- Hi everybody.
Thanks so much for coming,
it's good to see all of you.
My name is Stephen
Frailey, I'm the co-chair
of the graduate program
in fashion photography
here at good old SVA.
Erik is our second annual visiting artist
to the program, and I
just want to thank him
for his involvement.
We're very grateful for him being
involved in what we're doing
and for him to be here tonight.
I also just want to give
a special shout out to
our friends who are visiting from the
London College of Fashion,
who have just arrived
and will be with us for
the rest of the week.
So it's good to have you guys here,
and we're looking forward to all kinds of
great things happening.
So, my role standing up
here is to introduce the
people who you probably know very well
what their accomplishments are in.
But nonetheless, please
allow me to mention that
Vince Aletti, the distinguished
photography critic
was the recipient of the Infinity Award
in 2005 by the International
Center of Photography
for his critical writing.
He has curated exhibitions
at White Cube in London
and White Columns here in New York,
and has contributed to catalogs regarding
the work of Peter Hujar,
Saul Leiter, Eddy Sleiman,
Richard Avedon, and dozens
and dozens of other publications.
He has been the photography critic
of the New Yorker since 2005,
and before that he was at the
Village Voice for 20 years.
His writing on photography
appears regularly
in Photograph magazine, and Artforum.
Vince is a faculty person
in this graduate program
and in Fashion Photography here at SVA
and we are honored by his
participation in our program.
Erik Madigan Heck is a regular contributor
to Harper's Bazaar UK, New York magazine,
the New York Times magazine
and the New Yorker,
and he's represented by IMG
William Morris Endeavor.
He has shot campaigns for
Neiman Marcus, Etro, Tom Brown,
and Kenzo.
Erik has also been honored by
the ICP with an Infinity Award
in 2015, and a monograph of his work
will be published very
soon by Thames & Hudson
and Abrams in, did you say April?
March, so without any further delay
please welcome Vince Aletti
and Erik Madigan Heck.
(applause)
- Thank you.
I realize the last time I
was seated on this stage,
having a one on one conversation
it was with Saul Leiter,
who proved to be difficult.
Who was charming but ornery, in some ways,
and almost resisted questioning.
So I'm hoping that you'll be a little more
easy going, and so I'd like to start with,
well first I should say
that I started buying
British Harper's Bazaar, which I basically
paid no attention to for years,
because you started working there,
and I think you really
transformed the magazine.
They've given you huge
amounts of space, in this,
he's in this latest issue, 42 pages,
and you said that
previously they've given you
more than 60.
- Yeah.
- So it's impressive, and
you really hold the page.
But let me go back to some history.
The things that I don't
know, where are you from,
and how did you get
interested in photography?
- So I'm from Minneapolis.
I started photographing when I was 14.
My mother gave me a camera as...
I used to be really into music and DJing,
and I would spend hours in my bedroom
huddled over my turntables,
just not talking to people,
just listening to music and I
think she wanted to bring me
back out into the world.
- Smart way to do it.
- Yeah I was becoming
a total music hermit.
So she used to get me a
roll of film once a week,
and we'd go out on Sundays and shoot,
just a roll and she would say,
you can shoot anything you want,
as long as you shoot 36
exposures we'll be done.
- What an interesting exercise,
did you walk around or take a car, or?
- We would drive in her car and just,
she would have me point at things
that interested me.
She'd stop the car, we'd
get out, I'd take a picture,
and then maybe I'd walk a little bit,
take another picture, and it
would last maybe two hours,
I would shoot a roll of film.
In the beginning it was kind
of a nuisance, it was like,
I could be DJing, to myself.
But then it just became
a routine, it was like,
Sundays I would look forward
to doing this activity,
and in the beginning it was very mindless.
It was just kinda like going
and getting a cup of coffee,
but with a camera.
- Did you show the work to somebody?
- No, I mean...
- Did you make prints
when you came back?
- So then I enrolled,
this is freshman year I'd
enrolled in photography, and
I would go to the dark room,
make the prints every week.
But you know, it was really innocent,
it was just like a, it
was a hobby at this stage.
And then there was some point that year
where it just started, it just clicked
and I still kind of remember
knowing it was like,
meeting a part, it's like
meeting your wife or something
where you just, you're like oh I just know
this is the person.
- Something happened,
something clicked.
- Yeah, and it...
- Was it a picture or was it--
- I don't think it was a
picture, I think it was just,
I looked at it differently after,
whatever moment that was I
remember looking at the picture
and being like, this is
what I'm going to do,
I know for sure.
And it was probably a mundane landscape
or something not exciting
necessarily but it was,
I remember knowing without any doubt
that I was gonna be a photographer.
- So, but you didn't go
on to study photography,
from what I understand.
- No I went and studied...
I studied politics and philosophy.
My parents didn't think that I could be,
they didn't think that I could
make a lot money at photography so they,
my dad was concerned about...
You know, he's a concerned father,
he was like I want you to be successful,
I want you to have a, you know...
- As a philosopher?
- (laughing) Not as a philosopher.
- That's not exactly a profession either.
- No no no, it's not.
I went to a liberal arts school,
it was a private Catholic school,
and I went there with the intention
of studying political science,
and I was also studying philosophy.
But for me the whole time I knew
I was gonna be a
photographer so it was like
I was appeasing my parents.
- And were you taking
photography sort of on the side?
- I was taking it at the school as well,
but I was--
- Where was this?
- In Rhode Island.
- Okay.
- Yeah.
But it wasn't--
- Not RISD or, no?
- No it wasn't RISD, it was
the only school I applied to
that wasn't in New York.
And after September 11th my parents
were like you're not gonna
go to school in New York.
I mean I was a teenager, so
I was still under my parents'
wing.
- Right.
And finances I assume.
- Exactly.
So this was my safety school
that I had applied to,
I'd never been to Rhode Island in my life
until the first day of school.
And I showed up and I was
like, wow this is amazing,
it's really beautiful.
And it was an amazing
political science program,
but it wasn't, the arts program was tiny,
it was like a little closet.
- Oh, so but it was still something
you could do on the side.
- Yeah I was still
making dark room prints.
My whole career until 2007
I only shot black and white.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
- That's kind of shocking.
- Yeah.
Yeah I only, I hated color photography.
Any color photography I saw I thought was
unlookable, I couldn't, yeah.
- That's, so, well...
Maybe I should ask this question then.
How did you, I mean
that's a major transition
because I think of you
as the color photographer
in many ways and somewhat...
Your work is so much about color.
How did that change?
- Well I think for me,
I learned photography by
going to Barnes & Noble
in Minneapolis and reading
Andre Kertesz et la Savoie,
August Sander, Harry Callahan.
I read my way through the
history of photography
by going to the book store
and not buying the books
but sitting in the aisle for two hours
just looking at every
single picture and for me,
I was such a purist with photography
I felt like it had to be black and white.
And the subject matter
was street photography
and serious portraiture and...
- This is what you were doing as well.
- This is what I was doing
and my introduction to color photography
was William Eggleston, who
I didn't care for at all,
and my favorite photographer
was Harry Callahan,
and his work, when he started
doing color photography
I thought it was actually really bad,
and so I viewed it as the
demise of Harry Callahan
was the introduction of color.
- Have you, did you change
that opinion along the way?
- No, I still believe that, I think its,
I think his color work
is really, really bad.
And he's the, to me he's
the only photographer
that's made a lasting impression.
- Okay.
Well, okay, so well then, how
did you transition into color,
I mean, because like I said
I feel you're so identified
with it now, I was surprised to see that
your book actually includes
some black and white work,
but I don't really think of you that way.
- Yeah, well, the thing was
that I grew up painting,
my mother's a painter, and
I always wanted to be a painter,
but I was a terrible painter.
I don't...
- I'll talk your word for it.
- You can take my word for
it, I don't have the patience
and I'm not technically
able to express myself
with a paintbrush but I always
thought of my pictures as
paintings when I was making them,
I would try to create scenes in my mind
that I may have already
seen from a painter before
or trying to imagine it as a...
I don't know.
More of situations that
I had seen in paintings
as opposed to photographs.
But I always felt like I had to make them
as black and white images
because to me that's
what photography was.
The history of photography
had been shown to me as
hierarchical in black and white.
- Right, right.
But yet you--
- So at one point,
- Okay go ahead.
- I decided,
if I'm gonna do color, I want
it to just be about the color
and I really want to start creating
the paintings that I would
like to make as paintings,
but as photographs,
and so it was a choice,
it was like if I'm going to do color,
it has to be so colorful
that it's not photographic.
- In a way that you're not
treading on that old tradition.
