Hedi Slimane opens photography exhibition in Shanghai

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Mar 23, 2021

Hedi Slimane has opened a photography exhibition in Shanghai, the first of his photo shows in China.

 
Entitled Sun of Sound, the exhibition marks the first photo show of his work in over seven years, when he exhibited inside the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent in Paris in 2014.
 
This personal exhibition by Slimane, the creative director of Celine in Paris, is being staged in the Almine Rech Gallery, located in the hyper central Huangpu district of Shanghai, from March 19 to April 30. It’s a 4,000-square-foot space in the Amber Building, a former Bank of China warehouse.

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Curiously, the press release for the exhibition describes Slimane as the “acclaimed French multi-disciplinary artist, photographer, and fashion designer,” in that order.
 
Slimane first began taking photographs when he was 11, and his subject matter focuses on artistic youth in private moments, or rock stars captured in dive bars, after-hours clubs or dingy dressing rooms. Invariably shot in direct and unadulterated black and white.

 
“Music has a sense of freedom that continues to inspire me. I have never found anything else that has the same capacity to impact on popular culture,” said Slimane in a release.
 
The exhibition extends from 2006, capturing everyone from skateboarders to clubbers, jumping between LA, London and Paris, to a series of older iconic survivors like Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, Keith Richards, John Lyndon, and Jane Birkin.
 
“I like a ‘simple’ photograph, one that does not pretend to be anything other than a captured moment in someone’s life,” added the designer, who has helmed such illustrious brands as Dior Men and Yves Saint Laurent.