What was it like photographing Melania Trump nude for a fashion shoot in the mid-90s? Alexandre Alé de Basseville knows all about it.
But the photographer was only reminded of that New York City assignment after Trump defended her nude modeling work in a video posted on “X” to promote her upcoming memoir “Melania” from Skyhorse Publishing. Reached in Paris, de Basseville said he doesn’t know when he last spoke to the former first lady and that he only learned about the media attention to his photos after people pinged him on Wednesday.
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The Bassevilles first crossed paths when she was still a single model known as Melania Knauss. She wasn’t sure when, in the mid-’90s, the photos for Max magazine were taken in a duplex studio with a roof at West 26th Street and Sixth Avenue. “They say 1996. That’s a long time ago. We’re talking about a time that doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.
According to the New York Post, the recording took place in 1995.
De Basseville, who worked as an “artist photographer,” said he was looking for a “charismatic” model to balance out another model, Emma Eriksson, who had already been 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 scenario” he had envisioned.
“I’m an old-fashioned guy,” he said, laughing. “I come from an artistic background, painting and sculpting, and I take classes at a dance studio in Rome. For me, art was Caravaggio. I always wanted to represent women the way [the artists] in the 15th and 16th centuries with free will in terms of artistic vision and the diversity in everything she has to say. My concern was to show the beauty of a woman inside and out.”
On his opinion of nude photos of a former first lady, de Basseville said: “If you have a first lady who was as beautiful as she was, why would that be any different from all those kings and queens who have been depicted naked in art for centuries. What’s the difference between [that] and Alexander the Great [nearly] naked on his horse? Who doesn’t love Michelangelo’s ‘David’? I think it’s hypocrisy or jealousy.”
Recalling the shoot with Trump, de Basseville said Trump was “super nice with the whole team. Of course, there was Photoshop at that point. There were people on set for lighting, makeup, hair, styling. She was really professional and very nice.”
Afterwards, Eriksson, a favorite of Thierry Mugler, had to leave quickly to catch a flight to Paris, so de Basseville and Trump had a drink together in SoHo, as was customary after the shoot. “We talked about life and what we had to do [laughs] and stupid stuff. It was like two friends hanging out together and just having a good time, after doing something emotionally powerful. It was really fun,” de Basseville said.
Trump later did a nude photo shoot for the March 2000 issue of British GQ, curled up on a rug aboard Donald Trump’s Boeing 727, wearing only jewelry and handcuffed to a leather briefcase. On Wednesday, Trump said in her 45-second video post on “X,” “Why do I proudly stand by my nude modeling? The more pressing question is: Why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human form in a fashion shoot?”
Just as Trump’s life has taken a number of twists and turns, so too has de Basseville, who has traveled the world, expanded his career into other media and previously served prison sentences. Born Jarl Alexandre Alé de Basseville in Bordeaux in 1970, he is a descendant of the first King Harald of Norway. He became interested in contemporary art as a teenager, inspired by his collaboration with Andy Warhol and his art studies in Milan. He first painted on leather clothing after meeting fashion designer Claude Montana.
“She’s proud of the pictures and I’m so happy that she saw the same thing as me. Her sister was also in the fashion world. So it’s fantastic,” said de Basseville.
De Basseville said he approached the shoot like a sculptor, working with the models. “Photography is also like making a movie. It’s a bit like acting. Some aspects of it are not true, of course,” he said.
After 2000, he said, photography took two paths: the artistic way and the fashion way. “I never followed the fashion way. I always followed the artistic way,” de Basseville said.
His lifelong goals include AIDS awareness, which has been driven in part by the loss of family members to the disease, and women’s rights. He said: “It’s absolutely stupid that in 2024 we’re still fighting for women’s rights. After hearing all these friends, girls and models tell their stories [of mistreatment including ones] about Harvey Weinstein, who I knew, and all those other guys, I was dead. I couldn’t even believe it. I still can’t believe it. I’ve always fought for two things in my life, AIDS and women’s rights.”
The photographer has also had legal troubles. In 2017, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to distribute MDMA, commonly known as “ecstasy,” de Basseville was sentenced to 10 years in prison and served two years.
During a two-year undercover investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Agent, De Basseville and his co-defendant Bruno Cavelier d’Esclavelles negotiated with undercover agents posing as drug traffickers to launder more than $20 million in drug proceeds and import and distribute more than 500 ecstasy pills.
Asked about his imprisonment, he said: “It was an experience. I met a lot of people. I learned a lot. A lot of people are desperate. Prison is a dangerous place. There are all these really dangerous people, who are there to deal drugs, to kill people, and so on,” he said.
Often on air, de Basseville said he always learns from his experiences and gains knowledge for art and life. “Caravaggio was my master — no matter what. He and other artists have been in prison. It doesn’t matter.”
De Basseville lives in Paris and does a lot of painting, photography and design work with his architect wife Egla Harxhi. Their six-year-old son Luxifer de Basseville paints and often experiments with art with him, the photographer says. “I keep working a lot every day. I always try to go higher, higher and higher to develop myself.”
The biggest disadvantage of the social network is that many people judge others within two seconds, according to de Basseville. He prefers to read philosophy by Plato and Hannah Arendt. With a double genetic disease, epilepsy and Asperger’s syndrome, he started reading a lot as a child, because he couldn’t go to school. “That’s why I didn’t know much about life and I’ve never been 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. The way society is today doesn’t matter to me. If everyone says, ‘Everyone lives like this, I have to live like this,’ then I don’t care.”
De Basseville added: “I prefer to live my dream, which is perhaps more artistic in a way. That’s just the way it is.”
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