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André Ostier (1906–1994) was a French photographer known for portraits and photo reportages of his artists on "la vie parisienne". Born into a bourgeois Parisian family, he began his career as a bookseller ("À La Page") and then as a journalist before becoming a photographer, making a series of artist portraits and fashion photos published in the pre-war illustrated press. Read the full biography

André Ostier (1906–1994) was a French photographer known for portraits and photo reportages of his artists on "la vie parisienne". Born into a bourgeois Parisian family, he began his career as a bookseller ("À La Page") and then as a journalist before becoming a photographer, making a series of artist portraits and fashion photos published in the pre-war illustrated press. He travels a lot, takes photos during his travels and leads a very intense social life in the world of art and culture. In 1938, when he was a beginner with photography, he created the portrait of Émile Bernard: he was the first painter photographed by Ostier. In 1941, in Le Cannet, in the Midi, he photographed the painter Pierre Bonnard sometimes at work in his studio, sometimes in contemplative or contemplative poses. The same year, in Nice, he created a series of portraits of Henri Matisse in which one senses a great complicity between the painter and the photographer. Practically all the artistic avant-gardes found themselves in front of André Ostier's lens: Joan Miró in 1948 and 1954, Salvador Dalí in 1951, Gino Severini in 1956, Marc Chagall the same year, Max Ernst in 1965... Or Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon in Paris in 1982. André Ostier's photographic portraits are staged from a psychological perspective, which allows the model's physical environment to explain his character and temperament. Parallel to his practice as a portraitist, André Ostier produces fashion photographs for the newspaper Marie-Claire. After the war, Michel De Brunhoff, who wanted to relaunch Vogue magazine, decided to put him to work. The issue that marks the rebirth of the magazine is almost entirely made with his photographs. He collaborated with Vogue for five or six years and created a section entitled "Life in Paris" where he published photographs taken on the streets of the city. Ostier died in January 1994, leaving a corpus of works that collects numerous photographic testimonies, precious for understanding the great sociological, intellectual and artistic eras that shaped the modernity of the twentieth century.