THROUGH HEDI'S EYES ❘ WSJ MAGAZINE

       Photographer and Saint Laurent designer Hedi Slimane . Photography by Hedi Slimane

By William van Meter
Aug. 6, 2014

MUSIC IS CLEARLY, for me, the starting point of anything," says Hedi Slimane, whose Paris childhood in the '70s and '80s was spent worshiping David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. Decades later, not much has changed for the designer and photographer.

Shy of picking up a guitar himself, Slimane, 46, has come closer than almost anyone else in the fashion world to being a rock star—not least because of his ever-present weathered leather jacket and elusive mystique. Music reverberates through all of his work: He channels it in his collections for Saint Laurent, where he was appointed creative director in 2012, and captures it in his black-and-white portraits of musicians.

This month, "Sonic," an exhibition of Slimane's photographs taken over the past 15 years in London, New York and California, where he now lives, opens at Paris's Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent. The show and accompanying book feature legends such as Keith Richards and Lou Reed (photographed just months before his death) alongside emerging stars including Sky Ferreira. "It's more like a collaboration than a photo shoot," Ferreira says. "He knows how to capture musicians so well because he's a true music fan." Slimane has an intimate, unscripted photographic style that's as singular as his fashion design.

"He's an artist whose vision comes from a connection with the world and his place in it," says Jeffrey Deitch, who oversaw an exhibition of Slimane's photographs at L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2011. "You can't define him as a fashion designer. As his body of work gets larger, he gets more unique. Now it's even more intriguing with Saint Laurent added to it."

Like a punk band conquering a stadium without forsaking its ideals, Slimane has successfully established his personal vision within the confines of the fashion world. His highly personal, idiosyncratic flourishes have added up to booming sales.

Slimane began his design career in menswear at Yves Saint Laurent in 1996, before helming Dior Homme and redefining the male silhouette with his signature skinny suit. But in 2007, he left Dior and returned to his first love, photography. An autodidact of the art, Slimane has spent years documenting the independent music world from Berlin to Los Angeles in deeply textured black-and-white images.

After a five-year hiatus from fashion, Slimane returned to Saint Laurent, and during his tenure he has transferred the rebellious, ineffable cool of rock 'n' roll to the house's ultraluxe universe. Slimane's schism-inducing shows have astounded the fashion establishment, populating the runway with looks inspired by grunge kids, punks and rockabillys, accompanied by specially commissioned soundtracks from his favorite garage and electronic bands. His self-shot campaigns feature the likes of Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson and Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and—in a world of slick images—are iconoclastic for their raw style. "There was no hair and makeup. Hedi was always behind the camera and moved the lighting himself," says indie rocker Christopher Owens, a frequent Slimane subject, who appeared in the first series of ads for Saint Laurent. "He didn't change who I naturally am."

WSJ. spoke to Slimane over email about his life behind the lens.

WSJ: What appeals to you about photography as a medium? What creative needs does it fulfill for you that other métiers don't?

Hedi Slimane: I started taking pictures when I was a kid, around 11 years old, and haven't stopped taking photographs since. The sense of keeping a record, a memory of the time I am living in, was always a priority.

Furthermore, I am very attached emotionally to the subjects I photograph. I probably take photographs as much for them as I do for me, making sure something of their grace, a grace they mostly are unaware of, remains.

WSJ: So many of your subjects are musicians. Besides being a fan, what else draws you to these individuals?

HS: One of my strongest memories from when I was a kid is lying on my bed, bored to death, longing to grow up, listening to music on my lo-fi turntable and looking at album covers for hours. My birthdays were invariably about new LPs, either Bowie or the Stones, and the language of music, the visual and emotional language, was the one I could immediately understand, probably the only one I understood. I grew up surrounded by my music heroes—they made me feel alive; they helped me feel better about myself when I was a teenager. I also learned how to dress thanks to my music heroes. I never gave them up since then, and I therefore only feel in my element around musicians. I never had the desire to play any instruments, though. As I figured out early on, my place was to document them, eventually create stagewear for them, sometimes try to help share my passion or interest with those who might be interested in emerging talents.

