Interview September 2014 : The Photographers Issue

[kokobombon]

Thanks a lot for posting the covers with all the credits, GlamVal

 

[Nepenthes]

I really hope we get textless HQs of the covers.

 

[GlamVal]

kokobombon

 

[Avogadro]

This is how you should do September covers!!!Glorious covers,can't wait for the contents

 

[Alien Sex Friend]

it is still not on the sale

 

[Miss Dalloway]

^ Ugh, and i seriously wish they would join us in the modern world, and make their issues available to purchase in digital!

 

[Fiercification]

All of the features (apart from Daria/Jansson's) have been uploaded and they are all surprisingly brief, aside from Klein's which is very long and sure to get tongues wagging ...even though I don't get a sense of story from it!

Keira Knightley by Patrick Demarchelier

Styled by: Elin Svahn
Hair: Martin Cullen
Make-Up: Petros Petrohilos

Patrick Demarchelier was born outside of Paris in 1943, and any movie about his life would necessarily include the poignant scene of his stepfather giving the self-professed troublemaker an Eastman Kodak camera for his 17th birthday. After assisting the likes of Hans Feurer, the young Demarchelier struck out on his own, moved to New York, and developed his now signature, striking style of fashion photography. Destabilizing an elaborately staged fashion editorial or a portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales, for whom he was the official photographer, with a spark of spontaneity, Demarchelier creates a kind of verve, a frisson that has made him a legend, and his name a byword for fashion royalty—the very first thing Miranda Priestly wants to know of her hopeless new assistant in The Devil Wears Prada is "Did Demarchelier confirm?"

The Duchess (2008) star Keira Knightley knows a little something about onscreen royalty. In November she will appear alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in the WWII drama The Imitation Game, about the Enigma-code-breaking machine. Here, she tries to decode Demarchelier, getting the photographer to look at his life through the lens. Like the Devil's do-gooder assistant, she's got Patrick.


KEIRA KNIGHTLEY: Hey, Patrick! How are you?

PATRICK DEMARCHELIER: Very good. I'm in Long Island on holiday. In a few days, I have a trip to Sweden. After that, I'm going back to New York for one day and then to St. Barts for a trip to work for a few days, then I'm finished.

KNIGHTLEY: Oh my God, you're everywhere. Where are you going in Sweden?

DEMARCHELIER: We're going to the north. It's a hotel and spa. It's on top of a tree.

KNIGHTLEY: On top of a tree? Is it the place where they have a box of mirrors, so you can't see it? Have you been to this hotel before?

DEMARCHELIER: No, never. I've been to Sweden—my wife is Swedish—but this is a new place. How are you doing? Are you doing a movie now?

KNIGHTLEY: No, I'm not. What am I doing? I just bought a load of books that I'll read over the summer and hopefully choose another film based on that. I don't know if that'll happen, but it's quite a good way of working. Okay. I'm going to ask you questions. What's your favorite picture that you've ever taken?

DEMARCHELIER: I don't really think about that. For me, the new pictures are what I'm thinking about every day. The past is the past, no? Every day is a new challenge. Like for you, the movie that you'll be in is a new challenge. Photography is just the shot—one day, two days—and the next day you're gone.

KNIGHTLEY: Do you take pictures even when you're not on shoots? Do you always have a camera with you?

DEMARCHELIER: Not too much, no. I don't take the camera out with me. My eyes are the camera for me every day.

KNIGHTLEY: So does that mean if you're walking around, you get inspiration, log it in your head, and maybe use it at some point?

DEMARCHELIER: Exactly. If you love it, it's in your system.

KNIGHTLEY: What would be your ideal day, your dream day?

DEMARCHELIER: Every day is a dream, every day I spend with my wife.

KNIGHTLEY: Aw. Is it just fashion that you do?

DEMARCHELIER: No. I do fashion, portraits, nude. Sometimes animals, too. I love Africa. I love the wild. I love my dog. Actually, the best portrait I did was of my dog.

KNIGHTLEY: What sort of dog is it?

DEMARCHELIER: It's a longhaired daschund. And it's very funny, at a show in Paris, about six years ago—at the Petit Palais, the museum by the Champs-Élysées—there was a big show there, with a big picture of my dog, Puffy, like three meters high. [laughs]

KNIGHTLEY: What is your next show?

DEMARCHELIER: I'm doing a show in Tokyo, with Dior. I did a book for Dior haute couture three years ago, and I have a new book for them coming out in November. We're doing a show in Tokyo with the pictures and the clothes mixed together.