- Well to me, color photography
has to be about color,
black and white photography
is about composition, right,
and in graphic elements because
you've taken the color
out of the equation so
you can focus on all the other elements
but if you introduce color, to me,
the color is the primary thing.
So it might as well take
over and become all powerful.
So when I started doing color photography
I really wanted to do processes that
could lend themselves to
making it more saturated.
Sarah Moon used to live in Paris
and Sarah Moon was a photographer
that I really admired
when I was in high school,
and she was experimenting with
these dye transfer processes
and Paolo Roversi was doing his
color work that I also admired.
And so in the beginning I started shooting
with large format Polaroids,
and tried doing different
experimenting with actually
physical processes to see...
Because at that time digital
photography still wasn't...
- And so what time are we talking about?
- Like 2004.
2005, 2006.
- You're out of college?
- Wait.
No.
- No?
- No no no, 2006, sorry.
Bad at math.
- Well it's not exactly math but go ahead.
But so are you out of
college at that point,
are you on your own?
- Yes.
- Were you making a living?
- No, I'm in Paris, I'm studying--
- What are you doing in Paris?
- I'm just, I'm studying--
- How did you get to Paris?
- I took a plane.
- Okay.
- I took a plane, I woke up in Paris,
no idea how I got here.
I didn't speak French.
- Was it just a romantic
spontaneous thing?
- I turned 21 in Paris.
It wasn't very romantic.
- That's the only reason you need.
- I woke up with a bad hangover.
Wondered why I was there.
I was studying politics at
the American university.
- In Paris.
- And I was also taking classes at Parsons
when they had a school there.
They might still have a
school there, I don't know.
- Okay, well so that
grounds you a little bit.
- Sure.
- Alright, I needed that.
Thank you.
So you're not entirely fancy
free, but you're in Paris.
- Yeah, I mean I'm in Paris as a student
trying to soak in what Paris has to offer.
It seemed a lot more approachable
to be making fashion pictures in Paris.
- Well that's...
- In terms of like--
- I'm curious about
that transition then, to making
what I assume is personal work,
that probably you weren't
doing anything with,
to making commercial, or
thinking about fashion.
What made you wanna, or
think that you could do that?
- Well.
So I've always, I always look at things
and I'm like, I could do that better,
or I could do it differently
in a way that, you know...
At the time, so I left
Paris, came back to New York
and I actually started
graduate school at Parsons.
I went straight into doing my MFA,
which in many ways I should've
waited, but that was fine.
I started graduate school and I started a
online magazine, which, believe it or not,
there weren't any online
magazines in 2007.
It's really hard to imagine
because time is such a weird
thing but in 2007 there was like,
there was a thing called FlyDVD,
which was fashion films,
there was SHOWstudio, Nick Knight...
There still wasn't style.com, right,
you still had to go First
View to look at fashion shows.
And the magazine publications
hadn't transitioned
to online yet so there
wasn't Days digital,
there wasn't any of this.
So at the time, the idea of
putting an online magazine
was actually kind of cool.
- Radical.
- Radical, I'm not gonna
call myself radical but,
in a way, sure, and it was
like, my idea was really
a way to get my own
work out into the world,
but also to make a magazine
without any budget, right, because
all you need to do is buy a website
and then call people and so for...
The magazine I started was basically
my work, I would call designers
and I would ask them if they'd wanna
be included in this publication.
I would shoot it, so a
designer like Christian Lacroix
would send me 12 dresses from Paris,
I would shoot them,
and then I would curate
a selection of other art that I thought
paired well with the fashion.
So like, paintings by Lucian Freud,
or Anselm Keifer, or a poem by whoever.
Sorry my poetry knowledge
is not up to par.
But, it used to be, and I
would just create something
that was really organic and it was just
what I was looking at at the time,
and a lot of my references
are very old fashion.
It was also before Fabien Baron
took over Interview again,
and the whole merging
of real art and fashion,
that didn't start really
happening until 2008, 2009.
So it was like my own wanting
to go to the Met museum,
and merge that aesthetic
with Belgian fashion
and with electronic music,
and all these different
things into one place.
- But it was essentially your work,
other sort of influence,
kind of mood board
kind of material.
- Totally.
- And did you involve
any other photographers?
- I tried to but, it was really,
it was really about me, and it was,
I mean I hate to say it, because it,
it was like I wanted to
get my work out there,
it was also a very coy way of
making myself more important
than I was, if you immediately
include yourself next to
Lucian Freud, and Anselm Keifer.
You know, there's...
- It's putting yourself in the context
that you're sort of ambitious but you're,
that reflects your way of thinking
and what you're looking at.
So it makes sense, and
how long did this go on?
- So I did it for five years.
- Really?
- Yeah.
And we would make boxes of prints,
and we'd sell them.
- Who's we?
- Well, I say we, it was mostly me,
but I had friends, my friend
over there, Anna Krinn,
who helped me.
I had friends in different
places who would lend a hand,
but we would print boxes of
prints at Parsons actually,
in their computer room,
and in their dark room,
and then we'd sell them at
Other Criteria in London,
Barney's here in New York,
and 10 Corso Como in Milan,
Colette in Paris, so we'd do 10 boxes,
and then each box was just,
it was extremely expensive,
it was kind of like a collector's thing.
- Interesting.
- And that was how
I transitioned because that
took me from graduate school
to getting known on a broader scale,
to where people started hiring me.
That was kind of the...
- So that's what I was gonna ask.
- I didn't make it for that reason,
I made it just because I wanted,
I really wanted to publish somewhere,
and nobody would publish me.
You know it was kind of
a necessity, it was like,
well if you guys aren't gonna publish me
I'll just publish myself.
- And, but to get to
Colette and 10 Corso Como,
they had to want you on some level,
they had to be interested in your vision.
- Yeah, well we had great press,
or I had great press from the beginning.
The first issue we put
out, the New York Times
ran in print, in the arts and
leisure section, front page,
one of my pictures, and a blurb that said,
"The world's most expensive magazine,"
which was a great tagline in terms of
getting people's attention, but it was,
first of all it was not true,
it was extremely divisive,
because a lot of people were
like, well fuck that guy.
He's obviously a jerk, I don't
want anything to do with...
And then other people
were like, oh that's,
that's crazy it's, I can't
believe you would pay $7,000
for a box, and in reality--
- Literally?
- Yeah, I mean they were like $7,500 but,
you would get 20 prints, you know what I--
- By an unknown person.
- But, well no it wasn't just,
it wasn't just me, we would
make prints of other artists,
with the gallery's
permission so it was like,
you would get a print by Anselm Keifer,
and you'd get a print of mine,
and you'd get a print of,
Jamie Isaia who's a photographer.
- So it was a collection--
- It was a mixture of the issue.
Which I actually thought
was a really good price,
to be honest, because
you could take them out,
have 20 pieces of art in your home.
Anyway, they focused on the price,
because that was a great headline,
but that launched us into
the, many people's awareness.
- I can see, yeah.
I'm surprised that I didn't
rush off and raise some money.
- You don't know everything Vince.
- Well, so, let's talk about how that
actually led to editorial work,
or was that the next step?
- Well, so, I...
I used to be really ambitious
when I was in my 20s
and I would write letters
to people I liked and...
Which now I think back and
I'm like that's kinda creepy,
but it works, you know, and I actually--
- People like getting letters.
- They're nice.
So at the time, at the very beginning,
Ann Demeulemeester was one my biggest,
I loved her fashion since I was 15.
- Okay, well let me stop you there.
- Sure.
- Because, I mean, a lot of--
- There was a point I would have, yeah.
- No, a lot of photographers,
a lot of fashion photographers
have zero interest
in clothes and fashion,
they could care less.
And I'm interested that
you, that that was part
of your interest as well.
- Totally, I was really
interested in fashion
separately from photography.
My interests in photography were purely
photographic, like street
scenes, portraiture,
nothing to do with fashion photography.
And then I was really
interested in fashion,
and specifically the Belgian scene...
- In the kind of avant garde design.
- Yeah, like Ann Demeulemeester, Dries,
the Antwerp 11, Comme de Garcons,
what was happening in Japan,
but I was interested in
fashion as sculpture,
so when I would look at it, I was...
I was never interested in
fashion as a cultural scene.
I really liked designers who could
introduce a new silhouette
that was sculptural
and made you think on a level
that was beyond just like,
that looks cool, you know.
And there are very few,
unfortunately a lot of them
have retired or are soon retiring but,
for me Ann Demeulemeester was the best,
and when I was in Paris
I would go up to Antwerp,
it's like four hours on the train,
and I would go hang out in her store,
and then like hang out,
put myself in places that
maybe she would come.
- So you were a total fashion geek,
on some level.
- For sure.
For sure, but I was a
white kid from Minneapolis,
I'd wear an Ann shirt,
but with terrible shoes.