WSJ: What do you find inspiring about the music world, and what is significant about music for you personally? When approaching any creative project, do you always look to music first as a starting point?

HS: There is a sense of freedom in music, and a sentimental quality, which moves me and constantly inspires me. It is all in one song. There is also an idea of community that draws me, particularly in California today, in East L.A. or Orange County. This is something I felt in England in the early 2000s, when a generation of young indie musicians emerged (e.g., the Libertines, the Rakes, Arctic Monkeys, etc.). Music captures the vibration of a time, triggers popular culture and impacts other fields, in particular fashion. The sense of code and signs, the perfect semiotic of street culture and tribes, is constantly redefined or invented by emerging musical genres. Photography is an observatory if you are curious enough and spend enough time around music, searching and staying open to anything that might occur. Music is clearly, for me, the starting point of anything. Nothing else captures more accurately or creates precedent for what is about to happen.

I am therefore always a little saddened by the lack of curiosity or openness to the new, and I feel, growing older, the urge and necessity to never feel jaded, analytic or patronizing towards new music. Music is a constant reinvention, a mutation of the past and present. I always share the enthusiasm of young musicians, and I value their sincerity more than anything else.

WSJ: This book and exhibition are focused on London and L.A.—both seem like powerful muses to you. What draws you to both cities, which seem so different? And what do you love about L.A.?

HS: I probably feel most at home in London out of the European cities, having spent most of my time there from 2003 to 2007, after a stint living in Berlin. A lot of my dearest friends are British, and there is musically or artistically always something there that draws me.

Perhaps Britain is a bad example of this at the moment, though, as I feel England is going through a pop and mainstream period, focusing a lot on American blockbusters. I presume there are still pockets of creativity and individuality, probably more so outside of London.

Saying that, I really like the Temples album that James Bagshaw and his friend created in their bedroom. As Noel Gallagher pointed out, they certainly deserve more exposure, although they are starting to get more and more success. The album is quite classic, really, and consistent with what I have been listening to and documenting for a year now, a reinvention of psychedelia, happening at the same time in California, Texas, NY/Brooklyn, Great Britain and also Australia.

Again, it is interesting to see how this movement might affect other creative fields and popular culture in general. There is always a delay before those things make sense or become visible, and it is of course a necessity to ask those questions in photography and in my case, by extension, design.

Now more specifically in California, the current cycle is prolific and very free-spirited. I am drawing reference to the indie Southern and Northern California scenes, which exist alongside the global music industry based in Los Angeles that seems to have no interest whatsoever in what is happening on its doorstep (as always).

I feel very lucky to live in California at the moment and being able to observe what is happening both in Los Angeles and its suburbs but also San Francisco and the Bay Area. The influences of surf music, punk rock and garage and the strong scene of psychedelic rock are now evolving into a sound which is extremely specific to the Sun State and is starting to spread just like the U.K. generation did in the early 2000s. This is really exciting.

I have been here for six or seven years now, and I have seen and photographed this community evolving and getting more confident and stronger. It is, of course, one of the main reasons for me to continue living here, although I have always felt California to be home.

WSJ: Do you have a favorite band? If you had to choose the work of one group or musician to listen to for weeks on end, whom would you choose? And do you have a guilty-pleasure band?

HS: I listen to a lot of music, but I can go forever with the same album on loop, classic or new, which I have done many times, from Electric Mud, one of my favorite Muddy Waters albums, to the Girls' Album, the Allah-Las's first album, the Temples album, etc. I usually listen full blast in the car, my favorite place for music.

As for guilty pleasures, I couldn't narrow it down to a specific band, but tracks from the '80s or sometimes '90s. I am a big admirer of John Hughes movies, so anything musically along those lines is always welcome on the radio.

WSJ: The rest of the fashion industry seems obsessed with mainstream pop stars, who often seem like empty vessels—they have an armada of handlers, stylists, songwriters. The subjects of your photos seem to be the antithesis of that. What do you think about the current state of the music world, and do you actively seek out more-independent thinkers as your subjects?

