Some shoots feel like a privilege the moment you walk through the door. Photographing inside Assouline's collection library in Manhattan was exactly that. Assouline, the legendary Parisian luxury publisher, maintains an extraordinary archive in New York: a physical library housing every book the brand has ever produced, floor to ceiling, a room that functions simultaneously as a working archive and one of the most visually stunning interiors I have ever had the chance to light. Getting to work inside that space, for a lifestyle campaign featuring their books and candles, was the kind of assignment that reminds you why you do this work.
The Location: Assouline's Manhattan Collection Library
Walking into Assouline's collection library for the first time, I understood immediately why we were shooting here rather than building a set. The space does something no constructed environment can replicate. It has genuine history and density. Hundreds of Assouline titles spanning decades of publishing, organized in a way that is both archivally precise and visually sumptuous. The spines alone create a color palette that would take a set designer weeks to approximate. For a lifestyle shoot celebrating what Assouline makes, there was no more honest or compelling backdrop.
As a New York based lifestyle photographer, I am fortunate to work regularly in location environments that carry their own visual authority. Even by that standard, this space was exceptional. It set both a challenge and a gift: the environment was strong enough to anchor the images entirely, which meant the job was to work with it rather than impose upon it.
The Creative Approach: Strobes on Location
Shooting on location in a space with this much character requires a lighting approach that respects rather than overwhelms the environment. I worked with strobes to control the light precisely, bringing definition to the product and models without flattening the depth and texture of the library behind them. The goal was images that felt lived in and genuinely luxurious rather than obviously commercial. The kind of lifestyle photography that makes a viewer want to be in the frame.
Assouline's books and candles are objects designed to be displayed, handled, and experienced. They are not shy products that need apologetic photography. The lighting was built to honor that confidence, giving each product its due weight and presence while keeping the library itself as a rich, atmospheric context rather than a blurred out background.
Working with a Transatlantic Creative Team
One of the distinctive elements of this shoot was the team, a mix of American and French creatives reflecting Assouline's identity as a brand that lives equally in Paris and New York. That kind of cross-cultural creative collaboration has its own energy and its own particular pleasures. There is a different aesthetic sensibility that comes from the French side of a production, a certain comfort with refinement, with negative space, with letting an image breathe. Working alongside that perspective consistently elevates the work.
As a lifestyle photographer based in New York who works regularly with international brands, I have come to value these mixed-team shoots for the way they push the work beyond what either side would produce independently. The Assouline images that came out of this shoot reflect that collaborative tension in the best possible way.
What the Final Images Delivered
The campaign imagery from this shoot has done exactly what lifestyle photography for a brand like Assouline needs to do: it places their products inside a world that feels aspirational but achievable, beautiful but not cold. Books and candles photographed inside a genuine archive library carry a different authority than the same products on a clean white surface. Context is meaning in lifestyle photography, and the Assouline archive is among the most meaning-rich contexts I have ever worked in.
If you are a luxury brand, a publisher, or a lifestyle company in New York looking for a photographer who understands how to work with location environments, existing light, and international creative teams to produce images that truly represent your products, I would love to talk about what your next shoot could look like.
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External
Sigma / Travel the Alps with SIGMA’s Lightweight 18-50mm & 10-18mm Zoom Lenses
Sigma / Behind the Scenes on a Fashion Shoot with the Sigma BF
Sigma / Why I Choose SIGMA Zoom Lenses for Studio Photography
Sigma / A Fresh Look at Berlin Through the Sigma 12mm F1.4 DC Contemporary Lens