I grew up in Uptown, a real interesting neighborhood, very textured. My father was an X-ray equipment manufacturer and we had a darkroom in the basement. He loved mechanical things: how a camera was built and the processing of a picture. So, as a kid, I would hang out with Dad in the basement and help him develop negatives. He gave me this little box camera and I took pictures of my girlfriends sitting on the lions of the Art Institute or out in the backyard. It was not a child prodigy thing: I was just goofing around.
At an early age, I became interested in theater. I took voice lessons and acting classes on Saturdays as a kid and was in grammmar school and high school plays. Then, in college, at the University of Wisconsin, I joined the university touring company. In my sophomore year, I was taking a mime course and the head of the Asian theater department, Professor A.C. Scott, who was renowned in the field, came in and looked through the class; and to him, I physically looked right. I was thin. I had long black hair and had kind of Oriental eyes and I was taking mime. Perfect. So he put me in his Asian theater program.
This professor was interested in having me document on film all these forms of Asian theater. So I took some photography classes from the journalism school and mine was a very practical course, just camera, flash bulbs, very press oriented. Soon, he had mapped my whole career out. He was pulling all kinds of strings to secure a Fulbright scholarship for me, to further improve my academic credentials. My family was against it and it frightened me as well.
So I leaned more toward photography and got back in the darkroom. But even then, when everybody was shooting some kind of conference at school, I`d shoot the feet under the table. It was equally as terrible as the people who shot above the table, but I was looking for something. Maybe I`d never find it, but I was looking for something.
When I was out of school, I took two three-week summer seminar courses with the Ansel Adams group in Yosemite (National Park, Calif.). The first time, I was a fish out of water. I was basically self taught and I wasn`t technically schooled. And I was, without realizing it, very opinionated. So the first session I just kept my mouth shut and listened. But they noticed me there, too; that I was looking for something. And it was there that I understood clearly that there was such a thing as style and that I did have a direction.
The next year when I went back, I was a little more sure of myself. I was amused that when Ansel Adams selected a spot to set up his view camera for a shot of a landscape, a dozen or so students immediately would locate their own cameras and tripods all in a line, pointed in the same direction that his camera was, assuming that this would produce comparable results. As inexperienced as I was, I did know that being shoulder to shoulder with Ansel Adams wasn`t going to suddenly deliver Ansel Adams` photographic quality. So I would go off and find something else to photograph: old inns and local people. One photographer, a well-known architectural photographer who was there, took me aside and said: ”You are a curiosity to me. Why is it when we were all over there you`re always shooting something else?” I didn`t see waterfalls and fields and boundless nature. I`m an urban photographer. I just didn`t see it. It was documenting nature and, while I respected Ansel Adams, those photos were lacking soul somehow. It was missing something to me.
At the session`s end, Adams gathered his students, which included some really good photographers, around for a critique of their work. We sat in this group, I remember, in the back yard. And I kept thinking: Who am I to begin to be presumptuous enough to have him critique my work? But that same photographer kept on saying to me: ”Show him! Show him!” So, I did. Adams looked at some of the offbeat subjects I`d been shooting and he said:
”Personally, I abhor this kind of photography, but there is a whole genre of this photography going on in some universities.” And if I wanted to pursue it, he would refer me to those schools. Well, everyone turned and looked at me. I realized then I had a style. Adams didn`t approve of it. But I was real. He disagreed with me, but I existed. I had a valid approach. That was very important to me.
Maybe the reason I loved theater and now love photography was that I needed a way to express myself. I was pretty good at theater, but at the same time, I couldn`t see it. I couldn`t judge it. I couldn`t study it. I wanted something to look at, something where I could be my own judge. I couldn`t do that with theater. I realized with photography I could.
I have been fortunate because I`ve been able to learn from the right people. The second job I had was as a stylist/production coordinator for Joe Sedelmaier, the film director, who was then a rising star. He was the best there is, so it was very easy to learn things. I learned to develop a far more critical eye. I learned from him that film is very different from print and I learned about casting. What he taught me about casting has always stayed with me. Or perhaps it always was mine anyway, and now that I`m older, I`m a little braver to say that he reinforced what I needed to hear. And that is that people are different. A photograph of someone should not look interchangeable with somebody else. That person has to look like nobody you`ve ever seen before.
With casting you have a choice: Someone looks just like an actor portraying an Irish priest and another guy who is overweight and has a little twinkle in his eye is exactly what an Irish priest looks like. They both can be actors, but there is a difference. He taught me to look for that difference. Years later, when the time came for me to photograph Sedelmaier, it was still frightening for me because he was my mentor. When I shot him, I felt I was a grown up.
I have been shooting for Esquire for a number of years, mostly for their inside stories. About a year ago, they were looking to have a consistent concept for their covers for the following year. They reviewed several photographers and decided that mine fit most what they wanted for the concept. Their concept is, as I see it, modern elegant or warm elegant. Some inner personality has to come through.
To attain that with celebrities, I have to approach them on a certain level. I have to realize that they are real people. In spite of the fact that they have six cars and six homes, they have real problems and real concerns, and that`s the level I try to approach them on. I figure they don`t have power. So what if they`re movie stars. They`re victims like I am. Maybe they earn more, but they`re working people. They don`t have real power. They`re makers like I am.
