Yves Saint Laurent and Photography: Tracing YSL's Life and Work Through Photographs

There are a lot of layers to uncover while discovering that Yves Saint Laurent, a man remembered for his shyness and his almost alarming discomfort with attention, was also one of the most photographed designers of the twentieth century. While having spent much of his life avoiding the kind of public performance that came naturally to the fashion personalities who followed him, he understood very early that a designer’s image could become inseparable from his work. By the time he founded his own house with Pierre Bergé, photography had become part of the machinery through which Saint Laurent presented himself to the world, and eventually part of the way the world remembered him.

This understanding lies in the heart of Yves Saint Laurent and Photography, now on view at the International Center of Photography on New York’s Lower East Side. Organised in collaboration with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris and the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent, the exhibition brings together nearly 300 photographs and archival objects spanning four decades, from Saint Laurent’s earliest years in fashion to the end of his couture career. What’s interesting about the exhibition is that there are no garments on display, as such, which is usually synonymous with the idea of a showcase dedicated to a fashion designer’s work. This exhibition tries its hand at understanding who he was beyond his collections. Basically, the clothes are being considered through the images that turned them into fashion history.

The archive shows Saint Laurent’s process through contact sheets kept alongside magazine pages, advertising material, campaign catalogues, invitations, and Polaroids made by staff at the house. These materials offer an inside look at how the work was constructed, and for fans of archival collectibles, the exhibition provides a rare glimpse into his working world.

Saint Laurent worked with Irving Penn for more than three decades and maintained a long relationship with Helmut Newton, while also collaborating with Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Guy Bourdin, David Bailey, Jeanloup Sieff, Paolo Roversi and Juergen Teller. Their photographs look very different from one another, allowing the exhibition to follow the changing image of Saint Laurent across four decades rather than reducing the house to one recognisable photographic style.

Saint Laurent appears in these photographs as often as his clothes do. Newton’s 1969 photograph shows him dressed in black; Bailey photographed him in 1970 with shaggy hair and returned to him in 1984; Sieff photographed him nude in 1971 for Pour Homme. The Sieff image was made for a fragrance campaign, placing Saint Laurent’s body within the commercial imagery of the house. Fashion historian Raissa Bretaña describes this as one of the defining features of Saint Laurent’s career: “Saint Laurent constantly placed himself in dialogue with his work, thus inextricably linking Yves Saint Laurent the brand and Yves Saint Laurent the man.” 

The clothes developed a relationship with the camera, and Jean-Claude Sauer’s photographs of the 1966 “Homage to Pop Art” collection helped circulate Saint Laurent’s engagement with artists such as Piet Mondrian, while Newton’s 1975 photographs of Le Smoking gave the clothes a visual identity that became inseparable from the designs.

Andy Warhol’s 1972 portraits of Saint Laurent place him within the same culture of celebrity, fashion and mass reproduction that Warhol had made central to his artistic practice. A photograph of Warhol wearing Saint Laurent’s clothes reverses the relationship: the artist becomes part of the designer’s image. Taken together, these photographs show how Saint Laurent’s image changed with the photographers, magazines and visual culture around him. 

Nastasia Alberti, deputy head of collections and head archivist at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris and one of the exhibition’s three curators, alongside Simon Baker and Clémentine Cuinet, describes this as a first for the museum. “Most exhibitions, she says, have approached Saint Laurent through his textiles and his work as a couturier.” This one looks at him through photography: where he lived, where he travelled, who he hung out with, how the house developed and how collections came together.