Fashionclick   Photographer Interview

a job and happened to get one as a second assistant to somebody who was doing fashion work. So, it was - you know - by chance that I started to do fashion. I just cleaned dishes and mopped floors thinking, all along,  that I was gonna still paint. And three years later I had my first Vogue cover.

How long ago was this?

My first professional job was in 1981.

Let’s fast-forward to the present. What was the motivation behind "A private view"?

Every photographer wants to show his work in a book, for the sake of posterity – if anything at all. David Fahey, who represents me in Los Angeles as my gallery, thought it would be an interesting idea to include my diaries, because I keep 17 years worth of diaries - visual ones - and people are always fascinated by them. They were always the center of attraction whenever I pulled them out. So, to include them was a logical choice. It’s what sets it apart from every other book. It brings you into my world and gets you to see a private view. And that’s why we called it that.

What  defines a good photograph?

A good photograph, basically, is an image that has a certain kind of spirit. You take an inanimate object like a piece of paper, put an image on it and it becomes alive. It has an essence, a spirit. You feel it and you respond to it immediately, and it’s that essence that makes it a work of art... or not.

The book mentions that your proceeds of this edition will go to the Elton John Aids Foundation and to the Children’s Hope Foundation. Why did you choose them?

I chose Elton John’s foundation because I felt it represented my business - not only photography ‘cause he is a collector - but fashion, because he is so involved in it. And I thought that, symbolically, it was a way of giving back and of allowing all the people in my book to be a part of this donation. The book in itself is also a way of giving back to the business.

As to the Children's Hope Foundation, I have a four-year-old son, so children have a special place in my heart. That is why I split my contribution between the two charities.

I’ve heard you are a photographer with the knack for creating good rapport with models. Why do you think this is true?

I think, I am lucky enough to say, that I get a good rapport with everybody, not just with models. You can see that in my celebrity pictures. People seem to open up to me as a person and they respond to me as a human being, so there are no walls up, there are no barriers... They sense that, and that’s what allows them to open up to me photographically. 

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