Our edition of the day is entirely devoted to Jean-Marie Périer. Here is the fourth part that looks back to the 1970s of the French photographer.
From now on, Daniel and Frank are managing a newsgroup. Their offices are located on the Champs-Elysées.
(Photo No 1)
In this small privileged world, everything revolves around Régis Pagniez. His office becomes the center of the artistic part of the group.
(Photo No 2)
The Lui magazine that Daniel and Régis just created is immediately a big success. I convinced them to hire Francis Giacobetti, a photographer friend of mine who worked for three years for Télé7jours magazine. He will become the main photographer of the publication. As for Daniel, he is now known as “the Emperor”.
(Photo No 3)
Looking through the viewfinder of a still camera always gave me the wish of making movies. But the two practice really are different. With a “photographer’s movie” people are often amazed by the beautiful look of the film. But it is not a compliment, it’s like having nothing else to say about a woman that she’s got a great hairstyle. After making The children of the palace, a TV film inspired by a text of the writer Michel Cournot with my father playing the part of a judge for delinquent children. I decided with Jacques Lanzmann to start a movie named Tumuc Humac (nobody can remember such a title). It was shot in French Guyana with my brother Marc Porel and Dani, a young French singer. The two of them were really beautiful and most of all, I had the luck to work with the last four convicts still alive and living in Cayenne since the closing of the penal colony in 1946.
(Photo No 4)
One more time, my father was playing the part of a judge at the beginning of the story.
(Photo No 5)
I made pictures for Salut Les Copains until 1974, but my passion for Jacques Dutronc stopped me from taking pictures, to only make movies during the next six years. Dutronc was really fascinating, so different from the new wave of the sixties singers. He didn’t try to adopt an “American” name and I liked his fragility hidden behind a devastating sense of humor.
One more time I called upon my father and we shot Antoine and Sebastian.
(Photo No 6, 7 and 8)
After that, between directing commercials, I’ll shoot Mean dreamer, another movie with Dutronc and Lea Massari.
(Photo No 9)
I will also shoot Téléphone public, a movie about the French rock group « Téléphone ».
I will not take a single picture until 1990.
Jean-Marie Périer
