ORMOND GIGLI

Ormond Gigli: A Storied Career in Fashion and Celebrity Photography

Ormond Gigli was born in New York City in 1925 to a modest family. His photographic journey began in his teenage years when his father gifted him his first camera. Passionate about photography, Gigli worked as an assistant for various photographers after school. This experience introduced him to the fashion world through Wilhela Cushman, a fashion editor for the Ladie’s Home Journal. He graduated from the School of Modern Photography in 1942 and served as a Navy photographer during World War II. Gigli later embraced a bohemian lifestyle in France, describing his time in Paris as a penniless artist as a wonderful experience.

Gigli’s career took off in 1952. While working for the Rapho photo agency, a LIFE editor assigned him to replace Robert Capa for a series of celebrity portraits. That same year, LIFE tasked him with covering the Paris fashion shows, where one of his pictures was featured in the magazine’s center spread. This success marked the beginning of a more than twenty-year career in fashion photography. Gigli worked with prominent magazines such as Paris-Match, LIFE, Time, Collier’s, and the Saturday Evening Post. In 1954, he established his studio in Manhattan, photographing numerous celebrities including Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, John F. Kennedy, Gina Lollobrigida, Diana Vreeland, Giancarlo Giannini, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Louis Armstrong, Sir Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates, and Richard Burton.

During the 1970s and 1980s, changes in the fashion industry led Gigli to focus more on advertising photography.

Ormond Gigli passed away in 2019, leaving behind a remarkable photographic legacy that vividly captures the colorful and multifaceted essence of the second half of the 20th century.

Explore the iconic works of Ormond Gigli on IGWT, where his photographs continue to inspire and captivate audiences.

Ormond GIGLI, Anita Ekberg, 1954

Ormond Gigli: Capturing the Spirit of an Era Through Celebrities and Fashion Photography

Ormond Gigli had a remarkable ability to capture the essence of his time through his celebrity and fashion photographs. Known for meticulously constructing his images, Gigli would imagine and stage his shots. This approach led to the creation of one of the most iconic fashion photographs in 1960: Girls in the Windows. In this image, models pose in various windows of a building across from Gigli’s studio. In 1990, Jean-Paul Goude paid homage to this iconic photo in an advertisement for Chanel’s eau de toilette, Egoïste.

Today, Ormond Gigli’s photographs are featured in major collections, such as the International Center of Photography in New York, and are highly sought after by collectors, as evidenced by the Collectors’ Choice exhibition at the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2014.

Fairs and Exhibitions:

Galerie GADCOLLECTION, Paris, France, November – December 2016
Photo Shanghai, Shanghai, China, Staley-Wise Gallery, 2015
Collectors’ Choice: Inside the Hearts and Minds of Regional Collectors, Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida, September 2014
Miami Project, Miami, Florida, Staley-Wise Gallery, 2014

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