André Carrara

André Carrara was first introduced to photography when he was a teenager. He often accompanied his sister to the photographic laboratory where she was employed, he was given a camera and began to take photographs in Paris. These first images fascinated him and made him want to be a photographer. He learned about development and printing processes while attending evening classes at the Louis Lumière School. He was hired as an assistant at the age of 20 by the advertising agency SNIP. That was when he discovered fashion photography, frequenting Willy Rizzo, Fouli Elia, Guy Bourdin or Jean-Bernard Naudin, Carrara learned the trade and rounded off his training with the latter. In 1963, he made his first photo session for the agency, a famous campaign for Lacoste.

Antoine Kieffer, who was then Vogue France’s art director, was amazed by the quality of his black and white photos, gave him a chance, and commissioned his first photo reports. His career took off when Hélène Lazareff, founder of Elle Magazine in 1945, called upon him to join the publication.  He went on to join other prestigious photographers who used to collaborate regularly, like Helmut Newton or Hans Feurer. Roman Cieslewitz had just joined the magazine as the art director. His arrival marked the renewal of the magazine layout, which he transformed according to his own graphic vision, characterized by the clarity and simplicity of the plastic expression. 

Cararra’s collaboration with one of the greatest graphic designers of the second half of the 20th century was decisive for André Carrara: he perfected his style and then made a lot of very graphic reports with Cieslewitz. Their collaboration was interrupted by a three-year trip to the US where he captured photographs for Mademoiselle, Glamour... Back in France in the early 1970s, he resumed his collaboration with Elle and published his photos in many magazines like the British, German or Italian editions of Vogue, while becoming one of the main collaborators of the advertising agency MAFIA.

In the 1990s, at the request of Anna Wintour, André Carrara worked regularly for the American magazine Allure and other great reviews. However, the years 1980-2000 were above all the days of Marie-Claire and Marie-Claire bis for which he made, in collaboration with Walter Rospert and then Fred Rawiler as art directors, his most beautiful subjects and most beautiful photos.

— Isabelle-Cecile Le Mee, scientific director at the mission for photography, French Ministry of Culture