Juergen Teller’s portrait of Yves Saint Laurent, made in Paris in 2000 when the designer was in his mid-sixties, is a striking photograph. Furthermore, it speaks to the great fondness Saint Laurent maintained for the medium and its practitioners throughout his life.
‘He was interested in each new generation,’ asserts the photography historian Simon Baker, co-curator of the new exhibition, ‘Yves Saint Laurent and Photography’. ‘There are all these incredibly flattering images of him looking beautiful and elegant by people he loved, then Juergen comes along at a late part in his career and life… It’s so brave and wonderful as an older man. The image is iconic.’
‘Yves Saint Laurent and Photography’ at New York’s International Center of Photography
Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, 1957
At the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, where the exhibition, which is organised in collaboration with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris and Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent, runs through 28 September 2026, Teller’s portrait is blown up to gigantic proportions and affixed to a bubblegum-pink wall. ‘It really makes me smile,’ says Baker. ‘I think it’s fantastic.’ Originally commissioned for 2025’s Rencontres d’Arles (an accompanying book, published by Phaidon, was released in September), the exhibition has been revised and now includes a more in-depth exploration of how New York, to which Saint Laurent first travelled in 1957, featured in the designer’s life. Baker, additionally, is joined by curators Nastasia Alberti and Clémentine Cuinet, deputy head of collections and head archivist and head of photography, respectively, at the Musée.
Separated into two parts – a more traditional white cube space and a second ‘cabinet of curiosities’-styled room – the ICP exhibition comprises nearly 300 photographs and archival objects from the 1950s through to the 2000s: portraits of Saint Laurent (such as Irving Penn’s photograph of the then 21-year-old, newly installed as the head of Dior), photographs of the collections – among them Helmut Newton’s standout shot of model Vibeke Knudsen in Le Smoking – as well as magazines, contact sheets, and personal Polaroids that detail how Saint Laurent engaged with the medium in both a personal and professional capacity (and how these intertwined). In a first for the Musée, there are no physical garments on display, a conscious decision to both honour the venue and explore the possibilities of the archives.
‘Yves Saint Laurent and Photography’ at New York’s International Center of Photography
‘Yves Saint Laurent is, for sure, the most photographed fashion designer, in the sense that he identified himself very much with the brand,’ says Baker, highlighting one of the show’s core threads. ‘Even before he founded his own house, he worked with Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, and then through his career he had long-term relationships with people like Helmut Newton, William Klein, Horst P Horst.’
‘He cared deeply about art and saw beauty in many things,’ adds Alberti, characterising the genesis of this relationship, which only became more prominent when Saint Laurent met and began working with Pierre Bergé, after which his likeness became properly integrated with the house. ‘The two together were absolute geniuses at marketing,’ Alberti observes, ‘really, really smart.’
Across the Atlantic, Saint Laurent was privy to what Baker describes as ‘the very best of the New York scene’ – indeed, in 1972 he sat for Andy Warhol, while Penn and Avedon were both based there. ‘New York is really, really important for the history of Yves Saint Laurent, because it is where he had his first exhibition at The Met, the retrospective in 1983,’ says Alberti. ‘It was the first time there was an exhibition about a fashion designer; it had never happened before because fashion design was not seen as art.’ Organised by Diana Vreeland, who had become a consultant for the Costume Institute in 1971 following her dismissal from Vogue, the exhibition would attract almost a million visitors.
Helmut Newton, Rue Aubriot, Pantsuit worn by Vibeke Knudsen, Fall/Winter 1975 haute couturecollection. Published in Vogue Paris, September 1975
Perhaps most overwhelming, however, is how Saint Laurent shaped the way contemporary fashion houses operate, both with regard to adopting an in-house figurehead, and how visual media is employed. ‘Nowadays, almost all designers have behind-the-scenes photographers – Saint Laurent was doing that in the 1960s, so there’s a particular sense of photography being right there in the DNA of the house,’ says Baker. ‘We see Juergen Teller shooting for Marc Jacobs, Vivienne Sassen with Louis Vuitton, but Saint Laurent, again, was very pioneering in photographers having these intimate and extended relationships with brands. It’s impossible now, to imagine a major fashion house not having that attitude, and that integrated sense of photography. Saint Laurent was very early.’
‘Yves Saint Laurent and Photography’ is at the International Center of Photography in New York, until 28 September 2026