Redeemed Through Pain

CATHOLIC BOY

“I was born in a pool, they made my mother stand
And I spat on that surgeon and his trembling hand
When I felt the light I was worse than bored
I stole the doctor’s scalpel and I slit the cord

I was a Catholic boy,
Redeemed through pain,
Not through joy

I was two months early they put me under glass
I screamed and cursed their children when the nurses passed
Was convicted of theft when I slipped from the womb
They led me straight from my mother to a cell in the Tombs

I was a Catholic boy,
Redeemed through pain,
Not through joy

They starved me for weeks, they thought they’d teach me fear
I fed on cellmates’ dreams, it gave me fine ideas
When they cut me loose, the time had served me well
I made allies in heaven, I made comrades in Hell

I was a Catholic child
The blood ran red
The blood ran wild

I make angels dance and drop to their knees
When I enter a church the feet of statues bleed
I understand the fate of all my enemies
Just like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane

I was a Catholic boy,
Redeemed through pain,
Not through joy

I watched the sweetest psalm stolen by the choir
I dreamed of martyrs’ bones hanging from a wire
I make a contribution, I get absolution
I make a resolution to purify my soul

I was a Catholic boy,
Redeemed through pain,
Not through joy

They can’t touch me now
I got every sacrament behind me:
I got baptism,
I got communion,
I got penance,
I got extreme unction
I’ve got confirmation
‘Cause I’m a Catholic child
The blood ran red
The blood ran wild!

Now I’m a Catholic man
I put my tongue to the rail whenever I can.”

Jim Carroll

 

 

James Dennis “Jim” Carroll (August 1, 1949 – September 11, 2009) was an American author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician.

Carroll was born to a working-class family of Irish descent, and grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side. When he was about 11 (in the sixth grade) his family moved north to Inwood in Upper Manhattan where he attended Good Shepherd School. He was taught by the LaSalle Christian Brothers, and his brother in the sixth grade noted that he could write and encouraged him to do so. In fall 1963, he entered public school, but was soon awarded a scholarship to the elite Trinity School. He attended Trinity from 1964–1968.

 

Carroll identified Rainer Maria Rilke, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs as influences on his artistic career.

 

 

While still in high school, Carroll published his first collection of poems, Organic Trains. Already attracting the attention of the local literati, his work began appearing in the Poetry Project’s magazine The World in 1967. Soon his work was being published in elite literary magazines like Paris Review in 1968, and Poetry the following year. In 1970, his second collection of poems, 4 Ups and 1 Down was published, and he started working for Andy Warhol. At first, he was writing film dialogue and inventing character names; later on, Carroll worked as the co-manager of Warhol’s Theater. Carroll’s first publication by a mainstream publisher (Grossman Publishers), the poetry collection Living at the Movies, was published in 1973.

In 1978, after he moved to California to get a fresh start since overcoming his heroin addiction, Carroll formed The Jim Carroll Band, a new wave/punk rock group, with encouragement from Patti Smith, with whom he once shared an apartment in New York City, along with Robert Mapplethorpe. He performed a spoken word piece with the Patti Smith Group in San Diego when the support band dropped out at the last moment.

 

The front cover photograph was taken by Annie Leibovitz

 

The band was originally called Amsterdam, where they originally formed and were based in Bolinas, California. The musicians were Steve Linsley (bass), Wayne Woods (drums), Brian Linsley and Terrell Winn (guitars). They released a single People Who Died, from their 1980 debut album, Catholic Boy. The album featured contributions from Allen Lanier and Bobby Keys.

 

Robert Downey Jim Carroll and James Spader, in Tuff Turf (Fritz Kiersch, 1985)

 

In 1982 the song appeared in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982), from which Carroll received royalties until his death in 2009. The song also appeared in the 1985 Kim Richards vehicle Tuff Turf starring James Spader and Robert Downey Jr., which also featured a cameo appearance by the band, as well as 2004’s Dawn of the Dead. It was featured in the 1995 film The Basketball Diaries (based on Jim Carroll’s autobiography), and was covered by John Cale on his Antártida soundtrack. A condensed, 2-minute, version of the song was made into an animated music video by Daniel D. Cooper, an independent filmmaker/animator, in 2010. The song’s title was based on a poem by Ted Berrigan.