People would be like, what are you doing?
I don't know, somebody help me.
Because inherently I'm not
a cool, skinny Berlin kid
who can shave his head and just look cool,
and that's not, you know.
This is as cool as it gets.
Che crew cardigan.
So anyway I ended up making some prints,
some really large prints, and I got
Ann's personal address from a friend,
and I rolled them in a tube
and I sent them to her.
And she wrote me a letter,
and was like, we have to meet,
I love what you sent me, and
the sentiment was amazing,
and we ended up having this
really personal relationship
kind of off the bat,
which is really strange
because she was like...
She was like a untouchable
figure in my mind, and she
ended up kinda becoming,
I wouldn't say a mentor,
but somebody that I would
check in with in once a year,
and she would, we would
do projects together,
some she would ask me to
do, and others I would
say I want to shoot your
clothes just because.
Through her, her press
agent is Michele Montagne,
who's one of the most
powerful people in fashion
in terms of avant garde,
hard to get in the door fashion.
So she, when Haider started designing,
she started representing Haider Ackermann.
She hired me to shoot Haider's
first men's collection
in Italy, and then through that,
I mean it was just, it was very organic.
It literally started with a letter,
with me being like,
"Dear Ann, I love you,"
put it in the mail.
And then through those
just organic conversations
that, you know, it led
to shooting editorial.
Eventually.
- So what were your first
editorial experiences like?
I mean this Haider Ackermann,
was that just for The House?
- It was for The House
and for Pitti Uomo and...
I don't where they're, they're
published in various places.
My first proper editorial commission
was actually in the
New York Times magazine
and it was a portrait
of a Boston businessman.
It was great, I was so excited,
I was like the New York Times magazine is,
still to me, the pinnacle
of where you can publish.
- Well because they have a
great photo editor who really
puts you in a great context.
- Yeah.
And she gave me an assigment
where I was like, I don't,
how am I gonna do this?
- Yeah, why did, how did she?
- But they always do that to me,
she gives me assignments that--
- They throw you a sort of curve.
- I'm like, why can't
they just give me, but no.
Anyway, it was great that
my first assignment was
a very buttoned up businessman
because it was really hard,
and it made me...
You can get lazy in fashion, and it's nice
to go back to non-fashion
publications because it,
you have to switch your
mind into a different mode,
you're shooting for a different audience,
you're shooting for the
world, as opposed to
a fashion audience which is very specific.
- Well it interests me that
you do portraiture as well.
But let's, we'll come back to that.
Because I'm still curious about how you
jump started the fashion photo career,
if your first assignment
a portrait for the Times.
Did she at some point have
you do fashion as well?
- No, so, I started with portraits,
and then that year Neiman Marcus...
So I self published a book.
And I sent it out to a thousand people.
- Not me.
- Not, I didn't know you Vince.
- Excuse me.
(laughing)
- So anyway it wound up on the
desk of Georgia Christenson,
who's the creative
director of Neiman Marcus.
I think one of her friends
might've bought a book
and gave it to her.
And she looked at it,
and she was like, great,
let's hire him, and she me hired for
the Art of Fashion campaign.
Which historically, is a
really important campaign,
started with Richard
Avedon, and, you know,
Annie Leibovitz, every major photographer
has shot this campaign, that I know of.
- And impressive to be sort of brought in
as an upstart.
- Yeah, but it was also
terrifying because it was my first
real job, and it was a huge job, and...
They'd buy 20 pages in
Vogue, it's like the insert.
So anyway that was kind of my first foray,
I didn't shoot editorial, people did not
want to publish my work, I'm telling you.
I would literally knock on,
I'd go to Dazed and Confused
and be like, (knocking),
I'll do it for free,
I'll pay you.
They were like, no.
- Thank you but...
- Yeah, I mean my career
was super inverted
in terms of how it came to be.
- So it started with
ads rather than an editorial?
- Kind of, yeah, which is strange,
because normally you'd do
a ton of editorial work
so you can get advertising, but yeah,
it didn't really work that way for me.
- Well especially to be, sort of jump into
that Art of Fashion
thing in the context of
so many important people
who've come before you,
it's an incredible springboard.
- Yeah, it was, I got very lucky.
But I had met with Georgia
before she hired me,
she flew to New York and she wanted
to see who I was and...
This is not meant to sound arrogant but,
it was really because
I think she could tell
I truly like the clothing, I
want to celebrate the clothes,
and I think that was
really a selling point,
especially for advertising, because
my work isn't really about...
It's not about sex, and
it's not about being sexy,
and it's not about being
cool, like so many of the
pictures that I wanna make are about
fashion as sculpture.
And if you're trying to sell clothing,
that's the best way to do it.
- Well it's, you know, I think one of...
One of my real interests
in fashion photography is
the fact that it is functional at best,
and it serves a purpose of
actually showing you the garment,
which a lot of people could
care less about these days
but I really like that
you do have this sense of
the clothing in the picture,
and of really sort of paying attention.
- Thank you.
- So clearly that started
from the very beginning, or started
before you were photographing.
- Yeah well, it's because
fashion was such a separate
interest, I mean I always admired fashion
like I said as sculpture so when I did...
You know in the beginning
when I was a teenager,
when I looked at fashion
photography it was like,
it was like boobs, you
know, it was like, sorry.
- Is this the 80s we're
talking about, or the 90s?
- 90s, you know.
- 90s.
- And I was looking at GQ
and I was looking at magazines
that my dad was getting,
not necessarily...
Not necessarily Vogue Italia, for example.
So I wasn't seeing the
fantastical imagery of
Manzo or Tim Walker or what have you,
but my notion of fashion photography was
this really cheap
industry that was kind of
two steps away from the
sex club down the street.
And I didn't want--
- You're clearly, you were
looking at the wrong things,
at that point.
- Maybe.
But I don't know, I mean was I?
I mean a lot of...
Anyway my point was, my notion
of fashion photography was,
was really a vehicle to sell sex.
And I admired fashion,
but I didn't want to
denigrate it with...
- But how could, let me just pull you back
a little bit from that,
because were you not
somehow in the course of
your interest in Callahan
and the other photographers,
seeing Penn and Avedon
and Al McDuten and...
- I was, I was.
Yeah I definitely was,
I wasn't so interested,
I didn't think Penn was that great.
Yeah I mean he's obviously great.
Hey, it's just my
opinion, just my opinion.
Yeah I found a lot of the 60s,
70s, 80s fashion photography
to be a little bit boring.
I really liked Deborah Turbeville.
I thought she was great.
- That's interesting
because I was gonna ask you about her.
The more I look at your
work, the more I thought
about Turbeville,
because there's something
very personal there.
Something kind of odd and
engaged in the figure and...
- Well it's also that
she was one of the first
photographers, of female
fashion photographers,
but to really celebrate
women in a different way.
She was showing you a side
of a woman that wasn't
made to be a sexy object,
or like a personality.
They were just kind of like,
in many ways regular women,
put into more regular
landscapes like Russia, in these
kind of beaten down scenarios.
Which to me it was, it was nice.
- So it's as much about
her choice of models?
- For sure, her, yeah 100%.
- Because I mean that's
partly I think also why
I thought of her when I was looking at,
especially this, that your, do
you get to choose the models,
to some degree?
- Yeah, to a degree, I mean
in most of my projects I do,
with bizarre...
You know there are practical reasons
why we use certain models.
It might be that budget
allocates we have to get them all
from one agency, or
we're shooting in London
and we only have these
five to choose from because
the rest are out of town or whatever,
but yeah, within that
context I do, for sure.
- Because they're not like...
They have a different kind of personality,
they don't, they're mostly
not the big sex bomb models.
- Yeah, I mean it's
hard, for me it's like,
I tend to stay away from models that are
very well known now.
It's really hard to put your stamp
on somebody who you're
constantly bombarded with
by photographers who have
much bigger ad space.
- Oh okay.
- I don't know what I
was doing with my hands,
this means nothing.
And also my pictures aren't sexy in a
physical and literal way,
so it doesn't make sense
for me to shoot Cara
Delevigne or what have you.
I mean for me it's like,
I'm not so interested...
But I'm also not so interested
in people in my work,
you know what I mean.
For me it's more about
fashion, it's the landscape,
it's the color, so putting
a recognizable figure's
almost distracting and almost takes away
from the work, for me.
- So ideally the model should
sort of recede into the
scene and the clothing.
- Yeah.
Or you don't even see their face.
That would be my preference.
Half my book there's no faces.
- Well you know, while
we're talking we should
start showing a little
bit of this project.
What you're showing right
now are the opening pages
of this book, why don't we show...
- So yeah, this is...
