Patrick Demarchelier - No apprenticeship, only practice, experience and talent
Patrick Demarchelier was born on 21 August 1943 in Le Havre, where he spent his childhood with his mother and four brothers. His love of photography was awakened when his stepfather gave him a Kodak camera for his 17th birthday. Largely self-taught, Patrick Demarchelier learnt the craft of photography, which also included developing and processing film, and found his first models mainly among friends and at family celebrations. By his own admission, he had no role models; the only inspiration that brought him to photography was photography itself, the artist said. He had gone through the school of life and had no other qualifications. In the 1960s, he moved to Paris, where he gained further practical experience in various photo labs. When he moved to New York with his partner in 1975, he had already worked as an assistant photographer for American Vogue and was able to build on this.
Demarchelier’s most famous picture is of Princess Diana
Patrick Demarchelier celebrated his great successes in the USA, able to leave his mark on the 1990s in particular like no other fashion photographer of the time. His most famous picture was taken in 1989 when he was invited to take a portrait of Princess Diana. Diana had seen one of his pictures on the cover of Vogue and managed to ensure that he was the first foreign photographer ever to be given the honour of photographing a member of the British royal family. The princess and the artist got on well, perhaps because they were similarly reserved by nature, and from then on, Patrick Demarchelier was considered the court photographer of Buckingham Palace. He worked for Vogue so frequently that he became synonymous with the magazine and as such found his way into pop culture - for example in the film The Devil Wears Prada with Meryl Streep, who in her role as fashion magnate Miranda Priestly repeatedly requests the services of Patrick Demarchelier.
The favorite photographer of the world’s most beautiful women
Patrick Demarchelier photographed the most beautiful women of his time and played a key role in the era of the so-called ‘supermodels’ around Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford, Nadja Auermann, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington. He has also worked with singers such as Beyoncé and Madonna, and shot the famous Pirelli calendar three times. In addition to Vogue, he often worked for Harper's Bazaar and also had a contract with the Condé Nast publishing house. In the 1990s, there was hardly a woman who didn't want to be photographed by Patrick Demarchelier. The artist never put himself at the centre of attention, feeling much more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it, but did make a brief cameo appearance in the successful Sex and the City series. Although he celebrated his great successes in the USA, he never forgot his French roots. Two of his three sons have followed in his footsteps and have also become photographers. When several models accused big names in the fashion scene of sexual abuse in the Boston Globe newspaper in 2018, one of them Demarchelier, he firmly rejected this and called the accusations "ridiculous".
Patrick Demarchelier died in New York on 31 March 2022.
Patrick Demarchelier - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz: