The magazine of the art-form of the photo-essay “A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!” Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker

Sept 2014 back issue

Jane & Serge Serge Gainsbourg Jane Birkin

photographs by Andrew Birkin

Jane and Serge is a collection of photographs documenting the passionate love affair between the French poet-singer- songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and British actress Jane Birkin, taken by Jane’s brother Andrew. The collection is launching this September at Proud Galleries, Chelsea, at an exhibition giving a uniquely personal insight into the highly public relationship that captured the hearts and imaginations of a generation. After a fiery meeting on the set of the 1968 film Slogan, Jane and Serge fell passionately in love and spent the next 12 years together in a headstrong, often volatile romance. Their union would produce not only hit records - including Je t’aime… moi non plus, which was denounced by the Vatican and banned by the BBC, and the legendary album Melody Nelson - but also a daughter, Charlotte, who has become a star in her own right. Jane's brother Andrew, an avid photographer as well as an award-winning writer/director, has always been close to his sister and captured their life together, photographing countless personal moments shared by this unlikely pairing of an eccentric French musician and a beautiful English rose who was eighteen years his junior. The photographs selected from Andrew’s family archive offer a wonderfully personal perspective into their relationship behind closed doors, and document this turbulent romance until 1980, the year they parted intimate company. Although more than 30 years have passed since that separation, the public fascination with their love affair still remains.

Jane & Serge Proud Galleries, Chelsea, London 11th September - 26th October 2014