Marco Glaviano is the photographer who discovered St Barth, the first man to do a fashion shoot here. All the thousands of models, art directors, magazine editors and stylists who have made their way to the island down the years are following a trail of footsteps that Marco left in the sand. His career now spans half a century, and amounts to an enormous body of work. Here he talks to PURE about what the island means to him - and he shares with us some previously unpublished photographs and polaroids.

Polaroid of Marco Glaviano at Gouverneur Beach in 1977

Sometimes one conversation can change the course of a life - or alter the destiny of a place. More than 40 years ago, in 1973, Marco Glaviano was told about the island of St Barth by an editor at Condé Nast in New York. He decided to come here for a vacation - and things were never the same again, not for Glaviano or the island.

"There was nobody on the island form outside," he says, "and nothing here but Eden Rock and Lea Castelets." Like so many people since, Glaviano found himself instantly hooked on St Barth. He came back three times that year, and eventually bought a place of his own. He also saw that the island was the perfect setting for the photography that was then making his name. "St Barth reminded me of my childhood in Sicily. The two places are very similar. The nature is the same, and so is the colour of the water. So I did a shoot on the island for American Vogue. That was a big mistake, because everybody saw it and started to shoot here themselves."

One of the early St Barth sessions featured a strange tree that Glaviano came across in Grand-Fond. The canopy of the tree had been sculpted by the wind in to a huge Elvis quiff. Glaviano posed a nude model beneath the tree. When you. look at the set of pictures, the tree and woman seem to be involved in some kind of ecstatic dance, an al fresco tango in which the tree leans forward as the girl arches her back. In black-and-white, her skin has the same tone as the branches - and so whene she climbs the trunk she is almost perfectly comouflaged, like a mantis on a leaf. It is a brilliant piece of work.

"I did a shoot on the island for American Vogue in 1974. That was a big mistake, because everybody saw it and started to shoot here themselves."

Polaroid by Marco Glaviano of Lisa Berkley, St Barth, 1978

Glaviano has done hundreds of shoots on the island since then - so surely by now he has exhausted its possibilities? "No, forty-five years on, I am still finding new locations," he says. "That is incredible for such a small place." He has shot here - on the beaches and amog the rocks, in the water and in the woolly green wilds - for every important magazine in the world: Vogue, of course, but also Harpers Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Elle. He earned a small footnote in the history of fashion and journalism when he became the first photographer to publish a digital picture. That too was in American Vogue, in 1982 - before most people even know there was such a thing as "digital". 

And there have been many books, anthologies aof the supermodel work - which Glaviano has made into a kind of genre unto itself, studies of jazz musicians (if things had been different, music might have been his career), portraits of his native Palermo and the Emerald Coast of Sardinia...

A new book is out this year. It is entitled "50", and is a celebration of Glaviano's five decades in the image-making business. There will naturally be pictures of the preternaturally beautiful women that he has worked with - but, he says, "I am not a fashion photographer, I have never been into clothes, I like to photograph the people under the clothes." And the book showcases all the work that he has done besides, nudes, studio portraits, reportage - and a whole series about the island that has been so central to his life. "50" is published in a limited collection edition, and an exhibition of some of the pictures will be held at the Space Gallery in Gustavia. This, after all, is photography that belongs on the wall as well as on the page. It is, in other words, high art.

Glaviano will be here for the exhibition. He comes back at least twice a year, to soak up the special spirit of the place, and to see old friends such as Patrick Demarchelier (the man that he considers to be the best fashion photographer out there). "I like the lifestyle here," says Glaviano. "The people are not pretentious, at least most of them aren't. I like the simplicity of this place. I get invited to go all around the world, but I always return to this spot. There is no other place like SBH."

"I am not a fashion photographer, I have never been into clothes. I like to photograph the people under the clothes."

Polaroid by Marco Glaviano of Paulina Porizkova in 1986

Marco Glaviano's new book "50" is available at Space Gallery. Gustavia.

The show "Glaviano 50" A Retrospective of Glaviano's iconic photography work will be on display in December.

To find out more about available pieces by the artist, contact Space Gallery St Barth

info@spacestbarth.com

www.spacegallerystbarth.com