Grace Jones – Blue Black in Black on Brown – New York, 1981 – by Jean-Paul Goude
“Everything here is manipulated,” says Jean-Paul Goude (born 8 December 1940), the French graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, advertising film director, event designer, former art director at Esquire magazine and arguably best known for his work with Grace Jones, the singer and model.
“In 1977 or ’78, I met Grace and it was a period of decadence,” he recalled in 2009. “People were still doing lots of drugs and I had been working so hard for so long and she made me part of her lifestyle, made me go out dancing at Studio 54. She became an obsession and we did everything together.”
Goude and Jones pursued a romantic relationship, and he began stage-managing her live shows and creating her album covers. Goude used retouching before computer manipulation to depict Jones in an impossible pose for her Island Life album. Jones also appeared in much of Goude’s other work, including his 1985 Citroën CX 2 commercial.
Released in the internet era, his photos of the statuesque Jones would have broken the internet, a claim synonymous with Goude’s 2014 photographs of a naked Kim Kardashian, her buttocks catching a jet of champagne – a take on Goude’s picture of model Carolina Beaumont (below).
Carolina Beaumont – New York, 1976 – by Jean-Paul Goude
Cubist Grace Jones – New York, 1981 – by Jean-Paul Goude
Farida Khelfa – Paris, 1985 by Jean-Paul Goude
Fashion and Sport Running – by Jean-Paul Goude
Naomi Campbell – Knysna, 2009 0 by Jean-Paul Goude
Jimi Hendrix – Paris, 1968 – by Jean-Paul Goude
Slave to the Rhythm – New York, 1986 – by Jean-Paul Goudes.
Toukie Smith – New York, 1974 by Jean-Paul Goude
Jessica Chastain Joan-of-Ar , 2015 – by Jean-Paul Goude
Wamba – Paris, 1947 0 by Jean-Paul Goude
Grace, Revised and Updated – New York, 1978 – by Jean-Paul Goude
The Kodakette Family – Rome, 1984 – by Jean-Paul Goude
Photos from an exhibit at the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan, sponsored by Tod’s (originally published 2016)
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