All language subtitles for 3. Creating Concepts

Rolling stone up in the early days,

up until when I started to work there,

they just took

whatever material they had and they
made at the cover, they cut it out, and

they, there was no kind of formality to
the cover.

And

I started to think, well, why we had
this opportunity

where you could actually pose the cover.

Rod Stewart would show up and say, ok,
what are we going to do?

I mean, I had no idea what we were
going to do.

Grace slick, which was the first cover

I did, was really just going with
benfunctories

to their house in near golden gay park.

And van vontoriz interviewed them

while I took pictures that I loved,
because I was back in my element of

just photographing

someone

as they were doing something, and I
didn't have to be responsible

for.

I could just observe and take
photographs.

It's a really nice set of pictures of
grace slick and Paul kantner on a

waterbed, like just talking and smoking
and dressing.

from that time,

one doesn't have a totally figured out,
and you have to leave room for

something else that might happen.

I think

an early conceptual photograph, this,
like that, is the whoopee Goldberg

in the bathtub.

She was a young upcoming comedian.

I didn't know who she was.

Her

routine was that she played a little
black girl trying to scrub her skin

off, and thinking that underneath she
would be white.

And I met her in Berkeley.

She was living in Berkeley.

We went to a friend's apartment, and I
had this idea that she would just

be scrubbing her skin off in the
bathtub,

working like scribble, based on her
comedy routine.

And we filled the bats up with milk.

I didn't want it to be cold milk, so we
heated it up.

It was warm milk.

So when she got in the tub,

she sort of slid into

the milk.

And there was a very graphic image,

this very black person in this very
white

tub.

And hence that picture.

But it wasn't what I originally
imagined.

I always find that so

strange that people would think that
you wouldn't do your research on

a subject.

Especially today, you can

Google anybody, and

it's quite interesting.

I look

at the photographs that have been done
on the person, and I learn a lot from

what they have done, what they're
willing to do, what

hasn't been done.

What would be interesting to try

it's so important.

I mean, it totally feeds

what the photograph would be.

You know, I'm not ever asking someone
to jump in a pool just for the sake of

jumping and pull.

see a lot of

work that tries to emulate what I do,
and

it's disconnected,

you're not really dealing with.

It's important to

stay on subject.

And

all the work that I've ever done has
the ideas emulate from that person.

I was having the opportunity to
photograph Louise begewider at her home.

We had an appointed time, and I arrived
with

my two assistants, and I was planning
on, sitting up some lights, and I could

see that she was

ready.

And I sent my assistance to the back of
the house to sit up the lights,

and I told them

she was hit.

And then I went with her

to the front room of

her house, which had some nice light,
and I could see

she was ready.

And

I just started

taking photographs of her by myself.

In the front room, there are
photographs of her when she was

younger, with her hair down,

and she had her hair up.

And ill

happened.

So many times when you

photograph someone older, they don't
think they're older.

They really don't they have

you, sometimes you can see there are
younger selves in them.

It must be particularly difficult, you
know, when you're going to have your

photograph done, you know, I think I
was just

transfixed her or something, but I
thought she was so beautiful with her

hair down.

In those early photographs of her, I
asked her to put her hair down, and she

did.

She just put her hair down,

and

she put her hand up like, you know,
like that.

And I just took these a few photographs

with the daylight coming in through the
window,

and

she was definitely participating.

And then one of my systems came from
the back and said, okay, we're ready.

The lights are ready.

And I said, I'm done.

The biggest breakthrough,

and the conceptual work

for the covers

was not rolling stone magazine.

It was

an assignment I had from life magazine.

And can you imagine

being where I was and starting to get
this work from life?

It was pretty amazing

to be asked to do work for life,

no pun instead.

And how poetics

that they asked me to do a series on
poets.

It was an incredible assignment
because, first of all, was a series,

and there were serious series of
portraits.

And I read the poetry

of each subject that I was

photographing.

And there's two photographs from that
series that sort of survive it are, to

me, like

the foundation

for my work going forward.

Tes gallegher and Robert pen warren.

And Robert pen warren was writing about
dying and death.

He didn't live too much longer after
this photograph was taken.

And I realized for the first time, what,

since these were sort of

formal,

portrait Sessions,

that

what I

began to think about was trying to
emulate the poetry

in the portrait by using the subject to
be

as if they were in one of their poems,
to try to do two things at once.

Not only do I have the photograph of
the subject, but you also

saw the story

of their poems.

And

that was a big breakthrough,

because Robert penmore is,

I went the first time to his house.

He couldn't have been nicer,

and I did all these photographs, like
sitting under a tree at his desk,

all of these kind of typical

writer's

portraits.

And as I was leaving, pulling out of
his driveway, I saw him upstairs in

this room.

He had opened the window shade and was
looking at me as I drove out and it was

just haunting to me

that, look, this kind of, I don't know
what it was like, a

what it was.

But

then I remember

going into the studio thinking,

I got to go back.

I really have to go back.

There's something more here.

I have to go back.

And I called them up and said, I want
to go back and photograph you and your

wife together.

And under those pretenses, I got another

time with him.

And I went back,

and I walked upstairs to that room

that he had been looking

out the window, and it was his bedroom,

and it was all the whole house was

totally antique up and very

done.

And then I walked into his bedroom and
it was all gray.

It was like

the bed was gray.

The best friend was gray.

And I just sat him down

on the bed.

I asked him to take his shirt off, but
it was more like,

I wanted to see his skeleton or
something.

