DAVID SEIDNER WAS HERE

Stéphane Pompougnac - Villa Black feat.Juanita Grande broken wing

COWSLIP YELLOW DUCHESSE SATIN EMPIRE GOWN

DAVID SASSOON FOR BELLVILLE SASSOON

DAVID SEIDNER

HARPER'S & QUEEN  1987

Born in 1957 in Los Angeles, David Seidner started his career as a photographer in Paris; having moved there at the age of seventeen. At nineteen he had his first fashion cover and by twenty-one, his first one-man show at La Remise du Parc in Paris. The following year the young Seidner had a solo show at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. He remained based in Paris for most of his career working with Yves Saint Laurent, Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s & Queen, Vanity Fair and Vogue. 

MIST GREEN SILK TAFETA BALLGOWN  

TATTERS

CHAMPAGNE SILK EVENING SHOES - MANOLO BLAHNIK

DAVID SEIDNER

HARPER'S & QUEEN  1987

Throughout the eighties, his work had a major influence on fashion photography admired for the highly stylized fashion scenes he created inspired by moments in art history.

IVORY, SHELL AND FONDANT PINK DUCHESSE SATIN BODICE - IVORY SATIN SKIRT

CATHERINE WALKER

DAVID SEIDNER

HARPER'S & QUEEN  1987

CHALK GREY DUCHESSE SATIN STRAPLESS BALLGOWN - FONDANT PINK DUCHESSE SATIN BOLERO

DAVID FIELDEN

DAVID SEIDNER

HARPER'S & QUEEN  1987

Seidner’s signature style often used fragmentation and cropping techniques as seen in this portfolio for Harper’s & Queen. The imagery of this session is typical of his work in Paris in late 1986, which is said to have been influenced by the music of John Cage.

SPUN-SUGAR PINK SPOTTED TULLE BALLGOWN -CANDY DUCHESSE SATIN STRAPLESS PEPLUM BODICE

DAVID FIELDEN

DAVID SEIDNER

HARPER'S & QUEEN  1987

Typical of his signature style of this period, the face and body of the model is cut up and collaged together through multiple exposures, reflections in pieces of mirror, or by chemical manipulations in the printing.  Sometimes all of the above.

CHINESE IVORY AND OLD GOLD SATIN DAMASK SHEATH - SWEEPING ASYMMETRIC PEACOCK TRAIN

VICTOR EDELSTEIN

DAVID SEIDNER

1957 - 1999

LEFT BEHIND GREAT BEAUTY

THE MAGICAL PHOTOGRAPHY OF DIANE ARBUS

ANGUS AND JULIA STONE - HORSE AND CART

THE FULL CIRCLE   

 Who is i that can tell me who I am?  Shakespeare

MAX MAXWELL LANDAR has become Uncle Sam. It happened that about a year ago a patriotically-named tax advisory service conceived the notion of advertising itself by means of a sandwich man in an Uncle Sam costume, so they had a red white and blue suit made at a cost of $175 and hired a tall Negro man to appear in it: but a week had hardly passed before some goons drove up and threatened to beat him up if he didn't quit, so he did. Somehow Max inherited the job and the suit, which so well becomes him, although it is too large, that his dreams inhabit it too. He has worn it professionally as sandwichman to a barber shop, a pen company and an exterminating service, but chiefly he wears it to advertise himself.  

  Says Max, "Last year this time I was nobody, now I'm somebody.... I am what I call a Personality... without a doubt the youngest 80-year-old man in the world... my beard is now like Bernard Shaw's, even if it doesn't grow it's out of this world, and my face is interesting... when I'm ready I'll be Buffalo Bill from the back... I've got the greatest laugh in the country and the world... I am writing my life story which will be similar to Mission To Moscow which Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote... I am a soprano-contralto, the greatest singer in the world today and I have the voice of a man, woman and child... I'm going to Hollywood... there is no question about it: I'm going to be rich and famous... I can prolong the life of the leukemia victims of the world and Eleanor Roosevelt and Bob Hope will take care of cancer... I am ordering Congress what to do and I'm sure I'll have a meeting with Kennedy... I am a Phenomenon... M...E...ME!"

Max lives on the Lower East Side with his dedicated Negro servant Georgia, trudges the streets, tireless as the seven dwarfs, stopping traffic with his imperious hand and repeating his name to anyone who will listen or even to anyone who won't. He says he is the first person authorized to be Uncle Sam since 1812 and he plans to bring the Liberty Bell to New York. He took me to Washington for the Inauguration, walking from one end of the train to the other the entire way, proclaiming his mission. The plan was for me to photograph him being The First Man to Shake the Hand of Dwight D. Eisenhower when He Was No Longer President, but we couldn't get close enough. Instead we slept on benches in Union Station; he sold leftover campaign souvenirs inscribed "Kennedy Will Win" to finance the trip home; and he climbed the Washington Monument in a blizzard, all 898 steps of it, in 48 minutes, solemnly delivering his oration to George Washington at the bottom, for an audience of the five guards and me. He sometimes suddenly imitates Shirley Temple, and he can simultaneously eat a doughnut and sing without moving his lips. At Christmastime I helped him buy several editions of a plastic Nativity Scene at Liggetts for 99 cents, which he sent to the Kennedy's for their newborn son and to Clarke Gable's widow for the forthcoming child. He is planning to send something to the Pope and to Cardinal Spellman, too. Max is a master optimist. "God is good to me," he said once. "Unless I die I can make a lot of money, and of course," he added shrewdly, "if I die, you've got something."

