At the age of 17, the photographer David Seidner left his home in Los Angeles for Paris. Within two years he’d shot his first magazine cover, within four he had his first solo exhibition. At 22, Seidner signed an exclusive contract with the designer Yves Saint Laurent, cementing his status as a fashion photography wunderkind. Between 1976 and 1999, when he died at age 42 from complications of AIDS, Seidner shot campaigns for Madame Grès and Azzedine Alaïa, regularly contributed photographs to Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair, and exhibited at the Whitney Museum and the National Gallery of Art, in D.C. Seidner found inspiration for his photography in Roman busts and the paintings of John Singer Sargent. His portraits seamlessly bring the aesthetics of antiquity—sculptural volume, resonant stillness—to his contemporary subjects. —Paulina Prosnitz