Jean-Marie Périer, pop culture heritage

As soon as an idol leaves us, their phone rings. Jean-Marie Périer knew all the icons, the real ones, before the word became overused. This summer, several of them left: Alain Delon, Anouk Aimée, Françoise Hardy, who was his companion in the heart of the 1960s. “When “Ma Grande” died [le 11 juin 2024, ndlr]I received twenty-two calls during the night. There was no way I was going to throw myself on TV like all the guys who only go there to talk about themselves. » Nothing horrifies him more than these nightly phone calls to extract tears and anecdotes from him live. He prefers to pay tribute on Instagram, with a photo of his choice and a very personal text. “Farewell my Excellent, I will never forget you,” he wrote at the conclusion of a moving testimony posted on June 21, the day after the funeral of Françoise Hardy.

In 1966, she appeared, well surrounded, in the famous “photo of the century”, taken for the magazine Hello Friends. Forty-six artists gathered, including Sheila, Claude François and Johnny Hallyday. Through the life of Jean-Marie Périer, a whole era takes shape. His more than 12,000 photos have constructed our view of a bygone age. What to do with this collection? How to pass on this heritage? The photographer is thinking of another future for his emblematic photos from the 1960s to 1990s, asleep in a storage unit in Honfleur. The time when he spent his nights around the Rolling Stones speakers is over. At 84, priorities lie elsewhere. He wants to leave Aveyron, where he fled the bustle of the capital twenty-five years ago. His plan is all mapped out: he wants to buy a Parisian apartment to pass on to his children, Lola, Paul and Arthur, leave his 16th century pied-à-terre, an arrondissement he loathes, and settle in Perche. Above all, he intends to replenish his coffers to “leave something” to his heirs. So should we bequeath the collection to them? Bringing it to life from exhibition to exhibition? Sell ​​it? He asks questions with them, asks a lawyer for advice. Here he is caught up in pragmatic considerations, he who has spent his entire career not worrying about anything. Or so little. “I lived like a madman,” he rejoices, still animated by the energy of his extravagances. I burned through all the money and took my photos as quickly as possible. Click click Kodak. What really mattered was the laugh. »

When he started, celebrities were the same age as him. They were her friends, her accomplices, her intimates. Striking a pose was a formality. Day and night, he lived with them in excess and success, “like kids”. Time has passed and Jean-Marie Périer can no longer stand the label of “yéyés photographer”: “I am almost 85 years old and people only talk to me about what I did sixty years ago,” he laments. -he. Rare sigh of weariness. He admits to being “worn out” by constantly being sent back to his hours of glory. However, he cultivates a form of backwardness with enthusiasm, notably by playing the card of provocation. Under his dandy exterior, he proclaims his admiration for the “thugs, crazy but elegant” who were Serge Gainsbourg and Alain Delon. Their greatest quality? “They did whatever they wanted, that’s the pinnacle in life. » Like them, he readily admits to having “pygmalioned a lot”. No matter the tension that these remarks can generate today, post #MeToo. He enjoys it, aware of its effect: “I’m going to break down soon, I’m not going to change anytime soon. I don’t care about being careful about everything I say. »

In his impeccable electric blue suit, he laughs out loud as he recounts that day when Johnny Hallyday was driving his Lamborghini so fast that they both almost passed through it. This time, too, when Pierre Brasseur was drunk at Lipp, the famous Parisian brasserie, and broke everything within reach. He remembers the evenings at Castel, at Mathis, at the Élysée-Matignon or at the Club Saint-Germain, when crowned heads rubbed shoulders with singers and disreputable businessmen. Between two sips of carrot-ginger juice, he remembers this character that he was and on whom luck always smiled, depending on the encounters. It tells its story and, through it, the era.

Before living the great life we ​​know him for, he had to overcome the shock of turning 16. In 1956, Jean-Marie Périer dropped out of the school system without even a school certificate in hand. His passion? The music. He plays and composes from morning to evening, convinced that he has nothing to envy of Michel Legrand. One evening, a lover of his mother, Jacqueline Porel, tells him that his biological father is Henri Salvador. He will never speak the musician’s name again. He barely refers to him as “progenitor”. The next day, he came across a poster for a Henri Salvador concert at the Alhambra and took a seat. In the room, the boy curls up in his chair. The public is won over. People love this man who abandoned him. He readily admits: “That’s the only good thing I’ll tell you about him: he was very talented. » In the process, he makes a radical decision. “The most important one in my life, not necessarily the most intelligent,” he states straight away. The music is over. He will never touch a piano again, leaving this pleasure to Paul McCartney or Michel Berger, when they come to play it at his house later. “I cut out anything that looked like that guy and decided to adopt my father, who had adopted me himself earlier. »

