Biography

Denis Piel, born in France, raised in Australia and long time New Yorker (25 years) is a photographer and filmmaker currently (2013) living and working in the South West of France.

Rising to prominence in the field of fashion photography, Piel moved to New York in the late 70's and worked as a Condé Nast photographer for a decade, shooting mainly for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and Self, during which time he won the Leica Medal for Excellence in Commercial Photography 1987. Denis has shot more than 1000 editorial spreads this includes many celebrity portraits ranging from the films stars Geena Davis, Nastasia Kinski, Andi McDowell, Darryl Hannah, Isabella Rosellini, Goldie Hawn, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lillian Gish, Donald Sutherland, Jeanne Moreau, and Uma Thurman, to the directors and film producers Brain De Palma and Sherry Lansing to politicians such as Mario Cuomo, the writers Joan Didion, Erica Jong, to artists as diverse as Man Ray, Willem and Elaine De Kooning and Jasper Johns and thedancers Mark Morris to name a few.

In 1989 Piel left Condé Nast to concentrate on film. He continued with his commercial advertising work both in film ( notably the iconic New York campaign for Donna Karan and The Wool Board campaign, Australia) and stills during this period, however he stopped shooting editorial work except occasionally.

Piel produced and directed his first feature length documentary Love is Blind in the early 1990s.

The progression into independent film-making inspired Piel to set up Jupiter Films, a film production company; he also set up Umbershoot and the theideasbank, vehicles which would enable people to work together collaboratively.

After 9/11 and the dot.com crash Piel and his family moved permanently to Lempaut in the South West of France to live and work at Château de Padiès, a renaissance Château which they have been restoring since 1992. The property comprises the Château and also Les Jardin du Château de Padiès. The gardens at Padiès are an experiment in agro ecology and are being developed following permaculture and sustainable development principals. Padiès and the local environment have become a source of inspiration for Piel and are central to his current photographic practice.

In September 2012 Rizzoli published a retrospective of Piel's work shot between 1979 and 2007. Piel's eclectic approach to his work with a disregard for categorizing work as commercial or personal has generated a diverse body of work comprising projects which sit in dialogue with one another.

Piel is currently undertaking a period of research and development in preparation for his upcoming project 'Down to Earth', a celebration of living closely with nature, which will be shot on location at Château de Padiès.
- IMDb mini biography by: denis piel