In Focus: Yves Saint Laurent & Photography

This month I visited the International Center of Photography again, this time for Yves Saint Laurent & Photography. 

“One of the most photographed couturiers of all time, Yves Saint Laurent recognized the talent of the great image makers of the twentieth century, fashion specialists and otherwise: Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Cecil Beaton, Guy Bourdin, Robert Doisneau, Horst P. Horst, Dominique Issermann, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Harry Meerson, Sarah Moon, David Seidner, and Jeanloup Sieff among them.  [This exhibition] demonstrates the unique relationship that the designer had with the medium and with these photographers, exploring the history of fashion as much as that of photography.”

 

The collection of photographs on display in the first part of the exhibition, both of the designer himself and his creations, were fascinating. My only previous exposure into this particular realm was by way of studying Richard Avedon’s work in college and being routinely presented with his renowned portrait Dovima with Elephants (1955). In the iconic photo, Dovima wears a Dior dress, the first design for the fashion house by then 19-year-old Yves Saint Laurent. Having seen that image so many times, I became blind to its significance in the worlds of both fashion and fashion photography. 

Richard Avedon | Dovima with Elephants, 1955
Published in Harper's Bazaar, October 1955

Many of the photographs were by photographers whose names were known to me, some who I have studied extensively, but these photographs were largely new to me. (Apologies in advance for inconsistent lighting and any cast shadows.)

David Seidner | Evening Dress worn by Ana Cristina, Fall/Winter 1993
Published in L'Officiel de la couture et de la mode de Paris, September 1993

David Seidner was not known to me prior to this exhibition. His minimalist approach to to photographing this dress from YSL's 1993 Fall/Winter haute couture collection, which worked with translucent fabrics, has certainly put the photographer on my radar. 

Helmut Newton | Rue Aubriot, Paris, 1975
Pantsuit worn by Vibeke Knudsen, Fall/Winter 1975 haute couture collection
Published in Vogue Paris, September 1975

The above portrait by Helmut Newton stopped me in my tracks. I have seen a lot of editorial fashion photography over the years - from keeping a scrapbook of ads pulled from magazines twenty years ago to considering a career in fashion photography - and very little has had this impact. Newton is of course known for his bold and provocative portraiture. But this one - the lighting, the pose, the clean lines, and the revolution of women in tailored masculine silhouettes initiated by YSL - all come together beautifully.

Bettina Rheims | Hats from the Spring/Summer 1982 haute couture collection
at 5 avenue Marceau, Paris, 1982

Another striking image, so simple and yet so captivating. YSL regularly commissioned Bettina Rheims to photograph the fitting rooms at his couture house, as well as back stage at his runway shows. 

Jean Larivière | Gilded hat Fall/Winter 1991 haute couture collection, Paris
Published in Vogue Paris, October 1991

Larivière had a prolific and varied career in fashion photography, creating a portfolio both powerful and fantastical. Besides this being such a gorgeous portrait, I found myself coveting the hat. 

Among the photographs on display were many portraits of Yves Saint Laurent himself, taken at many varying periods in his long and prolific career. 

Irving Penn | Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, 1957

In 1946, Irving Penn began a major series of portraits for Vogue, including one of a young Yves Saint Laurent at the early stage of his career. Penn would go on to photograph YSL again twenty-six years later.

Jacques Henri Lartigue | Yves Saint Laurent and Catherine Deneuve,
who wears an evening dress from the Spring/Summer 1976 haute couture collection
Published in Vogue Paris, March 1976

Saint Laurent had a long friendship with the Catherine Deneuve, who was photographed dozens of times in his creations. Lartigue's work is a favorite of mine.

Irving Penn | Yves Saint Laurent, 1983
Image for the advertising campaign for Pour Homme cologne
Published in Vogue, December 1983

The second section of the exhibition “trace[s] Yves Saint Laurent’s life and career by examining iconic images related to his collections and the inner workings of his couture house, personal photographs, and documentation of his designs for film, theater, and musical revues.” Vitrines were lined with fashion magazine editorial spreads of iconic designs, like YSL’s dresses known as “Homages to Mondrian” from the fall/winter 1965 haute couture collection. The bits and bobs of paraphernalia were fascinating.

Archibald Henry "Archie" Parker | Yves Saint Laurent on the balcony of his apartment,
Place Vauban, Paris, 1959

Magazine spreads for Vogue Paris, the first iteration of the Mondrian dresses,
and various other pioneering creations from the era

"Fascinated by the paintings of Piet Mondrian, in 1965 he presented a collection that evoked the artist's geometric compositions. First in a long series of garments inspired by art history including Pop Art, these creations were immortalized by photographers such as Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Peter Knapp, and Irving Penn. 

In 1966, at the dawn of the sexual revolution in France, Yves Saint Laurent's designs caused a sensation. The designer empowered women by liberating the female body and revealing it through his exploration of transparency. His first tuxedo-inspired Le Smoking suit upended the gendered codes of formal evening wear and was an overnight hit with the public."

