The Prolific Willy Rizzo

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/fashion/remembering-willy-rizzo-versatile-and-prolific.html

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FASHION WAS A CHALLENGING SUBJECT for a photojournalist like Willy Rizzo. He was already well established and living in Paris in the 1950s, his subjects having included politicians, playboys and a pontiff, when Alexander Liberman, then the art director of Vogue, asked him to shoot for the magazine.

Discussing how to approach the subject of couture, the two men talked about the importance of the model, the expression of her eyes and her movements. Like a writer facing a blank page, a photographer had to tell a story.

While Mr. Rizzo, who died on Feb. 25 at the age of 84 (according to most biographies), was known for many things — his poignant portraits of Marilyn Monroe taken in the weeks before her death, his coverage of the first Cannes Film Festival, his long career with Paris Match, his equally prolific work as a furniture designer, his appearance as an actor in “Hoffa” with his friend Jack Nicholson — the photographs he took of the fashion scene in postwar France are especially compelling. They captured the story precisely.

When Coco Chanel, whose associations with the Germans during the war had tainted her reputation, returned to Paris fashion in 1954, financed by the Wertheimer family, Mr. Rizzo was sent by Hervé Mille, the director of Paris Match, to document her studio. Mr. Rizzo began to photograph the behind-the-scenes activities of the cabine, and photographed Chanel as she established her comeback, making the designs, like the boxy silk tweed jacket, for which she would be best known.

Chanel was taken with Mr. Rizzo’s wife at the time, Paule, who became one of her favorite models, along with her friend Suzy Parker. The resulting images are part of an exhibition of “Les Instants Chanel” on display at his design store on the Left Bank, Studio Willy Rizzo, at 12 rue de Verneuil, until May 15.

“WHAT I LOVED about his photography was that it was photojournalism, not fashion photography,” said Dana Thomas, a fashion journalist based in Paris. “He was capturing moments as opposed to creating a tableau.”

A few years ago, Ms. Thomas interviewed Mr. Rizzo, who said that Chanel had recognized the importance of the photographs. She was not necessarily sweet to him, but she was talkative. “After lunch, when she walked you to the door, she wouldn’t let you go,” Mr. Rizzo told Ms. Thomas, according to her notes. “It was a tick that she had. You could stand there for an hour and a half at the door.”

Mr. Rizzo’s famous portraits of other designers from that period often show couturiers at their work. He photographed Christian Dior, kneeling in a suit and tie at the feet of a model to precisely measure the distance from the hem of her skirt to the floor. From an April 1960 issue of Vogue, there is an image of a young Yves Saint Laurent, 23 at the time (and already the successor to Mr. Dior), sitting at a desk and smiling sweetly at his mother, Lucienne Andrée Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, wearing a cocktail dress with a sparkling pin on the back of the shoulder strap. He later photographed him with Pierre Cardin, who is resting his chin on Mr. Saint Laurent’s shoulder.

“When I photographed them, they were already strong personalities,” Mr. Rizzo said in an interview published last year at Artinfo.com. “I observed them in their way of working and their habits. Fashion was like the birth of a new industry.”

Mr. Rizzo never stopped working. When he was not working on new pieces of furniture (collected by Giambattista Valli, Aerin Lauder and John Demsey, according to Elle Décor), he was taking more photographs. His favorite subject, according to Dominique Rizzo, his wife of the last 35 years (following a second marriage, to the actress Elsa Martinelli), was women.

“He was looking for something that you would not need a legend or some words to describe,” she said. “In the photos you would know immediately, if it was Jean Cocteau, for example, what was the passion of that person through their eyes. The eyes and the look were the most important things.”