JEAN PAGLIUSO PHOTOGRAPHY

About

Jean Pagliuso (b. 1941, California) is an acclaimed artist who has photographed fashion, film, and celebrity portraits since the 1970s. Her photographs have been published in Vogue, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone. She has collaborated with film director Robert Altman and film studios, including Disney, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Brothers. Pagliuso’s photographic work of the last ten years, influenced by her extensive travels to Cambodia, India, Turkey, Mexico, and Peru, addresses the themes of time, nature and decay. Through these experiences, places of ritual and endangered environments intrigued her. She works most often with a Hasselblad camera, experimenting with printing papers and techniques for each of her projects. Pagliuso’s work can be found in collections around the world, including Susan Sarandon, Robert Altman, John Alexander, Edie Baskin, Eric Fischl & April Gornik, Agnes Gund, Kelly Klein, Bette Midler, Pfizer, Mobil Corporation, Jann Wenner of Wenner Media, and more.

 

JEAN PAGLIUSO 

BIO

Jean Pagliuso was born in Southern California and graduated from the UCLA College of Fine Arts in 1963. Moving to New York, she worked as assistant art director at Conde Nast in NY, then moved back to California where she began a life-long career in photography. In her forty-plus year career spanning both California and New York, she was published in Mademoiselle, HG, Vogue, NY Magazine, Italian Harper Bazaar, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, New York Times Magazine “Fashion of the Times”, Italian Vogue, and Interview Magazine.  In addition to her work in fashion, she photographed movie posters most notably for White Palace, American Gigolo, Splash Dillinger, Thieves like Us, Three Women, and Nashville.  Working with the director Robert Altman changed her life.

In 1997, Pagliuso’s attention turned to places of ritual and the endangered environments of Egypt, Mali, Peru India and Burma and the Southwest. Her rice paper photographic prints were exhibited at Marlborough Gallery in NY, Madrid and Monaco, Mary Ryan Gallery and the Drawing Room in East Hampton. From landscapes she went back to her roots and began making strictly formalized portraits of birds entitled The Poultry Suite.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Living part of each year in New Mexico eventually lured me away from a full time career in Fashion Photography. Striking out to investigate various “outlier” destinations, all directions led me to beautiful, crumbling ruins of Native American habitats and later to ritual grounds halfway around the world… Belize, Cappadocia, Angkor Wat, India, Chaco Canyon, and Machu Picchu. My theme broadened to encompass places of ritual as well as places of inspiration. The ravaged beauty of these civilizations has given me the privilege of discovery on a very personal and intimate level. The Ritual Suite of landscapes gave way to the “Poultry Suite” which began simply as a nod to my father and his obsession with breeding chickens while living in a suburban environment.

 

THE MEDIUM

Inspired by old temple rubbings, I have chosen a hand-applied silver gelatin emulsion brushed on handmade Japanese rice paper. Each piece of paper is initially sized then coated twice with a photographic emulsion and dried between applications. It is then ready for traditional exposure and development.