Erwin Blumenfeld met Lisa Fonssagrives around 1938, in Paris where she was working as a model, for the French edition of Vogue. One of the first sittings was modeling hats for Elsa Schiaparelli (1) alongside the models Muth and Lyla Zelensky. Erwin Blumenfeld loved the fact that Lisa, a former dancer, was rather fearless, and he photographed her on a horse, with a pig (!) (2), and famously atop the Eiffel tower in “a roomy dress in white surah with square motif painted in several colors” by Lucien Lelong for the Portfolio de Vogue : La Tour Eiffel, published in the May 1939 issue of the French Vogue for the 50th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower (3).

In an interview by David Seidner :
-“Weren’t you petrified when you hung off the Eiffel Tower for Blumenfeld?”
– “No, I was too young and too strong. I was a dancer and a skier and very athletic.”
They worked again together in New York in the fifties (4) although at that time, Lisa posed mainly for her second husband, the photographer Irving Penn.
She says about Blumenfeld: “He was marvelous. He made you feel so beautiful. He used to hold my face in his hands like some fragile flower, so gentle, to pose it in the right light.”

Tom Penn gave a number of prints to the MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photo-Paris) of his mother, Lisa, photographed by a number of famous photographers, Fernand Fonssagrives, Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, Blumenfeld and Irving Penn.

Exhibited at the MEP in 2024, with a publication “Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, Fashion Icon” eds.Skira-MEP, 2024.