Robert Fairer (born 1966) is a British

fashion photographer Fashion photography is a genre of photography which is devoted to displaying clothing and other fashion items, sometimes haute couture. It typically consists of a fashion photographer taking a picture of a dressed model in a photographic studio ...

who is known for his backstage photography in the 1990s until the 2010s. Working for American ''Vogue'', ''

Elle ''Elle'' (stylized ''ELLE'') is a worldwide women's magazine of French origin that offers a mix of fashion and beauty content, together with culture, society and lifestyle. The title means "she" or "her" in French. ''Elle'' is considered the w ...

'' and ''

Harper's Bazaar ''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the st ...

'', his behind-the-scenes shots of

supermodel A supermodel, also spelled super-model or super model, is a highly paid fashion model who usually has a worldwide reputation and often a background in ''haute couture'' and commercial modeling. The term ''supermodel'' became prominent in the po ...

fashion design Fashion design is the Art (skill), art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its Fashion accessory, accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends, and has varied over time and plac ...

ers,

makeup artists A make-up artist, also called a makeup artist, and often shortened to MUA, is an artist whose medium is the human body, applying makeup and prosthetics on others for theatre, television, film, fashion, magazines and other similar productions incl ...

hair stylists A hairdresser is a person whose occupation is to cut or style hair in order to change or maintain a person's image. This is achieved using a combination of hair coloring, haircutting, and hair texturing techniques. A Hairdresser may also be refe ...

and accessories designers would come to define the magazines front of the book. His first solo exhibition 'Robert Fairer Backstage Pass: Dior, Galliano, Jacobs, and McQueen' was held at SCAD Fash Museum of Fashion and his work has been exhibited at the

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, The Design Museum,

LACMA The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961, ...

, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...

Early life and career

Fairer was born in 1966 in London. He grew up on

King's Road King's Road or Kings Road (or sometimes the King's Road, especially when it was the king's private road until 1830, or as a colloquialism by middle/upper class London residents), is a major street stretching through Chelsea, London, Chelsea ...

, and was never without a camera. Being part of London's emerging art and fashion scene in the 1980s and 1990s, he began photographing friends and was encouraged to pursue a career in photography. Fascinated by wildlife photography, he traveled to Africa for three months with a telephoto lens to document the animals on the savannah. With the help of his wife and agent, he gained access to London Graduate Week in 1992, and photographed the

Central Saint Martins Central Saint Martins is a public tertiary art school in London, England. It is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of shor ...

graduate show which featured the collection of

Lee Alexander McQueen Lee Alexander McQueen CBE (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier. He founded his own Alexander McQueen label in 1992, and was chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. His achievements in fashion ...

. Fairer graduated from London School of Printing in 1993, and soon became a household name at fashion week in

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Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

and

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. With his Hasselblad camera, he discovered the backstage area by chance and began photographing behind the scenes beauty stories and supermodels minutes before they walked onto the catwalk. He was one of the only backstage photographers and the stories didn't exist in the fashion magazines at the time. He used a 35mm camera and changed to medium format in the 1990s before changing to digital. He would try to sell his stories after the catwalk shows and bring a suitcase with transparencies and a portable lightbox to magazine editors including Fashion Editor

Isabella Blow Isabella "Issie" Blow (nee Delves Broughton; 19 November 1958 – 7 May 2007) was an English magazine editor. As the muse of hat designer Philip Treacy, she is credited with discovering the models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl as well as prop ...

at ''Vogue'' magazine and

Terry Jones Terence Graham Parry Jones (1 February 1942 – 21 January 2020) was a Welsh comedian, director, historian, actor, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy team. After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English, Jones and ...

at ''i-D'' magazine. From 1995 to 2001 he worked as a contributing photographer for '' Elle UK'', '' Harper's Bazaar US'' and ''InStyle'' magazine. In 2001 he was hired by American ''Vogue'' and became the magazine's contracted lensman working with Editor-in-chief

Anna Wintour Dame Anna Wintour (; born 3 November 1949) is a British journalist based in New York City who has served as editor-in-Chief of ''Vogue'' since 1988 and Global Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast since 2020; she is also the artistic directo ...

and Fashion Editor

André Leon Talley André Leon Talley (October 16, 1948 – January 18, 2022) was an American fashion journalist, stylist, creative director, and editor-at-large of ''Vogue'' magazine. He was the magazine's fashion news director from 1983 to 1987, its first Africa ...

on backstage, runway, editorial, celebrity and wedding stories. Directed to capture "life in the pictures," his backstage photographs would cover up to 15 pages in ''Vogue'' front of book. Having exclusive backstage access for a decade was made to a halt with the 2009 recession and arrival of social media. Fairer began digitizing his archive after working with the

on their publication accompanying the '' Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty'' exhibition in 2015. He has published five books devoted to his backstage photography. In 2021 his first solo exhibition 'Robert Fairer Backstage Pass: Dior, Galliano, Jacobs, and McQueen,' was held at SCAD Fash Museum of Fashion and curated by director of fashion exhibitions Rafael Gomes. The exhibition showcased the glamour and spirit of backstage from 1998 to 2010. It featured shots of supermodels

Gisele Bundchen Gisele or Gisèle may refer to: Persons * Gisele (given name) * Gisele, mononym of Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen See also * Giselle (disambiguation) {{Disambig ...

Naomi Campbell Naomi Elaine Campbell (born 22 May 1970) is an English model, actress, singer, and businesswoman. She began her career at the age of 15, and established herself amongst the most recognisable and in-demand models of the past four decades. Cam ...

Kate Moss Katherine Ann Moss (born 16 January 1974) is a British model. Arriving at the end of the "supermodel era", Moss rose to fame in the early 1990s as part of the heroin chic fashion trend. Her collaborations with Calvin Klein brought her to fas ...

, makeup artists Pat McGrath and Val Garland, hair stylists Julien D'Ys and Orlando Pita, and milliners Stephen Jones and

Philip Treacy Philip Anthony Treacy (born 26 May 1967) is an Irish haute couture milliner, or hat designer, who has been mostly based in London for his career, and who was described by ''Vogue'' magazine as "perhaps the greatest living milliner". In 2000, T ...

Publications

* ''Alexander McQueen'': Unseen, Robert Fairer, Sally Singer, Claire Wilcox, 2016, * ''John Galliano: Unseen'', Robert Fairer, André Leon Talley, Claire Wilcox, 2017, * ''Marc Jacobs: Unseen'', Robert Fairer, Sally Singer, André Leon Talley, 2018, * ''John Galliano for Dior'', Robert Fairer, André Leon Talley, Oriole Cullen et al., 2019, * ''Karl Lagerfeld Unseen: The Chanel Years'', Robert Fairer, Sally Singer, Natasha A. Fraser, Elizabeth von Thurn und Taxis, 2022,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fairer, Robert Fashion photographers 1966 births Living people