- A nice format, by the way.
- Thank you.
It comes out, oh yeah
we already said that.
Anyway, this is a book I've
been working on for two years,
and we'll show you, this
is the pagination here.
Feel free to...
- Do what?
- I don't know.
Also if you guys have any
questions, feel free to ask.
- Well we're gonna do that at the end.
- Just kidding.
- Uh huh, right.
Don't say a thing.
- So yeah the book starts out, the book is
based on color, so it starts out in blue,
and then it goes to green,
it's like a color wheel.
You didn't even figure that out.
- No I didn't pick that up.
- I know.
- I'm gonna certainly
absorb the sense of color, and I guess
while you're showing this
let me jump to the question
about landscape, because a
lot of the opening images
are pure landscape, or, you
know, and a lot of the...
A lot of your work does involve
people in the landscape,
often deep in the landscape.
So, and where does, I
mean this is very Monet.
A lot of these are really quite beautiful.
- These are actually ponds,
the surface of a pond
that's been multiple layers
put on top of each other.
In various places too,
some of these are shot in
Florida, some are shot in Minnesota,
some are shot in France.
Yeah.
- Is these a landscape
painter or photographer that
interests you, that
kind of feeds into this?
- I mean I grew up looking at
all the impressionist painters.
For me I love Degas landscapes.
My favorite painter has
always been Vuillard.
I spent six years trying to figure out
how he made his space so flat.
You know how there's no dimension
between the person in the landscape
and the object in the foreground.
And that was my quest, to
make a Vuillard painting
as a photograph, and I started
with landscapes and then
for me...
I mean for me the most
important thing has always been
using color to flatten space.
- And certainly this sense of flowers
and print and this profusion
of flowers especially,
but texture and all the kind of
light and color that comes into all this.
- Yeah these were...
I mean in many ways too I loved...
A lot of the black and white photography
I was doing in the
beginning was landscape,
and I've always loved
landscape photography.
And now I feel like I
have to put a person in it
to justify making it.
I try to make them as small as possible,
so they just appear and
then I can publish it.
Because it's a fashion picture.
- Okay, so it fits into the context.
- Yeah.
Yeah, I mean I still shoot a lot of...
landscapes on my own,
and kind of put them aside, and...
With the hopes of a book
project being able to merge.
Again, on the left that
was Harper's Bazaar.
And then on the right was just a, yeah.
- How much of this is manipulated,
digitally or however later?
- So, I don't manipulate
structural things.
But I do the color in post, right.
So, I think about it, I try to describe it
as like a painting,
because you start out with
the base, which is just
the picture as it was, raw,
and then I do layers and layers of color.
And they're built up
like the canvas would be.
So, I don't put people in places that...
- You don't move things around?
- No.
- Okay.
- But the color is dramatically different.
Like...
- Those reds.
- Yeah, I mean if you were on drugs,
you could maybe see that.
- Okay. (laughing)
- But if you aren't, it was pretty green.
However, there are things like this,
that was really a red
bush, and it was sunset,
so it looked pretty much like that.
- And the light on her is so gorgeous.
- Yeah, I mean that's the other thing is
I only shoot natural light,
I don't light anything, so.
- No, that's pretty amazing.
- It's a waiting game, you
gotta wait for the sunset.
We were actually driving
around in our car,
that's Guinevere who's a
good friend of ours and,
I was like Guinevere
we're going to Vermont,
you should come with me
to make some pictures,
and we were driving around Vermont,
driving for the light, kind of chasing--
- Watching, uh huh.
- And then I'd be like get out of the car,
there's a red bush, and she
just ran in front of the bush
and click, that was it.
I think that was a dress
for Giambattista Valli.
The book was, the book
is 10 years of work,
and it was kind of
bizarre, no pun intended,
to put pictures together
from eight years apart
and start to see that
you take the same picture
over and over and over and over and over,
and you always think that
you're doing something new.
But then you see that you
did it six years ago in a...
- Well here's, to go back to that one,
this is one of those situations
where you're barely showing the dress,
but it's so, the atmosphere is very heavy
and seductive.
But there's only the little
bit of real information there.
- Well that wasn't a commission,
this was just a picture
that I wanted to make.
- Okay, that's what I was
wondering whether those...
- Although that's not to say that,
if it was a commission--
- You couldn't get away with that.
- Yeah, that they probably
still run it, but...
- Well it's such a beautiful image.
- Thank you.
- So, I wanted to go back though to
Turbeville and you mentioned
Paolo Roversi, both of whom,
now that I think about it
are quite, I love their use of color,
there was this similar sensibility.
Was there anybody else that struck you as
somebody that you could
relate to in fashion?
- Well, I mean, in the 90s, at the time,
I had a great admiration
for Peter Lindbergh,
especially because the work I was making
was all black and white film.
And I looked at Peter's
work as very much a segue
for me into fashion, but
I didn't want to make
work similar to his.
- And you're not...
In the sense, one of
the things I really...
You're never really doing narrative.
That I can remember.
- Like overt narrative?
Like Manzo's story about...
- Yeah, right, like a story.
- Not really, I'm not...
I never liked narrative,
because I didn't buy it.
- No, oh really?
- Yeah.
- I buy it completely.
- Yeah, no, I'm sure you do.
A lot of people do.
I don't.
- I mean if it's well done.
I mean obviously there's a lot
of people who try to do narrative
that just don't know what they're doing.
- Well, like in graduate school,
my, Joe, is here, he
was a professor of mine,
but everything would be in series, right,
you were unable to produce
work that wasn't in a series,
you had to have a conceptual framework.
I don't--
- Was that annoying?
- Well I just don't buy that premise,
I think a photograph should
be successful on its own,
and I don't think it needs to adhere
to 10 other images that look like it.
- Well I totally agree that each image
in a sequence should be successful
and be able to stand on its own,
but I also like the
idea of telling a story,
or finding a way to link those things up.
- I mean, well, if you're
going to tell a story,
to me, somebody like
Duane Michels is great.
But if I want to read a story
I'm going to read a book.
I'm not going to look at a picture.
There's a better medium to do
a story and it's literature.
- Peter Lindbergh is a good
example of that kind of,
not necessarily narrative,
but a sort of through line
of something he's trying to tell.
- I mean, I guess, but not really.
You have a film light in a corner,
and you have a tarp, and
you're somewhere in the desert.
How is that a story?
- Yeah maybe there's an
alien out there somewhere.
- Yeah, I mean...
- Well yeah, it's like, you know...
You put the story together
in your head in a way,
but you're--
- Yeah, I think,
I think narrative is a
word that allows people
to escape making good pictures.
- (laughing) That's a good quote.
- Quote me.
- So, but, without dealing with narrative,
you create these...
I think to do a 42 page sequence,
that where the pieces don't feel...
They're all quite different,
your settings are different,
you're indoors, you're
outdoors, and it's like,
sustaining that I think is really
an interesting and difficult thing to do.
How do you go about that, or
is it just a matter of like...
- I think it's just adrenaline because,
you have to make, those
shoots we have to do
40 some odd designers in two days,
on location, when it's 20
degrees, and there's no heat,
and I think a lot of it
is crisis management,
and I think I do my
best work when I'm given
really difficult parameters.
And those Bazaar shoots,
they're really difficult
because you're having
to get through so many
different situations, and
try to find some cohesive
glue, like you said,
which is the narrative.
I would describe it differently,
I would say it's just,
how do you make 40 really
good pictures in two days.
And I don't know, for me it's,
normally the atmosphere is the glue,
making it less, trying to
make it less about the people
and making it more about the environment,
so that the people just become
part of the environment,
and then the environment
is the story, if you will.
- Well...
I wanted to ask you about beauty,
since I was in the
conversation you have with
Susan Bright, right?
In this book, you say at one point
beauty is one of the most
powerful forces that's around us,
yet we're taught not to talk about it.
Because I think beauty does seem to be
one of those subjects that
is difficult to handle
in art school, or...
And that's I think where
people are taught that it's
something that shouldn't be...
- Right, it's like the
word you shall not speak.
- Which I've never believed in either,
I always think that that's,
it is what people should aim for.
- Right.
- But it has become a difficult topic.
And how do you get around that,
clearly your work is
very focused on beauty.
- Yeah, well, I always said
the rule of thumb for me was,
would my mom like it?
I think when you talk about beauty...
- Well first we need to
know a little bit more
about your mom.
Is she a tough critic?
- Yeah, I mean she's a tough
critic but I'm just using that
as a general statement,
like would your mom like it?
I don't know your mom, but...
- My mom would like it, yes.
- But I guess my point in that,
with fashion work, so
much, with any industry,
industries are insular, and people,
we all can get caught up on thinking about
specific things that we're
taught to think about for
our industry, let's
just talk about fashion.
