eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography

eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography
Jeanloup Sieff - biography
Born Paris, 1933, died 2000.
OBITUARY
The great French photographer Jeanloup Sieff died on 20th
September 2000 at the Laennec hospital in Paris. He was 66.
Jeanloup Sieff was a star, one of the first French photographers to
make it in America, a serial prizewinner (he won the Grand Prix
National de la Photographie in 1992) and a big player in the
commercial photography and advertising worlds. The other side of
the same coin was that the artworld always treated him with a
certain distance. He was too much the gentleman-amateur - in the
tradition of Jacques-Henri Lartigue - to be fully accepted by the
artworld, but then nor was he ever very sure that he wanted to be
part of it either. He was an old-fashioned 'smudger': loving the
very craft of photography and the life it led him. He affected a
casual insouciance about his pictures, and didn't have much time
for what he considered pretentious or laboured analysis. He
revelled in a certain levity: 'I'm proud of the two adjectives
superficial and frivolous', is how he put it in his last book. He liked
a certain vulgarity, even thrived on it, but anybody who ever met
him also remembers a man of tremendous erudition, who quoted
the literature that he loved with a passion and grace that few could
match. He was never lost for a quote.
Sieff took a while to find his place. He had brief stints at Elle and at
Magnum, and left both without either having made any mark on
him. A few great reportage series, notably on a miners' strike in
Belgium in 1959, remain as witness to another kind of
photographer that he might have become. But in the early 60s he
found himself at the Jardin de Mode magazine with Frank Horvat
and Helmut Newton, and suddenly fashion could be shot in real
locations out on the streets - Sieff was in his element.
Between 1961 and 1966 Sieff was a great success in America. He
worked for everybody: Esquire, Glamour, Vogue, although he was
perhaps most touched by his contact with Marvin Israel at Harpers
Bazaar. From then on commercial photography, and fashion in
particular, was his business, and he left them only to recharge his
batteries. Such diversions included the portraits that he loved to
make, a brilliant landscape series in Death Valley in 1977, and the
nudes on which he increasingly concentrated as he grew older.
Sieff had a huge popular appeal, in France and elsewhere. His
pictures were always inimitably his own, whatever their subject.
Brooding black and whites, always exquisitely printed, became his
trademark style. Yet in everything he did, he managed to instil a
sense of psychological upset or doubt within the picture.
A dandy all his life, early risers in Paris grew used to the longhaired
and elegant man driving his tremendously stylish, vintage English
sports car for an early breakfast in the St Germain district. It was
always hard to tell how much of that playboy languor was only
show; he certainly knew how to enjoy himself, but he was also a
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eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography
deeply serious man at the very top of his profession. Almost
everybody knows a picture or two of Sieff's, even if they perhaps
don't know that the image is his - and that is an extraordinary
legacy.
BIOGRAPHY
Jeanloup Sieff's photography delights in the pleasurable. When in
1954 he put aside ideas of a glamorous life in film or on the French
Riviera working as a gigolo, it was for a career in photojournalism,
driven by a different kind of pleasure-seeking: 'the physical
pleasure of rendering certain shapes, the pleasure of those
maddening lights, the pleasure taken in composing and living
through spaces and meetings'.
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.
Sieff's work is frequently described in terms of Proustian
remembrance, an interpretation fuelled by his use of deliberately
evocative titles, like that of his monograph, Demain le temps sera
plus vieux. However, he notes 'if I have caught myself struggling
to remember, it was, if not a pretence, at least premature, in that I
only ever used photography for my own pleasure - even if I then
bewailed the vanished pleasure which my pictures brought back to
me'.
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.
Sieff argues that dancers have a 'corporeal intelligence' that
enables them to fill space with their movements. 'Among the
models I photograph for the fashion magazines, I recognize
immediately the ones that have studied dance. They know how to
carry their heads, they have a certain way of sitting and a natural
elegance that the mastery of their bodies has shaped forever.'
One of Sieff's earliest images is of a spindly blonde ballet student
at Boris Kniaseff's dance school in Lausanne. The image reminded
him of a Giacometti sculpture, and it is an ideal to which he
constantly returns. Inevitably Sieff's photography responds to the
culturally pervasive images of dancers created by Degas and
Seurat, and of Rodin's bathing women. His photographs
occasionally revisit poses made by Seurat's models, but in the
language of the fashion shoot.
