Directors’ Cuts: Peter Lindbergh

When recalling fashion’s golden age of the 1990s, where the names of models, designers and photographers rolled off tongues the world over, Peter Lindbergh might not be the first name to spring to mind. Yet it was at the hands of the visionary photographer that some of fashion’s most iconic moments unfolded.

His January 1990 cover for Vogue magazine (starring Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford in oversized white shirts) heralded a new decade fresh-faced stars – in turn inspiring the video for George Michael’s “Freedom,” released the same year, which crystalized the statuses of the “supers” as household names.

For today’s Director’s Cut, the photographer enlisted Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele – the Vogue fashion editor responsible for pairing Lacroix couture with a pair of Guess jeans for Lindbergh’s first Vogue cover in 1988 – for The Reunion, bringing together again Crawford, Eva Herzigova, Karen Alexander, Nadja Auermann and Patitz.

Whether shooting Helena Christiansen in the desert with a child-sized alien or suspending Linda Evangelista from a crane above Manhattan’s streets, the photographer became renowned for capturing the same faces time and time again, a relatively unheard of practice in today’s fast-paced grapple for the new It girl. The piercing stares emanating from Lindbergh’s signature black and white portraits come as a result of long-lasting relationships with his subjects, enabling him to strip them of artifice – an approach which perhaps has it roots in Lindbergh’s beginnings as a painter.