Jean-Marie is a legend in France, creating wonderfully vibrant photographs of French stars like Francoise Hardy, Sylvie Vartan, Jacques Dutronc, but also US and UK musicians including Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, The Beatles and Bob Dylan among others.
Born in Neuilly in 1940, Jean-Marie Perier began his career in 1956. From 1962 to 1974, he took photographs for the magazine “Salut les Copains”, where he met all the main musicians from the 1960s and has a breathtaking archive including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and many others.
In 1980, he left for the United States, carrying a demo reel of his advertising work. He lived there for 10 years, directing more than 600 advertising shorts for a wide variety of labels, ranging from Ford Motors to Coca-Cola. Since then, he has lived between Los Angeles and Europe, taking photographs for various publications, including Elle, Paris-Match and Figaro-Magazine.
Not only did he photograph the ‘Big 3’ international stars of the period – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan – and actually, very few photographers can lay claim to those three major scalps – but if that wasn’t enough, he created some of the most enduring and iconic photographs of all the major French stars of the period, providing a visual document of the so called “Ye -Ye“ sound. His archives include Francoise Hardy, Jacques Dutronc, Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan, Michel Polnareff, Antoine, France Gall, Ronnie Bird and many others.