 

Richard Avedon | Dress known as "Homage to Piet Mondrian" worn by Jean Shrimpton,
Fall/Winter 1965 haute couture collection

From left to right: Published in Vogue Paris (David Bailey), Vogue (Irving Penn),
ELLE (Peter Knapp, and British Vogue (Irving Penn), September 1965

The landscape of fashion photography was very different in YSL’s early years in the industry. In a film playing on loop in the final section of the gallery, photographer Jean-Luce Huré reminisced about being the first photographer allowed to shoot a fashion show. Prior to this, photographers were not allowed due to fear of designs being copied by other houses. YSL helped to turn that notion of its head, inviting photographers to bear witness to the evolution of his creations and go behind the scenes at his runway shows.

Pierre Boulat | Yves Saint Laurent backstage at the first runway show under his name,
30 bis rue Spontini, Paris, 1962
Published in LIFE, April 1962

Organization during a runway show was paramount, and as early as 1968, Polaroids were taken to keep things orderly and running smoothly:

"Polaroids were essential for the smooth running of the couture house, serving as a memory aid by recording accessories and accompanying the garments backstage at the runway. An essential element of working documents, which were annotated with information necessary to identify garments (such as collection name, runway number, and model's first name), Polaroids also recorded the atmosphere that reigned during the electric weeks leading up to a collection's launch.

The first Polaroids preserved in the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris were taken by Alexis Witzig to photograph full-length views of creations from the Spring/Summer 1968 collection. In the early 1980s, the taking of Polaroids became systematic; they continued to be employed in preparing every collection through 2002. In its archive, the museum preserves nearly 6,000 Polaroids as well as the last cameras used to take them."

Polaroids, spanning decades of shows by the couture house

This exhibition was so special. Not only did it expand my understanding of an iconic designer whose legacy and couture house endure to this day, it bestowed upon me an exciting list of photographers whose portfolios I am eager to dive into. 

Birthday Roaming 2026

This year, I took off work and spent a few hours roaming the East Village. I had pierogis at my favorite Polish comfort restaurant, popped in and out of several tiny shops selling everything from stationery to home goods, stopped by Trash & Vaudeville for a new studded belt, and took lots of photos along the way. 

 

I only managed a few hours before the torrential rain came, my chucks got soaked, and I made my way back to home to Queens.

A Life Photographed: Duane Michals 1932-2026

I had planned to make a post this month about the evolution of self-portraiture stemming from an interesting passage in Walter Benjamin’s essay A Short History of Photography. However, in my research, I discovered that one of my favorite photographers, Duane Michals, passed last month at 94 years old.

I’ve mentioned Michal on this blog several times and had the pleasure of meeting him at a book signing for his monograph Empty New York in November of 2018, which I wrote about here. While the work in question that night was his documentation of New York City in the early hours, a-la Eugene Atget, before gentrification and capitalism swept through and irreparably changed the face and feel of the city, Michals’ earlier work included very cinematic photographs, often with expressive blurbs written directly on the print. Michals made a lot of self-portraits, and many of these were diaristic, recording the important moments of his life.

In memory of such a determined, playful, and enthusiastic artist, below are some of my favorites of his self-portraits.

Duane Michals, Self Portrait As If I Were Dead, 1968

Duane Michals, The Occasion of My Fortieth Birthday, 1972

Duane Michals, Self-Portrait, 2024

Duane Michals, Self-Portrait, 2025

Rest in peace, Duane.

Comparing Notes

Vivian Maier, Thalia, c. 1959

An interesting thing happens when one feels compelled to collect all of the available monographs of a single artist’s work: the introductions and forewords tend to both overlap and contradict each other in equal measure. The authors of these notes typically focus on one aspect of the artist’s life or career; sometimes what is covered in the monograph itself, and other times a deep dive into their upbringing, earlier contributions to the medium, or their inspirations.

I own five monographs of Vivian Maier’s extensive body of work and have made a handful of posts on this blog showcasing my adoration of her photographic proclivities and style and the ways her work has inspired mine. However, it wasn’t until Vivian Maier: A Photographer Found by John Maloof (the storage unit buyer who now owns and is responsible for most of Maier’s body of work) came into my possession that I learned, through Marvin Heiferman’s illuminating text Lost, Then Found: The Life and Photographic Work of Vivian Maier that I understood her inspiration.

“I AM A CAMERA,” proclaims the marquee of the Thalia, a revival movie theater on New York City’s Upper West Side, in a photograph Maier made on a visit in 1959. Based upon the quantity of negatives and prints she was amassing, it’s likely Maier made that picture because in some ways she feels similarly. That desire to take in all there is to be seen in the world is not an uncommon one. “I become a transparent eyeball,” wrote an exhilarated Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Nature,” his 1836 essay on transcendentalism. “I am nothing; I see all.” More than a century later, Garry Winogrand would say something similar in explaining what drove his restless picture making: “I get totally out of myself. It’s the closest I come to not existing, I think, which is the best – which to me is attractive.”

