Betreff Karl by Michel Comte

Betreff Karl by Michel Comte. Comte photograph’s some of the most well known faces in cinema, fashion, and even boxing. Intimate and direct, the viewer is confronted by the assertive demeanor presented through the central composition and neutral background.

Created

1989

Medium

silver gelatin print

Size

27 x 27 inches, 36 x 36 inches, 47 x 47 inches, 69 x 69 inches

Presentation

Edition of 20, Edition of 7, Edition of 3, Edition of 1

Signed

Yes

Genre

Fashion

Description

Betreff Karl by Michel Comte

Karl Largerfeld was a German creative director, fashion designed and artist who lived and worked in Paris. He was know as the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel, a position he held from 1983 until his death in 2019.

About the Artist:

Michel Comte is one of the greatest living photo–chroniclers. Michel Comte’s photographic oeuvre brings the most dissimilar human environments into contact, endowing the extremes of our planet with a human dimension. Michel Comte is especially well known for his fashion photography and photographs of stars, such as Kate Moss, Sophia Loren and Mike Tyson. From the very beginning, one theme has surfaced repeatedly, namely women in Michel Comte’s photography.

Self-taught, Comte’s images of models and celebrities possess a unique sense of climax, as though everything has built up precisely to the moment he has captured. Often featuring women’s nude bodies, his photographs are highly dramatic, suggestive of a larger, often sordid, narrative. In one of his most famous photographs—an image of Giselle Bündchen from 1999—the model scowls as she inhales from a cigarette. Naked from the waist up, she covers her breasts with her arms; her eye makeup is smeared and dripping, while decadent diamond jewelry hangs from her neck and ears. Such expressive portraits are complemented by Comte’s ethereal landscapes, in which clouds disintegrate into the air and light flares accentuate bits of bright blue sky.

Comte’s advertising clients include famous names such as Armani, Dolce & -Gabbana, Nike, Lancome, Revlon, Ferrari, Jaguar and Mercedes Benz.

In addition to portrait photography and fashion Comte has also increasingly moved towards photo-reportage and documentary. On photo assignments for the international Red Cross as well as his own Michel Comte Water Foundation he has travelled war zones and unstable areas in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan and Cambodia.

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