Michel Comte Books

This illustrated book brings together the celebrated images of the premier celebrity & fashion photographer.

Already in the 1970s Michel Comte worked for Bergdorf Goodman in New York on their impressive window displays. This was an early collaboration with Andy Warhol, and marked a time when Comte discovered the bold impact simple yet exquisitely executed decorative schemes could have on passersby. Since these opportune beginnings, he has created numerous such projects, mostly incorporating natural elements?the full bounty of flora. Garden of Beauty. Combining Worlds with Flowers explores Comte?s recent use of flowers to wrap buildings in Stuttgart and Düsseldorf for the luxury retailer Breuninger. Together with art director Jens Remes, Comte creates an entirely new retail environment and branding aesthetic

This very limited edition presents famed photographer Michel Comte's erotically charged images of Japanese geisha Aiko T., capturing her transformation from luminous serenity to possessed Dionysian abandon. Fully aware that Comte's photographs would eventually come to public view, her sexual act becomes a betrayal of Asian women as passive, obedient, and timid creatures who dare not exercise control over their sexuality and a symbolic protest against Japanese patriarchy. Through Comte's photographs, the guarded and vieled aura of the geisha is revealed and destroyed, consequently rupturing traditional boundaries and the geisha burden of all Japanese women. Printed on the finest Monadnock paper, bound in linen, and slipcased, this extraordinary 56 duotone sequence is strictly limited to 500 books, signed and numbered by Michel Comte.

Michel Comte recounts a family member's experience living through the Hiroshima bombing A love letter to Japan as seen through the prism of Michel Comte's relationship to his wife Ayako Yoshida and the history of her family, this book combines Comte's recent photos made throughout Japan with stills from his and Yoshida's 2013 film The Girl From Nagasaki, their retelling of Madame Butterflyin Nagasaki.

This book is Michel Comte’s personal analysis of the neoclassical style. Employing an eclectic approach including original photos, reproductions of neoclassical treasures, and reworked images of masterpieces such as Michelangelo’s Pietà and Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of Napoleon, Comte traces the classical aesthetic and its rebirth as the neoclassic throughout the ages. From the Parthenon to Gianni Versace’s designs, from Bernini to Albert Speer’s Reich Chancellery, the style has persisted and transformed itself again and again, as empires rose and fell around it. In Comte’s words, the neoclassic demonstrates a “dream of perfection,” one we are seduced by even as we know its danger: “History tells us that ‘grandeur’ is destined to fail.”

Few events have become as iconic as Gery Keszler’s annual Life Ball—for all not to forget that AIDS is still present. From Bill Clinton to Whoopi Goldberg, from Naomi Campbell to Elton John, the worlds of politics and fashion unite at amfAR’s (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) gala in Vienna, designed each year by a different artist and now one of the most coveted events in Europe. The spectacle invariably turns into an all-night party with several thousand donors dressed in the most stunning and outrageous costumes. This book is Michel Comte’s portrait of the glamour and grit of the Life Ball. Comte remembers: “My first journey started in New York. We all boarded a large chartered Airbus. Wherever I looked, there was somebody I knew, had read about or was interested in meeting. The experience onboard reminded me of a sixties rock-’n’-roll charter. People were frolicking through the aisles with glasses of champagne. In Vienna my assistants and I started working early afternoon before the legendary event began. Everyone was creating something special; chaos later turned into the most surreal experience. From the dazzling black-tie dinner to the fashion show, the performances and the late-night party, it all seemed like a crazy mid-summer night’s dream. Here is our story.”

. Steidl, bright clean copy, no markings, light shelfwear to dustjacket, Professional booksellers since 1981