 

Later albums were Dry Dreams (1982) and I Write Your Name (1983), both with contributions from Lenny Kaye and Paul Sanchez. Carroll also collaborated with musicians Lou Reed, Blue Öyster Cult, Boz Scaggs, Ray Manzarek of The Doors, Pearl Jam, Electric Light Orchestra and Rancid.

 

 

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Penelope’s Hungry Eyes

Self-portrait, London, 1972

 

Abe Frajndlich was born in 1946 to in Frankfurt. At the age of ten he moved to the United States via Israel, France and Brazil. His role model and mentor was photographer Minor White, from whom he learnt “the art of seeing”.

It is with “hungry eyes”, but also with a tenacity and patience only equaled by Penelope’s firm belief in the return of her husband Odysseus, that over the last 30 years Abe Frajndlich has taken portraits of his famous fellow photographers. A selection of over 100 pictures from the ever growing portrait collection has been published in book form for the first time under the title Penelope’s Hungry Eyes. It features grand old masters of the art and photographic artists, contemporaries of the author and younger masters from the Düsseldorf School.

Abe Frajndlich has succeeded in luring the world’s most famous photographers out from behind their cameras and in front of his. With extraordinary skill, he has trained his lens on people used to hiding their own eyes behind a camera. For each of his portraits (some in color, some black and white) Frajndlich has conceived an individual setup that brings into focus in diverse ways the photographer’s primary organ, namely their eyes, which are as special as the voice of talented singers. Some of the photographers shy away by closing their eyes, wearing a mask or turning away (Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz, Thomas Struth or Hans Namuth). Others use props such as glasses, mirrors or magnifying glasses to set their eyes in scene (Bill Brandt, Duane Michals, Andreas Feininger, Lillian Bassman) and still others draw attention to the vulnerability of their eyes using knives and scissors (Imogen Cunningham, Lucas Samaras). Yet many of the subjects respond to the unfamiliar “change of perspective” by looking directly into Frajndlich’s camera (Candida Höfer, Berenice Abbott, Gordon Parks).

Abe Frajndlich has presented a Who’s Who of recent photographic history, enriched with a highly subtle eye for humorous situations. In images and text (the photographer has added a personal note to each portrait) Frajndlich sets out to discover the ever enigmatic relationship between the real person and their own legend.

 

Lucas Samaras
 

Bill Brandt

 

Josef Koudelka

 

Arnold Newman

 

Robert Lebeck

 

Imogen Cunningham

 

Elliott Erwitt

 

William Wegman

 

Marc Riboud

 

Ruth Bernhard

 

Lillian Bassman

 

Louise Dalh-Wolfe

 

Ilse Bing

 

Dennis Hopper

 

David Hockney

 

Richard Avedon

 

Annie Leibovitz

 

Cindy Sherman

 

Andres Serrano

 

Harold Edgerton

 

Horst P. Horst

 

Norman Parkinson

 

Gordon Parks

 

Masahisa Fukase

 

Daidō Moriyama

 

Eikoh Hosoe

Dior on The Stairs

Lady Madonna: A Change of Face

Vanity Fair, December 1986. Photographer: Herb Ritts. Art director: Ruth Ansel

True Love Comes by Fairy-Lot

Dakota Fanning as Sleeping Beauty, wearing a Dior gown. Photograph by Karl Lagerfeld, Vanity Fair, January 2007

 
 

Many a girl has waited long
For a husband brave or strong;
But I’m sure I never met
Any sort of woman yet
Who could wait a hundred years,
Free from fretting, free from fears.
Now, our story seems to show
That a century or so,
Late or early, matters not;
True love comes by fairy-lot.

 
 

Zac Efron as the Prince and Vanessa Hudgens as Sleeping Beauty. Photo by Annie Leibovitz, c. 2011

 
 

Some old folk will even say
It grows better by delay.
Yet this good advice, I fear,
Helps us neither there nor here.
Though philosophers may prate
How much wiser ’tis to wait,
Maids will be a-sighing still —
Young blood must when young blood will!

Charles Perrault

(Moral of Sleeping Beauty)

The Richard Avedon of Asia

Self-portrait

 
 

Russel Wong is a Singapore-born Hollywood celebrity photographer. He had his primary and secondary education at Anglo-Chinese School. His celebrity portraits have earned him celebrity status. He is heralded as “the Richard Avedon of Asia” –an association Wong doesn’t seem to mind.

