, the classical pianist Alexandra Micholoff Derujinsky, died in the late 1950s.[5]
Derujinsky’s first languages were Russian and French,[6] and he went on to learn English while enrolled at theTrinity School in New York.
In 1942, Derujinsky became a corporal in the army and stayed until after the end ofWorld War II. His language abilities and negotiation skills contributed to his being promoted to Staff Sergeant halfway through his tours,[5] and learnedMorse Code in just 30 days.[6]
Upon his return to New York City, he opened his first photography studio with his veteran loan. By February 1948, he landed his first cover withCollier’s magazine. Shortly thereafter, he began working forHarper’s Bazaar Jr., an offshoot ofHarper’s Bazaar aimed towards college-age women[6] that became a supplement toHarper’s Bazaar. Derujinsky was retained as a freelance photographer, working alongsideRichard Avedon,Lillian Bassman, andLouise Dahl-Wolfe for editorsCarmel Snow andDiana Vreeland and art directorAlexey Brodovitch.[7][8] Citing the great photographerHorst P. Horst as a key influence,[9] Derujinsky photographed theParis Spring collections from 1953 to 1963 and was known for his outlandish ideas and travel images taken in remote locations all over the world at the time when travel, especially by air, was far from common.[6]
Derujinsky also freelanced forLook Magazine,Town and Country,The New York Times Magazine,Ladies’ Home Journal,Esquire,Glamour,Seventeen,Life, andGood Housekeeping[1].
Working extensively withCarmen Dell’Orefice[10] and his then-wife Ruth Neumann-Derujinsky, his work also featured many of the era’s top models, fromJean Patchett andJean Shrimpton, toNena Von Schlebrügge and Iris Bianchi.[9]In 1957, to commemorate the inauguration ofPan Am’sBoeing 707, Derujinsky, dubbed “the White Russian,”[3] travelled around the world with Ruth Neumann andNena Von Schlebrügge, photographing the former in 11 countries in the space of 28 days.[11][12] His photographs of theParis collections of the same year became a 25-page spread inHarper’s Bazaar.
In 1968, he began shooting television commercials forUnion Carbide,Dolly Madison,Johnson & Johnson,Texas Instruments, andRevlon, going on to win several awards atCannes andVenice.[13]
Derujinsky married four models in his lifetime and had Andrea Derujinsky with his third wife and cover girl Ruth Neumann.[6] In 1972, a few years after his divorce from Ruth Neumann, he married Wallis Fairfax Gault with whom he remained for 42 years until their deaths in 2011 in a car accident inDurango,Colorado, where they had lived for nearly 30 years.[5][6]
In Durango, Derujinsky opened a jewelry studio, One of a Kind, making and designing his own pieces. He turned his love of skiing into a career when he qualified as an instructor in nearbyPurgatory and taught in the children’s division for over a decade.[5] He earned an instructor’s license as a glider pilot and was instrumental in starting the Durango Soaring Club atLa Plata Airport, now known asAnimas Air Park. He flew sailplanes in cross-country competitions, and in the late sixties and early seventies, he was one of the top ten sailplane pilots in the country.[14] His achievements later in life include building a carbon fiber bicycle, whose patented design was one of the first to be used in an air tunnel test, as well as being used in the1984 Olympic trials inLos Angeles.[3]
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