HS: It's fine to be obsessed with mainstream pop or rap. I am not personally sensitive to it, to say the least, but I do understand it.

Mainstream pop seems to mirror this same obsession with fashion and loves to see fashion and brands as a sort of validation, trying to obtain a sense of sophistication. It seems to be all about status and flamboyant success; it is quite codified at this point. The social networks have created this endless connection between both worlds. I presume the fashion industry feels flattered. This is interesting but a different planet for me.

I am not really moved by it so far, or touched by it. I always liked independent subjects, and always admired people that are their own creation and consistent on and off the stage. I was talking about sincerity before, which also means a sense of authenticity and individuality, and of course I can only presume this applies as well to some mainstream artists.

WSJ: The one adjective I would always use to describe your photo work is intimate. As a viewer I get the feeling that there is no one in this room except the subject, and that's why the images are so revelatory. What is your working process like? Do you always have a closed set, for example, and what kind of camera and film do you prefer to use?

HS: I do prefer a closed set, but most of the time I take pictures on my own, as I mostly work in a documentary way. I am just around, and the subjects are usually forgetting about my presence, forgetting the camera. Intimacy is the only way to do it for me. This is why I only do a few commissions outside my own research or projects.

Besides, this is how I learned to take photographs, alone with two camera bodies and a few lenses. I also like photographs to be slightly off, and to forget the technique I learned as a kid.

As for the cameras, I am not that specific, but I have been using my imperfect old lenses for so long, they are familiar, and I am attached to them. I don't really like new glass that's overly coated. The technicality of a perfectly new lens or body is for me the enemy of the emotional quality of a photograph. The same applies to fashion with technology.

WSJ: Your black-and-white images are stark yet warm. What was the evolution in your work that allowed you to develop this visual language? Are you ever tempted to dabble in color?

HS: As a teen, I discovered the work of [Russian Constructivist] Alexander Rodchenko and [Hungarian Bauhaus artist] László Moholy-Nagy. Constructivist photography and abstract composition became my main influences, and I continued to experiment with those ideas until my mid-20s. My photography, both portraiture and still-lifes, became more and more abstract. Finally, around 2001, I lost faith in pure formality, and I wanted to break that mold. Up until that point, I had been carefully cutting up any unused negatives. But as my taste evolved, I found I needed the mistakes, so I desperately went back and tried to save whatever I could. I realized that what felt wrong today could be what finally works out. So I began to be interested in mistakes, imperfections, liveliness and recklessness instead of geometry and strict composition. As for the black-and-white film, it's what I know. I still prefer the sense of focus and the lack of distraction from your subject it gives you. I also think it gives you a different perspective on time—an everlasting dimension.

WSJ: Have you ever been concerned about the reception of your photos? There are few people who have been successful in two fields—or do you view photography and fashion as one creative process?

HS: I never really wanted to do anything with my photographs other than keep them carefully in drawers for myself. This all changed when the Internet began to interest me in the mid-2000s. I started the diary, a silent photographic chronicle online, something like an archaism of Instagram. Some galleries and museums commissioned exhibitions, and I started doing them when I stopped designing in 2007. There was no precise plan for me to go back to fashion at that point, and so I just went back to what I do instinctively every day. Naturally, now having gone back to design, I try to keep the right balance between the two disciplines, which end up creating a form of interconnection. Photography informs fashion and is somehow for me a step ahead of fashion. It is an observatory, outside any kind of subjectivity. Moreover, I have changed my perspective on fashion, and in the same way I did with photography at the time. I completely lost interest in formality and pure construction. I did not believe in digitalized conceptual fashion. This is certainly the eternal question of modernity, contemporanéité. What is modern? What defines today? Technology, virtuality, digital industrial design, transposed into Photoshopped conceptual fashion or photography? Is it modern or the illusion of modernity? Is it a new form of conformism, an average convention? I presume the doubt is a necessity.

