The International Center of Photography in New York is presenting an exhibition devoted to the relationship between Yves Saint Laurent and photography.
It brings together around three hundred works and archival materials: finished photographs, contact sheets, advertising campaigns, magazines and personal images. Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, William Klein. Enormous names, of course. Yet the material that interests me most is what usually remains behind the scenes.
That is where one begins to understand how a fashion image is made. Before the chosen photograph, dozens are rejected. Before the icon, there are attempts, mistakes and expressions that do not work. Then the selection is made, and everything appears inevitable.
I have worked with those images for a long time. In the Strappi and the Cycle of Rooms, I often begin with fashion photographs that have already been published—images that someone else has selected, corrected and declared perfect. I tear them, reassemble them and intervene with paint. Sometimes the face remains. At other times, only the tension concealed by that face survives.
This is why the exhibition interests me. Not so much as a celebration of Yves Saint Laurent, but as an opportunity to look at the machine that produced his image. The photographs do not come after the clothes. They are part of the same work and, in many cases, they are what remains of it in our memory.