Two years later, in an interview with Libération, he explained that it was at this point that he’d decided to come out as gay. He’d shot to fame with photographic nudes whose aesthetic owed something to the work of Irving Penn and Helmut Newton. Then, over the years, his work became more individual, and he photographed only bodies that fell outside the traditional canon of beauty—women who were heavily overweight or particularly small; models who had suffered severe burns; amputees; patients undergoing chemotherapy—singular bodies that Dalanegra managed to transform into something pure and flawless.

Although initially dubious, I found that I was dazzled by the raw power of his work, which was neither tasteless nor voyeuristic. The aesthetic was closer to that of the great Flemish artists than to a politically correct advertising campaign celebrating the diversity of the human form. Sophisticated, imaginatively composed, with studied lighting, his photographs were like the paintings of the old masters, taking the viewer into a world where beauty flirted with pleasure, sensual delight, and rapture.

I drove slowly along the little road flanked by olive groves and drystone walls that wound steeply uphill. From each patch of flat terrain, a narrower road branched off toward a group of houses—renovated farmhouses, contemporary residences, small developments built in the 1970s. I rounded a hairpin bend and was startled to see that the gnarled olive trees with their rustling leaves had disappeared; in their place was a glorious palm grove, as though a Moroccan oasis had been relocated to Provence. Yves Dalanegra had given me the access code. I parked in front of the wrought-iron gate and walked up the palm-lined pathway toward the house.

Unexpectedly, something bounded toward me, growling—a huge Anatolian sheepdog. I had been terrified of dogs ever since I was attacked by a Beauceron at a friend’s birthday party when I was six. I had almost lost an eye, and the incident had left me with a scar on the bridge of my nose and a visceral fear of dogs.

“Ulysses! Down, boy!”

Someone I assumed was the groundskeeper, a short man whose brawny arms were disproportionate to his frame, appeared behind the huge hound, wearing a sailor’s shirt and a cap that made him look like Popeye.

“Settle down!” he said, raising his voice. “Good dog!”

The dog stood its ground, refusing to let me pass. It could clearly sense my fear.

“I’m here to see Monsieur Dalanegra,” I called. “He gave me the code to the gate.”

The man was more than happy to believe me, but Ulysses had already sunk his teeth into my trouser cuff. I tried and failed to choke back a scream, which forced the groundskeeper to intervene. He pulled the dog away with his bare hands.