Jean Loup Sieff Biography
[Born: 1933]
[Died: Laennec hospital, Paris, 20th September 2000]
[Nationality: French]
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.
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.
[Died: Laennec hospital, Paris, 20th September 2000]
[Nationality: French]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The great French photographer Jean loup Sieff died on 20th September 2000 at the Laennec hospital in Paris. He was 66.
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