Jeanloup Sieff: 40 Years of Photography

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The son of Polish immigrants, Jeanloup Sieff discovered his passion for photography in Paris in the 1940s, when he received a camera for his 14th birthday. His breakthrough came only years later when he was given a commission from French magazine Elle. From then on, his list of clients rapidly increased, reading like a catalogue of who's who in the world of high gloss magazines such as Vogue, Esquire, Paris Match, and Harper’s Bazaar. It is not surprising therefore that Sieff is remembered particularly as a fashion photographer - a categorization against which he fought vehemently throughout his life. Besides well-known fashion photographs, a wide-range and comprehensive collection of reportage, portraits, nudes and landscape photographs was created. Without fail, his singular view through the lens continuously sought uniquely specific forms through a ubiquitous interplay of organic elements.

Mylio Photos – Access your photos from anywhere, without the cloud! Easily showcase your photos on-the-go, resolve duplicates, find faces and look for those stunning locations. SONIA SIEFF — He’d just say, “Just try it. It’s easier than you think.” And, magically, the women would get undressed. He graduated in 1945 with a degree in philosophy then went onto a varied list of studies including literature, journalism and photography at Vaugirard in Paris and Vevey in Switzerland.

By the same artist

All aspects of photography interest me. I feel for the female body the same curiosity and the same love as for a landscape, a face or anything else which interests me. In any case, the nude is a form of landscape. There are no reasons for my photographs, nor any rules; all depends on the mood of the moment, on the mood of the model.’ Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.

Elle magazine and fashion shoots. 1958: Magnum, the unlikeliest of homes for such a sensualist. 1959: Jardin des Modes and a tight working relationship with the magazine’s art director Jacques Moutin who, according to Sieff, was ‘attempting to do what Alexey Brodovitch had done in New York.’ That is, revolutionise fashion photography via a small group of new photographers – notably Sieff and Frank Horvat, who shared a studio for a while. His photographs, however, communicate an undying fascination with the glossy world of the movies, of pleasurable lives lived under the Hollywood sky, of movie-still photography, where a moment of glamour is paused with all the expressionistic lighting effects of the film set still glowing. Though his Vogue fashion shoots of fur-trimmed and pampered London in the 1960s are some of the most recognizable of the decade, Sieff also took countless opportunities to photograph dancers. Possibly his most important project is his chronicle of dancers who have appeared with the Paris Opera Ballet, including Rudolph Noureev, Carolyn Carlson, Claire Motte and Nina Vyroubova. If there is a typical Sieff model, she is a teenage dancer with gathered up hair, pictured at practice, flexed and craning.I imagine him watching people – especially the women – as he sits at his table at Café de Flore. In fact, Jeanloup Sieff writes in his memoirs: “With each woman that passes, I live out a love affair, fleeting but complete. When I see them some way off and their silhouette attracts me, our idyll begins. The closer they come, the more I love them. At ten metres it is passion; at six, painful jealousy; at four, it’s unbearable: the heart-rending separation has already begun. And by the time they pass me, I am released and relaxed and smile calmly at them. They have become my friends, and we can exchange the conspiratorial glance of those who have experienced many things together and remember them all.” By the seventies, Jeanloup’s studio doubled as a salon for Paris’s boldface names. “My father was really close with Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, and a handful of other people in their group — Loulou de la Falaise, Betty and François Catroux, Hélène Rochas, Thadée Klossowski, Fernando Sánchez, and Paloma Picasso — whom they saw regularly over the course of a few years,” Sonia told us. “They were all really, really creative. Everyone had a place — Yves was the designer, my father was the photographer, François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne were the sculptors, François-Marie Banier, the writer. They had big dinners, they would film each other, they all did projects together — my father took that very famous image of Yves Saint Laurent nude. They did it all so easily and with humor, without taking it so seriously. Maybe that’s why everything turned out so well.” B&H – B&H is a world renowned supplier of all the gear photographers, videographers, and cinematographers need and want to create their very best work. He always stressed the pleasure of taking photos. If his favourite source of that pleasure was in what was behind us, it was also in behinds themselves. No one can ever have been more taken by and taken more pictures of female bottoms. (In French, derrières.) Not arses, note. Or bums. Bottoms, always. ‘It is the bottom that remembers; it faces the past, whereas we advance inexorably into the future,’ he wrote. His work is owned by major museums in France, Germany, Switzerland and the US, and he exhibited in all those places as well as in London (where he held his first show in 1967) and Tokyo (where the erotic aspect of his work was well regarded). Other books, which eschewed silly titles, were called The Ballet (1962) or Best Nudes (1980) - although he couldn't resist calling one volume Bottoms (1994).

SONIA SIEFF — Jeanloup’s pictures were accurate, in the same way that Yves’ clothes were perfectly cut!

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