Quotes by
Jeanloup Sieff

Magazines were once produced by people who had something to say. People who had a point of view that you shared, or didn't share. Now magazines are produced by marketing people who only want to sell advertising pages. And the editorial part? Nobody cares.

A good portrait is the rapport that is established between two people, there has to be someone in front of the camera and someone behind it.

I am totally superficial, I know. But I believe superficiality can be very serious, a defense against the gravity of things, a manner of discretion.

I’m proud of the two adjectives superficial and frivolous.

All aspects of photography interest me and I feel for the female body the same curiosity and the same love as for a landscape, a face or anything else which interests me. In any case, the nude is a form of landscape. There are no reasons for my photographs, nor any rules; all depends on the mood of the moment, on the mood of the model.

The impulse that led you to make an image is a thing that you cannot share with anyone, even if you explain it. What remains is a surface that will live its own life, that will belong to everybody. I accept that surface.

If I have caught myself struggling to remember, it was, if not a pretense, at least premature, in that I only ever used photography for my own pleasure—even if I then bewailed the vanished pleasure which my pictures brought back to me.

This moment has been, it has been precious, I felt it as precious and I made this image. This is what we are trying to say.