90’s, featuring images by iconic French photographer Thierry Le Gouès, featured in MAXIM.
“In a beautiful new book from powerHouse titled simply ’90s, no less than Carla Bruni, former First Lady of France, contributed the preface. “While writing this preface, I turn the pages of this beautiful book, and the beauty of the photographs dazzles me; sensual and elegant, powerful and luminous, filled with joy and life, the photos of Thierry Le Gouès take us elsewhere,” she writes.
Bruni adds that, “Thierry’s eye on his models is very special: imbued with delicacy and empathy, the shots are simple and joyful; we laugh a lot. His talent is multiple—both sophisticated and primitive, and at the same time, timeless.
His images are always strong—even the most delicate of them exudes a granitic starkness… and yet, in each of these images slips a suspended movement, a smile, a ray of light, a gesture, a moment of life. And that is what one feels when leafing through this book: all the strength and emotion of his talent.” Summing up, she cites his “passion, his energy, his force… and his constant search for grace and elegance….
powerHouse Books notes that Le Gouès was “also one of the first fashion photographers to feature exclusively models of African heritage and ethnicity; the success of his first book, ‘Soul’”—also published by powerHouse, in 1998—“featuring Black models, posed strikingly, nude, with skin paint treatment, led to a multiyear international campaign for Nike and featured top American athletes. His later projects on Cuban street fashion and sports culture (Popular, and Havana Boxing Club, both from powerHouse) also influenced later ad campaigns and editorials.””
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