He was already running an entire couture house. Nothing obliged him to hold the camera himself, and he did it anyway. Karl Lagerfeld's path as a photographer says something precise about how a brand image is made.
Why did Karl Lagerfeld pick up the camera?
Artistic director of Chanel since 1983, Karl Lagerfeld began photographing the collections himself in 1987, for the press and advertising. According to the often-told story, the campaigns first went through outside photographers: he would approve, correct, start again, never quite finding what he had in mind. Tired of this back and forth, he is said to have ended up making the images himself.
What remains of these campaigns?
More than 600 photographs of Chanel campaigns, gathered in a book, signed by the same hand. In 1996, the German Photographic Society awarded him its cultural prize. Beyond the images, this photographic standard shaped the eye of the house's teams and contributed to a recognisable identity that outlives him.
What gave the Chanel campaigns their consistency?
It is not a single style. What lasted over time is that one single eye followed the entire chain, from brief to final print. The consistency of a brand image comes from the continuity of the eye, more than from the repetition of an aesthetic.
Why does each intermediary cost the image something?
Each time an intermediary is added between intention and delivered image, something is lost along the way: a framing, an intention, a detail. Lagerfeld solved the problem by removing the intermediary. The same mechanism can be seen in many visual productions, with a photographer on one side, a retoucher on the other and a person in the middle to hold it all together.
Is total control a whim or a production method?
It is a method. Total control is not the whim of a demanding creator: it is the guarantee that what comes out matches exactly what the brand wants to say.
How many hands touch your images between brief and delivery?
The question this path raises is simple: how many hands touch the image between brief and delivery, and what does each of them cost you? After fifteen years producing visuals for luxury houses, we chose a single point of contact for photo production and retouching. Our way of working is detailed in the production method, and you can contact us to scope a project.
Sources: Numéro, article on the 600 photographs signed by Karl Lagerfeld ; Wikipedia, Karl Lagerfeld.
