The beautiful peep-hole - Vanity Fair Portraits 1913-2008

Vanity Fair Portraits 1913-2008

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

IT'S THE thumb that finally sets my head spinning. In the puzzle to work out what Donald Rumsfeld really is (or was during the peak of his powers in the Bush administration) that thumb must tell me something. Is he competent and shameless, incompetent and shameless or simply shameless? Take a look at it, in Annie Leibovitz's famous portrait of George Bush's so-called "war council" in 2001. It's wrapped, awkwardly, in a pink sticking plaster. Did he bite his nail? Jam his hand in a door? What does that tell us about this bunch of smug and suited insiders and the way they chose to be portrayed?

Bush is, as often, just on the edge of giggling. Dick Cheney is looking venal yet complacent, apparently a man of appetite satisfied. Condoleezza Rice: unreadable. And Rumsfeld, the defence secretary of the most powerful military nation on the planet, is sporting a thumb injury: is it a sign of unabashed confidence, absent-mindedness or a post-modern ruse like Tony Blair's propensity to clutch a coffee mug to signify authenticity and busyness?

The thumb, in a sense, is the kernel of the exhibition Vanity Fair Portraits 1913-2008, 150 keynote images from the American magazine on tour to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from the National Portrait Gallery in London. It's not so much that appearances are deceptive, they are of themselves meaningless. What we read into them, however, is a different matter. With portraits of the famous we imagine intimate access to them; we think we scent money, brains, sex… whatever it is that turns us on.

This is, and always has been, the currency of Vanity Fair, the glossiest of glossy magazines. Launched in 1913, the height of "the jazz age", for 23 years it folded together old school European élan with the dizzying energy of the "American century". The portraiture of this period included old school intellectuals such as Thomas Hardy or Virginia Woolf (in an oversized dress belonging to her mother) and a smattering of society portraiture from the likes of Cecil Beaton. This was wedded to the latest in modernist art and photography from Man Ray or Margaret Watkins. The magazine closed in 1936 and merged with the fashion bible Vogue. After almost a half century's hiatus it was relaunched by the Condé Nast publishing empire somewhat unsteadily in 1983, finding its feet under the helm of a European editor, Briton Tina Brown.

These days, under editor Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair is an alluring mix of the need-to-know and the plain nauseating. A clever, crafted melange of in-depth political reportage, high society scandal and celebrity clap trap. Every year, the magazine hosts an Oscars night party which is as famous for turning people away as letting them in. Vanity Fair is a powerful brand, both protective and protected – just read the near simpering essay by one of its more serious and ferocious writers Christopher Hitchens in the catalogue that accompanies this show. To buy the magazine is to acknowledge its role as gatekeeper. The velvet rope of celebrity culture is always there and, by implication, you're always on the wrong side of it.

The early incarnation of the magazine was certainly not immune to fame. Is it mere historical distance that means that images of luminaries such as James Joyce, Frida Kahlo, Einstein or Jean Cocteau just seem so much better than Jennifer Aniston's naked thighs or Jennifer Lopez's silk-clad bottom? Or was it the fact that its photos were taken by some of the greatest pioneers of art photography in an era when it was finding its voice. These days we get an ageing Raquel Welch in swimsuit and furs surrounded by muscle-bound boys in the stalest of celebrity camp. They had Georgia O'Keefe photographed in almost unbearable intimacy by her lover Alfred Stieglitz.

Of course, it may simply be the flavour of a selection drawn from an archive of 10,000 images. Vanity Fair's current house photographer is Annie Leibovitz, in the Twenties it was Edward Steichen. Both were paid sky-high salaries to flatter film stars. But look at them: Steichen snaps Louise Brooks in trademark bob, en route to Weimar Germany to embark on her groundbreaking role in Pandora's Box or Garbo, her hair scraped back to reveal the architecture of her face. Leibovitz gets teenagers Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson to cavort naked like powdered and depilated courtesans. Of course, Hollywood values and advertising dollars drove both publications, it's just perhaps that the demographic has changed.

Leibovitz herself is a bit of a puzzle. A decent documentary photographer and one of the best rock'n'roll photographers ever, her best work may have been over before she started at Vanity Fair. Her most famous image was for Rolling Stone, where she was house photographer: John and Yoko just hours before his murder.

A somewhat hagiographic documentary made by her sister and screened on telly last week, suggested that the move to Vanity Fair both necessitated and provoked a life changing period in rehab. Clean, she seems to have poured her prodigious energy into ever more elaborate scenarios and her trademark recklessness into exceeding budgets. Her earlier work for VF was sly – just take a look at the Jackie and Joan Collins double portrait. Tits on show, jaws like piranhas. Many critics have discerned a simplistic attitude to race: her famous image of Whoopi Goldberg bathing in milk was effective because it was a simplistic one liner, a distinctive black female comic emerging from an undistinguished white soup.

Now though, her trademark is vast group portraits of lip-glossed and corseted Hollywood beauties, triumphs of digital tapestry rather than imagination. Of course, it's a reflection of the Hollywood values she's paid to celebrate. If she seems in her imagery to be obsequious, its because she is, but compare her to fellow VF star snappers like Mario Testino, Bruce Weber or Herb Ritts and you'll see what bland depths obsequiousness can reach.

The first leg of this show, in London, was accompanied by the expected glamathon and equally anticipated huffing and puffing from serious critics. It must be said that this is a far more interesting show than some recent attempts at celebrity photography exhibitions. The barrel-scraping recent Testino retrospective makes this show look like art. Art it ain't, but even in the disappointing portraits of the past 25 years are a handful of brilliant images. Nan Goldin's portrait of a young Rob Lowe, gorgeous, vulnerable, ever so slightly sleazy with his eyebrows mercifully unplucked. Helmut Newton, the creepiest of fashion photographers, was a brilliant portrayer of couples including Billy and Audrey Wilder. Jonathan Becker's heartbreaking image of a distant and ailing Robert Mapplethorpe surrounded by society admirers is cruel and tender. In a nightclub Madonna listens to a pompadoured Tony Curtis like an indulgent aunt.

Vanity Fair Portraits sets out to establish that the magazine has an intellectual as well as an aesthetic pedigree. Of course, it does. Whether it currently lives up to it is another thing. I think we can dismiss the most recent of the recent photographs – model Gisele naked on a horse, Rupert Murdoch sailing single-handed – as expensive fluff and window dressing for movie studios, media moguls and luxury brands. Yet the access that Vanity Fair has carefully cultivated to the powerful, the beautiful, the rich and the vain, tells us lots about how they want the public to see them. The question persists whether that thumb in plaster is actually quite interesting, mere happenstance or a clever diversion.

• Until September 21, 2008