Seizing Beauty for Gucci: Representing Paulette Tavormina for The Alchemist’s Garden
When Gucci Beauty commissioned photographer and fine artist Paulette Tavormina to create imagery for The Alchemist’s Garden, the collaboration felt remarkably natural. Paulette’s photographs—with their abundant flowers, fruit, fauna and carefully chosen objects—already inhabit a world where beauty, memory and symbolism meet.
My involvement began through the American Society of Media Photographers. While I was serving on the ASMP board two years ago, Paulette brought the opportunity to then-board chair Liam Alexander. As the only board member working exclusively as a photographers’ representative, I was referred to her to manage the contract negotiations and help establish the production framework for the commission.
The assignment required Paulette and her husband to travel to London and Paris, where she would work with local production companies and international creative teams. My responsibility extended well beyond negotiating an appropriate creative fee. We needed to address licensing and usage, travel, accommodations, scheduling, production support and the practical conditions necessary for Paulette to work safely and successfully.
This is one of the most important—and often least visible—parts of representing an artist.
Paulette is in the golden age of an extraordinary career. She brings decades of experience and a deeply developed visual language to every set. Her physical needs also required thoughtful consideration when planning international travel and demanding production days. With care and persistence, I worked to ensure that the contract and production recognized both the value of her work and the support she needed to create it.
Accessibility should not be treated as an inconvenience or an afterthought. It is part of responsible production. Protecting an artist’s time, health and creative concentration ultimately protects the work itself.
The resulting photographs are unmistakably Paulette’s. Gucci’s fragrance bottles appear within elaborate gardens of flowers, citrus, birds, books and precious objects. Against a deep black background, every leaf, petal and detail seems to emerge from the darkness. The images evoke seventeenth-century still-life painting while remaining vibrant, contemporary and perfectly suited to the imaginative world of The Alchemist’s Garden.
That connection is rooted in a distinguished fine-art practice. Paulette received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2016. Her monograph, Paulette Tavormina: Seizing Beauty, was reviewed by The New York Times and Architectural Digest. Her photographs are held in museum, corporate and private collections and have been exhibited internationally. Her artist biography also reflects a wide-ranging commercial career that includes commissions for Sotheby’s, GOOP, National Geographic and The New York Times.
Gucci has continued working with Paulette across multiple years, reuniting her with many members of the same creative and production team. That continuity is a testament not only to the beauty of the resulting photographs, but also to the trust created through a carefully supported collaboration.
I am proud to have played a role in establishing that foundation.
A representative’s most important work is rarely visible in the finished image. It happens in the negotiations, the planning and the conversations that ensure an artist is valued as both a creator and a person. When that work is done well, the artist is free to concentrate on what only they can bring to the assignment.
In Paulette’s case, the result is a world of extraordinary abundance: fragrant, mysterious and alive with beauty.
Campaign: Gucci Beauty, The Alchemist’s Garden
Photographer: Paulette Tavormina
Creative and production collaborators: The Style Council Paris, Emma Roach Studio, MAI Productions and Fjura
Artist representation and contract negotiation: Joe Lombardo @curated_artists_inc
Campaign and fine-art photographs © Paulette Tavormina. Gucci and associated trademarks belong to their respective owner. Images reproduced with permission.