WSJ: How did you select the work for this upcoming book and for the exhibition at the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent? Is it an emotional moment for you to be the first Saint Laurent designer besides Yves whose work will be exhibited at the Fondation? Are you planning to exhibit work that will resonate with his aesthetic and philosophy?

HS: Pierre Bergé and Philippe Mugnier, the head of the Fondation, asked me to do a project with the Fondation a few years ago. It was already in discussion prior to the Saint Laurent fashion project and is therefore unrelated. I guess this occurred when I did the California exhibition at Almine Rech sometime in 2011. We finally chose a date last year, and by then, I had already started designing again, but we all wanted the show to be specific to the Fondation and about photography. It was for me a very moving gesture and project. We discussed the subject of the show all together, and we came out with the idea to show the music archives in an intimate way.

WSJ: What do you see as the unifying link between your Saint Laurent Music Project, the Saint Laurent campaigns and your ongoing personal work? Are they all part of one artistic endeavor?

HS: This is again quite fluid and spontaneous. Everything somehow is connected, everything is about who I meet or discover. The Saint Laurent Music Project is a natural evolution of what I do every day in photography and documentary, and it is also a memory of the early days of the fashion house and its distinct connection with music. The great opportunity we have is that everything is done within the house. Therefore a campaign can be done and launched from one day to another. It is a completely free format—no rules apply to it but immediacy and spontaneity.

I also commission all the soundtracks for my show, instead of going through sound illustration, which is something I can't relate to. I feel creating music, producing it, is a substantial and defining part of the project, next to photography and design. Everything contributes to a single and open/collective project. It is an attempt, an experiment. It is difficult to do it, but we try things and we never know how they will end up, and we understand this is probably not going to be acknowledged as the usual industry format. 

WSJ: What do you see as the unifying link between your Saint Laurent Music Project, the Saint Laurent campaigns and your ongoing personal work? Are they all part of one artistic endeavor?

HS: This is again quite fluid and spontaneous. Everything somehow is connected, everything is about who I meet or discover. The Saint Laurent Music Project is a natural evolution of what I do every day in photography and documentary, and it is also a memory of the early days of the fashion house and its distinct connection with music. The great opportunity we have is that everything is done within the house. Therefore a campaign can be done and launched from one day to another. It is a completely free format—no rules apply to it but immediacy and spontaneity.

I also commission all the soundtracks for my show, instead of going through sound illustration, which is something I can't relate to. I feel creating music, producing it, is a substantial and defining part of the project, next to photography and design. Everything contributes to a single and open/collective project. It is an attempt, an experiment. It is difficult to do it, but we try things and we never know how they will end up, and we understand this is probably not going to be acknowledged as the usual industry format.
WSJ: What do you see as the unifying link between your Saint Laurent Music Project, the Saint Laurent campaigns and your ongoing personal work? Are they all part of one artistic endeavor?

HS: This is again quite fluid and spontaneous. Everything somehow is connected, everything is about who I meet or discover. The Saint Laurent Music Project is a natural evolution of what I do every day in photography and documentary, and it is also a memory of the early days of the fashion house and its distinct connection with music. The great opportunity we have is that everything is done within the house. Therefore a campaign can be done and launched from one day to another. It is a completely free format—no rules apply to it but immediacy and spontaneity.

I also commission all the soundtracks for my show, instead of going through sound illustration, which is something I can't relate to. I feel creating music, producing it, is a substantial and defining part of the project, next to photography and design. Everything contributes to a single and open/collective project. It is an attempt, an experiment. It is difficult to do it, but we try things and we never know how they will end up, and we understand this is probably not going to be acknowledged as the usual industry format.
WSJ: What do you see as the unifying link between your Saint Laurent Music Project, the Saint Laurent campaigns and your ongoing personal work? Are they all part of one artistic endeavor?