Like Avedon, Wong creates stunning portraits that are minimal, dramatic, and brilliantly composed. However, his photographs lack the cool indifference and stiffness of Avedon’s work; instead, the imagery is warm, personal, engaging.

Where does that gift comes from? “It’s difficult to explain”, he begins. “When I shoot someone, I feel like I’m dancing. The idea I’m working with is equivalent to the melody I hear in my head… then I improvise what that song’s ups and downs. I often try something wild at the end.”

The legendary celebrity-photographer the late Richard Avedon [1923-2004] had once sharply noted ‘my portraits are more about me than about the people I photograph’. This observation from the towering figure who chiselled his reputation on photographing the celebrated and the powerful suggests that the portrait-image could reveal as much about the photographer as it does the sitter-subject – or more. Russel Wong [b. 1961-] who (as stated before) has been christened the Richard Avedon of Asia by the popular media, wields an inventory of celebrity portraits that would exhaust most name-droppers. Joining the tradition of celebrity photographers like Avedon, Annie Leibovitz [1949-] Helmut Newton [1920-2004] and Herb Ritts [1952-2002], Wong’s practice ruptures the slender line between celebrity photography and fine art. Whilst some critics banish this genre as a soft art form shaped by the pressures and demands of celebrity publicity machines, most agree that this species of photography remains one of the most potent and most difficult to commandeer. It is one thing to wrestle for access to celebrities and quite another feat to persuade strong self-willed celebrities who are well-acquainted with camera tactics to trust if not share, one’s vision.

Several pivotal shifts in Wong’s practice occurred after his enrollment in the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles in 1984 for a fine art degree (Photography). There he encountered tutors and mentors whose personal charisma and professional triumphs exerted great influence over his formative development. In his second year, Wong made a 4-month ‘immersion trip’ to Milan, Italy – ‘the Mecca, where all aspiring fashion photographers go to, and where all the big-name photographers pay their dues’ [Russel Wong, interview 2004]. Wong learnt the language, ate the food and hung out at the Italian fashion cafes, like The White Bear, where models and photographers congregated. Most importantly, his photographic style and approach changed radically, and these shifts were not lost on his mentors. Amongst these was Paul Jasmin [1935-], the renowned fashion designer and photographer who worked with Vogue and Interview. Jasmin introduced Wong to his agent who also represented Herb Ritts.

The agent subsequently became Wong’s first agent in his career – opening the doors to major magazine assignments. Another seminal figure was Antonio Lopez [1943-1987] the flamboyant Puerto Rican fashion illustrator noted for his portraits of Jerry Hall, Jessica Lange and Grace Jones. Lopez, a cult figure in the circles, had in the 1970s, run a Paris salon with Karl Lagerfeld for fashion celebrities. Lopez noted Wong’s work and connected Wong to the remarkable photographer Art Kane [1925-1995] who had photographed The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan among others.

“Antonio said, ‘Go to New York. I will help you!’ He invited me to his New York studio in Union Square and he called up a bunch of photographers. At the point when Antonio introduced me to Art Kane, I was ready to be an assistant, intern, anything. I didn’t really care, because I just wanted to see what it was like to do real photographic work in a New York loft.
I would have waited tables, carried the photographer’s lights, made coffee… you name it. But it turned out that I didn’t have to do any of that. I don’t know if this is good or bad but I didn’t have to assist any photographer on my way up. They liked my work, and it all began.”
[Russel Wong, interview 2004]

 
 

Antonio Lopez

 
 

David Lynch

 
 

Isabella Rossellini

 
 

Kenzo Takada

 
 

Helmut Newton

 
 

Oliver Stone

 
 

Joan Chen

 
 

John Galliano

 
 

Cindy Crawford

The Madcap Maestro of American Haute Couture

Portrait of Isaac Mizrahi by Annie Leibovitz. Published in Vogue, December 1995

 
 

Isaac Mizrahi was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1961, of Syrian Jewish heritage. He is the cousin of rock guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, former player in the New York Dolls.

