N.Y. / Region

Henry Clarke, 77, Photographer Of High Fashion for Magazines

By ENID NEMY

Henry Clarke, whose fashion photographs and portraits of social personalities and royalty graced the pages of Vogue for a quarter-century, died on April 26 at the Anglo-American Hospital in Le Cannet in the south of France. He was 77.

He died of leukemia, said Susan Train, the Paris bureau chief of Conde Nast magazines.

Mr. Clarke, whose photographs of haute couture and of the elegant women who wore it were published in a book titled "L'Elegance des Annees Cinquante," was at the height of his renown in the 1950's and 60's. He worked under contract to the American, French and British Vogues from 1950 to the late 70's and was the photographer on major fashion shoots for the magazines.

During the editorial reign of Diana Vreeland, when jet travel made exotic locations more accessible, he traveled to India, Mexico, Sicily, Iran, Jordan and Syria for features that frequently took up to 20 pages.

"One of his greatest gifts was doing his homework," said Ms. Train, who often accompanied him on trips when she was Paris editor of American Vogue. "He knew all about the places we were going and he was able to tell the official guides assigned to us, 'No, I want this and this,' and we would race around the country with two models, a hairdresser and a fleet of cars."

Ms. Train said that another of his gifts was "always making the women he photographed look beautiful." His images were the epitome of sophistication, with wisps of veil making eyes mysterious and lens magic creating more swanlike necks than ever existed. His subjects included the Empress of Thailand, the Duchess of Alba, the Duchess of Windsor, Marella Agnelli and Robin Duke.

Mr. Clarke was born in Los Angeles and had a peripatetic childhood from, as he once said, "Chicago to Washington, via Florida." His family moved to San Francisco in 1932 and he eventually got a job as a window dresser for the I. Magnin department store. In 1946, he went to New York and soon became a background and accessorizing assistant at the Vogue studio. Watching Cecil Beaton photograph the model Dorian Leigh decided him on becoming a fashion photographer, Ms. Train said.

Mr. Clarke's archives have been left to the Musee de la Mode et du Costume in Paris.