KNIGHTLEY: How does it work, collaborating with a house like that? You have to keep the tradition but continue it moving forward, right?

DEMARCHELIER: They let me do what I want, basically. They give me the clothes and I do what I want. It's a very interesting project.

KNIGHTLEY: You said something really interesting to me on the shoot: "You have to relax your face, because that's what good movie acting is, a relaxed face. It's the same thing as having pictures taken."

DEMARCHELIER: The face is supposed to be relaxed. The more you relax ...

KNIGHTLEY: You're absolutely right. It's very funny, because no photographer has ever said that to me before and made the kind of connection between the two things. You shoot digital, right? Do you still shoot on film as well?

DEMARCHELIER: Very rarely, only for special effect when I need it. Otherwise I don't do film anymore.

KNIGHTLEY: I've noticed that the people who started on film still have the ability to see the person in front of them. Whereas for a lot of photographers who have only ever worked in digital, the relationship between the photographer and the person who they're taking a picture of sort of doesn't exist anymore. They're looking at a computer screen as opposed to the person.

DEMARCHELIER: Exactly. I love digital, but the only problem is less intimacy. People look at the screen right away. Before, nobody saw the picture before you saw the final picture. There was more privacy in a way.

KNIGHTLEY: Does everybody then obsess about the image, suddenly trying to be perfect, as opposed to trying to capture a moment?

DEMARCHELIER: Yes. Now you work more like a team, with people who have good taste. It's interesting. You can correct things, and if you don't like an image right away, you can change it. Before you used to do a lot of pictures and pick a picture after. You can't really compare; it's a different way to work.

KNIGHTLEY: Would you ever go back to shooting on film, or do you think you've got to keep going forward?

DEMARCHELIER: Film is not very practical. The new world goes faster, and digital is very fast.

KNIGHTLEY: Do you miss any of the physicality of it? I think I'm a horrific kind of romantic about film. There's something about that single shot that was one moment in time, and something about the physical process of the light hitting the lens and the dark room. I find it difficult to see the romance in digital.

DEMARCHELIER: It can do that too, actually. I do a Polaroid before shooting. A Polaroid you do one picture, three pictures, it's really a moment. Capturing that moment with those pictures is interesting.

KNIGHTLEY: Your shoot the other day was probably the fastest photo shoot I've ever been on in my life, which was excellent. Have you always been really quick?

DEMARCHELIER: Ah. Things really go quickly with me. I like to do the pictures before people get too self-conscious. I like to be spontaneous and get a shot before the subject thinks too much about it. Sometimes it can be interesting to be very slow, so if you're very, very slow, you get so bored that it's interesting too. [laughs]

KNIGHTLEY: Who were the worst people to photograph?

DEMARCHELIER: Everybody can take a good picture. Everybody is interesting. Everyone has an interesting face. Some people are more difficult or more nervous or more tired. When you do a movie, you have action, you're talking, you're moving. You don't see the camera. Taking a picture with a photographer, you don't talk, it's more difficult than in a movie for your body to relax, to be yourself.

KNIGHTLEY: Definitely. You're looking for one moment that tells that story or whatever you're trying to capture. Have you ever done film?

DEMARCHELIER: I do commercials sometimes. It's funny because, for commercials, sometimes I work for a client and they say, "The model was not great." In the moving image she was fine, but in the still photo it was difficult to get an image of her. It's typical of doing a movie, because in the movie, you're moving, you have personality, you don't have to be great looking.

KNIGHTLEY: How did you come to your idea of beauty? Did you have idols when you were growing up, people whom you admired artistically?

DEMARCHELIER: Beauty is everywhere. And, no, my photography came naturally without any particular inspirations growing up.

interviewmagazine.com

 

[Fiercification]

Naomi Campbell by Mert & Marcus

Styled by: Ludivine Poiblanc
Hair: Peter Savic
Make-Up: Lisa Eldridge

Creative and former romantic partners Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott met in Hastings, England, in the mid-'90s and began working and living together almost instantly. Alas grew up in Turkey, studying classical music; Piggott is Welsh. While shooting campaigns for Calvin Klein or Louis Vuitton, or editorials for Pop, Arena Homme Plus, or Love, often at their seaside home in Ibiza, Alas and Piggott like to trade the camera back and forth—a sort of bonded binary entity—like Jaeger pilots in the drift. Here, they trade ideas and opinions with their friend, Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci, on the heels of a grand bacchanal on the island in the Mediterranean to celebrate Tisci's 40th birthday.