There is a more politically engaged and introspective side to Sieff's
work which, though he downplays its importance, addresses his
own wartime rootlessness and wanderings. This side is revealed
most clearly in his cracked and brittle-seeming photographs of
Death Valley and the shots of unpopulated landscapes in Scotland.
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eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography
After narrowly avoiding the draft for the Algerian War in 1958,
Seiff joined the Magnum photographic agency in 1958 - what he
called 'taking the holy orders of photography' - and worked for
them first in Rome, covering the death of Pope Pius XII, then in
Turkey, Greece and Poland. Characteristically though, he left for
the demi-monde of New York and the attractions of Harpers Bazaar
magazine.
featured elsewhere within eyestorm
360: desire (addiction)
selected resumé
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Nagoya, Japan, 1995
'Images 95', festival de Vevey, Switzerland, 1995
Institut français de Cracovie, Poland, 1995
Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 1995
Biennale de Nancy, Nancy, France, 1994
'Hommage à 93 derrières.', Galerie Contrejour, Paris, 1994
'Regards sur la mode', Bell Commens Gallery, Tokyo, 1994
'40 ans de mode', Navio Museum, Osaka, Japan, 1993
'40 ans de mode', Art Factory, Sendai, Japan, 1993
'Paris des artistes', l'AFAA, traveling exhibition, China, 1993
'Photofolies', Rodez, France, 1991
'Photographies silencieuses', Crédit Foncier de France, Paris, 1990
Bell Commens Gallery, Tokyo, 1990
'L'année dernière, Comptoir de la Photo, Paris, 1989
Rencontres internationals de la Photographie, Arles, France, 1988
Vision Gallery, San Francisco, USA, 1988
'Paysages', MJC, Amiens, France, 1988
Paco Gallery, Tokyo, 1988
'Torses nus', Mois de la Photo, Athens, Greece, 1987
'Rétrospective', Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1986
Zeit Foto Salon, Tokyo, 1986
'Torses nus', Musée Nicéphore Niepce, Chalon-sur-Saône, France,
1986
Hamilton Gallery, London, 1986
Journées Internationales de la Photo, Montpellier, France, 1986
Amsterdam Festival, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1986
Maison de la Culture de Dunkerque, France, 1985
Festival de Vienne, Saint-André-le-Bas, France, 1985
Festival de Rennes, France, 1984
Festival de Trégor, France, 1984
Centre culturel français, Essen, Germany, 1984
Institute français, Aix-la-Chapelle, France, 1984
Museum Hagen, Germany, 1983
Hamilton Gallery, London, 1983
Institute français, Cologne, Germany, 1983
Novecento Gallery, Palermo, Italy, 1982
Canon Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1982
Galerie Photogramme, Montreal, Canada, 1982
Galerie municipale 'le Château d'eau', Toulouse, France, 1982
FNAC Montparnasse, Mois de la Photo, Paris, 1982
Watari Gallery, Tokyo, 1982
Silver Vision, Tulsa, USA, 1982
Netzhaut Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany, 1981
Fiolet Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1979
Photogalerie Portfolio, Lausanne, France, 1978
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eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography
Librairie la Hune, Paris, 1978
Galerie Paule Pia, Anvers, France, 1977
Galerie Dieuzaide, Toulouse, France, 1976
Foster White Gallery, Seattle, USA, 1976
'43 portraits de Dames remarquables pour une raison ou une
autre, dont quelques payages hautains', Galerie Agathe Gaillard,
Paris, 1976
FNAC Montparnasse, Paris, 1975
Silver Image, Tacoma, USA, 1975
Canon Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1975
Spectrum Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, 1974
