If American Vogue was for ladies, Cosmo was for working girls, and its combination of fashion, forthright editorial and glamour features was a winning formula. Scavullo’s photographs, with their combination of elegance and energy, suited it exactly.For 30 years, Scavullo was Cosmo’s cover photographer. Scavullo entered the photographic fray with vision, determination and energy.His big break came with a revamp of Cosmopolitan magazine in the mid-Sixties. The editor was so impressed that she gave him a contract, and Scavullo opened his own studio in Manhattan.Photography and photographers were becoming ever more important in New York’s cultural scene – the work of Robert Frank, Richard Avedon and Louise Dahl Wolfe was noticed not only by the magazines they worked for, but also by the rapidly emerging gallery and museum photo departments. Years later, one of his former assistants, James Ruggiero, acknowledged the impact Scavullo’s photography had on his own practice: Working alongside a master photographer such as Francesco enabled me to learn angles, lighting and how to make a model or actor feel comfortable in front of the lens.But the Vogue studios were already full of star photographers on long-term contracts, and Scavullo was determined to reach the top of his profession In 1948, he made a cover picture for Seventeen magazine. Once, Buchman commissioned him to take an important photograph of somebody some 200 miles away. Sir Peter denied yesterday that it would be a bitter pill for him to swallow if Mr King’s arrival heralded an overhaul of his own strategies.

He learned that he could make beautiful women sublime by filtering light through white muslin cloth or by bouncing it off a white umbrella, techniques which would iron out imperfections and make skin luminous. Strong returned from the assignment only to discover that he had forgotten to put film in his camera.Some of America’s leading photographers became his friends, including Edward Steichen, at that time Director of the US Naval Photographic Institute, and Arnold Genthe whose pictures of Greta Garbo paved her way to Hollywood. His favourite camera in those days was a German 35mm Contax.He was not averse to telling the occasional tale against himself. His talent lay in capturing the precise moment in an age before fast-action, wind-on camera motors were invented. The photograph was declared “picture of the year” by the UK’s Institute of Professional Photographers at its national exhibition. When Buchman launched the group’s programme of “Moral Re-Armament” (MRA) in London in 1938, and in the United States at the beginning of the Second World War, Strong travelled with him.Strong was at the West Coast launch of MRA at the packed Hollywood Bowl in 1939.

Trying to capture the size of the event, he had the insistent thought to get out and climb the nearby hillside. There he photographed the four searchlight beams reaching up into the night sky from the stage, symbolising the four absolute moral standards advocated by MRA – honesty, purity, unselfishness and love Within seconds there was a power failure. Strong always said afterwards that had he not obeyed his impulse the moment would have been lost for ever. The picture was published on the front cover of the French magazine L’Illustration in July 1939.Strong would use this experience to train younger photographers to be alert to the unexpected inner promptings which might give an extra dimension to their skills. Buchman put to him: “Why not come and photograph this revolution?” Strong responded, turning down Kodak’s invitation.In 1937 he took the front-cover photograph, of a crowd of young Britons, for the group’s mass-circulation magazine Rising Tide, which had a print run of 1.5 million in eight languages.