RICCARDO TISCI: How did you two meet for the first time?

MERT ALAS: It was a warm summer evening. I was at a party, dancing around, and Marcus walked up to me and asked if I would like a drink. I looked at this very tanned, young, handsome guy and said, "Sure!" So we found a corner and talked all night.

MARCUS PIGGOTT: I found Mert's number and asked him out for a date. After that, we pretty much moved in together. It was a big attraction definitely.

ALAS: Like magnets.

PIGGOTT: He was so charming, and I remember the orange boiler suit he was wearing—God, that was bright.

TISCI: How did you decide to start to working together?

ALAS: I was just out of the college of classical music in Turkey. I was always interested in fashion images and always dressed top to toe in crazy outfits. I loved clothes, loved partying. I loved everything that was visually charged and raised eyebrows. Marcus used to be a photo assistant and was an art student. He had a lot of knowledge of photography. I guess we started talking first, about photography and art, about films—we liked the same artists, the same movies. We both had a similar dark side and similar romance and madness to our ideas. He had an old camera, and we got a few lights and made one side of our apartment into a sort of makeshift studio. I got a set of 10 sort of "How to Make a Good Photo" encyclopedias, and we started playing. At first we did a lot of nudes, shooting a lot of our friends. Whatever was in those books, we tried.

TISCI: Why photography?

PIGGOTT: I was always very interested in photography. My father took a lot of pictures while I was growing up. There was always a camera, and as my father was an antiques dealer, a lot of art around us.

ALAS: I was a very visual person, even as a kid. I would set up cabaret scenes in school. I was into changing people's looks and amused by performance, by being different—any attention I could get. Photography was a perfect recipe, I guess. I could project my desires and imagination onto paper.

TISCI: Who was the first magazine you shot for?

ALAS: Dazed & Confused. It was a quarter-page portrait of this super-talented musician Leila, who at the time was working with Björk. She arrived at our home and we started taking pictures of her, but the pictures were boring. We didn't find normal photos that intriguing, so we tortured ourselves immensely.

TISCI: You were looking for something that had depth and intensity.

ALAS: Just beautiful was not sufficient. We didn't care about techniques or sharpness—we just wanted to make something that people would react to. So at the end of the day, we pulled the glass out of our oven and shot her through this glass with some water drops on it. The result was dark and weird, so we published it, and straight away we were commissioned to do a series for Visionaire using the same technique.

TISCI: You are the kings of color in my opinion. Even when your colors are bright and saturated, they seem to represent darkness and are totally different from the colors of other photographers. It doesn't seem like it comes from fashion photography.

ALAS: The mind wants to see color in a certain way. I may see a red in a photo, and my mind says, "That's not the right red!" So you search for that right red, and that's when something becomes yours—your red. I guess we're all selfish, cocky artists who want to do what we believe and what we believe only. [all laugh] We just do our thing. If you're lucky, "your thing" becomes popular and people respond to it. In our case, people seem to like it.

PIGGOTT: There is instinct involved, searching and experimenting until you are satisfied. Storytelling, surrealism, and darkness—my favorite pictures always have an element of all three.

TISCI: People talk about how fun your shoots are, which I can also say from my experience working with you. Do you think this is a strength?

ALAS: It became a strength. We are quite fun people to begin with—we like to socialize, to laugh a lot and have a good life. So we had to make it fun, because our work is our life and visa versa. Even now we are sitting at a seaside in our swimming trunks on a beautiful summer day, and still we're working! [laughs]

TISCI: Tell me about a crazy experience on one of your shoots.

ALAS: Actually, there is a funny memory. It was our first assignment for Vogue U.K. ...

PIGGOTT: And maybe the last, as they haven't booked us for a while. [laughs]

ALAS: We went to Kenya with Kate Moss, to this place called the Paradise Island.

PIGGOTT: Which turned into a misery island.

ALAS: On the plane, this marine biologist told me we were going to get a red tide, a toxic flood that was killing all the sea life. I told the crew, who, of course, thought I was exaggerating. The next morning we woke up to the red tide and the entire beach was covered with dead fish. The whole story was supposed to be shot in the water, which we couldn't even touch, as it was also toxic to humans. We were trying to think of ways to shoot that didn't involve Kate getting into the water—we even built a raft. Time was running out but we were somehow hysterical, laughing the whole time.