Nikon Gallery, Tokyo, 1983
Galerie des Philosophes, Geneva, Switzerland, 1973
Nikon Gallery, Paris, 1972
Les Maisons de la Culture d'Abbeville, Bordeaux, France, 1971,
traveling exhibition
Académie d'Art Moderne, Gand, Belgium, 1971
Underground Gallery, New York, 1971
Maisons de la Culture d'Amiens, Amiens, France, 1970
Angers, France, 1970
Tours, France, 1970
Le Havre, France, 1970
Galerie la Demeure, Paris, 1969
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
'Paris, vintages', Hamilton Gallery, London, 1996
'Paris, visages-paysages', Paris, 1996
'Mèdecins sans frontières, Paris, 1991
'Fashion Photography since 1945', Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, 1991
'Histoire de la Photo de mode', Kunstforum, Vienna, Austria, 1990
'Les prix Niepce', Musée Art moderne', Dunkirk, France, 1990
'Le choix des sens', Revue Clichés au botanique, Brussels, 1989
'20 ans de photo créative en France', Fondation Bayer/AGFA,
France, 1988
Rencontres d'Arles, France, 1988
'Palais Garnier vu par.' Opéra de Paris, 1988
'Hommage à Ferrari', Fondation Cartier, Jouy en Josas, France,
1987
'La photographie de mode', Victoria and Albert Museum, London,
1985
'Regards sur l'architecture', Angers, France, 1984
'Photo française: 10 photographes', Ministère des Relations
extérieures, 1984
'Photo française: 10 photographes', Association Français d'Action
Artistique, 1984
'Photo française: 10 photographes', RDA, 1984
'Photo française: 10 photographes', Sweden, 1984
'Photo française: 10 photographes', Denmark, 1984
'Photo française: 10 photographes', Finland, 1984
'La photo française', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1983
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1982
'Photographie de mode - Vogue 1920-1980', Musée Jacquement
André, Paris, 1982
'Paris-Paris', Centre George Pompidou, Paris, 1981
'Photoscopies 81', essay on Carolyn Carlson, Centre national d'art
contemporain, Paris, 1981
'La photographie de mode française', Galerie Zabriskie, Paris, 1979
'History on Fashion Photography', Rochester Museum, USA, 1977
Galerie Canon, Geneva, Switzerland, 1976
'The Human Image', Museum of Art, Washington University, USA,
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eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography
1976
'Portfolio 76', galerie Portfolio, Lausanne, France, 1976
'Confrontation 73', Université de Dijon, Dijon, France, 1973
'La photographie française', Varsovie, Poland, 1972
'La photographie française', Moscow, Russia, 1972
Musée Cantini, Marseille, France, 1968
'La jeune photographie française', Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,
1967
'Photographies de mode', Photokina, Cologne, Germany, 1966
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Paris, visage-paysages, Paris Musées, France, 1996
Kobe-Aid fund, Tokyo, 1996
Gainsbourg, Vade Retro, Paris, 1995
Yves Montand, Vade Retro, Paris, 1995
Dictionnaire de la mode, du Regard, Paris, 1994
Dictionnaire des mots, Bordas, Paris, 1994
Ritratti di fumo, Peliti, Rome, 1994
Les routes du lait, Contrejour, Paris, 1994
Portfolio, Black & White Magazine, interview, Sydney, Australia,
1993
Photographers International, interview with F Horvat, Taiwan, 1993
Il treno, Peliti, Rome, 1993
Rudolph Noureev, Plume, Paris, 1993
Patrick Dupond, Plume, Paris, 1993
'Cimetières 14/18', La Somme, Amiens, France, 1991
Appearences: Fashion Photography Since 1945, J Cape, London,
1991
Entre vues, book interview with Frank Horvat, Seoul, South Korea,
1990
Asahi Camera, Tokyo, 1990
Nippon Camera, Tokyo, 1990
150 Anniversaire de la photographie., Photographic Society of
Japan, Tokyo, 1989
5 photographes en Liberté: Essai sur la Révolution, Francom, Paris,
