Jean Pigozzi

Paris-born Italian photographer Jean Pigozzi—also well known as an art collector, philanthropist, and entrepreneur—began photographing celebrity life in the 1960s, capturing iconic subjects like Gianni Agnelli, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, and Diane von Furstenberg as a visual record of his own upscale social milieu. In his series Pigozzi & Co., which he began in the 1970s, he inverted the typical understanding of the "paparazzo" photographer, depicting himself among the rich and famous subjects he captured. More recently, he has also turned his attention to portraiture and travel photographs. In addition to his own celebrated work as an artist, he is an avid collector: he has amassed the world's largest collection of contemporary African art, which was the subject of the 2005 exhibition "African Art Now: Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2005. 

Pigozzi's work has been the subject of solo shows at the Musée d'art moderne  in Paris, the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, Les Recontres D'Arles Photographie, among others.