Jean Pagliuso: In Plain Sight Captures Luminaries During an Era of Decadence (and the Occasional Landfowl)
Jean Pagliuso, Hollywood, 1975
“I was staying with a friend, and when I walked out her door, there it was . . . right in front of me on the next ridge over in Beachwood Canyon, Hollywood. I went right down to Frederick’s of Hollywood and bought the marabou-trimmed slippers . . . and took this shot.”
The California-born photographer Jean Pagliuso has spent her career turning her lens on what interests her, be it fashion, Hollywood, travel, or poultry (the difference between the former and the latter, as she once told Vogue, is not much: “There’s just no difference,” she said. “You put ‘em up there and you look for the fluidity of the line.”) Her work has included collaborations with Robert Redford (who was inspired to contact her, she says, after seeing her work with then–New York Magazine fashion editor Anna Wintour), the film director Robert Altman, as well as major film studios like Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Disney—giving her access to some of the brightest burning stars in the Hollywood firmament.
Pagliuso’s new monograph, In Plain Sight, explores the multifaceted aspect of her work and interests. In the gallery here, she shared some of her favorite images with Vogue, as well as the stories behind them, from stolen moments with Lauren Hutton on Robert Altman’s yacht in Cannes, to a distractingly magnetic connection between Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard; what it’s like to have Jack Nicholson whisper a secret in your ear right before he poses with Meryl Streep; and the mysterious muse who turned up in her elevator one day, never to be seen again.