Guy Le Baube

guy le baube

A contemporary of Helmut Newton and Patrick Demarchelier, French fashion photographer Guy Le Baube captured the heart of the New York and Paris fashion scenes

BIO

Guy Le Baube (b. 1944), a celebrated fashion photographer, uses precision and wit to capture every nuance of the female form in his bold, sexy and spirited black-and-white photographs. Moving to New York from France in the 1970s, Le Baube worked as a commercial photographer working on editorial campaigns and receiving high acclaim for his works which appeared in publications such as Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, and Elle. After several years shooting commercial work, he decided in the early 1990s to pursue his own artistic vision and create several series centered on the female nude.

Le Baube’s works are glamorous and erotic but also daring and surprising. His first series entitled “Behind the Scene” consisted of intimate portraits of leggy models, often only donning heels. He demonstrates his expertise in light, shadow, and the female form and although his works have a playful element, he approaches his work with an awareness of the darker side of fashion: the objectification of women. He addresses this issue with his “Readymade” series of oversized photographs of females in various set-ups, packed into crates, ready for shipping.

guy le baube

Whool, 1979

Archival pigment print

"[Behind the Scene] has never been a project. It is basically built around pictures I took right before and after shootings. All the pictures here were never meant to be art, but rather outtakes of commercial jobs...For around 50 years I just focused on portraits and commissions. I would be sent by magazines to shoot people for editorials, usually they were celebrities. Here, on the other hand, I made a point not to have too many celebrities and to dig in my archive in order to only feature people that I actually like. I’m just living out of my past."