Pierre Et Gilles The Complete Works

The highly stylized portraits by the French photographers known simply by their first names, Pierre et Gilles, function unapologetically in the grand tradition of glamour photography. The subjects?whether they are stars of film, music, or fashion or just friends of the photographers?are both idealized and irrelevant when standing amid complex fantasy sets under layers of makeup in photographs that have been heavily retouched. This contradiction, which we know to have been most fully realized in the Hollywood star system of the Forties, is perhaps the only irony in the artists' body of work. These are simply beautiful images of beautiful people, produced as a sincere homage to the beauty of the human form.