Denis Piel

Down to Earth No. 23, Château de Padiès, France

2013

Denis Piel was born in France in 1944 and raised in Australia. Piel opened his first photography studio in Australia in 1966 and the 70s, moved to Europe for assignments with Elle, Marie Claire, Votre Beaute, as well as numerous magazines in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. A 1979 assignment for The New York Times magazine caught the eye of Conde Nast editorial director, Alexander Liberman, who hired Piel for American Vogue, which led to an exclusive contract with Conde Nast. Piel relocated to New York City in 1979 and studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He spent the next decade creating the groundbreaking fashion and advertising images and generated many of the decade’s most iconic photographs for magazines like Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and Self. Piel was awarded the Leica Medal of Excellence for Commercial Photography in 1987. Piel now lives in the rural southwest of France. Piel is a member of the Experiments in Art and Technology. He founded Jupiter Films in 1985 and wrote and directed numerous award-winning commercials. Piel directed his first feature-length documentary, Love is Blind, in the early 1990s. Piel has exhibited at the ROVE Exhibition in London, England; Galerie Pinxit, Toulouse, France; Staley-Wise Gallery, New York; Musée du Point de Vue, Brussels, Belgium; Musée départemental du Textile, a Labastide Rouairoux, France; Museu Nacional do Traje e da Moda, Lisbon, Portugal; Alliance Française de Sydney, Australia; International Centre of Photography School, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; The Mint Museum, North Carolina, among others. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as numerous private collections such as the BES photo collection and António de Sommer Champalimaud collection.