When Isaac was eight, his family moved to the middle-class Midwood section of Brooklyn. He contracted spinal meningitis during this time and his confinement was spent eating junk food and viewing television, especially old movies. The 1961 remake of Back Street, about an affair between a fashion designer and a married man, was a pivotal event in Mizrahi’s development. The glamour of the fashion industry depicted in the movie became an inspiration to him to design clothes.

Around 1971, young Isaac steals money from his mother to buy fabric and trimmings. At eleven, he saves up babysitting money and purchases his first sewing machine—a secondhand Singer from the 1920s—and begins stitching clothes for his puppets. He later says, “I felt like a total outcast. I used to sit and make these puppets and watch a lot of television and a lot of movies on television. My mother was really worried about me. Everybody was worried about me.”

After struggling to fit in at Yeshiva of Flatbush, an Orthodox Jewish private school (where he is caught sketching fashions in his prayer books and doing rabbi impersonations), Isaac transfers to New York’s High School of Performing Arts. “It was a setting free,” he will later say. Dabbles in acting. October: At Isaac’s bar mitzvah—to which he wears “sky-blue shantung” —his father presents him with a pair of scissors engraved with his name.At 13, Isaac was designing clothes for himself, his mother, and a close friend of his mother, Sarah Haddad.

Isaac makes an appearance as Touchstone in the singing-and-dancing-teens film Fame (Alan Parker, 1980), based on the competitive atmosphere at his performing-arts alma mater.

His earliest design influences stemmed from his his mother’s all-American wardrobe, which included clothing from Halston, Geoffrey Beene, Claire McCardell and Norman Norell.

1982 Graduated from Parsons School of Design, New York. Among his fellow students is Marc Jacobs, two years his junior. “At Parsons, everyone thought he was incredibly talented,” Jacobs later recalls.

Worked for Perry Ellis, and said he was a major influence who taught him how to cut a dress, and many lessons in life. After this, he worked with Jeff Banks and Calvin Klein.

After leaving Calvin Klein, in June 1987 he and Sarah Haddad-Cheney pooled $50,000 each and opened Mizrahi’s own womenswear company. They occupied a loft on Greene Street in SoHo. Seven stores bought the first season’s collection. By the first collection show in April 1988 Haddad-Cheney had secured additional financing from the owners of Gitano Jeans company. In 1990 the company’s workrooms and showroom moved to an expanded space on Wooster Street. Mizrahi’s menswear collection premiered in April 1990.

1990 Isaac Mizrahi is presented with the CFDA designer of the year award for his women’s wear collection.
The year 1997 proved to be a milestone in Mizrahi’s career. He announced an unprecedented deal with three major Asian markets in Japan, Singapore, and Korea which included freestanding stores, in-store shops, wholesale distribution, manufacturing, and sublicenses in Japan and shops and distribution in Southeast Asia, an online ABC source reported. The deal was estimated to generate at least $150 million in retail sales by the year 2000.

Mizrahi has made appearances in numerous television shows and movies since the 1990s. In 1995, a movie was released about the development of his Fall 1994 collection called Unzipped made by his freind Douglas Keeve. In fall 2005 the Isaac show debuted on Style Network. He previously had a show on the Oxygen network. His new less-expensive line ISAAC, opens in 34 locations around the USA. Each boutique will show his new logo, a Silver Star.

He often appears on many of E!’s programs and has become well-known for being flamboyant and considered by some to be rude. He also appeared as himself in the episode “Plus One is the Loneliest Number” of the fifth season of Sex and the City.
He also guest starred on the American dramedy series Ugly Betty (based on Fernando Gaitán‘s Colombian telenovela soap opera Yo soy Betty, la fea), in which he played a reporter for the cable channel Fashion TV in the episode “Lose the Boss“.

Mizrahi also appeared as himself in The Apprentice season 1 (episode 6) as one of the celebrities auction for The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

He made a series of comic books called Sandee, the Adventures of a Supermodel, published by Simon & Schuster.
Mizrahi is currently the spokesperson for Klein-Becker’s StriVectin anti-wrinkle cream.

He is developing “The Collection,” a one-hour scripted project that draws on the experiences of the designer for The CW Network.