Photography, for those who devote themselves to it, becomes a philosophical pursuit as much as a way of life. Looking for pictures is speculative and liberating, a compulsive activity that paradoxically sets you a distance apart from the world as you contemplate and do your best to connect with it. For photographers, that intense level of engagement is not only pleasurable but addictive. […] From the material she left behind, we get a sense of what she thought was worth taking note of.

Like Emerson, Winogrand, and likely Maier herself, that detached yet acutely observant state of being is one of the things I love most about being a photographer. Years of training my eyes to look for pictures, of orbiting other creatives who see differently than I do and learning from them, of maintaining a backlog of photographic history and its major players, have all coalesced into the fundamental DNA of my art. It's the entire basis of my #roaming project. 

What Makes a Landmark?

On Wednesday the 13th, I attended the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative’s (L.E.S.P.I.) community meeting at the Henry Street Settlement. The guest speakers of the evening were Margaret Herman, Director of Research at the Landmark Preservation Commission (LPC), and Simeon Bankoff, preservation consultant and former executive director of the Historic Districts Council, for a presentation on what makes a landmark.

While I waited for the meeting to get underway, I met and spoke with a few members of the board of directors of L.E.S.P.I., first about the embattled church on the Upper West Side one of my colleagues is helping fight to protect, then about the shortcomings of various building projects going on around the city, including the failed residential construction downtown on Maiden Lane. (In short, the project failed due to the use of an unstable foundation, the building now leans three inches to one side, and all means of righting the building have failed, so it sits like an ugly skeleton on the eastern waterfront in FiDi.)

First up was Margaret from the LPC. She sped through a PowerPoint presentation about the functions of the LPC – review of applications for landmark status, make designations, and regulate changes to existing landmarks – and the process any building or site must go through to be designated as a landmark.

Since its inception, the LPC has protected 38,500 buildings and sites across the five boroughs. These are broken into categories: individual landmarks, which are the exteriors of individual structures; historic districts, like the Hunters Point historic district, two blocks in Long Island City with rows of gorgeous brownstones; interior landmarks, which must be open to the public, like the Red Room inside the Printemps department store at 1 Wall Street (which I photographed last year for Open House New York), and scenic landmarks, like the Coney Island boardwalk.

The framework of the LPCs designations is dependent on many factors, which are distilled into two areas of classification: the architectural and/or cultural significance of a building or site. How old is the building? Does it represent an important period of history or an important style of architecture? How was the building used? Is the building tied to any person of significance? What is the integrity of that person of significance? And as for the evaluation of historic districts: what are the boundaries of this district, and does it have a strong sense of place?

A few recent Lower East Side designations with both architectural and cultural significance were the Eldridge Street Synagogue (12 Eldridge Street), the S. Jarmulowsky Bank Building (9 Orchard Street), and the former Loew’s Canal Street Theater (31 Canal Street). The last is a building I have photographed myself.

Former Loew's Canal Street Theater, 31 Canal Street © Chelsea Pathiakis

As it turns out, the Lower East Side once had the highest concentration of movie theaters in the country. Yet another reason I wish time travel were possible.

Margaret also mentioned the LPC’s dedication to equity in landmarks, noting an effort to include diversity and inclusion in the framework of their designations. Notably, in this category, are 935 St. Nicholas Ave, former residence of Duke Ellington, and the Stonewall Inn.

Simeon Bankoff was an animated speaker, and his topic was “What Is a Landmark?” He began by exclaiming “Culture is everything!” before delving into the finer points. Landmarks change the way we interact with the city. More specifically, they stabilize and improve property values; foster civic pride in the beauty and notable achievements of the past; enhance the city’s attraction to tourists and visitors and therefore strengthen the economy of the city; and promote the use of historic places for the education, pleasure, and welfare of the public.

“No one is born knowing about buildings. Education is an ongoing and persistent grind, and people need to keep being reminded why it [history of the city] is important. All landmarks should fulfill the purpose of being educational.” – SB

I came away from this community meeting with a much better understanding of the landmarking process, and with renewed vigor to help in whatever way I can to protect the history of this city. One of my favorite quirky little spots, The Hess Triangle, is not an individual landmark itself, but sits in front of Village Cigars, which is itself landmarked, and lives within the landmarked Greenwich Village Historic District.

Hess Triangle © Chelsea Pathiakis

Eurotrip 2026

I just returned from two weeks abroad – Scotland, London, and Paris – in honor of my parents’ 40th anniversary. I’m still sorting through the roughly 2,100 photos I took between both my Fujifilm mirrorless camera and my iPhone. 

There were some truly memorable moments: navigating from the left front seat of our rental car in Scotland, where everything was opposite; experiencing the Electric Brae in Maybole; realizing there are definitely more sheep in the upper UK than people; so many castles and the gorgeous cemeteries in the towns around them; the Kelpies; seeing London like a tourist again, including an open-air bus tour and doughnuts at Borough Market; Stonehenge; a boat tour on the Seine with views of all the iconic Parisian landmarks; surprise jazz bands; and of course, crème brûlée.

Scotland

Stonehenge

London

Paris