And I think, when I talk about beauty,
beauty is something
that affects everybody,
it's something that, it's an experience
that any person's had in their life.
I'm not talking about beauty
as described as makeup,
I'm not talking about beauty
in different specific senses,
I'm talking about beauty
on a larger experiential way, right.
And so, for me...
You know we don't have
conversations about beauty
because it's one of the, it's
like talking about religion,
it's an impossible thing
to really talk about.
But to try to talk about it...
With my work I want the image to be
for everybody, and I
think that's where I'm,
I think that's part of what I'm trying
to talk about with beauty,
is that I would like
your mom, or the guy on the street,
or somebody in a different
culture who isn't
versed in what Givenchy is,
and what Harper's Bazaar UK is but to have
an experience with the image
or a reaction with the image
emotionally and have...
Beauty to me is an experience.
You have an object, you have yourself,
and that thing in between,
that's the beauty.
The object itself isn't
necessarily beautiful to everybody,
people get really held
up on subjectivity but I,
I don't think that's the conversation,
the conversation is that middle place.
- Of how you respond.
- Yeah, and I...
I do believe there are
objective, universal
things that people react to.
Color.
Certain ways figures are described.
You can look through
the history of painting,
and see threads popping out, and for me
those are more important than...
I don't know, making an image that seems
to be of the now.
- Well I mean it
interests me that you are,
in a sense, there's
something very classical
about your work, there's
something romantic about it,
and I really think that
there's some pre-Raphaelite
things going on here.
And yet at the same time
you're also really interested
in this very avant garde clothing design,
that's very intellectual in some ways,
and not, and appeals to a
very kind of narrow audience.
- Sure.
- So I mean to...
Having those two things play together
is I think what makes
the work interesting.
That you're...
It's not sort of just a sop.
- But they're interested
in beauty as well,
it's a different articulation of it,
but you know, Ann Demeulemeester
or Haider Ackermann,
or Raf Simmons, their clothing
is their way of expressing
their articulation of beauty
and they're very poetic,
and they're very romantic.
You know, it's the...
The aesthetics are different,
but when I shoot Ann Demeulemeester
in a setting with little
boys that look like
Mario Giacomelli priests, there's a...
You're taking something
out of the Belgium context,
and you're celebrating it in
my own viewpoint of beauty,
and it kind of becomes full circle.
So I think there are ways to...
Because also when you're shooting
a collection of clothing
the designer's giving you,
it's like handing over to you to do,
it's like here's a gift, and
you do with this what you will.
- Right.
- When I look at their clothing,
I imagine it in a
different way than I'm sure
they intend it to be,
but that's the exchange,
that's the beauty.
- Well that's what I'm, and
you are interpreting it,
in a way, for us, for
the world, on some level.
Finding a way to put that across,
and make it come to life on some level.
Are there any particular designers
that you've been talking
about in this sequence?
- Yeah, so, for example...
Sorry I'm just gonna...
This was a series for Tom Brown,
that I did for his A Magazine,
that's actually, this is in
Scotland, in the Isle of Sky.
This was an example of taking
his collection and just...
We took the collection from New York,
we flew to Scotland, we shot it,
and we put it in his
A Magazine Curated By,
and he just said before
I left, he was like,
just make it about death.
I was like, great, easy.
And so we went and we made
these pictures, let me see.
I think I passed a couple.
Yeah, these are, it's on the left.
This is in the northwest part of Scotland,
on an island that is
one of the oldest places
that you can go, you could
expect to see a dinosaur.
And we just made, yeah.
We just made a bunch of pictures that,
to me were about almost crossing over,
going up into that abyss and
saying goodbye.
These are, I'll just
keep flicking through.
This is one of my favorite pictures.
I can still say
I have a favorite.
- I know it's on the back,
on the back of your book, right?
- Yeah, this is for Valentino,
and we shot this at the botanical gardens
in the Bronx.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
- Well often, I mean this is as...
Your use of patten on pattern on pattern,
is really compelling, and comes across
repeatedly in the book.
But then this kind of strong
color really stands out.
I also do wanna go ahead
to the Gucci campaign.
- Yeah, so I'll get to...
- But this, I mean it's good to see the...
There's also some toward the end of this,
these just more simple silhouettes,
that seem to me to go back to
your talking about sculpture.
- Yeah, for awhile I've been doing these,
just the back of people, which I prefer.
No face.
- So why is that?
You said that before but, because you feel
that the personality is distracting, or...
- Yeah I just, I feel like,
the pictures to me aren't about people,
I'm not interested in people necessarily,
I also don't think, I
don't think photography's
the right medium to talk about people,
there's such better mediums.
- That's a whole other conversation.
I will not have that conversation
right now.
- I'm just stating facts.
I mean you have literature
and you have film, so...
Photography, it's a...
Anyway...
- Let's not go there, really.
August Sander, excuse me.
- Can't I just get you riled up,
and you can say something
you'll regret tomorrow?
- Let's not. (laughing)
And this kind of, this graphic group
is really interesting to me too,
it feels like you sort of
subtracted a lot of material
in order to get these images.
- Yeah.
For a while, I mean...
It's trying to figure out how to really
eliminate the person,
while having them still be
the central focus.
- The body.
- The body.
- Well and it does really play up
the garment, the shape,
the silhouette, the,
everything that sort of just,
it makes it in a sense
a pure fashion image.
- Yeah.
Also I just think, we see faces
everywhere, all the time.
We see too many faces.
- Is that a problem?
- Too many faces.
- Let's not get into this again.
- I'm just gonna keep...
- Alright. (laughing)
I mean, but one of my
favorite areas is portraiture,
and you're doing that as well
so you have to deal with faces
and all that comes with it.
So, I know that you--
- Yeah but a lot of
the portraiture I do is
trying to make them into a sculpture.
We talked about that.
- This, I thought the one on the last,
this black and white
one is really striking.
Is there still a body in there?
- Yeah, so the top was the headpiece,
it was actually a wig, but we took
from the shirt and put it into the hair.
So this became...
- It's a collage in a way.
- Yeah, this is the one
series where we actually
started manipulating scale,
and replacing pieces.
And then, yeah, here's
some black and white.
So then, yeah, it goes
into Gucci, which is--
- We talked a little bit about this,
this is the Gucci menswear
campaign that you said
will not actually be running.
- No, it's not, I mean--
- It's not a campaign.
- No.
So well, I...
- I wish it was.
- I do too.
- Because I'm a little tired of their
advertising, and I find
this really a nice break.
- Vince said that, I didn't say that.
So, I was going to do
a residency in Venice
this fall, which I did,
and before I went there,
I was trying to think of designers
that I would love to
shoot while I was there,
on local Venetians.
And so I wrote to Gucci,
and they brought down
the menswear collection before,
like right after they showed it they
got on a train from Milan,
brought it down to Venice,
and we scrambled,
we were trying to find
people on the street
to wear Gucci and it wasn't working,
I was walking around Ven--
Venice is such a weird place, I don't know
if you've been to Venice.
- I have been, yeah.
- I thought I was gonna love it
and I got there and I was like, ugh,
I have to be here for three weeks.
And eventually I'm at
the University of Venice,
I met some teachers and
they introduced me to
their fashion program,
and I walked in, and it was like,
five rooms full of kids.
Every single kid looked amazing.
Just incredible, you couldn't have cast
a better crowd of people.
And so the stylist that
I was working with,
a good friend of mine, her name's Kat,
we walked around and she's
way more outgoing than I am,
so I was kind of like,
I'd be like, that person,
and she'd walk, be like,
over there, they'd stand up,
and we'd take their picture,
write down their email,
and we organized the
shoot over three days,
where we took these kids around Venice
and they were just wearing the collection,
and we just shot a bunch of pictures.
And it was amazing too because
they were fashion kids so
they really appreciated the
clothing, they were like,
oh that's how they made that, and...
So it was amazing to see
it on people who actually--
- Appreciated it.
- Yeah, appreciated it.
- Well it's also, I like this because,
there's something not exactly snapshot-y
but more spontaneous about this.
It feels relaxed, it
feels like, and it's...
It has a nice feel to it.
- Well these are all friends
who hang out outside of school.
There's an authenticity
just to their relationships
that you don't have when
you're working with models.
Like these two are best
friends in real life.
And it was more, just telling them
to go about their day.
And I was kind of a fly on the wall.
- Hanging out with them.
- Yeah.
This was actually the
teacher, her name is Detta.
That's in an elevator.
This is...
The actual image is a little bit bigger.
I don't know if it's just that I'm old now
so I think young people look amazing
but there's something just...
You walked in.
- That's true,
they do have a certain, thing going on.
