David Seidner

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

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Biography

David Seidner was born in 1957 in Los Angeles. At seventeen he moved to Paris to work as a fashion photographer and by nineteen, his pictures were appearing on magazine covers. Seidner had his first solo exhibition in 1978. Based in Paris for most of his career, Seidner had a two-year exclusive contract with Yves Saint Laurent. His images, which appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Harper's & Queen, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and international editions of Vogue in the 1980s and 90s, greatly influenced fashion photography for over a decade.
For photographs of couture designed by Azzedine Alaia, Chanel, Mme. Grès, Jean Patou, Ungaro, Valentino, and Yves Saint Laurent, Seidner often used the techniques of fragmentation, dynamic lighting, and cropping he had begun to explore in his earliest works. One early series of fragmented faces was inspired by the music of John Cage, the avant-garde artist. In these works, the face or body of the model is visually cut up and collaged together through multiple exposures, reflections in pieces of mirror, or by chemical manipulations in the printing.
In addition to his advertising and editorial fashion work, Seidner also pursued other projects dealing with clothing, the body, and art. He photographed the miniature war-time couture replicas housed at the Musée des arts de la mode in Paris as well as the Academy Award-winning costumes Eiko Ishioka designed for film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the 1990s, Seidner spent eight years photographing the studios of well-known contemporary artists including Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Brice Marden, Richard Serra, and Cindy Sherman. To further distinguish this work from his fashion photography, he photographed the sitter in a stark black background and presented the images as fine hand-made prints using the antique platinum printing process. In addition to documenting paintings and sculptures in progress, Seidner also made a black and white headshot of each subject, dramatically side-lit and cropped at the chin.
In the "Nudes" series, Seidner again used this striking lighting technique. He photographed male and female models from the front and back standing in classical contrapposto. Because they stand in front of a black background and the lighting from the side accentuates the muscles and curves of their bodies, they resemble Greek marble sculptures of athletes, gods, and goddesses.
This interest in art history and portraiture culminated in years of research on the models for the painter John Singer Sargent. Seidner sought out the descendents of these sitters who were chiefly women and men of the upper class in England and America. Their offspring, members of the wealthy classes of over a century later, posed in the similarly sumptuous fashions of their ancestors, often propped on a period sofa or chair. These large-scale works seamlessly combine contemporary color photography with the conventions of late-nineteenth-century portrait paintings by Sargent and Ingres.
In his final series of highly saturated color images of orchids from 1999, Seidner seemed to be moving away from portraiture and instead reinvestigating the abstract compositions of his early fashion photographs.
Selected Bibliography
Musée des arts de la mode. Moments de Mode: À travers les collections du Musée des arts de la mode, Paris: Éditions Herscher, 1986.
Seidner, David. David Seidner, New York: Rizzoli, 1989.
Charles-Roux, Edmonde et al., Le Théâtre de la Mode, Paris: Éditions Du May, 1990.
Seidner, David. Nudes, Munich: Gina Kehayoff, 1995.
___. Lisa Fonssagrives: Three Decades of Classic Fashion Photography, London: Thames & Hudson, 1996.
___. The Face of Contemporary Art, Munich: Gina Kehayoff, 1996.
___. Artists at Work: Inside the Studios of Today's Most Celebrated Artists, New York: Rizzoli, 1999.
___. Portraits, Paris: Assouline, 1999.

icp.org

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

US Harper's Bazaar August 1991
"Long & Luxe"
Model: Kristen McMenamy
Photographer: David Seidner
Hair: Louise Moon
Makeup: Marie-Laurie Gryson

radolgc.com/kristenmcmenamy

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

Vogue Paris December 1991/January 1992
"Ciel, mon Saphir!"
Model: Nadja Auermann
Photographer: David Seidner
Stylist: Monique Duhart
Hair: Stéphane
Makeup: Phophie Mathias

imcmagazine.com (originally from nadja-auermann.com)

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

Vogue Italia July/August 1985
"Grigio di Rilievo, Grigio di Movimiento"
Model: Lara Harris
Photogarpher: David Seidner
Hair: Odile Gilbert
Makeup: Prudence Walters

archivio.vogue.it

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

Vogue Italia July/August 1985
"Per Un'impronta Chic All'inglese"
Model: Lara Harris
Photogarpher: David Seidner

archivio.vogue.it

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

Vogue Italia January 1988
"Tinte Tenui e Flori 'Ricordo di Venezia'"
Model: Unknown
Photographer: David Seidner
Hair & Makeup: Kushnir Félix

archivio.vogue.it

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

Vogue Italia October 1990

Ricercatezza
Model: Gurmit Kaur
Photographer: David Seidner
Fashion Editor: Alice Gentilucci
Hair: Barnabe
Makeup: Nelson Sepuleveda

Scanned by kelles @ tfs

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

Vogue Italia September 1986 (Speciale)

"Il Ilusso dell Super-Classico"

Models: Anne Rohart & Unknown

Photographer: David Seidner

Hair: Grey Zisser

Makeup: José Luis

archivio.vogue.it

Vogue Girl · January 11, 2018

Vogue Italia September 1986 (Speciale)

"Drappeggi, Maniche Ala, Donne Angelo"

Models: Anne Rohart & Unknown

Photographer: David Seidner

Hair: Grey Zisser

Makeup: José Luis

archivio.vogue.it

Vogue Girl · January 15, 2018

Zuccoli Spring/Summer 1988 (Advertisements)

Model: Anne Rohart

Photographer: David Seidner

archivio.vogue.it (Vogue Italia January 1988)

Vogue Girl · March 28, 2018

Valentino Fall/Winter 88.89 (Advertisements)

Models: Rachel Williams, Catherine Bailey with her son, Iman, Elaine Irwin & Unknowns

Photographers: Walter Chin, Helmut Newton, David Bailey, Horst P. Horst, Victor Skrebneski, Norman Parkinson, Sheila Metzner & David Seidner

archivio.vogue.it (Vogue Italia October 1988)

Minerva13 · April 15, 2018

ELLE (Russia) April 1997
''Haute Couture:Magic of grace''
Photo: David Seidner
Models: Chrystele Saint Louis Augustin,Astrid Munoz,Diane Heidkruger,Carole Naville
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