I wanted to see.

It wasn't like a shirtless man.

It was more like he was so

eddy's, and so at peace, and so ready
to die, really,

and so at ease with himself.

He didn't have any

guard or shield or anything.

He was totally

comfortable, in a way that I think we
always, we hope were going to be when

we're ready to die,

or ready for that next phase in our
lives.

And that was that photograph,

was a very compelling image for me.

It doesn't mean the same to other
people when they look at it, but to me

it was just a big breakthrough.

Tescalliger was just more whimsy.

She was kind of,

you know, a little

silly and goofy.

And she had all these clothes in her
closet, and she wanted to dress up.

And

Tess gallegher wrote about horses.

She showed me a home movie she is shot
on horseback.

There were masks

all over her house and put racks full
of clothes.

She wanted to get dressed up, and she
pulled the sequin dress out of her closet.

So when you were with gallegher, you
were in her world, and you could see

the way her imagination worked.

The tescalger portrait is the beginning
of placing my subject in the middle of

an idea.

On some level.

When you had an idea, it was almost,

and it was a good idea.

It could be a relief for the subject.

Merrill street,

who did not want to really be dealing
with herself.

She was sick of herself and I think
that to be able to get out of herself

and play a role and have a white face,
and it just feeds back to doing her

homework.

You have to

be prepared,

have an idea who you're photographing
and what they do.

And because she comes from a tradition
of theater

and mim's,

to be able to

portray

what she thinks her

her role

might be, you know, I think it was a
relief for her, and she enjoyed it

because of that.

You can see

the real self in it in those rooms.

I mean, I think their real stuff comes
out even more

in those roles.

Prali's entire company, for over fifty
years, has been producing a sort of a

limited edition calendar for its
clients.

I mean, I guess they print about,
really, just about 10000 of these.

For decades it's been mostly a
cheesecake kind of thing, always filled

with women with not very much on.

However.

At the same time, it was a prestigious
commission for a photographer.

For the year 2000, I was asked to do
the calendar.

And to thousands, sixteen,

they came to me again.

It was their idea to do women of
distinction,

thinking about women.

I wanted to photograph I pulled in a
lot of people that I cared about, like

Yoko Ono and patty Smith and Agnes gun.

I looked at the Amy shuber show and
found

a lot of extraordinary

episodes in them,

and a lot of

issues that she was dealing with on the
ami shoomer show.

That I was really impressed with

who she was.

So I asked her if she would come in,
and she said she would,

and I had never met her.

And she comes in, and I slain to her
the concept that

this is the prely calendar, everyone's
wearing their clothes,

and

you have to, and you should look like
you didn't get the memo, and

you're the only one would ever close
on.

She was fine, great.

Let's do it.

Come on, let's do it.

And then I said to her, I know you're
self conscious about your body.

She said, I am not self conscious about
my body.

I love my body.

It's fine, you know,

I'm great.

And I was, like, totally

impressed with her.

And thus, she was so cool.

We used that picture

for the calendar.

It was definitely an Amy humor moment
period.

And

the banny fair cover story came next.

I was trying to think of things

for her to do and see who she is, and
she's not embarrassed about anything.

The idea was, her

crotch is basically replaced with a
fire.

What was very awkward

about, but

the actual shoot

she insisted upon, wearing no underwear

for the picture.

And

I think her problems was there and was
aghast.

But that same humor,

I've always wanted to photograph Keith.

And

I think I actually was asked by a
magazine

from Florida to take his picture.

I evolved place.

It was not done for vanny farobog or
anyone.

So I had seen the photographs that
Robert maplethorpe

had done of grace,

grace jones.

Keith had painted grace jones.

And I thought, oh, he painted

grace jones.

Maybe he could paint himself.

I needed to give him a background.

So I thought, ok, well, i'll

create some kind of room for him or
something.

And I actually built a set

where I had several walls, and we got
some furniture from the salvation army,

and we painted everything white.

And I said, I'd like to see, could you
think you could paint this set and then

paint your upper body?

And you can wear white pants,

and I could put you in the set and so
he painted the set in about 45 minutes,

like he just went so fast, he's so
prolific.

And then he painted his upper body.

And I looked at him and I said, well,

why don't you do the whole thing?

And he agreed.

And he painted the whole rest of his
body, but he's only painted on the

front.

He's not

very funny.

And he stood in the set, and we took
these couple pictures, and it was done

in like a few minutes.

And it was funny, because he felt like
all dressed up, and

nowhere to go is kind of, he was
beautiful.

It was like he was dressed in his paint.

Once he was totally painted.

Something else took over,

and I said, well,

let's go to Times Square.

Let's go to Times Square.

Let's just go.

We've got to shoot this fast, because
we're going to get arrested.

We're just going to, keat, is going to
jump out of the car.

We're going to shoot this, and then

we're going to jump back in the car.

And this is, we have to do this really
fast.

And so

got out to Times Square, and Keith
jumps out of the car.

We jump out of the car,

we shoot, and it's like,

and no one pays us any bit of
attention.

It's like New York City, like, who
cares?

We took those pictures in Times Square,
and

kind of amazing.

And then

that was that.

I think

a good idea for

conceptual

exercise would be to consider
photographing

an older person

is either in your community or in your
life.

And

what you might consider doing is

ask this subject, ask the person

if they have any photographs of them
when they were young.

And

how does that younger photograph

inform inform you

when you're photographing them now?