His father is François Périer, the man thanks to whom he has always rubbed shoulders with the stars and immersed in an adult world. Louis Jouvet and Sacha Guitry were regulars at the mansion where he spent a privileged childhood, in Neuilly. As a kid, he laughed at the jokes of Jacqueline Maillan and Jean Poiret. He hates theaters that “smell old” but loves being pampered by “made-up actresses” who point out how cute he is, backstage. From the stage, his father winks at him. So, when his son told him he was stopping music, naturally, he took him on a shoot. Direction Italy, where he is filming The nights of Cabiria for Federico Fellini. The film won the Oscar for best international film in 1958. In Rome, the journalist and photographer Benno Graziani advised his father: “He told him this phrase, which could only be uttered in the 1950s: “When you don’t know what to do with his son, we put him in Paris Match.” » The emergency plan becomes the chance of his life, since he meets Daniel Filipacchi there.

He surprises the Beatles

Photographer and press boss, the latter is looking for an assistant to Jazz Magazine. It was love at first sight. Filipacchi becomes his “second father”. For his part, the journalist has absolute confidence in this resourceful young man, ready to seize every opportunity. At sixteen, Jean-Marie Périer looks twelve, at most. Because appearance does not prevent confidence, he accepts the first mission of Jazz Magazine : the Juan-les-Pins festival then, a tour with Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. We must then imagine this young, unknown beginner sneaking behind the scenes to immortalize the daily life of international tours of global stars. “I went to wait for Dizzy on the tarmac. It would be impossible today. » For his first cover, the young photographer didn’t look far: “Dizzy wanted to go swimming. I just told him to take his trumpet with him into the water and I held my one. » Jean-Marie Périer takes advantage of everything, absorbs every conversation in the car, every gossip heard over a drink after a concert. And then the army calls him. He witnessed the horrors committed in Oran during more than two years of military service. On his return, Daniel Filipacchi climbs Hello Friends and wants to hire his former assistant as a photographer. He remained there for twelve years, from 1962 to 1974.

He gains in audacity, does not tremble before any celebrity. Like that day in 1964 when he found himself facing the Beatles, who gently laughed at his broken English. To impress them, the photographer had the idea of ​​handing each of them a cigarette and a lighter, before plunging the studio into darkness. “I wasn’t even sure I saw anything on the film,” he still congratulates himself. They were surprised! » When we pay attention to his photos, it is impossible not to see the fascination of a frustrated musician for the stage beasts whose daily life he shared. He remembers traveling the South of the United States alone with Chuck Berry, spending eight days on tour with James Brown, seeing the “orgies” in the back of the Rolling Stones’ private jet. And then there is Jacques Dutronc. One of his favorite men and models. The proof appears in his favorite photo, dated 1970: the singer is wearing headphones plugged into the mouth of a dead sea bream, spread out there on a white table. “This photo is only the result of a meal that was a little too drunk, a crazy joke like only Jacques could provoke. » In fact, Jean-Marie Périer gave up everything for Jacques Dutronc. Separated from Françoise Hardy for two years, the photographer succumbed to the charm of his new companion as soon as she introduced him to him, in 1966. “I loved Dutronc straight away. I was convinced that this guy was made to break the screen. » He abandons the camera for the camera and turns it into two films with mixed critical and popular success (Antoine and Sébastienet Dirty Dreamer).

Meanwhile, French stars are becoming Americanized. Johnny Hallyday dreams of himself as James Dean. For Jean-Marie Périer, the American dream came true in the early 1980s. For ten years, he earned “fortunes” by making advertising films for major brands in the United States. Sometimes he pockets $10,000 in a day. However, a gambler and a bad saver, he gets bored as soon as we talk to him about business and gets tired of the land of (show)business. All it took was a call from his sister, Anne-Marie, to decide him to turn back. Journalist at the magazine ELLEshe wants him to take the photo again for the fashion pages. That’s good, all the major creators of the moment know him, his photos are already cult. Many of them are from the same generation as him. They know it is true to its reputation: effective. Even Karl Lagerfeld, whose sense of control and distancing we know, was “always available for him” and posed without flinching. However, it is above all the name of his rival that comes up in the photographer’s mouth: Yves Saint Laurent. His most famous photo of the stylist, dated 1995, is also his last. Looking mischievous, he barely emerges from the darkness to emerge between two red theater curtains. They met again a few years later, at Mathis, a club where all of Paris’s elegant people gathered to party. “He was always surrounded by people but everything, from his look to his attitude, made me feel his immense loneliness. »