1989
Clichés, Brussels, Belgium, 1989
Photographie magazine, Paris, 1989
Paysages, 3 Cailloux, Amiens, France, 1988
'Marne-la-Ville.', Beba, 1987
Collector's, Los Angeles, USA, 1987
Camera International, Torses Nus, 1986
Photomagazine, June 1986
Dister, Alain, Connaissance des Arts, May 1986
Beaton, Cecil, The Magic Image, 1985
Sieff, Jeanloup, 'Portrait sans garde-fou', Clichés, Brussels,
Belgium, November 1985
Carte blanche à., Contrejour, Angénieux, 1984
Planche contact, no 1, June 1984
Walter, Annie, 'Sieff parle de Sieff: L'envie de photo',
Photomagazine, September 1984
Walter, Annie, 'Sieff parle de Sieff: Faire l'image', Photomagazine,
October 1984
Walter, Annie, 'Sieff parle de Sieff: Balade en Sicile',
Photomagazine, December 1984-January 1985
Walter, Annie, 'Sieff parle de Sieff: Photographies de mode',
Photomagazine, February 1985
Walter, Annie, 'Sieff parle de Sieff: Back is beautiful',
Photomagazine, March 1985
Calvenzi, Giovanna, Il Fotografo, Italy, June 1984
Le Nu français, Janninck, Paris, 1983
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eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography
Ellis, Ainslie, 'Essences and Ambiguities', British Journal of
Photography, London, 9 December 1983
'Photographer's Space', Photo, Japan, December 1983
d'Hooghe, Alain, 'Jeanloup Sieff: Inédits de mode 1960-1964',
Clichés, Brussels, November 1983
Passion, special edition on Jeanloup Sieff, April 1983
Merlo, Lorenzo, Jeanloup Sieff: nooit een blow-up type geweest',
Foto, The Netherlands, January 1983
Camera, Peterborough, USA, October 1982
Sladovic, Anne, Jeanloup Sieff: Regard et Solitude, Quotidien de
Paris, special photography edition, October 1982
Photomagazine, le portrait des stars par les stars du portrait, May
1982
Nikon World, Japan, 1981
Sieff, Jeanloup, 'Monologue Photographie', Culture et
Communication, published by le ministère de la Culture et de la
Communication, no 36, 1981
Photoscopies 81, Jeanloup Sieff: Carolyn Carlson
Photo, Sieff et la pub: Images très Libres sur un theme impose,
December 1981
Maudery, Guy, Photomagazine Ciné, Kaléscope, un jour avec
Jeanloup Sieff, June 1981
Best of Nudes, Tokyo, 1980
Melcher, Russel, 'Jeanloup Sieff', You and Your Camera, London,
1980
Bauret, Gabriel, 'Collected Matter', Zoom, no 73, 1980
Photo Magazine Cinéma, December 1980
Petri, Pier Paolo, Jeanloup Sieff, Il fotografo, Italy, September 1980
Sieff, Jeanloup, 'Hitchcock directs', Foto, June 1980
Jamais, Guy, 'Death Valley', Foto, May 1980
Encyclopédie de la Photo, Elsvier, Brussels, Belgium, 1979
'The sketch of an anthological album presented by the author',
Zoom, no 68, 1979
'Death Valley Days', American Photographer, New York, September
1979
Tournier, Michel, Des clefs et des serrures, Denoël, Paris, 1978
Photo, September 1978
Camera, Switzerland, September 1978
'Jag Hattar att var omtyck av idioter., Aktuell Fotografi, Finland, 9
September 1978
US Camera, New York, Autumn 1978
Camera Photo World, New York, August 1978
'Jeanloup Sieff: la Valle della Morta', Nuova Fotografia, Italy, JulyAugust 1978
'Le Routard du Nevada, Photo, May 1978
Masterpiece of erotic photography, Talisman Books, London, 1977
'Die Revolte des Jeanloup Sieff', Photo film, RFA, no 60, 1977
'A Certain image of French Photography', Fondation Nationale de la
Photographie, October 1977
'Quand Sieff s'évade', Photo, September 1977
Grand Angle, Phillipe Damperon interview, March-April 1977
Flash Foto, Spain, March 1977
'La Révolte de Jeanloup Sieff', Photo, December 1976
'Jeanloup Sieff inedito', Photo, Spain, no 1, 1976
Schofield, Jack, 'Jeanloup Sieff', Photo Technique, UK, October 1976
Foto, The Netherlands, December 1975