Known for his magnetic personality and witty style, Mizrahi has won four Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) awards. He is famous for his use of colour and the clean flattering lines of his designs. Chanel, who was financing him, pulled the plug and Isaac had closed his own fashion house in 1998. He started his own TV show interviewing celebrities.

However in February 2003, Mizrahi entered into a new partnership with New York based Hip retailer TARGET. Isaac created an exclusive collection of classically designed fashion sportswear and accessories for style conscious women. The collections are named “Isaac Mizrahi for Target” and he unveiled his debut collection in April 2003 in Minneapolis at the Walker Arts Center. Target is putting the designer back on the fashion map in a major mass-market way.

When he was interviewed, Isaac said he was very happy working with Target. Certain aspects of the couture scene and the constant rush to try and make money, just made him unhappy. Now he is making clothes for ordinary Americans at reasonable prices, and they are “racy, fun and crazy” and very popular.

But Isaac’s heart has always been with fashion shows, and in June 2004 he put on his first show in six years, and it was really successful. The show celebrates Bergdorf Goodman’s decision to devote space in its American couture collections for Mizrahi’s label.

The Concept of Travel in an Emotional Sense

“The Journey of a star, captured in a flash”. Annie Leibovitz and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Annie’s studio, New York

 
 

“Is there any greater journey than love?” Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi. New York

 
 

“There are journeys that turn into legends”. Sean Connery, Bahamas Islands

 
 

“Every journey began in Africa”- Ali and Bono. Uganda

 
 

“A journey bring us face to face with ourselves”. Mikhail Gorbachev, Berlin, Germany

 
 

“Some stars show you the way”. Muhammad Ali and a rising star. Phoenix, Arizona

 
 

“Three exceptional journeys. One historic game”. Pelé, Diego Armando Maradona and Zinadine Zidane. Madrid, Spain

 
 

“Some journeys change mankind forever”. Sally Ride, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lowell. California

 
 

“A single journey can change the course of a life”. Angelina Jolie. Cambodia

 
 

“Inside every story, there is a beautiful journey”. Sofia Coppola and Francis Ford Coppola. Buenos Aires, Argentina

 
 

Louis Vuitton Core Values campaigns revisit the brand’s heritage with a completely fresh interpretation of the concept of travel in an emotional sense, viewed as a personal journey, a process of self-discovery. The campaign debuted in September 2007 in major international titles featuring no other but the former Soviet statesman Mikhail Gorbachev, the French movie siren Catherine Deneuve, the founding member of The Rolling Stones Keith Richards and the tennis power couple Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, among many other influential and famous people.

Pietro Beccari, Senior VP of Communication explains this shot: “Not only does it capture the unique quality of a father-daughter relationship, in which both are enriched by a shared experience, but it also evokes the heritage of Louis Vuitton with its suggestion of know-how being passed from one generation to the next.”

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s first steps on the Moon, the ad features legendary astronauts Sally Ride (first American woman in space), Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11, first steps on the Moon, 1969) and Jim Lovell (Apollo 13) looking up in the Californian desert night sky.

In 2010 Brazil’s Pelé, Argentina’s Diego Maradona and France’s Zinedine Zidane all won football’s ultimate prize, and all wore the emblematic N°10 shirt. They met up in the Café Maravillas, a typical bar in Madrid, and were tempted into a game of table football. The image leaves the suspense intact, but clearly captures the atmosphere of fun and friendly rivalry.

Given the photographer of all Core Value campaigns personal and financial troubles in 2010, Louis Vuitton wished to offer support in the most positive way and suggested that Annie Leibovitz become the next campaign’s hero. She accepted on the condition that she appears alongside for friend and one of the foremost dancers of the 20th century, Mikhail Baryshnikov.

This is the first time U2 frontman Bono has appeared in an ad sans his bandmates, but instead with his wife Ali Hewson. It’s also the first time that a label other than Louis Vuitton is getting a fashion credit – the pair are wearing their own clothing line Edun, a line of ethical fashion. Proceeds from the sales will go to TechnoServe, which supports sustainable farming in Africa.

As the pioneer of the art du voyage, Louis Vuitton is always on the look out for the exceptional people with extraordinary journeys. The question is who will be next?

