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Let’s start from the very beginning: how did you become a fashion photographer?
My father was the correspondent of the French newspaper Le Figaro in New York. I wanted to become a painter, but after graduation from the art school in California, I was not inspired to be one anymore. I was struggling with the money at that time, and my model girlfriend introduced me to her photographers – that’s how my photographer career started.
So I became an assistant to Avedon and to Hiro (Yasuhiro Wakabayashi) because Hiro used to be an assistant of Avedon. Avedon saw that he had a great talent so he took him under his wing and had his agent represent him. At that time Avedon switched from Harper’s Bazaar to Vogue and Hiro was working for Harper’s Bazaar. They hired me to build a studio for Hiro in the same building so that the editors would not meet, you know. I assisted Hiro allot but I also printed allot for Avedon. Hiro was fantastic because I printed the pictures of the Beatles, of Nureyev, of Sophia Loren, of Maya Plisetskaya. Avedon had Plisetskaya in his studio for one week. And he would always fall in love with his subjects, whether they are male or female. So he was ecstatically in love with her. And she was a great lady, so nice and kind. One Sunday she came to the studio with her tutu, we didn’t take any pictures but she only danced for us the Swan Lake. All the time there were great people coming. So I stayed there for about two years and then I decided that I had enough of that studio because Avedon never changed: his lighting was always the same. His talent was the psychology. For instance when he photographed someone famous he would find out before what music they liked and then they would come on set and out of sudden there would be the person’s favourite music.
That kind of things. So I learnt that from him. Then I worked for few other people. But I started to think of working on my own. I did a few things for friends who were less known and I continued to work freelance for such photographer as Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton. I was sort of the European photographers’ assistant in New York. At the same time and it’s very very important for me, there was a club, very big called Max’s Kansas City in New York. It was a fantastic place, it’s marked me for the rest of my life. Because all the artists, all the musicians, everybody who was in an art field went there. It was in the mid-1960s. Every night it would be Andy Warhol there.
Did every magazine have its own way of collaboration with creatives?
How were your relationships with your fellow photographers?
China. At British Vogue. It was just when Mao Zedong died and China opened to tourism in 1979. So, British Vogue decided to do the whole issue in China. In those days the editors were Liz Tilberis and Grace Coddington, and I worked with them all the time then, it was fantastic! So we went to China with these both editors. Nobody ever been to China before us from any magazine. And it was a big secret, we had a code, we would say that we would going to Tunisia or something. The models that we took with us were not supposed to tell anyone. When American Vogue found out, they were furious, because they were late. At those days every country was independent in the matters of shooting. So we went there and we spent 10 days in China. And I did the whole issue. I think that there were the best pictures I have ever done. Everything worked perfectly. We brought two models: Kim Charlton (blonde) and Esme Marshall (brunet). Esme was a fantastic model. Kim Charlton was one of the top of that time, but one week before we leave she says : “I can’t go”. And we found out that she had a catalogue which paid a lot of money, that’s why she would not go to China. But finally we kept her. But we did almost everything with Esme… We opened the door. I wish we would stay longer, but it was hard, because it was very hot and it was very very low budget also; Vogue didn’t have a lot of money. They would rely on people on the board of tourism or something from the country they were shooting. Flight were free, so we went with Ethiopian airways which took 30 hours because the plane kept on breaking down.
I never asked myself this question. Probably, because the pictures became more real in a way, models could become more actresses than mannequin. They (the industry) allow them to have more character in pictures, I think. The public could relate more to them out of sudden. Because the fashion those days came more from the streets.
No. It’s an applied art. I claimed to be an artist because I tried to paint, even if I am not very happy with my painting, but at least its a whole other ballgame. In fashion first of all its an exchange between two people and you have to work with a whole team of stylists, make-up artists, etc. That’s one thing; then it’s also a very technical thing, you know, with printing and magazines, and commercial things too. So, for me it’s a minor art. Even art photography to me is minor art. Let’s take art pieces today: some paintings are sold for millions of dollars! Do you see any photography sold for million of dollars? No. Or probably there are some, but they would not go much higher than that.
