The world of Yves Saint Laurent and fashion photography takes center stage at the Rencontres d’Arles. From July 7th to October 5th, 2025, the iconic French festival unveils a groundbreaking exhibition titled Yves Saint Laurent and Photography, co-produced with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris and the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent. The show traces the intimate and visionary relationship between the legendary couturier and the greatest fashion and portrait photographers of the 20th century.
A passion for the lens: Yves Saint Laurent photos as art
Saint Laurent’s fascination with photography was lifelong and deeply personal. Throughout his career, he collaborated with photography titans—Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Jeanloup Sieff—to document his vision of elegance, rebellion, and identity. More than 80 iconic Yves Saint Laurent photos are on view, revealing not just garments, but eras.
One early highlight is a striking 1957 portrait by Irving Penn, capturing the couturier’s youthful presence just as he was beginning to redefine Parisian fashion. Equally captivating is William Klein’s 1962 experimental series, which blurs the lines between fashion and avant-garde street photography. These images not only immortalized Saint Laurent’s designs but contributed to his mythos in the public imagination.
Inside the House: Yves Saint Laurent and photography behind the scenes
The exhibition’s second chapter unfolds like a cabinet of curiosities, offering a glimpse into the backstage life of the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house. More than 200 archival items—from contact sheets and campaign catalogues to personal Polaroids and annotated press clippings—underscore how photography shaped not only the brand’s image, but also its inner rhythm and evolution.
Visitors will discover how Saint Laurent used his own image as a form of expression. As curator Simon Baker notes, he wasn’t just a designer of silhouettes but a curator of his own visual narrative—“obsessed with photography,” and always on the pulse of its newest voices.
Yves Saint Laurent and Photography isn’t just a retrospective—it’s a celebration of how one man’s vision transformed not only fashion, but the medium that framed it. The exhibition, staged at the Mécanique Générale in Arles, forms a compelling dialogue between clothes and camera, style and story.
YVES SAINT LAURENT, Paris, 1957
Courtesy of THE IRVING PENN FOUNDATION; Courtesy of FONDATION PIERRE BERGÉ – YVES SAINT LAURENT
Costume worn by ZIZI JEANMAIRE, imagined by YVES SAINT LAURENT for the show Zizi, je t’aime, Paris, 1972.
Courtesy of YVES SAINT LAURENT. © ESTATE OF JEANLOUP SIEFF © FONDATION PIERRE BERGÉ – YVES SAINT LAURENT
Models from the autumn-winter 1976 haute couture collection Opéra-Ballets russes, Sheraton Hotel, Vogue (Paris), September 1976.
Courtesy of YVES SAINT LAURENT. THE GUY BOURDIN ESTATE 2025.
Courtesy of LOUISE ALEXANDER GALLERY.
FONDATION PIERRE BERGÉ – YVES SAINT LAURENT
ELLE, September 1965. Cocktail dresses from the haute couture autumn-winter 1965 collection, entitled Homage to Piet Mondrian.
YVES SAINT LAURENT. JEANNE LANVIN-CASTILLO; Courtesy of PETER KNAPP / ELLE FRANCE
YVES SAINT LAURENT, Paris, 1966
Courtesy of HARRY MEERSON, FONDATION PIERRE BERGÉ – YVES SAINT LAURENT