German-American photographer Horst P. Horst was BOTD in 1906. Born Horst Bohrmann in Weißenfels in the German Empire to a wealthy merchantile family, he developed an early interest in art, and studied architecture at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg. In 1930, he moved to Paris to apprentice with celebrity architect Le Corbusier, and became the assistant and lover of photographer Baron George Hoyningen-Huene. Mentored by Hoyningen-Huene and their mutual friend Cecil Beaton, he began working for Vogue magazine and presented his first solo photography exhibition in 1932. A favourable review by New Yorker journalist Janet Flanner made him famous overnight, leading to a commission to photograph actress Bette Davis. He moved in a louche literary and artistic expatriate circle, making portraits of actress Marlene Dietrich, songwriters Noël Coward and Cole Porter, artists Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dalí, fashion designers Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, and aristocrats Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark and Count Luchino Visconti (with whom he had an affair). In 1937, he relocated to New York City. The following year, he formed a relationship with English diplomat Valentine Crawford, who became his life partner, later adopting a son together. One of his best known photographs, 1939’s Mainbocher Corset, shows an unidentified woman in a partially unlaced corset, showcased his interest in Surrealism, his stylised placement of models and dramatic use of light and shade. Following the United States’ entry into the war, he enlisted in the Army in 1943, joining the Army’s photography corps. After the war, he and Crawford moved to Oyster Bay in Long Island, constructing a lavish white stucco villa. His career had a major resurgence in the 1960s, when newly-appointed Vogue editor Diana Vreeland commissioned him to take portraits of the international jet set. His best known portraits include Consuelo Vanderbilt, Baron and Baroness Phillippe de Rothschild, Lee Radziwell, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Andy Warhol, Oscar de la Renta, Yves Saint-Laurent, Cy Twombly, Paloma Picasso and Princess Michael of Kent. Later in life, he worked for House & Garden Magazine, and published several collections of his earlier photographs. After Lawford’s death in 1991, Horst retired to Florida, dying in 1999, aged 93.