- Yeah.
- But also I guess, see I find
the Gucci clothes kind of ridiculous.
- For sure.
- And so somehow there's, it comes,
it's not exactly down to earth here,
but it feels more believable to me,
that people actually
could wear these clothes.
- Yeah but I mean at the same time,
they were the perfect casting.
- And they were enjoying it, yeah.
- But they look like Gucci
guys, but less polished.
- Well, I guess any time you
put on those stupid glasses,
no one's gonna look...
Anyway the glasses are
sort of, thankfully,
absent in most of these pictures.
- So we, like this, I mean, come on.
You couldn't, you couldn't
make up a better Gucci...
- (laughing) Right, moment.
- Slash Wes Anderson...
I mean he really looks
like that, at all times.
- This is nice too, I like this.
- Yeah, this is, I think
one of my favorite pictures.
- Well so I guess, it
interests me that you,
you find color in the landscape.
Clearly you're looking for these settings,
but, the color of the boat,
the brickwork, everything
really is part of, it's like,
I don't know, I'm thinking a funny face,
to where everything
seems like it's colored
deliberately to work with, for the,
that moment in the fashion picture.
Or Antonioni movies where
everything is usually
painted so that it works.
I just, I really like your
way of finding and using
ready-made color.
- Yeah well it's finding what's there,
and then bringing it out more.
- Is this the woman again?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Here's a dramatic look.
- Yes, very.
I mean...
They were a little bit looser...
- Looser?
- The pictures were looser
than my other fashion work,
but it was kind of an experiment,
it was also nice for me to take a break
from what I've been doing, and go back
to kind of what I was doing
when I was in graduate school,
at the beginning.
Which was this, it was
calling up a designer
and being like, hey, I really
want to shoot your stuff.
- So do you, does this encourage you
to sort of incorporate this looser style
into other work?
- Yes and no, I've been
thinking a lot about,
recently, also going back
to black and white for
I don't know, a month or
something, maybe two months.
Yeah I get bored really
easy, so I'm always trying
to figure out ways...
- That's a useful thing
in a fashion photographer.
- Getting bored?
- Yeah, getting...
Well yeah, but constantly
egging yourself on,
finding, knowing that
you have to do something
different next time.
- I know there's not a lot of
monetary value in that, but...
Well, cause, people are always like,
you should really love
your pattern on pattern,
but that was a few years ago.
As soon as I shoot something I'm...
I'm bored.
- You're ready to move on.
- Yeah.
So this, I had them do parkour.
- Did they know how to do it?
- They did, they were really good.
But it was great, I think of
these more as film stills.
But I mean, for me it was
nice to just watch them,
they're just, there was
nothing fake about any of this.
They're all good friends in real life,
they're having a good time,
they're just goofing off, and...
- Well I guess what I think
is also really successful
about this group is that the
clothes look really terrific.
Insane, but terrific.
And they're having a good time in them,
so they don't feel false, somehow.
So this is a different series?
- Yes, this was another
series we just did in Japan.
This is outside of
Kyoto, in the mountains.
This was for Departures Magazine,
it was a travel story around Japan,
and then we did, we would
stop in different parts
of the country and shoot fashion.
So it was actually landscape driven
from a travel perspective, and then
we brought the fashion in.
Which I thought was
interesting, it was more--
- Had you worked in Japan before?
- No it was my first time.
- So what were you...
Were you looking for
these kinds of spaces,
or did you find things that excited you?
- I mean our trip was curated so it was,
we were going into very
historic, ancient places that
a lot of people...
You wouldn't necessarily
be able to photograph,
or some places we were let into that
only certain Japanese government officials
were able to go into, and...
It wasn't necessarily a representative
viewpoint of Japan now, it was much more
of a historic trip, and kind of--
- Like a classic, kind of...
- Yeah, totally.
It's funny, I sent out...
So every time I do a new body
of work I send an e-blast,
and there's some people on my list
that I don't know how they got there,
I didn't add them, maybe
they added themselves,
or what have you, and
there's a fashion designer
that I won't name.
That you probably wouldn't know.
German.
Known, but not...
You'd have to know your
90s avant garde, anyway,
he was on my list, I have no
idea how he got on my list.
And I sent out this
e-blast with this picture
and one other picture and, he wrote back,
"You have to be careful
not to be too kitsch."
And I wrote back and I was
like, what the hell man,
what are you talking about?
But I mean I said it a lot nicer,
and anyway we went down
this really horrendous email
back and forth, we're just saying,
I've never met this person,
I don't know him at all,
I have no idea why he would take the time
to say that little comment,
but then I started
re-looking at the pictures
through this lens of, are they kitsch?
- Or are they touristic?
- Yeah, are they touristic,
and it, you know,
the whole thing was, our
trip was specifically curated
by these people that I did--
I wasn't picking the locations you know.
I was kind of, anyway,
you guys be the judge,
kind of turned me off
from the whole series.
- Well.
- Nice.
- So how many of these are published
or have been published?
- It was a big portfolio, I...
Want to say 28?
Something like that, 26?
- And was the clothing
related to Japanese
designers at all or was it--
- Yeah, well I mean they
have their advertisers
they have to check, and then
we had a lot of Japanese
designers in there, Japanese stylists,
our Japanese team, hair and makeup.
Oh yeah.
So I mean that was essentially
the end edit of Japan.
- So, okay, let's just, for this image,
how much did you pump up
the color on the flowers?
- Well, they're not
iridescent in real life.
But they are blue.
- Really?
- Yeah, I mean, they are a tone of blue.
- But they definitely jump out.
- Yeah.
I wanted to make them like jellyfish.
Then the next, this is
the new Harper's spread.
- Coming after this then?
- Yeah.
Or no, that's in here.
- Oh, it's part of this, okay, sorry.
And this was done in London, you said.
- Yeah this is in south
London, at the Hamm House.
Kinda near Richmond.
- That's very Turbeville.
- Yeah.
I think it's the clothing
that's doing the headpiece.
- Oh, yeah, I see.
But just that sort of
soft focus is really nice.
- Yeah.
- So I also wanted to ask about,
looking at this sequence
reminded me of Beaton,
of certain mid period Cecil Beaton.
Does he interest at all?
- No.
- (laughing) No?
- No I mean, to be honest I
don't know his work so well.
He was a photographer that
I looked at, put aside.
- Because I think there's something,
and Beaton and Turbeville sort of
meet at a certain point,
in terms of fantasy,
settings, sometimes over the top,
but really romance, I
know that's something
that some of your work
definitely reminds me of his,
in that way, that he had a very
lush way of looking at the
world at different points.
- I'll have to look into it again.
- I think it would interest
you for that reason.
Also what I guess also
I was thinking about,
how artful your work is,
and that often I miss
fashion illustration,
and that your work has a kind of,
a quality of that, of
painting and drawing and...
- Yeah.
Yeah, I love fashion illustration,
and on a hierarchy of mediums,
I put photography kind of at the bottom,
and illustration--
- Now did everyone hear that?
- Illustration has always been...
I've tried to make my images
look like illustrations,
in many cases because
again, I wish I could be
an illustrator instead of a photographer
but I can't, so...
- There were things sort of at the end
of the sequence of your
book that reminded me,
that had a very illustration
quality that I quite like
and it's one of those things
I miss in fashion magazines,
I wish there would be a
place for illustration again.
- For sure, well the New Yorker.
You guys keep trying to
introduce photographs.
I don't know why you're doing that.
- Too late to go back now.
- Just keep it illustrations.
- But, you know...
There was a time when
fashion magazines were,
had almost no photography, and that was,
there were some great illustrations.
And I guess that's also
why I think of Beaton,
because he also, he was a great drawer,
illustrator, very good
part of his life too.
And there's, I think a lot of crossover.
- I'll check him out.
- Okay.
- Promise.
- So I'm wondering whether we should
open it up to the audience
at this point or...
- Yeah.
- If there's, if there are any questions.
Talk as loud as you can.
(distant talking)
- Yeah.
I mean I always thought of it as like,
you can get to anybody if you want.
It is easy I think if you think
about it as it being easy.
So practical example...
- Your first example of...
- How do you, how do, so, okay.
Let's say you wanna do
work with Valentino, right.
Where are they based,
they're based in Rome.
You can go through the press office,
which they'll for sure say no.
You could go through stylists
who have relationships
with the press office,
you could go to Rome,
you could go literally
to their office and watch people come out,
and maybe they have drinks after work,
you could go to the cafe and
you could start a conversation,
oh you work at Valentino,
that's interesting.
I mean, there's a million ways,
the more creative the better but I think
the problem is that most people probably
don't think it's possible and
if you start with that premise
then it's not possible.
