May 31, 2022

French photographer Patrick Demarchelier, who died in March, was one of the greats of recent decades, and injected a strong sense of personality into the fashion industry, says Damien Demolder

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Having heroes is a dangerous business. Some of them go and die on you, while others fall into disgrace. French fashion and portrait photographer Patrick Demarchelier has managed to do both, and it’s hard to know how to feel. Demarchelier was among the first photographers I idolised when my photographic brain was being slowly moulded in my teenage years.

Having exhausted the collection of books between 770 and 779 on the shelves between Printmaking and Music in our local library, I resorted to actually buying photography books and requesting them for birthdays. I think I saw the American Photography Master Series Fashion Photography by Patrick Demarchelier advertised by a photo book club in AP and, hoping it might inspire me, signed up and bought it.

Along with the fashion pictures by Tony McGee and others in my parents’ daily newspapers, this book really caught my attention and gave me something to aspire to. Of course, I never went into fashion or beauty photography, and the subjects I have photographed in the intervening years have been quite different. I also have had
fewer Vogue covers than Monsieur Demarchelier.

Patrick Demarchelier, photographed by his assistant Margaret Gibbons

I do however hope that he has influenced me somewhat, not so much with the glitz and glamour of his celebrity sitters, but with the natural-looking images he created of them. As far away from the kitchen table in my family home as they are, I felt I could relate to the people in Demarchelier’s pictures. He had…