Rihanna publicly mourned the passing of the great fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh, who took many of the most iconic fashion photos of the last half century and who helped create the notion of the supermodel.
Lindbergh’s catalog of images was second to none in capturing human beauty at its most alluring. He often asked his subject to remove makeup and his photos always seemed to capture something essential and pure.
Here’s one of the early black and white renderings of the original supermodels. Look how young! Especially Cindy Crawford to the right, where she seems like she’s about to star in a Francis Ford Coppola teen drama like Rumble Fish:
The most recent model pics posted to Lindbergh’s own instagram are of Dutch sensation Birgit Kos:
Here’s more iconic pics:
And here is the man himself:
