[Female gaze] Brigitte Lacombe discusses her extraordinary career capturing the inner lives of her internationally celebrated subjects

Welcome to this fourth episode of the new Dior Talks series ‘The Female Gaze’. With the term developed in response to the writings of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, this podcast series will explore how the work of the female photographers and creatives collaborating with Dior offers a radically new and progressive image of women.

In this episode, series host Charlotte Jansen, a British journalist and author, speaks with Brigitte Lacombe, the French-born New Yorker who has made an esteemed career photographing major figures in Hollywood and the world of theater from a unique point of view. Her ‘behind-the-scenes’ images of iconic figures have brought a specialist and specific angle to the concept of the ‘female gaze’. 

Brigitte Lacombe was raised in the Gard region of southern France and began her career working in the black and white photography lab of Elle magazine in Paris. Her first break came when she traveled to the 1975 Festival de Cannes where she met actors Dustin Hoffman and Donald Sutherland. From this point she started to shoot on film sets, documenting the making of the movies of Martin Scorsese, Sam Mendes, David Mamet and others. Over the years she has developed a strikingly intimate, private aesthetic, subverting the traditional posturing associated with fame and moving beyond the classic idea of celluloid celebrity.

Here, Lacombe discusses her approach to image-making over more than four decades and how her vision has evolved during her time working in a movie industry which has undergone immense political and social changes. She examines the development of her style, of which Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri is a great admirer, which led to her inviting Lacombe to shoot several campaigns, including two featuring actress and muse Jennifer Lawrence.

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