The Photo Which Gave Birth to the Modern Maternity Portrait

Ever since Annie Leibovitz photographed Demi Moore, for the front cover of Vanity Fair magazine, maternity photographs have become increasingly popular. Undoubtedly this photo gave birth to the modern maternity portrait

 
 

The supermodel swelled with pride as she showed off her seven-month belly (filled with son Presley) in the June 1999 issue of W. Cindy Crawford was originally slated to wear a gown, but she apparently didn’t look pregnant enough in it. Problem solved. Photo: Michael Thompson

 
 

It’s only fitting that Brooke Shields was Vogue‘s first visibly pregnant cover model. After all, she’d also been the fashion bible’s youngest cover model back in 1980, when she was 14. She was 37 and eight months along with daughter Rowan on the April 2003 issue, on which she sported a sheer, soaking-wet Krizia gown.Photo: Annie Leibovitz

 
 

The Italian bombshell — best known to American audiences for her work in The Matrix Reloaded — had more than vanity in mind when she posed nude for the cover of a 2004 edition of Vanity Fair: The wife of French actor Vincent Cassel reportedly disrobed to protest Italy’s laws against the use of donor sperm. Nicely done, Monica. Photo: Fabrizio Ferri

 
 

Vanity Fair Italy, March 2010. Photo by Tyen

 
 

Six months pregnant with second son Jayden James, the then-spiraling pop star Britney Spears disrobed for the August 2006 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. Necklace: Louis Vuitton. Photo: Alexi Lubomirki

 
 

November 2006 issue of Britain’s Q magazine. In the interview, Britney revealed she was craving ice (and evidently lollipops). Photo: James Dimmock

 
 

Milla Jovovich gnawed on that gauzy curtain for a good cause. Her 2007 shoot for Jane magazine benefited charity. Soon after, she gave birth to daughter Ever Gabo with Resident Evil writer-director Paul William Scott Anderson.

 
 

Christina Aguilera was nearly done baking son Max when she ditched her duds (but not her Louboutins or hair dye) for the January 2008 issue of Marie Claire. Photo: Ruven Afanador

 
 

Known for her sometimes outrageous red carpet poses, Paula Patton looked perfectly goddess-like draped in nude chiffon with curly hair and natural make-up on the May 2010 cover of Ebony. And the magazine happened to hit stands after the actress, who’s married to R&B crooner Robin Thicke, gave birth to son Julian Fuego

 
 

Dem babies, as Mariah Carey affectionately nicknamed still-gestating twins Moroccan and Monroe, kicked at their mom’s belly through most of her photo shoot for the April 18, 2011, issue of Life & Style. We assume they were kicking in protest over this awkward pose

 
 

Proving that supermodels really are superior life forms, a shaggy-haired Claudia Schiffer was pregnant with her third child, daughter Cosima, when she stripped down for a Karl Lagerfeld-directed shoot in the June 2010 issue of German Vogue

 
 

Mrs. Orlando Bloom, Miranda Kerr,  was six-and-a-half months pregnant with son Flynn when she tastefully revealed all in the December 2010 issue of W. Photo by Patrick Demarchelier

 
 

The 41-year-old actress bared her soul (per the cover’s tagline) and lots more in the November 2011 issue of Ebony. She welcomed her second son, Kez, that same month. “The medical [profession] tries to tell every woman, ‘Have your babies before 40 because you shouldn’t have children after 40. Society tells us, ‘Get married before 30, because no man wants a woman after 30.’ You are not half the woman you’re gonna be until you turn 30. You’re not even half of that woman yet. So I think if we’d just take our time as women, and do what comes natural to us and for us, we would make fewer mistakes.”

 
 

The latest star to go au naturel, Jessica undressed for the April 2012 issue of Elle and revealed she’s expecting a girl with fiancé Eric Johnson. Photo: Carter Smith. Styled by Joe Zee

A Life of Its Own

“I have no regrets. I feel beautiful when I’m pregnant. I look at stretch marks as something I’ve earned, not as something that wrecks my appearance,” Demi told the Los Angeles Times soon after the issue came out. “I was trying to tell people I feel it’s possible to do all those things — to have a career, be a mother, still be beautiful and sexy. … I mean even on a sexual level, I’ve never felt more beautiful or sexy or more appreciated by my husband [Bruce Willis] than when I’ve been pregnant.”

Demi Moore

 
 

Demi Moore, Culver City, California, 1991. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. The photo went on to become one of the most iconic photographs of the past two decades.

