Exhibitions, Italy, Lucca, 01 January 1970
A main event in the Lu.C.C.A. calendar and a highlight exhibition of the LDPF (Lucca Digital Photo Fest), curated by Alessandro Luigi Perna, Enrico Stefanelli and Maurizio Vanni, brings sixty images by one of the greatest contemporary photographers and portraitists, to our country. Geraldine Chaplin said of him “he is a knight errant of photography: a vagabond, an adventurer, a nomad with a camera”.
His career has taken him all over the world to carry out publicity campaigns for famous brands – Gianfranco Ferré, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, Versace, etc – that have made him one of the most sought after fashion photographers on an international level. But to make him unique is his capacity to portray faces and bodies, of which he is an insatiable and untiring hunter.
“Not only Women” arises from an assumption that all too often the fashion portrait, in particular the female one, only has to be studied from iconographic and stylistic points of view. Michel Comte overturns this assumption. On the contrary, his shots are not limited to being plastic-aesthetic interpretations or to being well planned out performances, where the protagonists are women. In pursuing stylistic perfection, Comte delves into the intimacy of the female subject. He takes sharp, female images of faces and bodies that stand out against neutral backgrounds. Or compositions where the background becomes an integral part of the foreground, feeding on the light and on hints of surfaces, thereby coming alive. The women he photographs are never objects, but always the subjects and, with his art, the photographer succeeds in transforming contemporary femininity into icons.
The exhibition aims to propose a different idea about the fashion portrait, through a range of images of women destined to subvert the equilibrium of portraiture and glamour photography. Nudes, portraits of models, actresses and artists, amongst some of the most significant that Comte has taken throughout his career, are on show. Amongst others: Verushka, Iman, Wallis Montana, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen, Cindy Crawford, Carla Bruni (the famous nudes taken by the artist of France’s First Lady), Laetitia Casta, Giselle Bündchen, Louise Bourgeois, Sophia Coppola, Catherine Deneuve, Isabella Rossellini, Sharon Stone, Sophia Loren, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Sandra Bernhard, Tina Turner and Whitney Houston.
His career has taken him all over the world to carry out publicity campaigns for famous brands – Gianfranco Ferré, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, Versace, etc – that have made him one of the most sought after fashion photographers on an international level. But to make him unique is his capacity to portray faces and bodies, of which he is an insatiable and untiring hunter.
“Not only Women” arises from an assumption that all too often the fashion portrait, in particular the female one, only has to be studied from iconographic and stylistic points of view. Michel Comte overturns this assumption. On the contrary, his shots are not limited to being plastic-aesthetic interpretations or to being well planned out performances, where the protagonists are women. In pursuing stylistic perfection, Comte delves into the intimacy of the female subject. He takes sharp, female images of faces and bodies that stand out against neutral backgrounds. Or compositions where the background becomes an integral part of the foreground, feeding on the light and on hints of surfaces, thereby coming alive. The women he photographs are never objects, but always the subjects and, with his art, the photographer succeeds in transforming contemporary femininity into icons.
The exhibition aims to propose a different idea about the fashion portrait, through a range of images of women destined to subvert the equilibrium of portraiture and glamour photography. Nudes, portraits of models, actresses and artists, amongst some of the most significant that Comte has taken throughout his career, are on show. Amongst others: Verushka, Iman, Wallis Montana, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen, Cindy Crawford, Carla Bruni (the famous nudes taken by the artist of France’s First Lady), Laetitia Casta, Giselle Bündchen, Louise Bourgeois, Sophia Coppola, Catherine Deneuve, Isabella Rossellini, Sharon Stone, Sophia Loren, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Sandra Bernhard, Tina Turner and Whitney Houston.
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