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Brigitte Lacombe

French photographer Brigitte Lacombe is known for her influential and revelatory portraiture. For four decades, she has created iconic and intimate photographs of many of the world’s most celebrated artists, actors, politicians, and intellectuals. Her work has been exhibited internationally and published by the world’s best magazines. The International Center for Photography (ICP) in New York City exhibited Face to Face: Portraits of Artists, featuring work by Brigitte Lacombe, Catherine Opie, and filmmaker Tacita Dean, curated by Helen Molesworth, from January 27 to May 1, 2023. The documentary film Brigitte was written and directed by filmmaker Lynne Ramsay in 2019. Commissioned by Miu Miu Women’s Tales, the film premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and 2019 New York Film Festival; it can be viewed online. Lacombe’s monographs include: Lacombe Anima/Persona (Steidl/Dangin, 2008); Lacombe Cinema/Theater (Schirmer/Mosel, 2001); Forward, 20 Years of Times Talks (The New York Times, 2019); Breakthrough Prize, Volumes 1 & 2, (Breakthrough Foundation, 2016-2019); Hey’Ya: Arab Women in Sport (Qatar Museums, 2012); and Prada Luna Rossa (Prada, 2001). She is currently at work on a visual memoir. Lacombe has traveled extensively and was a founding photographer at the magazine Conde Nast Traveler. She won the 2000 Eisenstaedt Award for Travel Photography. Other awards include the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award for Photography (2010) and the Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Travel & Portraiture (2012). As a special photographer, Lacombe has worked behind the scenes on many film sets, starting with Alan Pakula’s All the President’s Men and Fellini’s Casanova, both in 1975, as well as Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1976. Since then, she has documented the films of Martin Scorsese, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Lynne Ramsay, Spike Jonze, Bennett Miller, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Haneke, and Mike Nichols, among many others directors. Lacombe’s many advertising campaigns include work for Dior, Chanel, Issey Miyake, Prada, Armani, Hermès, and Lancôme. She lives in New York City.