Jeanloup Sieff

(b Paris, 30 Nov 1933). French photographer. He studied photography at the Vaugirard photographic school in Paris in 1953 and at the photography school in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1954. After this he worked as a fashion photographer for Elle (1955-8) and with the Magnum photographic agency (1959-60). From 1961 he worked freelance, contributing images to Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Vogue and other magazines, establishing a permanent studio in Paris in 1967. Treating a variety of subjects, especially the nude and landscape, he had a propensity for unexpected objects and unusual camera angles. His photographs are invariably pervaded by a sense of melancholy.

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Sieff, Jeanloup (1933-2000), French photographer who began as a photojournalist in the 1950s, belonging briefly to Magnum. In 1959 he won the Prix Niépce and published his first book, Borinage, containing gritty images of a Belgian miners' strike. But he spent the early 1960s in New York working for leading fashion magazines, especially Harper's Bazaar. He made portraits—notably of Rudolf Nureyev (1960) and Charlotte Rampling (1967)—and landscapes (Scotland in 1972, Death Valley, California, in 1977). Most striking, however, was Sieff's continual output of stylish nudes and near-nudes, presented either in sculptural isolation, or in surreal settings like train compartments or, waiflike, in sparse interiors. Shadows or designer lingerie evoke mythical enchantment and bondage. For much of his nude and landscape work he favoured ultra-wide-angle lenses and grainy monochrome.

— Robin Lenman

Bibliography

• Jeanloup Sieff: 40 Years of Photography, trans. C. Daro and C. Miller (1996)

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