'20 ans de Sieff', Photo, October 1974
Commercial Photo Series, Japan, no 26, Autumn 1974
Vorlet, Jean-Pierre, Photo Amateur, Switzerland, August 1974
Trbuljak, Goran, Spot, Yugoslavia, May 1974
The Image, UK, March 1974
Minguez, Pablo, Nueva Lente, Spain, 1973
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eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography
Asashi Camera, Japan, October 1973
Progresso Fotografico, Italy, September 1973
'Marco Ferreri par Jeanloup Sieff', Photo, August 1973
Photo World, USA, Summer 1973
Tremlin, Summer 1973
Salbitani, Roberto A, Progresso Fotografico, Italy, February 1972
Gautrand, Jean-Claude, Photo revue, December 1972
'Jeanloup Sieff inédit', Photo, November 1972
'Portfolio', Camera Mainichi, Japan, August 1971
The British Journal of Photography, London, 5 November 1971
Camera Mainichi, Japan, no 8 and no 9, 1971
'A quoi rêve un jeune maître de la mode', Photo, February 1971
Creative Camera, London, 1970
Gautrand, Jean-Claude, Phototribune internationale, Belgium,
September 1970
Aalto, Jussi, 'Jeanloup Sieff', Kamera, Finland, July 1970
Camera Mainichi, Japan, no 10, 1970
Populär Fotografi, Sweden, 1970
Photo, March 1969
Photo, October 1967
Sieff, Jeanloup, 'La photo de mode n'existe pas', Techniques
Graphiques, October 1967
Fehr, Gertrude, 'Jeanloup Sieff', Foto Prisma, RFA, October 1967
Photography italiana, Italy, March 1967
Porter, Allan, 'Mode et Photographie', Camera, Switzerland, 1966
US Camera Annual, New York, 1965
US Camera Annual, New York, 1963
Laurent, J, J'aime la danse, Rencontre, Lausanne, Switzerland,
1962
Martinez, Roméo, Camera, Lucerne, Switzerland, September 1958
BOOKS AND PORTFOLIOS BY THE ARTIST
Danza, Motta, Milan, Italy, 1996
I had a dream, essay on the actress Kumiko Goto, Asahi, Tokyo,
1995
Hommage à 93 derrières choisis pour leurs qualities plastiques,
intellectuelles ou morales, Contrejour, Paris, 1994
Demain le temps sera plus vieux, Contrejour, Paris, 1990
Jeanloup Sieff, Parco, Tokyo, 1988
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, retrospective
catalogue, 1986
Borinage 1959, Charleroi, 1986
Torses nus, Contrejour, Paris, 1986
Intimode, agence Safronoff, 1984
Vers les ciels d'or, (Towards the Golden Sky), journal de voyage de
Guy de Maupassant en Sicile, Novocento, Palermo, Sicily, 1984
Jeanloup Sieff, (Les Grands Photographes), Filipacchi, Paris, 1983
Jeanloup Sieff, (I grandi fotografi), Fabbri, Milan, Italy, 1982
Portrait de Dames assises, de paysages tristes et de nus
mollement las, Contrejour, Paris, 1982
La Vallée de la Mort, Denoël, Paris, 1978
La photo, with Chenz, Denoël, Paris, 1975, 2nd ed 1985
Académie d'Art Moderne de Gand, Belgium, exhibition catalogue,
1971
Jeanloup Sieff, Galerie la Demeure, J-P Sudre, introduction
Jeanloup Sieff, La Demeure, Paris, 1968
TELEVISION/RADIO
Paris Match Première, Philippe Azoulay, television, 26 minutes,
Paris, 1996
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eyestorm - Jeanloup Sieff - biography
Le bon plaisir, 3 hours, France Culture, Paris, 1993
Grand format, one hour, RTL, Paris, 1991
Schick-chaud, one hour, RF1, Paris, 1991
Télévision Suisse, Portrait, 30 minutes, 1986
Flash 3, Eric Cloué, TF1, 1981
Expressions, TF1, 1980
La nudité, France Culture, 1980
3 jours, 3 photographes, F Moskowitz with Robert Doisneau and
Bruno Barbey, television, TF1, 1978
La Vallée de la mort, Jeanloup Sieff, television, TF1, one hour,
August 1978
Invité du Lundi et Chemin de la connaisance, radio, France Culture,
1976
Entretiens, Télévision Suisse Romande, 1976
Chambre noir, Michael Tournier, television, TF1, May 1969
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