Demarchelier, Patrick

French, b. 1943

BiographyBorn in Paris and raised in the French town of Le Havre, Patrick Demarchelier moved to New York in 1975. He began working as a freelance photographer and soon embarked on a career in fashion photography. Since the late 1970s, he worked on international advertising campaigns for fashion houses such as Dior, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel. His editorial photographs have been published in every major fashion magazine, and since 1992, he worked regularly for Harper's Bazaar.

In 1988, The Gap launched an advertising campaign titled the "Individuals of Style," for which it commissioned leading photographers to create black-and-white portraits of famous cultural figures. Demarchelier chose to photograph rock musician Lenny Kravitz. Intended for display in bus stop shelters, the photographs from the campaign are printed at a large scale and overlaid with the Gap logo. Along with the photograph by Demarchelier, the Museum of Contemporary Photography's collection includes portraits commissioned by the Gap from five other photographers. These selections were exhibited at MoCP in 1994. Photographs from campaign were also presented at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2007. Demarchelier died in 2022.