Sometimes you get exactly what you want from a sitter, Alain Delon who starred in Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Purple Noon was at the height of his fame when I took this picture.
To say he was brooding and smouldering is an understatement as you can see from the image above and although I am anti smoking, there is nothing more real than a French man and his Gitanes and the image perfectly reflects that moment. Great to see GQ Japan using this image for a feature in their current issue.
His manager was in the studio and he didn’t really speak to me and just spoke to his manager in French until I made him laugh with my attempts to speak French, which cut through the language barrier and you really see the warmth of his character below. The feel of the picture below is so different from the above portrait and shows how different images can be within the same session.
- Clive Arrowsmith shoots stunning images, stages exhibitions, writes books, gives talks and runs workshops, and is as passionate about photography as he was when he first pressed the shutter at The Paris Collections. He is available for global media opportunities related to his work and photography generally. Bespoke prints from Clive’s archive are also available by special request, for any enquiries (email Eugenie here). Clive’s book Arrowsmith: Fashion, Beauty & Portraits is available here and Lowry at Home: Salford 1966 is available here
