Now Boarding
Harry Gruyaert tells Maisie Skidmore that he took inspiration from his work at Charles de Gaulle airport for his commission for Saint Laurent.
Harry Gruyaert’s fascination with airports is well documented. In his 2018 book Last Call, the Belgian photographer compiles photographs made over the course of several decades in airports around the world. Young children look out over runways. Solitary businessmen sit down to lunch alone, or gather impatiently at their gates. Everywhere, people wait. They read. They watch.
“It’s a situation I really enjoy shooting,” he explains. “Inside. Outside. The transparency. The colors. The days of waiting.” In Gruyaert’s work, the liminality of the airport, with its garish advertising, its carefully considered decor and its vast and diverse mixture of people makes for fascinating scenes. When it came to proposing an idea for Saint Laurent’s SELF project, he knew he wanted to continue to examine it.
"I work by myself, so it's a very different setup. I’m usually keeping everybody away, pushing them back. But this time, it worked."
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In creating this new body of work, however, there was one important difference. It was shot at the tail end of the Covid-19 pandemic, when reduced airport traffic had forced parts of Charles de Gaulle – the largest international airport in France, and closest to Gruyaert’s hometown of Paris – to close. “We could move quite freely, which made it easy to work,” he says.
The resulting photographs are playful, poised, glamorous and mischievous. Models seem to have run with reckless abandon through the airport’s empty corridors and lounges. The stillness of these spaces presents a strange sense of foreboding – one familiar to anybody who has spent a long night waiting for news of a delayed flight, or looked around an empty hall for signage for their terminal.
“I’ve been interested in fashion for a very long time,” Gruyaert explains. The photographer often shot fashion editorials early on in his career, and has continued to work with fashion brands and magazines from time to time in more recent years. For him, though, the current running through these images is created not by the clothing, but by the women wearing it. “It’s about movement and about colors,” he says.
Nonetheless, working as part of a large team offered him a refreshing, if unusual, change of pace. “Kaduri Elyashar [who consulted on style and image for this story] was really very important.” In particular, the large team on-set was unusual. “Normally, I work by myself, so it’s a very different setup. I’m usually keeping everybody away, pushing them back. But this time, it worked.”
• SELF 07 launches this week with six spectacular pop-up public exhibitions staged across six cities, from June 9–12th:
Paris
Harry Gruyaert
Jardin du Palais Royal, 43 rue de Vallois, Paris 75001
Open 8am to 10pm, June 9–12
