Dior AS SEEN
BY PETER
lindbergh

Upon entering La Galerie Dior, look left. A “welcome” photograph sums up the formidable retrospective devoted to Peter Lindbergh (1944-2019) and his unique collaboration with the House: here is the model Alek Wek wearing the unmistakable Bar jacket – designed by Christian Dior for his spring-summer 1947 haute couture show – captured in a moment of grace against a background of yellow cabs during a historic shoot for Dior in the streets of New York in 2018.

Through the magic of a single shot, it’s all there; everything comes together in a dizzying mirror effect: the genius of Christian Dior as seen through the lens of one of the most fascinating photographers; life – and even the truth – that suddenly inhabits the iconic garment – the symbol of the New Look – with astounding modernity. More than fashion, it is about femininity and more broadly women’s place in society, a quest close to Dior’s heart and that of Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director of women’s collections since 2016.

Black-and-white comes next. A technique that makes it possible to render subjects timeless, to give them eternal vivacity, poetry and universality that traverse the ages. Not unlike documentary photography of the 1930s and 1940s, for example the work of Dorothea Lange, whose wit and grace resemble that found in compositions caught in an instant by Peter Lindbergh. There are countless points in common with Christian Dior, who first drew his models’ faces in black and white before sketching the outfit and then applying the colours. As he said: “A sketch must suggest a gait, an allure, a gesture; it must evoke a silhouette in action; it must already be part of life.”

Peter Lindbergh would transform how women were represented by going against stereotype. A woman, through his lens, would always be free, audacious and devoid of artifice. Age would never be an obstacle for him, quite the contrary: the fragility of a face and a body that expressed the marks of time proved a marvellous inspiration: “It should be a duty for every photographer to free women from the terror of youth and perfection,” he was fond of saying. And so it was that he made natural beauty, authentic, at once strong and vulnerable, picturing as closely as possible real emotions, a connection: “The photo is not of the woman but of the bond you have with her.”

He is also credited with fathering the “supermodels” via his cover for British Vogue in January 1990 portraying, for the first time, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Tatjana Patitz and Christy Turlington all together. To highlight that legendary era, La Galerie Dior presents photographs from several fabled series, as well as – thanks to the support of the Peter Lindbergh Foundation – contact sheets and never-before-seen prints and cameras, touching witnesses to Peter Lindbergh’s work.