I`m still intimidated, but that`s okay. What I find is, and I think I learned this from shooting children, is that if I`m not a participant in it in some way, then I can`t get them to be. So if you shoot a child and say ”would you please smile,” they`re not going to smile. You have to chew bubblegum or bark or scream, or blow bubbles in the air. I will say to them: ”I don`t know you and you don`t know me and it`s going to take a little time for me not to be nervous and you not to be nervous. So if we just start, we`ll get used to each other.`
For psychological reasons, I would like the subjects to like me, but I don`t know if they do or not. The important thing is that they have to feel safe. And there`s something about my personality that is safe. I try to be the anonymous photographer. I bank on that. I use it as a device. You can`t have two egos at work.
If somebody is being paid to be photographed for a product, that`s a different ball game. They are being paid to co-operate. But a celebrity for Esquire comes in with a whole set of fears. Most of them say they don`t like to be photographed. They`re not models. Willlam Hurt is not a model. He`s an actor. How is he going to show his real personality in front of a camera?
Sometimes it`s pleasant, sometimes it`s not. The celebrities come with their own sets of rules. The Esquire covers are not my best work. My best work would be if Woody Allen would call me and say ”I want you to take my portrait and let`s talk about it.” But that`s not the way it works. He comes with rules and regulations. The rules are that it must be at this time. It must take no longer than 30 minutes. It must be what he chooses to wear and there must be no gimmicks and no gags. And you don`t talk to him and you don`t talk to his agent. Well, there isn`t much left.
A lot of people have had trouble shooting Woody Allen. The photographer before me that shot him was Annie Liebovitz. I had heard that she had wanted to shoot him with a rock to portray him as the thinker, the philosopher. It wasn`t a bad idea, hut he wouldn`t do it. The shot she ended up with was a straight-on head shot. I`m assuming this, but she got into trouble. She had nothing else to shoot. And I knew all I was going to get from him was something like that.
I noticed that in other photographs of him that most of the time when he looks at you, he stares you down. So what happens is you don`t see him, you see him seeing you. You see him staring at you, which is not a bad trick. But I wanted to do something where we turned the tables and we could look at him. A shot where we could stare at him a little too much. I saw it as a matter of turning his head three quarters and getting him to close his mouth. He breathes through his mouth and that gives him a look that says he`s unapproachable. I wanted to soften him up a little.
Mia Farrow was there. She was videotaping the shoot for a home movie and I sensed he was kind of proud of having his picture taken for Esquire but he would never show me that.
So, I said to him: ”I don`t know if you`re going to like this shot or not. You`re a film director. You have strong opinions but let me tell you what my intent is and, hopefully, it will be in agreement with you.” I asked if he would hold a Polaroid of himself and he said ”yes,” and he did.
Hopefully, what I got is a photograph where you can look at Woody Allen. You can see he doesn`t button the top button of his shirt. You can see he chews his nails. You can see him. You can look at him and see that it`s fun to look at Woody Allen. And you`re not intimidated by him. It`s a photo of Woody Allen the director. It`s not Woody Allen the buffoon. It`s not Woody Allen the victim. It`s Woody Allen the director and that is who he was that day. And for that reason it was authentic.
What I try to capture is an energy release. It`s something that happens in a split second exchange between the photographer and the subject and intercepted by the film. When William Hurt is amused, he smiles in a different way than anyone else. And Walter Cronkite lights his pipe differently than other people light their pipes. You see nuances of their personality. It`s a very special thing.
The camera is my vehicle, a wonderful device that permits me to see people from a very special vantage point. I`m not a social person. I don`t have cocktail parties. I talk a lot, but I`m basically shy. When I look through the camera, I don`t have to talk. I don`t have to take on a certain persona. I look through this little live box that somehow isolates the truths in people.
I`m successful. But I don`t think a lot about being female or being the first (successful) female commercial photographer in Chicago. I think about photography. Concentrating on the fact that I`m a woman just gets in the way. I think people who are really good at what they do don`t think about it. They just are focused on what they do. Now, maybe I`d be less famous if I was a man or maybe I`d be more famous. Right now, it`s probably in vogue to be a female in photography but I`m not out to prove anything by it.
I have a 7-year-old daughter at home and a husband. It`s hard. I`ve told Sarah I work because it helps the family and I love what I do and hopefully when she grows up, she`ll be fortunate enough to have something that she loves to do. I`m there at the important times hopefully, the PTA meetings.
But what you have to live with is the guilt. You`re not there with milk and cookies after school and that is a definite guilt. Hopefully, there are other things I do that make up for it.
It isn`t that I`ve had to make a choice between being a mother and a photographer and the kid is going down the drain. But I have had to work out the two in my own mind. And when I was asked what it is that I want to do, I realized I want to do film and fashion and environmental photographs and I want to be better at it. I need to do this so I should be at peace with myself.
My fantasy I suppose is that when I`m old I`ll have a gray braid down my back and white socks with sandals and still be taking photographs.
