Faye by Jerry

Jerry Schatzberg, filmmaker and faithful friend of the Lumière festival, is also a grand photographer, for whom Faye Dunaway was a muse, an actress and a model.

 
   In 1956, Jerry Schatzberg opens his own studio as an independent photographer. By 1958, he is hired to shoot for leading fashion magazines including Vogue, Esquire, Life, Glamour, or McCall's. His photographic style is somewhat similar to that of Andre Kertesz or Henri Cartier-Bresson in its quest to capture the natural – an approach wholly unprecedented at the time, disregarding the strict codes of fashion photography aesthetics. For ten years, Jerry Schatzberg is a highly sought-after photographer and forms friendships with famous models. One such model is Ann Saint Marie, who is experiencing a painful depression, rejected in favor of younger girls, though she herself is barely 30. Jerry Schatzberg decides to tell this touching story. In 1969, he chooses actress Faye Dunaway, then 29 years old, with a career in full-swing, to portray the fallen model. The result will be the critically acclaimed Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), whose reissue at the 2011 Lumière festival was a revelation.

   However, Jerry Schatzberg had been photographing Faye Dunaway since 1967, when he captured her against a stark black background in a mythical photo-shoot. Many years later, one of the images of the series would be chosen for the official 2011 Cannes Film Festival poster. Dunaway and Schatzberg's close connection would continue, giving rise to many other shots, always based on mutual trust, an element apparent in all of Schatzberg's photos. Celebrities and lesser known subjects would let their anxiety fall by the wayside in front of his lens and allow their emotions to shine through. The photographs of Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Catherine Deneuve, Roman Polanski, Charlotte Rampling, and Faye Dunaway, along with many others, express these moments of truth, captured by Jerry Schatzberg.