Jeanloup Sieff was not just a fashion and advertising photographer, he was also a reporter and an amazing portraitist, a nude specialist and even a genuine landscape artist. His advertising campaigns included the legendary image of Yves Saint Laurent posing nude for his Eau de Toilette. His career is an impressive collection of prizes: he received The Best Photographer award at the Esperito Santo Museum in Brasil in 1968, he was made Chevalier de La Legion D’honneur by the French president in 1990 and he won the Grand price of Photography in Paris in 1992, among others...
The consecration came when he became a permanent member of the French Foundation of Photography. Born in 1933, he was raised by Polish parents in Paris. He died in 2000. And as with all major oeuvres, he was swept along by his medium and never had the time to reflect on the entire collection of his images as a whole. Hence this mix of commissions and more personal work that has never appeared in his numerous books. Before he died he talked about his work that way: “My photos are like little black and white stones that I have thrown down behind me to help me find the path back to my adolescence.”
