EXHIBITIONS

KARL LAGERFELD, A VISUAL JOURNEY

By Eddie Musson | 16:12

“I am fortunate to be able to devote my life to what interests me most: photography, fashion and books, and in the best and most perfect conditions. I am very lucky. ” Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld is a multi-faceted artist, we know that for sure. He started his fashion career in his early 20s and since that moment, he never stopped drawing and creating amazing clothes and accessories. Today he’s at the helm of Fendi and Chanel, he takes care of his eponymous label, he shoots the pictures of his own fashion campaigns.The exhibition Karl Lagerfeld, A Visual Journey presented in Parisian Pinacoteque from 16 of October 2015 to 10 of March 2016 explores the wide variety of patterns, approaches and techniques that defines the subtle and very personal interpretation that makes Karl Lagerfeld photography.
It highlights the many attractions of Lagerfeld, including architecture, landscapes, night Paris, portraits and self-portraits, fashion photography and abstraction (a taste for graphic arts characterizes many its photos, whatever the subject). Two large systems – Daphnis and Chloe and The Journey of Odysseus – round out complete presentation of the photographic work of Lagerfeld.
Lagerfeld, is not a man to be limited to one way of understanding his surroundings, his photographic style adapts depending on the subject: “People always want to know what my photographic style. I do not know, he says. It is the observer to tell me. I do not have a style, but several, or none. Never stand still, neither in life nor in fashion and photography”.
Such creative flexibility and desire never to repeat guide the photographic vision of Lagerfeld, like his ambition to preserve the fleeting impressions that might otherwise slip into oblivion: “I love the ephemeral: fashion is my profession . But the ephemeral nature of a photograph is at a different level than that of fashion. It is also dangerous to remake an image that is dangerous to want to learn from past collections. The famous “never again” a unique moment gives the picture an extra dimension, a kind of instant nostalgia without attachment to the past”.
Despite its impressive production as a photographer, Lagerfeld began his photographic career relatively late. He made his first professional shots in 1987, ironically more out of necessity than choice. “I never thought I would do if my friend Eric Pfrunder, Image Director at Chanel Fashion, was not literally pushed me one day, by necessity, need of emergency for a photo press kit .Today, the picture is part of my life. It closes the circle of my artistic and professional concerns. ”
From the beginning, Lagerfeld is as much interested in exposure times and printing techniques as compositions they own. For him, a picture is not just an image but a visual object whose identity depends techniques that gave it birth. Karl Lagerfeld, A Visual Journey and present the entire spectrum of photographic techniques Lagerfeld, including daguerreotypes, platinotypes, Polaroid image transfers, Fresson prints, serigraphs and digital prints.
Eric and Gerhard Steidl Pfrunder, curators of the exhibition.