Ilse Bing (1899-1998) was one of several leading women photographers in the inter-war period. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, she initially pursued an academic career before moving to Paris in 1930 to concentrate on photography. The photograph ‘Salut de Schiaparelli’ (Lily Perfume) was one of Ilse Bing’s (1899-1998) fashion assignments for the designer label Schiaparelli. Elsa Schiaparelli was a very popular designer in the 1930s who had close ties to the Parisian artistic community. In the early 1930s Bing had begun to take commissions for fashion photography and was published in magazines such as Paris Vogue, Adam and Marchal. This photograph was later published by the photographer and critic Emmanuel Sougez as part of an article and portfolio of Bing’s work in L’Art Vivant in 1934.

Bing experimented with solarisation from 1934 at the same time as Man Ray (1890-1976) and Lee Miller (1907-1977), although she claimed that she discovered the technique independently of them. Solarisation happens when negatives are exposed to light in the darkroom during developing and printing, producing partly reversed images. The technique adds to the dreaminess of the image, and the woman, reclining with eyes shut, appears to float on a bed of abstracted lilies.