Pierre et Gilles - 40 ans (French version)

“Today, a superb monograph enriched by an essay by art critic Eric Troncy brings together the now-iconic portraits of anonymous subjects, close friends, and celebrities, including Jean-Paul Gaultier, Amanda Lear, and Stromae, as well as Zahia and young martial arts champions and other athletes.” NUMÉRO

Forty years already: it was in 1976 that photographer Pierre Commoy met Gilles Blanchard, a painter trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, thus was their collaborative body of work born: blurring the lines between painting and photography, where the intimate is inseparable from art under the name Pierre & Gilles.

For this anniversary, they chose the book format, which unfolds like an album, year after year. Their style is inimitable: romantic, dreamlike, influenced by pop art, gay culture, street culture, as well as the art of portraiture in the greatest tradition of art history. The two “image engineers”, to borrow the lovely phrase coined by the author of the accompanying text, Éric Troncy, have from the very beginning developed a personal body of work that goes beyond commissions for album covers or magazine covers. Their method remains the same: the works feature intimate subjects whether anonymous or, more often than not very famous, in a studio setting they design together.