Parting shot: Yves Saint Laurent says goodbye

“I really loved that guy! But he was very complicated. Even in a crowd he seemed lonely and sad.”

The ‘guy’ in the photo is Yves Saint Laurent; remembering him is the man behind the camera: Jean-Marie Perier.

Perier, now 78, is talking about his “third life” shooting fashion for French Elle in the 1990s. He began his career as a music photographer in the ’60s, touring with the stars who shaped the decade, from The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and The Beatles to France’s Johnny Hallyday and Francoise Hardy – Perier’s girlfriend at the time. Hardy became his muse, as did her later boyfriend, singer and actor Jacques Dutronc.

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“I couldn’t imagine not loving the man she loved,” Perier says. “He was amazing, and because of this I put down my camera and made films with him.” Hardy and Dutronc are still very close friends of Perier, who lives a quiet existence in the pretty medieval town of Villeneuve, about an hour’s drive from Toulouse.

Growing up, Perier was a talented musician and dreamt of becoming a jazz star, but a family secret changed the course of his life. “At 16, I found out my father [actor Francois Perier] was not my biological father. It was a big shock. In fact, my biological father was a famous musician [singer Henri Salvador]. I wanted to be the opposite of him, so I didn’t play music again.”

Instead, he followed François on his movie sets. It was during filming of Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria that Jean-Marie first contemplated photography. “My father was very worried about me. He didn’t know that I knew the truth [about my parentage] and couldn’t understand why I had given up on everything. He was asking everyone else on set: ‘What am I going to do with my son?’ A young journalist joked, ‘When you don’t know what to do with your son, you put him at Paris Match!”

His father took the tip, arranging for Jean-Marie to meet future publishing mogul Daniel Filipacchi, then a young snapper at Paris Match who also had a radio show dedicated to jazz. Recognising a kindred spirit, Filipacchi hired Perier on the spot as his assistant, arming him with a Leica. He worked at Paris Match for a year before being drafted into the French army to serve in Algeria. A year on, he reconnected with Filipacchi, who was launching a music magazine, Salut les Copains.

They joined forces on what was to become one of the biggest success stories in French publishing history. “In 1962, we started with 100.000 copies,” says Perier. “Six months later, we were producing more than a million magazines a month.”

Perier quickly became the go-to music photographer of his generation. He had unprecedented access to the biggest teen idols, and was given free rein to create his own narratives and backdrops. Memorable images include The Stones drinking fizzy pop on a train from Marseilles in 1966; a young Marianne Faithfull posing in the window of Jaeger in London in 1965, and a coiffed, suited and booted James Brown stepping off his jet in Long Island in 1967.

“Daniel never told me what to do. He only said, ‘Just take pictures that parents will hate!’ It was much easier back then. When I met The Stones, The Beatles and Johnny Hallyday, they were 17 to 22 years old. It was almost children’s stuff. I could ask them to do anything at all! Can you believe that for 12 years, no one asked to see a picture before I printed it?”

After a relatively short career as a film director, Perier moved to LA to make commercials for brands such as Coca-Cola and Ford. “I arrived in 1980, the beginning of the trend for European directors over there. It was amazing working with people like Ridley Scott. I stayed another 10 years and made more than 600 ads. Then I changed directions again in 1990.”

His sister, Anne-Marie Périer, was editor of French Elle at the time and suggested he move back to Paris to photograph fashion. “She has a good sense of humour and thought it would be interesting for me to create the same mise-en-scène I did in the 1960s, but this time for designers. At first, it was very funny for me to make pictures of designers, because they all knew me from before. Saint Laurent had made many smoking [tuxedos] for Francoise [Hardy], so I knew him well. But, for me, these designers were the new rock stars. Nobody lived like Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld or Jean Paul Gaultier back then. No one had their imagination and craziness.”

When Perier took this shot (above) in 1995, he wanted to challengethe (albeit accurate) perception of Saint Laurent as painfully shy and reclusive. “He was already quite sick. He knew it was the beginning of the end, so it was like a goodbye picture, him behind the curtain, just smiling. It was like he was saying. ‘I made this whole show, so now I can go.’”

The Elle spread was to be one of the very last photoshoots of the great couturier, who died in 2008 at the age of 71. There is a touching twist to the story, too. Perier had a chance meeting with Saint Laurent at a restaurant in Paris just before his death. “He told me he loved the picture and asked if he could have a print. I was amazed, so of course I made sure I sent it to his apartment the next day. Two days later he died, but he’d already arranged to send me flowers and a card thanking me for the gift. It was so beautiful of him.”

A national treasure himself, Perier is preparing for his next adventures: an exhibition at London’s Little Black Gallery, and the publication of a series of short stories inspired by old age. Dark humour, he says, is essential when you hit 70. “People say silly things like, ‘Being old is wonderful.’ Why do they think it’s so great? What’s important is to never sit back. You must never waste time.”

Designers by Jean-Marie Perier is at The Little Black Gallery, 13A Park Walk, London SW10 0AJ until October 14

Portrait of Yves Saint-Laurent, Paris, 1995 © JEAN-MARIE PÉRIER, courtesy of The Little Black Gallery