About
Cartier-Bresson said that a photographer must be a hidden observer. I put myself in my pictures. That’s how little I am hidden.
—Jean Pigozzi
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Jean Pigozzi.
Photographer, collector, philanthropist and businessman, Pigozzi has spent much of the past four decades compiling a frank and lively photographic catalogue of the international glitterati with which he surrounds himself. Instead of writing a diary, he has kept a visual journal of his friends and social calendar, producing a brand of high-society portraiture that conveys his preference for celebrating life in the limelight, embracing the company of the rich and famous rather than stalking celebrities with a telephoto lens to reveal their secrets. The well-known series Pigozzi & Co. that he began in the 1970s turned the typical conception of the paparazzo on its head by inserting the photographer among his famous subjects, such as Gianni Agnelli, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, and Diane von Furstenberg. In recent years, his attention has shifted to portraiture, casual, low-key moments, and travel photographs.
At once insider and outsider, Pigozzi provides extended access to a world that is usually hidden from sight. His small Leica camera goes everywhere with him as an extension and defining element of his identity. In a photograph with Carla Bruni (1991), he poses for his own camera while Bruni gazes out to the side of the frame, flirtatiously engaged with an unseen subject. Diane and Jean Pigozzi, Geneva Switzerland (1991) reveals an endearing sense of play, as he snaps the cartoon-like face of his dog appearing between his legs, nuzzling his crotch; while his portrait of Bill Gates before the jaws of Damien Hirst’s notorious shark (2007) is at once humorous and iconic.