A Friday Evening with Dominique Issermann

Friday evening, a friend invites me to join her at the 7L bookstore for a nearly exclusive screening of Dominique Issermann’s work.

It’s not every day that one gets to immerse themselves in the vision of a photographer whose work has defined a certain idea of fashion and time.

I knew her name, echoes of her work, images glimpsed here and there.

— But knowing an image is not knowing a gaze.

Lyrics is not a documentary, nor a making-of, nor some dusty archive tucked away in a drawer.
It’s a time glitch.

A film that takes black-and-white stills (1980-1995) and layers them over Single 8 footage, that old-school format where every frame seems to breathe differently.

The result? An illusion of movement, a past that blinks back at you.

But Lyrics doesn’t stop at the image.

It absorbs sound. And when Nick Cave and Warren Ellis  step in (through their score for The  Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford),
it creates a soundtrack where every note wavers between brightness and dusk.

Music for a film that doesn’t document the past — it resurrects it, like a memory you thought was filed away, yet still lingers.

So much has already been said about Dominique Issermann.

About her style, her approach to light, her way of capturing bodies and faces with disarming clarity.

But above all, there is this refined sense of whimsy that runs through her images — a subtle play between sophistication and spontaneity.

The eye ventures into them, capturing discreet joy, a perfectly framed insouciance.

Her fashion photography does not impose, it suggests — it makes you want to wander within the moment captured.

I walk in. The 7L Librairie, a haven of freely accessible erudition, is filled with Karl Lagerfeld’s books — books that do not just line up images but inspire one to read, to delve deeper.

Around me, a carefully curated audience: icons of French culture, witnesses of time, the curious, and admirers.

Elisabeth Quin takes the microphone and, in a composed voice, introduces us to the screening.

On screen, images emerge, captured with a Single 8 — the predecessor of the Super 8. A singular texture, a materiality that no longer exists in the smoothness of digital.

A visual poetry that, in 2025, seems almost anomalous in a world obsessed with speed and immediate impact.

I have always wondered what it feels like to see one’s life projected in front of them.

To see fragments of past years unfold in light, to stand before a mirror that does not reflect the present but the accumulation of everything that has been.

And then there is Dominique Issermann. I watch her. She trembles slightly. That imperceptible tremor says everything. The weight of time, love, memory. A life replayed on a screen. A moment that doesn’t vanish, only dissolves.

Aging, that paradox. Having a life, then having to abandon it when leaving. But in the end, it is always others who leave us.

Her collaborations with major fashion houses are not just commissions; they are visual dialogues, explorations of form and texture, a way of redefining fashion beyond the garment. The campaigns for Yves Saint Laurent unfold a hushed sensuality, almost whispered.

For Sonia Rykiel, she captured the mischievous Parisienne, all undone hair and knowing glances. For Dior, she sculpted silhouettes with shadow and light, whispering rather than shouting elegance.

Her work with Nina Ricci, Emporio Armani, and Claude Montana reveals fashion in its most elusive form — an equilibrium between dream and precision, between intuition and mastery.

Leaving the 7L, one thing is clear: I want to capture more moments, unearth my Super 8, and reclaim the slow, thoughtful passage of filmic time.

I want to dive into Dominique Issermann’s work, to explore how she intertwined fashion and truth — let myself be immersed in this pursuit of beauty, composition, and perspective.

Still, one question lingers… We often hear people say they miss analog photography, a collective refrain that spans generations.

But nostalgia alone doesn’t bring things back. Maybe it’s time to stop missing, and start making.