Hedi Slimane’s Contrasting Fashion and Photography Cool

Few people leave their profession when they are at the top of the game. In fashion, perhaps only Tom Ford comes to mind. But even Mr. Ford — after a stint in Hollywood that culminated in his direction of the Oscar-nominated “A Single Man” — came back into the fold and is now designing again.

But Mr. Slimane seems to have left fashion behind with nary a second thought, reinventing himself as a photographer in the past few years, one who has produced an array of strikingly intimate portraits, nearly all of them black and white, of some of the most famous faces in contemporary culture: Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, Brian Wilson, Gisele Bundchen, Robert De Niro and Kate Moss. {New York Times}

During his time at Dior Homme, Hedi Slimane is almost solely responsible for the ultra slim aesthetic that moved menswear away from clothes cut to flatter larger, muscled physiques in favor of skinny ties, and even skinnier jeans that didn’t just fit the can’t-gain-weight guys, but made them cool.

With a new solo photography exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Slimane still seems to enjoy pushing a certain kind of cool – only this time through lighting and composition that draws attention to everything except what someone is wearing. Which has a certain irony, considering Slimane’s subjects are often models and other fashion personalities. Certainly as high a contrast to his previous career as anything captured in his increasingly well known black and whites.

‘California Song,’ Hedi Slimane’s photography exhibition is running at the Los Angeles MoCA through January 2012.