Patrick Demarchelier passed away yesterday in St. Barth at the age of seventy-eight, a French photographer (he began as an assistant to Cartier-Bresson and went into fashion under Hans Feurer) but an American by adoption, one of the most prolific and elegant.
From 1975, when he opened his first studio in the States, until today, he has worked internationally for all the main fashion magazines, becoming known for a way that, under the apparent spontaneity, hid infinite mastery.
His speed in creating fashion shoots and portraits was legendary: Demarchelier loved to capture his subjects in the moment of unawareness instead of posing, and this resulted in extremely vivid images, which pierced the page with elegance.
Equally evident was his desire to celebrate and enhance the beauty of the subjects. In his many years of career, he never let himself be tempted by the vogues of the moment, by the sensational taste of the glamorous horror, by chaos as an aesthetic. His non-style style, essentially made up of technique, light and spirit, made him perhaps less immediately recognizable than others, more silent, but therefore more subtle and durable.
However, the same has entered the collective imagination: Lady Diana chose him as the official photographer, and it was he who immortalized her full of restless grace on the covers of English Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the mythical times of the direction of Liz Tilberis.