Harper's Bazaar November 1961
DIANE ARBUS - THE FULL CIRCLE

arbus admin girl @devodotcom

FROM THE ARCHIVE

devodotcom posts on Diane Arbus

3/22/12 The Simplicity of Thought

3/21/12 Have A Great Day!

1/25/12 The Vertical Journey

12/31/11 Happy New Year

11/24/11 The Young Heiresses

8/14/11 Bill Blass Designs For Little Ones

7/12/11 The Full Circle:Prince Robert de Rohan Courtenay

5/17/11 As You Desire Me

4/25/11 The Full Circle: Max Maxwell Landar

2/14/11 The Couple

1/30/11 She's As Mae West As Ever: Mae West

10/16/10 The Full Circle: William Mack

9/25/10 Mrs. T. Charlton Henry

9/05/10 Fashion Independents On Marriage

8/20/10 The Real Miss Cora Pratt

8/20/10 Miss Cora Pratt

7/29/10 The Full Circle: Jack Dracula

7/27/10 Thank Heaven For Little Girls

7/26/10 Petal Pink For Little Parties

5/24/10 Tokyo Rose

Guilty About Girls

LUV - GUILTY ABOUT GIRLS

AUDREY HEPBURN

HARPER'S BAZAAR

FEBRUARY 1954

RICHARD AVEDON

Brigitte Bardot

Harper's Bazaar

August 1957

Brigitte Bardot was ordained at fifteen, when her small haunting face appeared on the cover of a Paris magazine. European directors - Sacha Guitry, Rene Clair, Marc Allegret - spotted her at once, and have sought her ever since for their films

SOPHIA LOREN

RICHARD AVEDON

OCTOBER 1961

The commanding gaze of Sophia Loren appearing beneath a domed welter of fringed black felt. Collaring her throat, a surfeit of cultured pearls nestling two sublime solitaires: an eighty-eight carat deep blue sapphire encircled by diamonds, and a masterly cushion-shape, ninety-seven carat yellow diamond the color of pale sunlight. Hat by Adolfo of Emme.

Miss Loren will soon be seen in El Cid - its pageantry photographed against the landscape of Spain. 

HARPER'S BAZAAR

1961

SHARON TATE

RICHARD AVEDON

HARPER'S BAZAAR SEPTEMBER 1964

BARBRA STREISAND
iRVING PENN
HARPER'S BAZAAR DECEMBER 1964

AUDREY HEPBURN - BRIGITTE BARDOT - SOPHIA LOREN - SHARON TATE - BARBRA STREISAND

ALL GREAT BEAUTIES

SUM OF THE PARTS

HEY ROSETTA! RED HEART 

 LIP SHOCK 

REVLON'S LIVING LIPSTICK IN RETHINK PINK

STEVEN KLEIN

ORE-STRUCK

COSMETICS A LA CARTE

HERB RITTS

 GIORGIO DI DANT'ANGELO
STEVEN KLEIN

METALLICA
HERB RITTS

LIZA BRUCE
STEVEN KLEIN

LIQUID SILVER
HERB RITTS


BEAUTY -  HEALTH
BRITISH VOGUE
APRIL 1989

HERB RITTS - TATJANA PATITZ - CARIIE OTIS

FISHNET TABARD - JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

JOHN GALIANO

JOHN GALIANO

 

JOHN FLETT

 

  NECKLACE - TINA CHOW

HEAD SCARF - JOHN GALIANO ON CARRIE OTIS

UK VOGUE 

APRIL 1989

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY HERB RITTS

LET ME LOVE YOU

SAINT LAURENT

Mario - Let Me Love You

 

LACROIX

 

 

 CHANEL

 

SAINT LAURENT

LACROIX

KIM BASINGER'S PARIS COUTURE

UK VOGUE 

APRIL 1989

HERB RITTS

SIDNEY LUMET IN JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM

SIDNEY LUMET AGE 16

"JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM"

VOGUE OCTOBER 15, 1940

HORST

Serene, young Sidney Lumet is here in the role of twelve-year-old Jesus, outside the gates of Jerusalem, in Maxwell Anderson’s new play, "Journey to Jerusalem."

AMERICAN DIRECTOR SIDNEY LUMET

JUNE 25, 1924 - APRIL 9, 2011