In the September 1939 edition of American Vogue, magazine editors, reporting back from the season’s Paris collections, ran a spread that heralded the return of the corset. The black-and-white photographs were accompanied by a pull-no-punches bit of advice for readers: Start “with a naturally small waist” in order to achieve the “willow-wand” figure depicted by the model. “And,” they admonished, “that means exercise and corrected posture. Let your corset emphasize a waist that you have whittled down to its lowest possible denominator.”

Whether American women reading that fall’s issue reached for the appetite suppressants is uncertain, but one photograph from the two-page spread would have a lasting impact on American fashion photography: “Mainbocher Corset” (1939), taken by photographer Horst P. Horst, and now on view at the Forbes Galleries as part of the exhibit “Horst Platinum.” The show comprises about 50 platinum prints from the Horst estate and spans his career as a Vogue lensman in Paris and New York between the 1930s and 1980s. He died in 1999.

In the iconic corset photograph, a seated woman is seen from behind, her body cut off just above the posterior, her elevated arms forming a visor across her eyes. The stay laces of her couture corset have come undone and hang loosely across the marble rail that bisects her upper and lower halves. The image stands out, even among the classical Horst nudes included in the show, for its throbbing eroticism. (Pop star Madonna paid homage in 1990 to this and other Horst creations in her black-and-white “Vogue” video, directed by David Fincher.) Horst was born Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann in 1906 in Germany. After studying furniture design in Hamburg, he left for Paris in 1929. There, he met a photographer for French Vogue, George Hoyningen-Huene, with whom he formed a lasting relationship, both professional and romantic. Not long after, Horst was introduced to the influential art director of American Vogue, Mehemed Fehmy Agha. During the meeting, Agha became impressed by the young Horst’s knowledge of German design and architecture and offered him a photographic assignment. Horst’s first photos for French Vogue were published in November 1931; his first exhibit in the basement of the bookstore Plume d’Or, in Paris’s upscale Passy district, was mounted just a few months later.

Horst, a novice who had grown disenchanted with his design apprenticeship, picked up a camera at 25 and seemed never again to put it down. He adopted a spare approach to building his sets that made the use of light — and, by extension, the line and silhouette of a garment — the focus of his photographs. Some of the pieces are distinctive because of a severe lack of illumination, thus casting long, atmospheric shadows over the subjects. (Irving Penn and Helmut Newton each put their own stamp on this method.) Horst’s editorial work for the various editions of Vogue in the ensuing decades displayed his wit as well: In “Tall Fashion” (1963), a Kewpie-faced woman, apparently balancing on sky-high stilts, models a pale pantsuit.

A show-stopper taken in 1978 demonstrates that Horst had held fast to his light-and-dark perspective: “Courreges Bathing Suit” (1978), easily blurs the line between fashion and fine art. His sittings with model Lisa Fonssagrives also produced high-fashion photos that ooze glamour and an aspirational sensibility. Fonssagrives, who married Penn in 1950, was more than just an ideal “clothes-hanger” — she was expressive in a way that today’s models simply are not. In “Lisa, Hat and Gloves” (1951), for instance, the model is seen in profile; her cinched waist is showcased to stunning effect in a dark A-line dress whose skirt is splayed along the bottom edge of the frame.

In addition to his editorial work, Horst composed still lifes, both at his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, from the 1950s on, and during his travels abroad to places such as Persepolis, Iran. Highlights from those studies are also included at the galleries, as are the portraits of fashion notables such as designers Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Far from being conflicted about making commercial work for what Newton described as the “twin-set-and-pearls” clique that typified Vogue staffers, Horst “was a big fashion man, who loved fashion and loved to entertain,” the exhibition curator, Juan Carlos Arcila-Duque told The New York Sun.

Surely Horst would have enjoyed this tribute.

“Horst Platinum,” Forbes Galleries, 62 Fifth Ave. at 12th Street, 212-206-5548, through Saturday, March 15, free.