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What was it like to photograph Melania Trump nude for a fashion shoot in the mid-1990s? Alexandre Alé de Basseville knows about that.
But the photographer was only reminded of that New York City assignment after Trump defended his nude modeling work in a video posted on “X” to promote his upcoming memoir “Melania” from Skyhorse Publishing. ones. Arriving in Paris, de Basseville said he did not know the last time he spoke to the former first lady and only learned of the media interest in his photos after people hit him on Wednesday.
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Having first crossed paths as a solo model known as Melania Knauss, de Basseville wasn’t sure when in the mid-1990s the photos for Max magazine were taken in a rooftop duplex studio at West 26th Street and Sixth Avenue. “They’re saying 1996. That was a long time ago. We are talking about a time that no longer exists,” he said.
The New York Post reported that the shooting took place in 1995.
Working as an “artistic photographer,” de Basseville said he was looking for a “charismatic” model to counterbalance fellow model Emma Eriksson, who was already booked for the shoot. After someone told him he “had to see this girl,” Metropolitan Models introduced him to Knauss, who turned out to be “perfect for the situation” he envisioned.
“I’m an old-style guy,” he said with a laugh. “I come from an artistic background, painting and sculpting, and taking classes in a dance studio in Rome. For me, the art was Caravaggio. I have always wanted to represent women as [the artists] in the 15th and 16th centuries with freedom of artistic vision and diversity in everything she has to say. My concern was to show the beauty of a woman inside and out.”
As for what he thinks about having nude photos of a former first lady, de Basseville said, “When you have a first lady, who was as beautiful as she was, why would that be any different than the kings and all these queens, although presented naked in art for centuries and centuries. What is the difference between [that] and Alexander the Great [nearly] exposed on his horse? Who doesn’t like Michelangelo’s ‘David’? I think it’s hypocrisy or jealousy maybe.”
Recalling the shoot with Trump, de Basseville said that Trump was “very nice to the whole team. Of course, at this time there was Photoshop. There were people present for lighting, makeup, hair and styling. She was very professional and very nice.”
Afterwards, Thierry Mugler’s best man Eriksson had to rush off to catch a flight to Paris, so de Basseville and Trump had a drink together in SoHo, as was the post-shoot routine at the time. “We were talking about life and what we should do [laughs] and stupid things. It was like two friends hanging out together but having a good time, after doing something emotionally powerful. It was very nice,” said de Basseville.
Trump later did another nude photo shoot for the March 2000 issue of British GQ, curled up on a rug aboard Donald Trump’s customized Boeing 727, wearing only jewelry and handcuffed to a leather briefcase. On Wednesday, Trump said in his 45-second video posting on “X,” “Why do I proudly stand behind my nude modeling work? The most pressing question is: Why did the media choose to examine my celebration of the human form in a fashion piece?”
Just as there have been several twists and turns in Trump’s life, so too, de Basseville’s, who has traveled the globe, expanded his career to other mediums and previously served prison time. Jarl Alexandre Alé de Basseville was born in Bordeaux in 1970, he is a descendant of the 1st king Harald of Norway. He got into contemporary art as a teenager inspired by working with Andy Warhol and studying art in Milan. After meeting the fashion designer Claude Montana, he painted on leather clothing for the first time.
“She is proud of the photos and I am very happy that she saw the same thing that I saw. Her sister was in the fashion business, too. So it’s great,” said de Basseville.
De Basseville said that he approached the shoot like a sculptor, who worked together with the models. “Photography is also like making a film. It’s a bit like acting. Of course some elements are not true,” he said.
After 2000, he said photography took two tracks – the art route and the fashion route. “I’ve never been into fashion. I have always been on the artistic path,” said de Basseville.
His lifelong motivations have been AIDS awareness, which was partly focused on the loss of relatives to the disease and women’s rights. He said, “It’s completely stupid that we’re still fighting for women’s rights in 2024. After all these friends, girls and models telling me their stories [of mistreatment including ones] about Harvey Weinstein, who I knew, and all these other guys, I was dead. I couldn’t even believe it. I still can’t. I have always fought for two things in my life, AIDS and women’s rights.”
The photographer also had legal problems. In 2017, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to distribute MDMA, more commonly known as “ecstasy”, de Basseville was sentenced to 10 years in prison and served two years in prison.
During a two-year undercover investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Agent, de Basseville and his coder Bruno Cavelier d’Esclavelles negotiated with undercover agents, who thought they were drug traffickers, to launder over $20 million in proceeds from drugs and to import and distribute. more than 500 ecstasy pills.
When asked about being in prison, he said, “It was an experience. I met a lot of people. I learned a lot. Many people are desperate. Jail is a dangerous place. All these people are really dangerous, there to handle drugs, to kill people and so on,” he said.
Often in the air, de Basseville said that he is always learning from his experiences and gaining knowledge for art and life. “It was Caravaggio to me, master—whatever. He and other artists have been imprisoned. It doesn’t matter.”
Based in Paris, de Basseville has been doing a lot of painting, photography and design work with his architect wife Egla Harxhi. Her six-year-old son Luxifer de Basseville often paints and dabbles in art with him, the photographer said. “I continue to work a lot every day. I always try to go up, up and up to develop myself.”
The main advantage of the social network is that many people judge others in two seconds, said de Basseville. He prefers to read philosophy from Plato and Hannah Arendt. With a double genetic disease, epilepsy and Asperger’s syndrome, he began to read often as a child, since he could not go to school. “That’s why I didn’t know a lot of things about life and that’s why I was never jealous,” he said. “Sometimes things that are normal for people are not normal for me. That’s because they’re things I don’t think about. I don’t care what society is like today. If everybody says, ‘Everybody lives like that, I have to live like that,’ I don’t care.”
De Basseville added, “I prefer to live my dream, which can be more artistic in a way. That’s just the way it is.”
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