PARIS.- Coproduced by the Rencontres d’Arles and the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris in collaboration with the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent, the exhibition Yves Saint Laurent and Photography will highlight the exceptional relationship that Yves Saint Laurent had with the greatest photographers of the twentieth century.

Yves Saint Laurent was one of the most photographed couturiers of all time, one who recognized the talent of the great photographers of the twentieth century, whether fashion specialists or not: Avedon, Bailey, Beaton, Bourdin, Doisneau, Horst, Issermann, Lartigue, Meerson, Moon, Seidner, Sieff.

This unprecedented exhibition—Yves Saint Laurent and Photography—shows the unique relationship that the couturier had with this medium and these photographers.

The first part of the exhibition brings together more than 80 works that chronologically trace the evolution of Yves Saint Laurent’s creations and emblematic portraits of the couturier. From the striking portrait by Irving Penn in 1957 to that by Patrick Demarchelier in 2004, from experimental images by William Klein in 1962 to those taken by Bettina Rheims backstage at runway shows in the 1980s, each image bears witness to an era. Immediately recognizable, these photographs contributed to Yves Saint Laurent’s worldwide renown and have left a lasting impression on the collective imagination.

The second part of the exhibition, designed as a cabinet of curiosities, retraces these same years through the presentation of around 200 objects from the archives of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris—contact sheets, advertising notebooks and campaign catalogs, press clippings, magazines and personal photographs—which reveal the central role that photography played in the life of the couturier and in the history of the House of Yves Saint Laurent.

For the first time at the Rencontres d’Arles, this exceptional exhibition, which draws from the photographic collection of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, immerses the visitor in the world of a revolutionary couturier and explores the history of fashion as much as that of photography.

Simon Baker and Elsa Janssen