But honestly the more annoying you are,
it's kind of better for
you in the long term,
in the beginning, and
then stop being annoying.
- As quickly as possible.
But your first example
of writing to Ann...
- Demeulemeester.
- Is really ballsy on one level but also,
you did it innocently
out of real interest,
and if that's your way
of approaching something,
that seems like that's a possibility.
And certainly now you have a name, and,
you're calling Gucci and
they know who you are,
but at the beginning you--
- But I mean yes and no, I
think I still think that I,
many people don't know me.
I think a lot of people know my work,
but they don't know me,
like when we called Gucci,
it was through the
relationship with a stylist
at first, actually it was through, I...
Here's how.
I was like, I wanna contact Gucci.
One of my best friends is the head of PR
for Commes de Garcons.
She is good friends with that person,
I was like hey, can you introduce me,
it was just a process of, you know.
But it wasn't like
Gucci, they weren't like,
oh my god, Erik Madigan Heck.
You know I'm not Mario Testino or...
Some day, some day maybe.
- Other questions?
- Yeah?
(laughing)
- [Woman Offstage] Your first magazine,
can you tell us the name of it?
- Yeah, it was called Nomenus Quarterly.
- [Woman Offstage] Can you tell us how you
came to that name?
- Yeah, yeah so...
In New York, you have these
signs that say no menus.
And so, the door to my
apartment it had a sign,
but it was put together.
And every day I would walk in,
and it would really piss me off
because I had no idea what it meant,
and I thought it was Latin,
because there was no space,
and then one day, I looked at it,
and I was like, oh, that's just no menus.
That's so dumb, I've wasted
six months of my life
trying to figure out--
- Puzzling this out.
- What this word is, and it was...
I was looking for a name
to name my publication,
and I was like that's perfect because,
it was that little
space that was not there
that confounded me and you know,
made me think and sometimes
the most obvious thing
is right in front of you.
- [Woman Offstage] It's
how I discovered you.
- Oh really?
- I didn't know it was
no menus and actually I knew,
now I know the story but I
wanted you to share it with the audience
but I found the name
intriguing, and mysterious.
So romantic, and...
- It sounds really smart.
Like people would, it sounds like,
oh that's a literary journal.
- [Woman Offstage] I called up a friend,
a photographer, and I
said, you have to get
with this magazine.
And actually, we did arrange for her
to be published in your
magazine, Eva Richey, who shot
the blue icebergs in Livonia,
- Oh yeah, that's right.
- [Woman Offstage] I sent her to you.
- Amazing.
- [Woman Offstage] One more question.
- Sure.
- [Woman Offstage] You say that you prefer
shooting in natural lighting.
Is that exclusive, is
that in studio as well?
- Yeah, I only shoot natural light, yeah.
I'm not, I think...
Might be a far stretch but
I think most people light
to have it look natural,
and I always thought
why not just, you know, use natural light.
- [Woman Offstage] So
you bring in no equipment
in terms of lighting?
- I mean, we can have equipment there,
to make people comfortable.
People can get uncomfortable
with the fact that you're
shooting something with
a lot of money behind it
and you don't have lights.
- And you're waiting
for the light to get...
- I mean if you're shooting
London in February,
and it gets dark at 4 o'clock.
I'll still shoot natural light,
but then if we need to continue on
til 7 o'clock, the last
three hours will be lit.
It's not my preference.
- [Woman Offstage] Should I
pass this on to anybody else?
- [Man Offstage] Alright I guess have,
a multi part question, so
it looks like looking at
this image behind you,
you use a lot of allusion
to art history so that's like...
I think that's the joy of life.
Going into a project like that,
how much, because it's a large portfolio,
do you leave a lot of leeway
for yourself to improvise,
or do you prefer specific?
- Yeah, it's all...
- [Man Offstage] Okay so you don't have--
- No I go into every situation
having no idea what I'm
doing, for the most part,
knowing that the research has come before.
Like these, you can make obvious
comparisons to paintings,
because I've studied art
history for half my life,
so it's here, but I don't go into,
I'm not trying to make
that picture necessarily.
Generally it's like--
- Excuse me, you don't
go in with a mood board
waiting, okay.
- No.
I mean it's kind of like...
I describe it as being like a
spy, I kinda wish I was a spy.
But it's like, you get a call,
it's like we need you in
London tomorrow, or whatever,
you show up in a place,
you have your camera--
- Mission Impossible.
- Yes, you Mission
Impossible, you figure it out.
It's like, here's your
location, here's the clothes.
You can't, how can you prepare?
You're either prepared
mentally or you're not.
- [Man Offstage] And I guess that leads me
to the other part was,
it seems like you have
a very specific idea about the fashion
you want to photograph.
What does it look like
for you to work with
a fashion editor?
- Oh it's a nightmare.
No I mean, I'm just kidding, I have...
There's like four or five
stylists that I work with
regularly, who we have a relationship
where they know what I like, but also
they're willing to let me
take control sometimes.
Yeah, the fashion...
The fashion is either really important,
or it's secondary to the
landscape, or to the series.
A lot of times for Bazaar it has to be
the forefront because
editorial is still paid
in advertising.
Yeah.
- [Woman Offstage] Hello.
I wanted to ask you, how do you deal with
assistants, like personal team?
- Yeah, so my team is me,
and my everything, which
is this guy named Matt.
Matt is my digital tech, and my retoucher,
and my studio manager, and just generally
he hates me, but he's everything.
He's, like I'm this arm,
and Matt is this arm.
That's why he's not here tonight.
But yeah, I don't do well with a lot of
people, I'm, I pretty much
like to do everything,
and I like to be involved in every aspect,
so assistants...
I've tried to have assistants,
and it's just not...
I reach out to people when I need them,
but for the most part,
they're just in the way,
because I would have to tell them,
I'm like, by the time
I tell you what to do
I could have done it myself.
That sounds rude, I didn't
mean it to be, but...
- Any other questions?
- Hey Peter.
- [Peter] Just one thing
I wanted to touch on,
because I know you
recently embarked on it,
but moving image, film,
digital, commercials.
How do you attack those differently
than you attack your still pictures?
- So, that's a good question.
Can I talk about Gentle Monster, no.
Okay.
No.
Not who's involved.
Great.
These guys are my,
these guys represent me.
We just did a big project
with somebody that I can't talk about,
but it involves a--
- A film?
- It's a film.
- A short...
- Yes, short film, this
person is a known actor.
- Bigger than a breadbox?
- Bigger than a breadbox.
So film to me is very different,
the way that I would
like to think about film
is more in film terms,
as opposed to fashion,
I guess fashion film.
So, yeah I, to answer your question,
when I eat my meal on my plate,
I tend to segregate the
foods, and I try to...
I'm terrible at analogies,
but I try to think of
film very separately from photography,
and that's what I was saying about
black and white photography and color,
it's easier for me to digest things,
or mediums when they're kind of pure.
- But you still think of
color photography as impure?
- I mean, come on.
Second best.
- Let's not go there.
- Let's not go there.
- Okay.
I'm going to especially rate
your own work.
- I'm just, I'm kidding.
- I know, I hope so.
- No, I mean, if I do more film,
it's gonna be more in a
very film-referential
context, as opposed to
trying to make fashion films, I guess.
- Or animating pictures.
- Yeah, right, yeah.
Like I wouldn't want my film work
to look at all like my
fashion photography work.
- Are there filmmakers that would,
that you'd love to be compared to?
- Yeah I love Jonathon Glaser.
I think he's amazing.
- I don't know who.
- Jonathon Glaser?
He's great, look him up.
- Okay, I'm writing it down.
- Yeah I mean I love, you know,
Abbas Kiarostami,
Krzysztof Kieslowski, you getting these?
- No, but go right ahead.
- David Fincher, I still
think is one of the greatest
American film directors.
But again, you know...
It's difficult, because
I am adverse to narrative
a lot of time.
- That does make it a difficult thing.
- Just destroyed your mind.
- Well you know, there
are always abstract film.
But, with an unnamed performer,
that's a little probably difficult--
- [Offstage] And a very commercial client.
- And a very commercial client, I know.
- A little difficult to
carry off, I would guess.
- Oh, I think we did a good job.
You'll see soon enough.
Yeah, yeah.
- Another question back here.
- [Man Offstage] Do you have a,
like a muse or a model face,
I know you don't like faces but,
do you, I don't know.
- Yeah, so Guinevere, she was,
or she is, one of my
favorite people to work with
but also because she, she's
from an older generation,
she was big in the 90s, she's
still relevant, obviously,
but I think shooting the older girls,
they're able to go into
different character roles
that, naturally and inherently that,
it's really hard to find muses now,
who are young, who are as comfortable
as just being themselves, but also
taking themselves into these...
