Photography Collection

Swiss photographer Michel Comte, author of the image of Carla Bruni in the nude says he has more explicit pictures but that he will not sell them. In an interview published in Le Matin, Comte, who now resides in New York, says that he does not know how the picture got to Christie’s where it will be auctioned on April 10, "I must have made a gift to someone. I make very few copies, three to five at the most, he points out. In fact, the photographer assures that he got word of the auction when a reporter from Le Matin called him on the phone. He remembers that he took the picture at the end of a photo shoot for Vogue in Paris or New York.

I worked with Carla for approximately 10 years. We have shot thousands of pictures together, fashion photos, pictures in her house in Italy. We were close friends and spent a lot of our time aboard the Concorde”, he remembers. In his opinion, the black and white photo which is expected to fetch at least $3,000 US DLS.”It’s her, it’s Carla, with her fantasy.

Comte says that Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife is “naked in this picture but at the same time shows her masculine side. And even goes on to say that it could even be a man. “It seems as if she is touching or hiding her sex: she plays. She looks afraid, with her feet pointing inside and her face has the expression of a mask, as if it was torn from her body, he continued.

According to an online bio, Bruni signed with City Models at age nineteen. In the 1990's she was pulling in about seven million dollars a year modeling and she dated a list of famous men including Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Donald Trump.