PIGGOTT: I remember shooting with Grace [Coddington] and Lara [Stone] near a beach, and as the picture developed, we decided we wanted a baby in the shot. So Grace went down the road and borrowed a baby from a family nearby, which was so funny.

TISCI: How did you meet Kate?

PIGGOTT: I met her through Stella [McCartney] at [Central] Saint Martins.

ALAS: I met Kate at [photographer] Mark Lebon's party. I walked up to her and said, "Hi. You are going to model for me someday." She said, "Yeah, right," and walked away. [all laugh]

TISCI: Describe perfection in photos in three words.

ALAS: Substance.

PIGGOTT: Beauty.

ALAS: Style.

TISCI: I'm sure you have some disagreements. How do you resolve things while you are shooting?

PIGGOTT: For the amount of the time we spend together, we really don't fight that much.

ALAS: Totally. It's not fighting, but there are lots of disagreements. Which I think is very healthy. If I had a partner who agreed with every one of my opinions and choices, it would be boring and unstimulating. It would drain me. I love a challenge, a critic to ignite my inspiration. I like going through some suffering to make something beautiful.

TISCI: How do you think your style has evolved?

ALAS: When you are a punk, you are a punk, it doesn't matter what you achieve or how successful or recognized you become. Look at Björk or Vivienne Westwood or Marina [Abramovic]—it doesn't matter where you get to in life, the core element of your character is stuck with you till the end. What I do miss, though, is the purity and the bravery that comes with inexperience. You kind of throw yourself into a battleground with nothing to lose but your poor head.

PIGGOTT: We had no fear in the '90s, when we started. We were so much more free, raw—not just "we" as in Mert and Marcus, but "we" as in all of the '90s generation.

ALAS: I agree. The '90s was a special moment for all of us. It was the birth of the new language in art and fashion. It was about breaking rules, not sales records. And we are at a plateau of creativity in society at the moment. It's all very marketing-conscious now-no more mistakes, no more accidents. We really need to fight this. We can't have art that's been programmed and sold. We have to be inspired to inspire, and rules are not inspiring.

TISCI: You make great images-you practically make dreams. Some say retouching is an art form. What do you think? How do you describe your process?

PIGGOTT: Like the darkroom where we used to play with chemicals, our tools have changed, but intentions are still the same.

ALAS: Man Ray used to retouch, so did Avedon. Some people confuse image-making with image-enhancing. We all know that you can slim out a waist, brighten up eyes, and take wrinkles off, but our work goes far beyond this. It's about making something, not faking something.

TISCI: So what do you guys think about photographers adopting your style?

PIGGOTT: It's always a compliment.

ALAS: I like the fact that we inspire other artists, the way we were inspired once ourselves. But believe me, sometimes I look at a picture and say, "Wow, when did we shoot that?" And my assistants answer, "We didn't!" Which is really ****ing annoying. [laughs]

TISCI: Tell me about the icons of yesteryear that you would have loved to shoot.

ALAS: Visually, Marilyn Monroe.

PIGGOTT: Debbie Harry.

TISCI: How about any women of our time that you haven't worked with but would love to work with?

ALAS: Honey, we've worked with them all!

PIGGOTT: How about Bette Midler? She is so talented. I love her.

TISCI: You are very famous for transforming people. Is there someone you would love to make into an M&M woman?

ALAS: Anna Wintour.

TISCI: Which artists do you admire the most?

PIGGOTT: As a child, I used to find it very intense looking at Bosch, almost like an out-of-body experience. There was so much to explore in his work, all the details and scenarios and sexuality in one painting. And the first time I saw a French Vogue with pictures by Helmut Newton was super intense.

ALAS: I associate myself with the late 1920s and early '30s, with the beginning of surrealism, Dada, Bellmer, Dalí, Delvaux. I wish I were a part of something like that, or the Beat generation.

TISCI: Where would you love to shoot?

ALAS: The moon. Or heaven.

TISCI: What does the word sex mean to you?

ALAS: Confusion, spontaneity. For me, flesh and nudity does not represent sex in any way. It is the unknown, something behind the wall, that is sexual.

PIGGOTT: Fantasies. Power and imagination.

TISCI: You shoot swans or a car in flames, but in all the craziness and surreal ideas, you seem to always have a reality that I connect to. I think that's why people get really attached to your work—it's a dream but they feel as though they can be part of this dream.

ALAS: We think a lot while we shoot—before, during, and after—about the world of the subject. Would this chair be right for her? Would she sit with that robe? So, we create this dream as we go along. And spontaneity brings some reality and life to the image ... Oh, Ricky, I don't really know!