Thinking about it as an actor
would, as opposed to a model.
I find now, a lot of
models, they're present,
and then they're like,
what do you want me to do?
As opposed to finding something inside
and actually transforming for you,
without you having to direct them,
and I'm not a good director.
Some people are really good at being
this, this, this, I'm an
observer, I always have been.
So for me when I put
a girl in front of me,
I want them to really find it,
as opposed to me telling them what to do.
- And is that difficult sometimes?
- Yeah, it's extremely difficult.
I think most people don't,
probably don't enjoy shooting
with me until they...
Because it's uncomfortable.
If you were like, alright.
Just, just be.
- Be yourself.
But what's that?
- It's awkward but I find,
that's the only way that I've
known how to work, I'm not...
- So, are you, do you try to work with
some of the older models, some of
the more experienced models?
- Yeah, yeah, I've
worked with most of them.
Kirsty Hume, Audrey Marnay,
that whole lot.
The only one I think
I haven't worked with,
to be honest, is probably
Kristen McMenamy, but...
I would, that would be great.
- Yeah, you know there's
something about the characters
of that period that are
still really interesting.
- Yeah, totally.
And even like Kirsten Owen, who now,
I think she's like 43, and she still,
in my opinion gets more
beautiful every year.
But also, they just come
from a different time
where it was like, you had to be,
you had to have this presence.
Which I don't know that--
- I would guess that
also that was something
that the photographers
that they worked with
valued and sort of made happen with that.
- Yeah.
- Expected, on some level.
Are there other questions, yes.
- [Woman Offstage] Well you told us about
collaboration with Gucci.
- Yeah.
- I wanna know more about
collaboration with Aganovich.
- Oh, with Aganovich.
- [Woman Offstage] Aganovich, yeah.
- Who is that?
- I know you were like,
really good friends and, he's
one of my favorite designers
so maybe something--
- Yeah, well actually, we're just going,
we're shooting the new
collection in a couple weeks.
So, Agonavich, they're...
Okay, so Agonavich is the young
label at Michele Montagne.
So, Michele Montagne started Helmut Lang,
and then did all the
Belgians, Ann Demeulemeester,
et cetera et cetera, and I was in Paris,
and a good friend of mine, I was like,
hey, I need a new designer to work with.
Throw me a bone, who is making clothing
that is amazing, and kind
of flying under the radar.
And they were like, yo, you
check out these guys Aganovich,
they're great, and we
met and we immediately
hit it off and became best friends.
And so now we just, we have
this ongoing thing every season,
they actually just came
out and stayed with us
for a couple days in country.
They're just like, they become friend...
Friends, yeah, I was
looking for another word.
- It's a good one.
- Yeah and now it's just we...
I used to have that relationship
with Mary Katrantzou,
and we would do, every season
we would do a look book
and we'd just make
pictures because we wanted
to make pictures.
And actually Aganovich
this season, in February,
upcoming, they're not doing a show,
they're only gonna do, we're
only gonna make pictures,
and then release them
to the world that way,
so that's exciting.
I mean, it's so expensive to do shows too,
if you're a young brand, it's like,
I don't know how they afford it.
Anyway.
- [Woman Offstage] Now I am,
because your rep is also here
I wanted to know how did you find a rep
and how did you know it was the right one,
a little bit of...
Then like tell it for both, I guess.
- How did I find them?
So, well, do you guys
wanna take-- (laughing)
We, yeah...
So Jimmy Moffat, is...
Is he involved in the program, yeah.
- Still, yes.
- Yeah, co-chair, right, so Jimmy...
- SVA Program.
- Right.
He, I don't know if
I'm telling this right,
you can stop me if I'm
not, he helped start
this branch of IMG, and I had
been speaking to Jimmy for
a little while about representation,
and it's within IMG so it's,
part, it's a division that
just represents photographers
and directors, anyway, they
were starting something new,
it wasn't a traditional agency,
it wasn't art and commerce,
it wasn't our partner,
and it's been eight months, it started
just very organically.
I mean, historically, I've
represented myself, I, you know.
I don't know if you guys would say
I'm difficult to work with, but...
I just, I like to do everything,
so for me, having an agent
for a long time wasn't,
wasn't easy, in the
beginning I had an agent,
Stockland Martel, which
is very commercial.
They didn't really do
fashion, and he kind of
nurtured me into the world
of portraiture and introduced me to
Kathy Ryan at the New York Times
and Jody Quon at New York, et cetera,
so that's kind of how I started.
But then I stopped with them
and I was representing myself
for a number of years,
which I also really liked,
it was just, it got to the point where
so many jobs only come into agencies,
and if you're not, if
you're representing yourself
you're also just kind of putting yourself
out of the equation, at a certain point.
Some photographers, later in
their careers I think have,
like David Sims left our partner
three years ago or two years ago.
I think there are certain
cases of at that scale,
where you can do it yourself,
you just get a studio manager
instead of an agent.
But those are few and far between I think.
- Yeah I would think it would be
difficult and better to have someone...
- Out there.
- Stand up for you, yeah.
- Yeah.
I mean, I stand up for myself.
- Clearly.
- [Man Offstage] Should we
have just one more question?
- This right...
- [Man Offstage] That's
a good segue for that,
you said you'd stand up for yourself,
is there clients or
jobs you might not take?
- Yes.
Yeah.
I know why you're asking that, by the way.
Yeah, so, well we haven't
really talked about ethics,
and I know at the end of this,
you're just gonna roll your eyes.
No, are there clients I wouldn't take?
Yes, of course, and are there
subjects I wouldn't shoot,
yeah, for example, I
wouldn't shoot Donald Trump.
- Thank you.
- And the reason he's asking is because,
a very reputable photographer
shot the cover of Time,
and which has engaged a lot
of us in conversation about,
is that appropriate,
when is it just a job,
when do, you as an artist,
have an ethical responsibility
to just say no to an assignment?
For me I feel like that,
there are certain subjects
where you do draw the
line and you just say no,
I will not shoot them.
- What's another example?
- I mean for a long time I felt
like the Wall Street Journal
was a publication I wasn't
willing to publish in,
because it's owned by Murdoch
and it's an extension of
right wing conservative media,
and to be honest,
I don't think it's a, it's a
place where you can't ethically
publish in the Wall Street Journal,
and then turn around on Facebook
and complain about the Republican party,
you become a propaganda
extension by publishing.
There are certain distinctions like that,
I think at a certain
point in your career where
they're important and if...
As an artist you're part of the media
spectacle, you have to take
responsibility for your actions.
- No, that's...
- Yeah, I still, yeah.
- That's thoughtful.
- Well.
- Yes.
Because I tend to be
apolitical when it comes to
things like fashion magazines,
especially because I think the
Wall Street Journal magazine
is quite a good one, because they do
get a lot of good photographers,
but I have never thought
of the ethical question
and it's a strong one.
- Yeah, I mean, it's the least...
I don't know, I mean some, you can make
the argument against it, you can say,
you're fulfilling a job,
and it's a hired job.
I tend to think that you still
need to maintain some sort of
boundaries for yourself.
- Yeah, no, I totally agree.
- But, that's just me.
- So did you wanna make
that the last question?
- [Man Offstage] Is
there anything you guys
wanna close with?
- There was one person way over here,
he's been raising his hand a few times,
so let's just make this the last question.
- No I can hear you though.
- [Man Offstage] Okay, you
seem to have a very distinct
visual style, is that something that
you found in time or was it something
that was always inside of you?
- That's a good question.
I think that, yeah I think I
definitely found it during,
through time.
You know in the beginning, you're like...
Anybody, well there's a Louis C.K. bit
where he's talking about
a man on a first date,
and he's just throwing 20
different personalities
at the girl, just to see what will stick.
And that's like any young artist.
In the beginning, you're
like, I like this,
and I like this, and I like
this, and I'm gonna try this,
but on the flip side of
that, I think for sure
there was a certain style
that I had developed
as a kid, painting with my mother
that was probably in my head,
that took a little bit of time to come out
through the photography.
But, if I look back at my
beginning work as a photographer
it was embarrassing, it was like,
you would look at a picture and be like,
that would be a Sarah Moon, and then
there would be a Paolo Roversi picture
and then there'd be a
this person that I copied,
and that was fine because I was a student
and I was trying to
figure out what it was,
and I think just through time, just,
you realize what it is you
like about certain people
and you take little things, and then,
over time you start making them your own.
It's like Malcolm Gladwell, didn't he say
if you do anything for 10,000
hours or something like that
you'll make it your own.
I think he said that.
- Uh huh, okay.
- So yeah, anyway, thanks for coming.
- Thank you.
(applause)