 
 

Vanity Fair, August 1991 issue

 
 

“It’s hard to imagine now, but the portrait of Demi Moore nude and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair was truly scandalous in 1991. Scandalous in the sense of shocking and morally offensive to some people. The first day the issue was available, it sold out on newsstands at Grand Central Station during the morning rush hour. Newsstands in other parts of the country displayed it in a white paper wrapper, as if it were a porn magazine. Several supermarket chains refused to sell it even with the wrapper. Television crews were parked outside the Vanity Fair office for days. Editorialists and pundits weighed in. A few years later, the picture was held responsible for the rise of body-hugging maternity fashions.

 
 

 
 

None of this was my intention, although it’s gratifying to think that the picture helped make pregnant women feel less awkward or embarrassed about their bodies. It began as a shoot with a specific problem. Demi had a new movie coming out, and Tina Brown, who was the editor of the magazine then, wanted to put her on the cover, but Demi was seven months pregnant with her second child. Tina and I talked about how to handle this, and we decided to go for a glamorous, sexy look. Lori Goldstein, the stylist, brought diamond earrings and a 30-carat-diamond ring to the studio in Los Angeles where we were shooting. We had long gowns, including a green satin robe by Isaac Mizrahi.

Demi and I had worked together several times before, and I’d taken her wedding pictures when she married Bruce Willis, in 1987. I had said to her then that I was interested in photographing a pregnant woman, which at that point I never had. Demi called me when she was going to have their first child. Bruce was working on location in Kentucky and she had gone there to have the baby. I stopped off in Kentucky on the way back to New York from Los Angeles and took a few rolls of black-and-white film. Just for them. Demi and Bruce were not shy about documenting the pregnancy. Several friends and a man with three video cameras were in the room when their daughter was born a few weeks later.

At the cover sitting in 1991, I shot a few close-ups and some full-length portraits. Demi was by no means camouflaged for any of them. In the standing portrait published inside the magazine the green satin robe is pulled off her shoulders and it falls open to expose her belly and leg. In another picture she’s wearing a black lace bra and panties. But the fully nude picture was not taken until toward the end of the shoot and was intended just for Demi. I was taking some companion photographs to the ones I had made during Demi’s first pregnancy. As I was shooting, I said, “You know, this would be a great cover.” It wasn’t until I got back to New York and looked at the proofs that I realized that there really was a great cover photograph there. Tina agreed, although she thought that Demi would be furious if we ran it. She was surprised when Demi said yes right away. We all knew what we were doing up to a point, but none of us completely understood the ramifications.

A few months after the Demi Moore picture was published, an exhibition of my work from 1970 to 1990 opened at the International Center of Photography, in New York. The director of the center, Cornell Capa, wanted to blow the picture up and hang it in the stairwell. I wouldn’t let him. It was a popular picture and it broke ground, but I don’t think it’s a good photograph per se. It’s a magazine cover. If it were a great portrait, she wouldn’t be covering her breasts. She wouldn’t necessarily be looking at the camera. There are different criteria for magazine covers. They’re simple. The addition of type doesn’t destroy them. Sometimes they even need type. My best photographs are inside the magazine.”

 

Excerpted from Annie Leibovitz at Work, by Annie Leibovitz, Random House, 2008

 
 

 
 

Speaking in an interview with Vanity Fair – the magazine that placed the image its front cover – Leibovitz says the photograph was not one of her best.

‘It was a popular picture and it broke ground, but I don’t think it’s a good photograph per se,’ Leibovitz said in an interview with Vanity Fair. ‘It’s a magazine cover. If it were a great portrait, she wouldn’t be covering her breasts. She wouldn’t necessarily be looking at the camera.’

Ms Leibovitz has talked in the past of the genesis of the photograph, which came about quite by accident. The photographer tells how she got together with the star to shoot the Vanity Fair cover, but given that Demi was seven months pregnant, Vanity Fair was nervous about the result. The consensus was that Leibovitz would somehow disguise the pregancy, or just shoot a head portrait. But on the day, after a series of shots in various outfits, Leibovitz suggested the nudes.

