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Yves Saint Laurent’s Special Relationship with Photography Goes on View at ICP

The couture legend’s use of the camera is examined in a glamorous assemblage of over 300 objects

By Rena Gross
Yves Saint Laurent exhibit at ICP with framed photos on green wall above a glass display case featuring vintage magazines and photographs.
Installation view, “Yves St. Laurent and Photography,” at ICP. Photo: Courtesy of ICP

The ICP on Ludlow Street in Manhattan has opened a show on the revered fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent’s special relationship with photography as an art form. Titled “Yves Saint Laurent and Photography,” it examines Saint Laurent’s use of photography in his work over the decades. The exhibition brings together stellar work by artists including Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, David Seidner, and Andy Warhol.

Models in colorful 1960s dresses pose playfully in a bright, artistic studio setting.
Cocktail dresses known as “Homages to Pop Art,” Fall/Winter 1966 haute couture collection Published in LIFE, September 1966. Photo: Jean-Claude Sauer / Courtesy of ICP

Produced in cooperation with the Musée Saint Laurent in Paris and the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent, “Yves Saint Laurent and Photography” also brings together over 200 museum archive loans, including personal photos, magazines, press clippings, contact sheets, campaign catalogues, and notes for Saint Laurent’s numerous iconic ads.

Yves Saint Laurent in a suit with glasses, resting chin on hand, pointing downward with other hand against a plain background.
Harry Meerson (1910–91) Yves Saint Laurent, 1966 Photo: Courtesy ICP.

Saint Laurent’s constant elevation of fashion to an art form has been well-documented. In 1983, he became the first living designer to have a Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute solo retrospective, an honor that so far has been duplicated solely by Rei Kawakubo in 2017. He drew on cultural and artistic influences as diverse as Piet Mondrian, the Ballets Russes, and Henri Matisse. He occasionally made himself into the provocative work of art, as when he posed nude for photographer Jeanloup Sieff in an advertisement for Yves Saint Laurent Pour Homme. That photo is one of many famous images in the exhibit.

Models wearing matching zigzag pattern dresses, striking dynamic poses against a plain backdrop.
Models from the Spring/Summer 1966 haute couture collection in Harper’s Bazaar, March 1966 Photo: James Moore / Courtesy ICP

“Yves Saint Laurent and Photography” is on view at the International Center of Photography in New York through September 28, 2026.