Fashion photographer Roxanne Lowit dies – WWD

Fashion photographer Roxanne Lowit, whose behind-the-scenes photographs and after-hours images captured the nerves and excitement of the fashion industry, has died.

Her daughter Vanessa deferred comment Wednesday to Jesse Frohman, who said Lovit, 81, died Tuesday. The cause of death at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, NY was not released. A memorial is being considered for a future date.

No-nonsense in her all-black outfits, bob of black hair and petite stature, Lowit blended in so well wherever she was photographing that her subjects were immediately at ease. As Lowit was, she fully understood that glamor could be a form of currency.

“She created a genre. She created pictures behind the scenes. She was always invited to all these parties. She was not a stranger. She was a photography insider, and she was able to capture these more intimate moments,” said longtime friend Brian Cashman, MD. “With her eye, she was able to do it better than anyone else. Ten photographers would go after a shot, but she was always the one who captured that moment best.”

“It’s important to always look fabulous,” she once explained to WWD. Lowit would know, having routinely shot Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Shalom Harlowe, Helena Christiansen and the rest of the roster of high-profile models who helped define fashion in the ’90s. Not only did Low pay attention to all the behind-the-scenes mayhem, but she was in on the joke. An image of Evangelista covering her eyes, Campbell covering her ears and Turlington covering her mouth reflected the see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil mantra and also reflected her own lifestyle. Lowit. Such double-edged humor was also evident in her series “VIPs (Very Important Portraits)”.

Her 1990 book Moments chronicled nights at Studio 54 and Le Palace in the 70s and early 80s. “People thought they would live forever. It was an incredible mix – famous people mixed with club people. Everyone was a star. It didn’t matter who you were — it mattered what you looked like,” she told WWD in 1990.

Of course, “there was always someone who would get on the table and do something,” she says, but the onset of the AIDS epidemic displaced that entertainment and flattened the artistic landscape. “These times changed all those who passed through them. Because of the AIDS crisis, so many of the leading people died. The scene is now incomplete. They were the young people like Keith Haring. And third-rate people will take their place,” she told WWD in 1990.

Speaking about that time, Lowit said: “Everything was more intense. Wealth was not as important as glamour. Each person had something on the line, but kept it hidden.”

Fashion designer Joanna Mastroianni recalled Wednesday when she began what became a lifelong friendship with Lowit in February 1990. “I was a young designer just starting out. She came to my studio to photograph me with my newborn son for Vogue. I knew she was a star,” Mastroianni said. “It was the first time I was being photographed by a famous photographer. She was very soft-spoken and made me feel very comfortable.”

Recalling the good times the pair shared, the designer said: “Roxanne was always ready to play. I remember after a late dinner tagging along at an after party with him. The most interesting characters were there. As soon as they saw Roksana, they struck a pose. She was always the first photographer to arrive backstage at my runway shows. She quietly tiptoed in and continued to photograph.”

In addition to shooting for Vogue for almost 20 years starting in the early 80s, Lowit also worked for Vanity Fair, Italian Vogue and other glossy magazines. Low’s portfolio also included photos of major artists such as Warhol, Haring, Schnabel, Salvador Dali, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Eric Fischl and Kenny Scharf. “She wanted to capture her time and the amazing people of that time in fashion and culture. Although she was not a Hollywood photographer, she was more of a fashion world photographer capturing the cultural and art scene. Anyone who mattered in her time, she recorded,” Frohman said.

Her family is managing Lov’s archives while they decide what to do with them. However, an exhibition of her photographs is expected to bow at the Cascais Museum in Portugal in September 2023.

Before diving into photography, Lowit studied textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, specializing in hand screen printing. Working in textile design as a lead designer, WWD reported on Low’s textile designs in the late 1970s. Around that time the New York City-bred Low was given an Instamatic camera. Painting was another pursuit, but Lowit discovered a more fulfilling medium and instant gratification through photography.

Lowit began by shooting some of her textile designs on the runways, and “the big photographers elbowed her out and the models took her backstage. [as their hairdresser]Cashman said Wednesday in a joint phone call with Frohman.

“She didn’t want to take pictures on the runway. it [thought] ‘They’re getting it. I want something special.’ She was an artist all along,” said Frohman, a photographer who has edited Low’s four books.

Karl Lagerfeld referred to Lowit as ‘the invisible of appearance, witness to the marriage of vanity and fame…’ Further testament to her skills was the fact that Lowit was Yves Saint Laurent’s photographer of choice for 24 years. His comfort level with her was clear considering she called him by his first name while everyone else called him Monsieur Saint Laurent. Lowit also photographed the notoriously camera-shy designer – as well as his collections – during that time. The level of mutual comfort can be seen in a photo of Saint Laurent Lowe holding and kissing an architectural model of the Empire State Building. Another features the bespectacled designer with his arms wrapped around Lagerfeld – when the two men were still friendly.

Referring to her long tenure with Saint Laurent, Lowe told WWD in 2014, “He had an aura that no one would pierce. Ever since I first met him, I wanted to do something for him because I admired him so much. He did everything first and changed the way women dressed.”

Hundreds of her images of the designer and his collections are featured in her book Yves Saint Laurent spanning from 1978 to his final collection in 2002. A teenage Kate Moss re-enacting a haute couture version of the painting. Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is among the prized hits. Jerry Hall, Pat Cleveland, Betty Catroux, Catherine Deneuve and Lucie de la Falouse were among the many other fashion insiders Lowit photographed overtime. In addition to her book Yves Saint Laurent, Lowit published Backstage Dior, Moments and People.

After inspecting her photos in the late 70s, SoHo News co-founder Annie Flanders told Low that if he took a professional camera and shot the shows in Paris, Flanders would feature the images in SoHo News.

“I learned how to put film in a real airplane camera along the way. The next thing I knew I was on top of the Eiffel Tower shooting with Yves Saint Laurent and Andy Warhol,” Lowit said in an interview with The Genealogy of Style. “It was all downhill from there because how could it get any better ?”

In December of that year, when Halston threw a fantasy circus birthday party for Steve Rubell that included giant stuffed animals, live ponies, toy soldiers and laughing clowns and a 75-piece marching band in December 1978, Lowit shot guests such as Roy Cohn, Marisa Berenson. , Barbara Walters, Truman Capote, Doris Duke and Cheryl Tiegs for WWD with Dustin Pittman.

People’s Revolution founder Kelly Cutrone on Tuesday recalled Low’s “amazing career” and how she admired the photographer, not only for her talent, all-black outfits and friendship, but also as a single mother navigating the the fashion industry. In addition to hiring Lowit for advertising projects and behind-the-scenes duties for Jeremy Scott and other designers, Cutrone, Lowit and the late photographer Mary Ellen Mark met for lunch on Fridays at Lucky Strike. “They were never quite caught on by the women who ran them [fashion] publications. They never hired so many women to shoot. It was really weird for both of them not to be doing more fashion,” Cutrone said of Lowit and Mark.

Explaining why Lowit was someone he became friends with, Cutrone said: “She had a lot of qualities that I wanted in a woman. She was wearing all black. She did her thing. She kind of called her shots, but she was fantastic at what she did. And she was a fantastic mother to Vanessa,” Cutrone said. “She also had a sense of what was right and what was wrong. She never really got out of that lane. I really looked up to her because she was very elegant and traveled the world. ”

In addition to her daughter, Low is survived by her partner, John Granito, and two brothers, Daniel and Neil. Another brother, Bennett, predeceased him.