CLAUDE GASSIAN "The Rolling Stones' photographer"

Claude Gassian is a French photographer, born in Paris in 1949. For more than forty years, he has been capturing the images of personalities from the world of music. He is particularly known for his portraits of the group The Rolling Stones.

His first photo? At the Olympia, at 16, during a Rolling Stones concert. Armed with a Rolleiflex belonging to his father, Claude Gassian will tour concerts: Led Zeppelin at the Olympia at the end of 1969; Jimi Hendrix on the Isle of Wight… With the advent of rock’n’roll, concerts multiplied and the personalities of the musicians asserted themselves.
The concerts follow one another, and Claude Gassian refines his style, his framing, his approach. He is no longer simply a photographer; he is a concert photographer. A light, very particular angles. At the beginning of the 70s, he signed his first photos in the music press of the time: Best, Rock & Folk... These photos will make him noticed by the general press, which commissions more and more portraits of celebrities who are no longer exclusively from the music scene.
But it was his photos of the Rolling Stones that made Claude Gassian famous. He says, in an interview: For two decades, I passed them for ten minutes here and there. And in 1990 I released a collection of photos. […] I sent them my book. They were looking for a photographer for their new European tour. I was summoned to the castle by Tony King, Mick’s manager […]: I was their official photographer. My fear: that they invade the image too much. You put the Stones anywhere, the shot is successful! I'm still trying to find an idea to save my photo. This desire to look further, to look for the shot that no other photographer will have the idea or the patience to seek, gives Claude Gassian's photographs a style of their own, which will be his calling card for penetrate the intimacy of the greatest musicians from the 1970s to the present day.

He will accompany Eurythmics, Prince and the Rolling Stones on tour in turn. Leafing through one of the voluminous collections published by Gassian, we find the best of music over nearly half a century. All the movements, the timeless artists and the headliners, were shot by Claude Gassian: Miles Davis; The Who; Bob Dylan; David Prince; Iggy Pop; Neil Young; Bowie; The Kills; Nick Cave; Jack White or 50Cent… Numerous exhibitions (Acte 2 gallery in 2002, Lyon contemporary art museum in 2003, Govinda Gallery in Washington in 2007, Rencontres d’Arles in 2010…) retrace all of his work.

Claude Gassian still lives and works in Paris.