Its’ a difficult question because with art in general, wether fine art, or minor art, the artist has to develop his relationship with the public to become known. There are a lot of people who are not known, who do fantastic pictures. If a famous photographer do such pictures, they would worth a lot of money. See, thats a big difference already. Art is now all about marketing. It’s a new thing in our society. My cousin has a gallery in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, I see it all the time. You have to have a network. But back to my beginnings it was already important. I was lucky in a way to have a girlfriend who introduced me to someone, and I cultivated that and I tried to network and I ended up working for Avedon… I am very cynical about it, but it’s true. You have to build up a package.
That’s fine. It’s another tool, it’s like colouring your palette, using another kind of pencil or brush. Its’ something you have to master to a certain degree and then, why not? What’s really important about art, digital or analog, is its instinctually. Those who rationalise their art by giving it all kinds of the reasons why they are doing it, that’s bullshit. As long as you see the picture and you like it, you don’t necessary need to know what was going in life of the artist when he created it. Conceptual art is probably a door opening to the contemporary artists who are looking for the newness in their art. Like *Joseph Beuys* who is considered as the father of conceptual art.
I like allot the work of *Richard Serra*. For me he is probably the best sculptor in the world right now, the greatest. He builds big walls of shaped steel, amazing. As an art-object its already beautiful, but also the concept is that he makes you walk in between these things. And the whole experience of walking is what the conceptual art is about. I have a story about him. Once he was exhibiting at *Gagosian Gallery* in New York, which is one of the biggest galleries right now. They had shipped these big steel things on big trucks and they were lying on the sidewalks because they had not been installed them yet in the gallery. And a kid, young guy who was selling me marihuana in New York, a skateboarder; he was travelling all around New York delivering it to everybody, so he sees these things on the ground and says: “Hey, it’s cool!” And he skates on it! Apparently, Gogasian freaked out, but Serra said :”It’s ok”. That’s to me the art!
I was friend with Guy Bourdin, who was very nice with his assistants. We were close friends with Patrick Demarchelier; our friendship with Patrick was all about the fun we had together. Both of them, they were part of this (French photographers in New York) gang… Hiro was very nice. They were all different, as people are.
What I do like about photography is imposture. Photography, that’s very technical. Once I did pictures for that class, the Avedon class, we had to do the self-portrait. And in those days I was an assistant of Avedon, I had no money at all. I was renting a huge loft in Chelsea n New York, but there were no heat, no shower, nothing, it was like empty. I got only that mattress from the Salvation Army, I slept on it. And I did a self-portrait of me sleeping: I tied to my toe a string so that when I moved, it would take a picture. So it would show my movements as if I was dreaming. You see me in this empty space, just moving like in a dream. I like the idea of doing that. I like the joke; its probably one of my problems – I only liked the funny things.
I’ve been out of it for so long, it has changed so much.. I don’t know if I can give any advice. The only advice I can give, that you can apply it to anything; is just: work, work, work. Believe in what you are doing, specially when you are young, because when you are young you think that everything is possible. It’s like when I wrote all those letters to Vogue. And also, whatever you do, you have to put yourself in danger, you should go to areas where you think you loose control – that’s where you become creative, that’s where the good surprises come. I have done may be only ten good pictures in my life, really great pictures. They all were done when I had no control on the process anymore. That’s where the creativeness starts; go there, go further, experiment. You have to go into your perversion, don’t be afraid to show it. That’s where you discover yourself. So many times I told myself ‘its chic, it’s good, it’s perfect’. Helmut Newton told me once when one editor said “It’s very chic!”. Newton blew up and was like: “Give me the definition of ‘chic’, tell me, what chic is!” And he went on: “I tell you, what chic is. It’s another world for boring”.
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