Karen Radkai

In an effort to educate myself on vintage women photographers I stumbled across the work of Karen Radkai. I feel a bit like a scent hound trained for a specific target: I'll be browsing the web, see a vintage photograph and then read the photographer while buzzers start going off in my ears as soon as I see a feminine name listed--time to hunt down more images and information on that person! I'm a great admirer of the aesthetics of the 50s and 60s, but I don't subscribe to the retro-value system we usually associate with that era so I'm always interested in learning about women who spent the 50s working (particularly in fields I'm also interested in) when most women were assumed to be homemakers. Unfortunately, information on Karen Radkai is sparse; she was married to a fellow photographer and worked primarily for Vogue in the 50s and 60s. One of the only tidbits of her career that does persist on the Internet is a falling out with model Dorian Leigh, which perhaps should be a fair warning that you can't outlive drama.