“Not Another Photographer”
]Meet Kourken Pakchanian, the photographer who captured the Modern American Woman.
By Condé Nast Archive
By Ivan Shaw
Not much is known about Kourken Pakchanian, except that he didn’t want to be a photographer. “My adolescent passion was to become an architect and not another photographer like my father and nearly everybody else in the family,” the lensman noted in a three-page autobiography, handwritten before his passing in 1991 and recently discovered by the curators at the Getty Museum.
A Christmas present in the form of a Kodak box camera sealed his fate. Being a Pakchanian, he picked it up and started taking pictures.
Born in Lebanon in 1934, Pakchanian was raised in Egypt by his Armenian parents. He moved to Canada in 1956, where he finally put aside his adolescent dreams of becoming an architect and began working as a portrait photographer to pay the bills.
Model with Revlon Nail Polish, Vogue (1972-06-01) by Kourken PakchanianCondé Nast Archive
Still not satisfied, Pakchanian moved to New York five years later to work for the Bachrach photo studio, the go-to portrait studio for New York’s social set. Bachrach agreed to petition for Pakchanian’s visa in exchange for his portrait-taking.
Model in a Stephen Burrows Dress, Vogue (1972-05-01) by Kourken PakchanianCondé Nast Archive
To the young lensmen, taking pictures of “the ladies,” as he put it, was a day job; his free time was spent poring over “Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue very carefully and wonder[ing] what went on, to be able to produce such innovative photography sometimes issue after issue.”
Fascinated, Pakchanian focused more and more of his energy on fashion. In 1966 he landed a sitting for Vogue Patterns that took him to Peru for two weeks, and put him steadily on a path that eventually led him to Vogue.
Pakchanian translated his own peripatetic life into photographs that were characterized by their sense of motion, which appealed to Alexander Liberman, Condé Nast’s editorial director, who in 1972 rang the lensman and asked him to work exclusively for Vogue.
Beverly Johnson in Rio de Janeiro, Vogue (1973-12-01) by Kourken PakchanianCondé Nast Archive
Though Liberman couldn’t offer the contract Pakchanian wanted, he promised the magazine “would keep me so busy that I wouldn’t have to work for others.” With that Pakchanian signed on, letting go of all his other editorial clients.
At that time, Vogue, under its new editor in chief, Grace Mirabella, was going through a sea change. Instead of extended trips to far-off lands, as had been the trademark of Mirabella’s predecessor, Diana Vreeland, the focus was now placed instead on the modern “American Woman.”
Mirabella asked the photographer when she first met him what his version of that type was. The “A.W,” he told her, “would have to be first intelligent and then physically beautiful—that she must be sensitive and sure of herself.”
Mirabella liked what she heard, and for the next three years Pakchanian shot for almost every issue. He felt at home at Vogue and said he “learned to respect such an organization that obviously had all the flair for fashion.”
Two Models on Bottecchia Bikes (1972-05-01) by Kourken PakchanianCondé Nast Archive
Two images stand out among the images Pakchanian took during this time. One of these, styled by fashion editor Polly Mellen, appeared in the May 1972 issue. Captioned “the body-suit action,” it shows two models in matching outfits racing each other on Bottecchia bikes.
Riding toward an exciting future, they evoke strength, energy, and style. The second, lesser-known, image was taken for the September 1973 New York Collections issue and shows model Cheryl Tiegs, another woman on the move, waiting for a taxi on Park Avenue.
Beverly Johnson and Cheryl Tiegs, Vogue (1973-12-01) by Kourken PakchanianCondé Nast Archive
