Max Vadukul is a photographer who has worked mostly in America. He is noted for his fashion photography, portraits published in The New Yorker and many covers for Rolling Stone magazine.
Vadukul was born to Indian parents in Nairobi, educated in England and lived for a time in Paris. At age 16 he ran away to escape an arranged marriage. Vadukul’s first success came when David Puttnam asked him to take a photograph of his assistant.
In 1984 Vadukul was employed as a photographer by Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto whose young art director Marc Ascoli was looking for young, beginning photographers. Vadukul asked for a cash advance with which to buy a camera, then took black-and-white images in Manhattan for the project. Vadukul began taking photographs for The Face in the early 1980s and also worked for the French, American and Italian editions of Vogue. Much of his work is not credited aside from by-lines in editorial mastheads. Vadukal’s work has included photographs of Lisa Stansfield, panoramic shots for Veuve Cliquot and manipulated colour images in advertisements for Chloé.
In 1985, Vadukul also branched into video and television commercial directing with an award-winning advertisement for Williwear called The Expedition. He has cited Stanley Kubrick’s evolution from still photography into film directing as a career model.
Vadukul has said he rejects a Pre-Raphaelite image of women in his work, seeing modern women instead as "powerful, aggressive." At times his work has strayed from straightforward documentation of fashion and has not been published. His preference for black-and-white photography has also been a commercial hindrance.
