Kate Moss for sale
PARIS — There’s Kate Moss peering behind a glass pane attached to a building with a cerise facade on rue de Poitou.
At La Gallerie de L’Instant, the model is the muse once again at an exhibit featuring photographs of Moss by the industry’s most established icons. Dubbed “Kate Moss by the biggest photographers,” the show features portraits by the likes of Ellen Von Unwerth, Mary McCartney, Arthur Elgort, Bert Stern, Rankin, Mike Figgis and Patrick Demarchelier, among others.
Most striking is the image of a young Moss by Bettina Rheims, who is credited with discovering the model. Shot in 1989, she’s the picture of innocence, her face framed with pre-Raphaelite curls. (It’s a significant counterpoint to all the hoopla surrounding the discussion on Thylane Loubry Bondeau, the 10-year-old model whose pouting image in French Vogue appalled conservatives denouncing underage models’ overtly sexualized editorials.)
The recently-wed model has been the subject of another exhibit earlier this year. Danziger Projects, the New York gallery, collated 11 images of the famous waif by leading lensmen like David Sims, Juergen Teller, Bruce Weber, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Working with Moss to select her favorite images, the gallery put together the 11 images as a limited-edition portfolio being sold for $75,000. That’s a little over three million pesos.
At La Gallerie de L’Instant, the priciest image — a moody ethereal portrait by Paolo Roversi — retails for 10,000 euros (or about P600,000).
With at least two decades of work under her skinny belt, Moss, currently in this year’s list of Forbes’ richest supermodels, has yet to see the tail-end of a long career. Credit goes to her lack of interviews — which, in an era of oversharing celebrity tweets, allows the model to retain an aura of elusiveness.
A spokesperson for the gallery sums it up: “She has inspired the biggest photographers of every generation as well as contemporary artists including Lucian Freud, Marc Quinn, Sam Taylor Wood.
“It is therefore only fair that we dedicate an exhibition to her, as her work with photographers has been so rich and varied.”