Jeanloup Sieff

Born in 1933 in Paris; died in 2000 in Paris. Fashion, portrait and reportage photographer Jeanloup Sieff studied photography at the École Vaugirard in Paris and the École Supérieure d’arts appliqués in Vevey, Switzerland. Sieff started working as a freelance photojournalist in 1954, turning later to fashion photography and working for Elle. He became a member of the Magnum photographic agency in 1958, travelling on its behalf throughout Italy, Greece, Poland, and Turkey. Sieff spent several years in New York in the 1960s working for Esquire, Glamour, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Twen. Awards: Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, Paris (1981) and the Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1992). Photographer Jeanloup Sieff was known his sensuous black-and-white nudes, portraits of artists and politicians, fashion photography, and surrealist-inflected landscapes. Influenced by the new-wave filmmakers of the 1950s, Sieff developed a style characterized by clean, modern elegance, capturing long bare backs, sumptuous curves, and ladies’ lingerie. “I have always maintained there is no such thing as art,” he once said. “There are only artists, producing things that give them pleasure, doing so under some compulsion, perhaps even finding the process painful, but deriving a masochistic joy from it!” Sieff worked for Elle and the Magnum Agency, and his work has appeared in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, among other publications.