‘She dropped her clothing and I started to shoot. I said, “well this looks really, I mean… maybe we should make this the cover. Why not?” And she said yes, maybe.’ ‘So we tried to hide everything the best we could. Tina Brown in New York made a decision to go ahead with it. And this is one of those things, it had a life of its own.’

 
 

Leibovitz’s naked self-portrait taken when pregnant at age 51

Some Journeys

Keith Richards photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Louis Vuitton 2008 ad campaign. “Some journeys cannot be put into words. New York. 3 am. Blues in C,” runs the slogan of the ad.

 
 

The founding member of The Rolling Stones was captured in a New York hotel room that he transformed by draping black Alexander McQueen’s skull-print scarves over the lamps and placing a skull on a bedside table.

Approaching to Mick Jagger

“Mick Jagger really put Montauk on the map. All the motels were overflowing with groupies. Two girls with no hair and black cats on leashes followed them all the way to Montauk. Mr. Winters – the caretaker of the estate – found them hiding in the bushes!”
Andy Warhol

 
 

Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and Fred Hughes. Photo session documented by Annie Leibovitz, Mountauk, 1975

The Rolling Stones’ Tour of The Americas

“And yet, despite the ultimate and monumental success of the tour, things did not always go smoothly. The trouble was not so much from within the group (though there were instances of stress and friction, granted) but from the outsiders: tourist-types, music-lovers, hero-worshippers, souvenir-hunters, run-away-teenies, young ill-informed musicians hoping to replace guitarist Mick Taylor who had recently left the group, and quite unaware, of course, that inside the house, at that very moment, the great Ron Wood was picking a line that would have set Bo Didddley’s top a ‘tappin’!”

Terry Southern

 
 

This was The Rolling Stones‘ first tour with new guitarist Ronnie Wood, after Mick Taylor had left the band. (A 14 April announcement merely said he would be playing on the tour; he was not officially named a Rolling Stone until 19 December 1975). Long time sidemen Bobby Keys and Jim Price on brass were not featured on this tour, being replaced by Billy Preston on keyboards and Ollie E. Brown on percussion. Bobby Keys made a guest appearance on You Can’t Always Get What You Want and Brown Sugar at the Los Angeles shows.

The Tour of the Americas ’75 was not tied to support of any newly released material, as it began more than seven months after the release of their last studio album at the time, It’s Only Rock’n Roll; therefore the compilation album Made in the Shade was released to capitalise on the tour’s publicity.

The mid-1970s were the era of extravagant stage shows, from the likes of Elton John, Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Queen—a new format for the Stones, with their usual act freshly aided by theatrical stage props and gimmicks, including a giant inflatable phallus (nicknamed ‘Tired Grandfather’ by the band, since it sometimes malfunctioned) and, at some shows, an unfolding lotus flower-shaped stage that Charlie Watts had conceived.

 
 

The Rolling Stones’ Tour of The Americas, 1975. Pictures by Annie Leibovitz and Christopher Simon Sykes

Don’t Forget to Put Roses

“..You can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won’t forget to put roses on your grave…”

Dead Flowers

Track number 7 on the album Sticky Fingers. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

 
 

Mick Jagger, Photo by Annie Leibovitz, Buffalo, New York, 1975.

 
 

Illustration by Sebastian Krüger

The Ideal of New Pop Art

 
 

Sebastian Krüger was born June 30, 1963 in Hamelin, Germany. After studying free painting with Prof. Dörfler at the Braunschweig University of Fine Arts, he made a stunning reputation as the designer of a number of cover spreads for the press in Germany and abroad and as an illustrator and creative designer of various LP covers.

He then stepped away from commercial work and devoted himself solely to free painting. In recent years, he has aesthetically moved away from a stylistic “star caricaturist” to New Pop Realism, pushing his rendered subjects into a psychological arena. His artistic visions are treasured and collected by other stars of the pop scene, like The Rolling Stones, who are friends of his, and by art connoisseurs all over the world.

In the quarter century of his creative career, Krüger has remained true to the ideal of New Pop Art, dedicating his art to a kind of game o deception, the interplay of identity and portraiture, of authenticity and fiction. This has enabled him to establish himself as a popular painter whose works draw large numbers of visitors to the galleries and museums. The defining feature of his work is the creative reflection about the apparatus of media presentation and the manic iconography of contemporary picture production.