HS: This is again quite fluid and spontaneous. Everything somehow is connected, everything is about who I meet or discover. The Saint Laurent Music Project is a natural evolution of what I do every day in photography and documentary, and it is also a memory of the early days of the fashion house and its distinct connection with music. The great opportunity we have is that everything is done within the house. Therefore a campaign can be done and launched from one day to another. It is a completely free format—no rules apply to it but immediacy and spontaneity.

I also commission all the soundtracks for my show, instead of going through sound illustration, which is something I can't relate to. I feel creating music, producing it, is a substantial and defining part of the project, next to photography and design. Everything contributes to a single and open/collective project. It is an attempt, an experiment. It is difficult to do it, but we try things and we never know how they will end up, and we understand this is probably not going to be acknowledged as the usual industry format.

There are certainly, or hopefully, different ways to approach photography, music and design.

WSJ: How do you remain plugged in to the newest bands, and how do you have time to devote to photography now that you have so many other duties? Are you continually at shows, or do you pay attention to music blogs or word of mouth?

HS: Music is a vital necessity to me, and, of course, I cannot find my way through others—I have to be directly involved. It is a personal and intimate endeavor; otherwise I would lose interest. I also need to get to know the musicians, and this mostly starts with a friendship. This is therefore a 24/7 experiment; this is predominantly all I do. I have somehow been very lucky to be in the right place at the right time, somehow accidentally, and so it happens I have always been around: in Paris in the late French touch '90s, Berlin in the early days of Berlin minimal electronica, in London during the birth of the London scene and California for almost a decade documenting emerging generations of musicians.

WSJ: One particular band you have shot extensively is Starred, which is one of my favorite groups. I saw them play the other night, and their new work and progression are staggering. Do you still follow them? Why the heck aren't they famous?

HS: Liza is very gifted and so lovely and brilliant. So is Matt. I met them in Los Angeles when they used to live there. I keep following them as I always do with the musicians I love. It is an ongoing project of documentation and memory. I don't really know how people get or don't get famous. It is quite a mystery to me. Fame is hardly enough of a certificate of relevance, if not the contrary at this point. It will be interesting to look back at the fascination of this decade of social-network selfie-fame factory. I believe the light-speed broadband world gives the wrong idea of the time frame needed for something truly significant to exist or to survive as "classic" in popular culture. Time is still of the essence, even when buried under instant self-publicity.

WSJ: Is there someone you haven't yet photographed whom you would like to?

HS: Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.

WSJ: Is there a portrait of a musician that you wish you had taken?

HS: Elvis Presley, naturally; James Brown; Jimmy Hendrix; Kurt Cobain —the list is endless.

WSJ: Do you have a different approach when shooting legends like Lou Reed and Keith Richards as opposed to up-and-comers, since you also work with artists who have yet to release their first single? In the faces of the famous rockers, are you very conscious of their previous portraits, and do you ever get nervous? What are you looking to portray in your subjects, no matter where they are in their careers?

HS: It is quite similar, actually. There is still a sense in which music is defining them all. On the other hand, sometimes established musicians tend to have an idea of how they like to be portrayed, being aware of the mythology they are meant to represent, I presume. For me there is no difference between a legend or a future legend. If this were not the case, I wouldn't have any desire to photograph them.

WSJ: The Lou Reed photo is so striking—you can see such emotion through the dark glasses. This was taken four months before he died. Do you think mortality was evident in his emotional state? What was this shoot like? Do you have a favorite song by him from the Velvet Underground or his solo career?

HS: I believe so. I believed I saw it when Lou arrived on set. It was heartbreaking. There was something in him that was resisting, as if he wanted to prove he was indeed alive. This was very emotional. I felt so sad afterwards and admired his courage and strength. In some ways, the exhibition is dedicated to him. Not that I chose to do so—it is almost as if he had decided it for me that day. It is somehow a photograph that has obsessed me for the past year and imposed itself, as if Lou was at the origin of the show. Let's not forget he was also a photographer and very specific about portraiture. I love a lot of his songs, but "Walk on the Wild Side," written about "Little Joe" Dallesandro, whom I love very much and photographed many times, resonates particularly to me today.