For Yves Saint Laurent, working with photographers was a means of exploring his own limits, of giving his clothes another life beyond a purely material one. His creations were photographed by some of the greatest photographers in the world, in the studio and in natural settings, in color and in black and white.
Over the course of forty years, those photographed for Saint Laurent’s collections included top actresses and models, from Audrey Hepburn and Catherine Deneuve to Naomi Campbell.
Polaroids taken by the fashion house staff, changing rooms at 5 Avenue Marceau, Paris. Photography credit: © Yves Saint Laurent © Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent. Evening dress worn by Naomi Campbell, 1987 Fall/Winter haute couture collection, July 1987
“Yves Saint Laurent did not just create clothes. He was an architect, a sculptor, and a painter, playing with line, form, and fabric in space,” writes director of the Rencontres d’Arles photo festival, Christoph Wiesner, in our new book, Yves Saint Laurent and Photography. “Photography was not simply a promotional tool; it was a way of taking his creations further, revealing their lines and shapes in new ways by engaging them in a continuous dialogue with light, movement, and the unexpected.”
Yves Saint Laurent and Photography features the designer’s collaborations with some of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, including such legends as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, David Bailey, Helmut Newton, William Klein, Sarah Moon, Annie Leibovitz, Paolo Roversi, and Juergen Teller.
With such a sharp eye for what made couture ping on the page, it’s not surprising that when it came to his own portraits, the way in which Yves would be personalised for prosperity, he was equally smart in his choice of photographer. For Saint Laurent’s first ever portrait in 1957, the year in which he began working as creative director at Dior, that particular honor fell to Irving Penn.
Yves Saint Laurent and Photography. With forewords by Madison Cox and Christoph Wiesner, and texts by Elsa Janssen, Simon Baker, Serena Bucalo-Mussely, Alice Morin, and Clémentine Cuinet. Phaidon
In 1957, Irving Penn, or Mr. Penn, as he was called by almost everyone he worked with, already had an unparalleled status in the photography world, having made some of the greatest portraits, fashion pictures, and even documentary work of the mid-twentieth century.
“Since the late 1940s, Penn had been producing a series of “existential” portraits for American Vogue of iconic figures, such as Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, Alfred Hitchcock, Truman Capote, Francis Bacon, Colette, Marlene Dietrich, and Pablo Picasso,” Serena Bucalo Mussely writes in Yves Saint Laurent and Photography .
“Sometimes pushing them into a corner of the room, Penn photographed his subjects against a plain untreated background, using a wide-angle lens, which allowed him to exaggerate certain physical details and to concentrate on a specific area of the face in order to bring out the subject’s inner character.”
Christian Dior took part in the project in 1947, posing memorably for Penn on an old carpet, and, ten years later, in November 1957, Yves Saint Laurent offered himself up for a portrait. (Our main image Irving Penn, Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, 1957. Photography credit: © The Irving Penn Foundation © Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent).
Yves Saint Laurent and Photography. With forewords by Madison Cox and Christoph Wiesner, and texts by Elsa Janssen, Simon Baker, Serena Bucalo-Mussely, Alice Morin, and Clémentine Cuinet. Phaidon
“In it Penn shows his unmistakable mastery of composition and lighting. The young couturier is photographed in profile, facing left, his head turning sharply, as if caught at the moment of turning to look at the camera. The pared-down studio setting allowed Penn to get straight to the essence of the subject and focus attention on Saint Laurent’s gaze. While Saint Laurent looks mild on the outside, his piercing eyes reveal great determination.”
“In spite of this, there is a certain degree of vulnerability about his face, part of which remains subtly in shadow. In what we can readily imagine is a work scene, his arms are stretched out beyond the frame, as if the photo was taken as the couturier was kneeling to adjust the hang of a dress. The framing is reminiscent of that found in some self-portraits painted in front of a mirror, where the viewer cannot see either the palette or easel, but guesses they are there.”
“Penn’s treatment of Yves Saint Laurent,” writes Christoph Wiesner, “is radically minimalistic, allowing for a picture of the man to emerge. The restrained framing, rigorous use of black and white, and dense play of light and shade reveal a quiet vulnerability. It is not just the couturier who is being photographed, but the inner man, with his doubts and silences, his subtly melancholic gaze.”
Yves Saint Laurent and Photography shines new light on the world of the genius couturier, tracing both the course of fashion and the history of 20th–century photography. This beautifully designed book features an astonishing range of imagery: breathtaking fashion photographs of subjects such as Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve, Naomi Campbell, and Kate Moss; portraits of Saint Laurent; and never-before-seen archival documents, all packaged in a luxe, oversized volume.
