ART SPATE: STEVEN MEISEL IS ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL FASHION PHOTOGRAPHERS

Steven Meisel is one of the most successful fashion photographers in the industry. He had a boyhood fascination with beauty, so we’re not surprised at how his life’s turned out. Born in 1954, and showing early artistic talent, he copied from publications like Vogue, and later attended art school, majoring in fashion illustration.

Women like Babe Paley and Gloria Guinness belonging to the high stratum of the society infused the ideas of high society and beauty in Meisel’s eyes.

An admirer of photographers such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Jerry Schatzberg and Bert Stern, he came to believe that illustrating was the past, and photography was the future. While working at Women’s Wear Daily, he approached Elite Model Management, where his designs caught the attention of booker Oscar Reyes. Reyes allowed Meisel to photograph agency models (including Phoebe Cates), which he did at weekends in his apartment or on the street, while working as an illustrator during the week.

When some of these models took their portfolios to castings at Seventeen magazine, they were also carrying Meisel’s future, in the form of his photos. A phone call from impressed magazine staff followed, inviting him to work with them.

He’s gone from that call to being one of the most successful fashion photographers in the business, working for the likes of Versace, Valentino, Dolce and Gabbana, Balenciaga, Louis Viutton and Calvin Klein, and with involvement in Prada campaigns since 2004. Steven is an intensely private man, giving only a handful of interviews throughout his lifetime. Supermodels owe their careers to him; Vogue Italia can thank him for the past 25 years of covers – most importantly, the controversial ones.

Steven Meisel is credited for promoting as well as discovering many models who already were or became successful, such as Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Coco Rocha, Liya Kebede, Raquel Zimmerman, Doutzen Kroes, Karen Elson, Caroline Trentini, Lara Stone, Nadège du Bospertus and Iris Strubegger. He regularly featured them in Vogue particularly for campaigns by Prada. In 2008, in order to address the racism visible in fashion commercial campaigns, runways and magazines, Meisel did an issue of showing just black models in Vogue.

Meisel does not have his own book dedicated to his photography, but teNueuscollected some of his images in a book named Steven Meisel in 2003 which completely sold out.

Naomi Campbell, 1992.

Satire (W, 2011). Ironic and iconic: that pretty much sums up the series of fake adverts Meisel photographed for W. Fabulous Fakes was a humorous take on everything from hair products to fragrance promotions.