How India and Pakistan Shaped Influential Fashion Photographer Frank Horvat’s Career

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A young person with dark hair and traditional jewelry, including a maang tikka and bangles, covers part of their face with their hand.

A new book explores the images groundbreaking fashion photographer Frank Horvat took in India and Pakistan early in his career, and how the experience shaped his work.

Frank Horvat, who passed away in 2020, is best known for his iconic fashion photography. Born in Abbazia, Italy (now Opatija, Croatia), in 1928, Horvat was one of the first artists to apply the 35mm film camera and reportage techniques to fashion art photography.

A black-and-white close-up shows a person wearing a traditional head covering, their face reflected in an ornate, circular hand mirror held by multiple hands.

A high-angle, black-and-white shot shows people walking up stone stairs within the geometric, weathered structures of an observatory.

A young boy stands in the center of a crowded, dimly lit room filled with seated men, with birdcages hanging from the ceiling.

But before becoming one of the most influential fashion photographers of his generation, he embarked on a journey through India and Pakistan that would shape his photographic vision for years to come. In 1952, at the age of 25, Horvat traveled to the region, spending two years photographing its people, rituals, and landscapes.

A woman in a headscarf sits by a window, focused on sewing or needlework in her hands.

A man in a dark blazer and white shorts stands in shallow ocean water, holding a seashell to his face with both hands.

A new book, Frank Horvat. The Birth of a Photographer / La naissance d’un regard, published by Kehrer Verlag, brings together around 100 black-and-white photographs from these formative journeys for the first time — offering a rare insight into the early work of a photographer whose practice would extend far beyond fashion.

Horvat’s journey to India and Pakistan followed his first encounter with Indian soldiers in Switzerland during the Second World War, where he had arrived as a young Hungarian Jewish refugee. He spent two years traveling through India and Pakistan, photographing rituals, landscapes, and people with a curiosity and sensitivity that would become hallmarks of his later work.

‘The True Starting Point of my Journey as a Photographer’

His photographs were soon published in Europe and the United States, and by the time he returned, he had already begun to establish an international reputation, before embarking on his pioneering career in fashion photography.

A crowded, narrow street in a South Asian city features numerous hanging signs with Urdu text, pedestrians, and a person riding a bicycle.

A black-and-white close-up shows two young women wearing headscarves, with one woman's hand resting on the other's shoulder.

A low-angle, black-and-white shot showing the lower bodies and legs of several men wearing traditional dhotis and dark leather shoes.

Among the most celebrated images from this early period is a photograph of a bride taken in Pakistan in 1952. Edward Steichen selected the image for the landmark exhibition The Family of Man at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York in 1955.

Horvat returned to India in 1962. The book brings together, for the first time, around one hundred black-and-white photographs from his journeys to India and Pakistan, documenting a formative period in his career.

“It seems to me that these images ‘go beyond the subject’, and more generally, that this trip was the true starting point of my journey as a photographer,” Horvat said.

Although Horvat is best known for his fashion photography, which was published between the mid-1950s and the end of the 1980s, his photographic opus also includes photojournalism, portraiture, landscape, nature, and sculpture.

Horvat was briefly a member of the American picture agency Magnum before moving to Paris in the 1970s. He continued to photograph and experiment with new technologies, including digital cameras and Photoshop. He also continued to publish and exhibit his work until his death at the age of 92.

Frank Horvat. The Birth of a Photographer / La naissance d’un regard, published by Kehrer Verlag, can be purchased here.

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