Andy Warhol and his corsets, photographed by Jonathan Becker at the fourth Warhol Factory, New York, 1986.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman at the *Vanity Fair* Oscar party, Los Angeles, 2000.

Madonna, Martha Graham, and Calvin Klein at New York City Center, 1990.

Pat Cleveland and André Leon Talley, New York, 2013.

King Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles at Buckingham Palace, 2001.

Bob Guccione and April Warren at home, New York, 2004.

Jocelyn Wildenstein at home, New York, 1998.

Fazenda Santarém in Três Rios, Brazil, 1988.

Gloria Vanderbilt at home, New York, 2011.

Jonathan Becker, In Focus

From garden strolls with Brassaï to nights out with Andy Warhol, a new book by the American photographer documents intimate moments with the 20th century’s high society

In 1974, when a young Jonathan Becker met Brassaï for the first time, the veteran photographer was depressed. “You have to understand,” he said over lunch at Paris’s Place Denfert-Rochereau, “all my friends are dead.”

Pablo Picasso had died from a pulmonary embolism in April 1973, in Mougins. Marcel Duchamp and Jaime Sabartés had died in 1968. The moping didn’t deter Becker. He was a lively 19-year-old who had taken a summer class at Harvard and had secured a meeting with Brassaï by mailing his thesis to the master’s mailbox.