Jeanloup Sieff was born in Paris in 1933. After graduating in Philosophy in 1945, he began many different studies, each of them for a very little time including literature, journalism and photography at Vaugirard in Paris at Vevey in Switzerland. Jeanloup Sieff was born in Paris on November 30, 1933, to Polish parents. Like many a child of immigrants, he never really found where his own home was. ‘My childhood companion was solitude,’ he wrote. ‘A lost father – the wanderings of wartime. But I came to accept it and the pain it gave me.’ 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.

There is very little doubt that it was the American and French cinema of the time that greatly influenced his work. His Vogue fashion shoots of wide angle and swinging London in the 1960s are some of the most recognizable images of the decade, …probably even more so than his contemporaries of the time. Ballet dancers of the day were a special interest he had, including the very famous Rudolph Nureyev, probably the most famous jet setting dancer of the time. When asked about this fascination with dance, he said he was attempting to capture the space filled with movement. Sieff was really trying to reproduce the French art masters, Rodin, Seurat, etc., in film, and applied this to his fashion shoots. 60’s PoliticsElle US, 1995."This is from the same series, and it was taken in Normandy... more Adriana Karembeu, fashion Dolce & Gabbana, Normandy, France, Marvelous,” said Sonia Sieff, when asked about her childhood with the late Jeanloup Sieff, her father and one of France’s great fashion photographers. “Marvelous, because he took good care of my brother and me … He taught us about the beauty in the world.” Long before Sonia’s birth, Jeanloup made his first fashion photo in 1952, and he spent the next two decades working for French Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Queen, Jardin des Modes, and Vogue, producing some of the iconic images for which he’s now known — like Astrid Heeren, cigarillo-in-mouth, in Palm Beach.

Radiant Photo– Radiant Photo superior quality finished photos with perfect color rendition, delivered in record time.Your photos — simply RADIANT.The way they are meant to be. 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.” Jeanloup Sieff was tall, elegant with an eye for beauty where ever he looked. A model’s face can be hiding anywhere, even on a New York City cop (opening photo, top left image). He was French; his parents were Polish. An uncle gave him a Photax camera when he was 14 years old. Sieff said of it “If I hadn’t received that camera, today I’d maybe be an actor, filmmaker, writer or gigolo.” He was, unsurprisingly, a great admirer of the Anglo-German photographer Bill Brandt and the French painter Pierre Bonnard – both also great poets of the female bottom. ‘For it is the most protected, the most secret part of the body, and retains a childish innocence long since lost by gaze or hands.’Regarding fashion (and society), the Seventies were indissolubly tied to a synthesis of the sexes, which first occurred through the widespread use of trousers, and the affirmation of seductive femininity. Ironically, that symbol of joyous liberation called the miniskirt made way for new portrayals of the female body in public. A woman’s success was no longer measured by the shortness of a hem, which now came in a wide variety of lengths. In Paris, women discovered the androgyny of the tuxedo. In New York, they flaunted their figures in body-hugging wrap dresses. Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin played at hyper-sexualizing bodies and creating a photography style that was blatantly sexy, which infuriated the feminists who did not catch the irony of the gesture. Newton’s message was clear: women are objects – the Alpha women of the future. 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. OLIVIER ZAHM — Was there something specific about your father’s photography that Saint-Laurent liked?