The list of legendary Maxim covers is almost too vast to count, but we can tell you exactly how many of them were shot by Antoine Verglas: 23. Shannen Doherty’s June 1999 cover (which is honored on this year’s Hot 100) marked the French-raised, New York City-based photographer’s debut with the brand, and he’d go on to capture some of the most beloved and significant moments in Maxim’s illustrious history. But even by the time he joined the family a quarter-century ago, Verglas was already a seasoned veteran.
Breakthrough success came in the late-1980s shortly after he moved to New York with his girlfriend, who had a contract with Ford Modeling Agency (now Ford Models). Using a seemingly innate ability to network, he managed to score candid photoshoots and accompanying interviews with several future supermodels, including Linda Evangelista, Stephanie Seymour, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford—the latter of whom left quite an impression. “I remember being very intimidated by Cindy,” Verglas tells us. “I was hiding behind my camera.” Nerves be damned, the work was ultimately published in France’s Photo and Elle, igniting a career that never slowed a beat over the subsequent decades and yielded a positively stacked portfolio, in which this magazine has maintained quite a presence.
Verglas identifies several standouts, among them our August 2002 cover shoot with Beyoncé… before she kicked off her superstar solo career and Jay-Z power partnership. “She was promoting her role in Austin Powers in Goldmember,” Verglas says, recalling her comically seductive role as Foxxy Cleopatra in the cult-classic comedy. “The entire set was gold, it was very cool and 1970s.” Indeed, then-Princess Bey donned scant all-gold attire.
Another fave is one of the most famous in Maxim’s three decades of publication: the positively angelic July 2003 cover. “I loved the shoot with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu,” which united the Charlie’s Angels leading women some three years after the blockbuster premiered, Verglas says. “You could tell they were really getting along.” Notably, another Maxim shoot is dear to Verglas not because of subject, but location. “Maxim’s first ‘Real Swimsuit Issue’”—the February 2000 issue featuring then-burgeoning fashion model Kim Smith—“introduced me to The Baths beaches in Virgin Gorda in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It’s since become my favorite location to shoot at because of the beauty of the rocks and the way the light goes through them.”
The industry has of course changed drastically since Verglas last shot a Maxim cover, starring Entourage star Dania Ramirez, in August 2010. These days, anybody can make beauties and beautiful locales look pretty for Instagram—even Verglas admits that the cameras on the Samsung Galaxy series and Apple iPhone “are really pretty amazing,” though he cites the Pentax 67 as his favorite pre-digital camera.
“I think digital imagery and retouching technology has totally changed photography in general,” he opines. “Social media has revolutionized glamour photography by making it accessible and democratized. And social media is obviously a large platform for new talents—everyone is a photographer or a model, and magazines are no longer the only way to exhibit your work. Also, beauty standards have evolved tremendously.”
For any photographer with career aspirations beyond the creation of viral social-media posts, “You need a combination of technical expertise, creativity and a sense of aesthetics, business and social skills,” he says. “You also need to push your own style and brand and use all platforms available to get your name out there.” Paramount is understanding the glamour photog’s purpose. “I think every photographer has a different style and different ideas regarding the capture of emotions, beauty and so on. Personally, I want to make sure the model feels comfortable, safe and beautiful—you’re there to make them look stunning.”
As for his future work, look out for a retrospective book on four decades of Verglas’s photography. In the meantime, his fans should feel free to flip through our pages, where we are honored to continue to publish his uniquely beautiful work regularly.
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Maxim magazine.