TISCI: What don't you like about your work?

ALAS: It would be great to have more time for ourselves. But you choose your path, so you could have more time if you choose to.

PIGGOTT: Also you start to compete with yourself and want to make every picture better than the one before, which adds to the stress. It would be great to have more time to develop some film ideas—which we are doing.

ALAS: This year we have been good, though. We took fewer assignments so we could have some weekends to do other things, like work on our first book.

TISCI: Book? That was my next question. How have you guys not yet had any big exhibitions or made any books?

ALAS: I didn't think we were ready. We really are the biggest critics of our own work, so it's hard to impress ourselves. And we wanted time to create this repertoire and not push it. Now the time has come. Let's see.

TISCI: What is the last thing you think before you close your eyes at night?

ALAS: "Hope I wake up tomorrow!"

RICCARDO TISCI IS THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF GIVENCHY.

interviewmagazine.com

 

[Fiercification]

Léa Seydoux by Peter Lindbergh

Styled by: Ludivine Poiblanc
Hair: Odile Gilbert
Make-Up: Aude Gill

Peter Lindbergh is a German photographer born in 1944 in what is now Poland. He lives in Paris, New York, and the Provencal town of many a van Gogh sunflower, Arles. And perhaps it is this cosmopolitan cocktail or the wanderings of his youth that give such sumptuous depth to his classical portraits, often in black-and-white, of the most beautiful women of the last half-century. So iconic are these images that it's difficult to even hear the word supermodel without picturing Christy, Linda, Cindy, Naomi, Stephanie, and Helena, prancing on a beach arm in arm or huddled in a New York street in Lindbergh's often imitated minimalist pictures of the era.

As Lindbergh explains to actress Léa Seydoux, whom he photographed with signature power and intimacy in a Parisian hôtel particulier, this legacy allows him to explore even more deeply the personal and political dimensions of his work. He wants to both tell a story and tell it like it is.


LÉA SEYDOUX: So, Peter, it's my first interview. I'm very excited. [laughs] I want to start from the beginning, when you were a kid. What were your first obsessions?

PETER LINDBERGH My first obsession was actually sports. I was a very good handball goalkeeper. With special permission, I played in the premier league in Germany before I was even old enough. When I became 18 years old, I knew I definitely didn't want to go to the German military service, so I went to Switzerland and stopped my sports career. Eight months later, I went to Berlin for a year and a half, and that's where I learned about culture and art and everything. Before that, I lived in total absence of culture. I come from a house where there was nothing like reading or art—the opposite of yours.

SEYDOUX: And when did your fascination begin with Vincent van Gogh?

LINDBERGH: When I went to the Academy [of Arts], in Berlin, they wanted you to paint and draw as realistically as possible, saying that was the basis for an artist. I was flabbergasted and said to myself, "What? This is from the past." I thought, "No, this is not my place. I want to go to Arles, because van Gogh lived there, and I want to see the light and everything else he used as inspiration for his revolutionary paintings." I was inspired by his powerful interpretation of nature. So I hitchhiked to Arles and stayed there for eight months. That's more exciting than drawing realist pictures for two years, no?

SEYDOUX: Did you discover photography in art school?

LINDBERGH: No, not at all. After the eight months in Arles, I hitchhiked through Spain, Morocco, and the south of France for another year and a half. When I came back, I stopped in Düsseldorf, and then went to art school in Krefeld, where I studied for three and a half years. I did something called "free painting," but never touched photography. It's a long story why I stopped being a painter, because I was quite successful in the beginning. I had an exhibition at Galerie Denise René, Hans Mayer in Krefeld, one of the great avant-garde galleries in Germany, in September 1969, while I was still in art school, which was rather a miracle. When I finished art school, I went to live in Düsseldorf and something surprising took place. I read an article by Klaus Honnef about conceptual art and went to see Joseph Kosuth's piece One and Three Chairs [1965]. The work of Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, Douglas Huebler, and others turned all my knowledge about art upside down. I could not accept what I did anymore. I wanted to do something different, a project that touched people intellectually. But that didn't really feel like me. So I decided to stop working as an artist, to find out where I really wanted to go. For six or seven months, I didn't do anything, which was very unusual for me. And then, accidentally, a friend of mine knew of a photographer friend who was looking for an assistant. So I went to assist [Hans Lux]. Nearly two years later, about 1973, I started my own studio in Düsseldorf. That was the switch from art to photography. Now people ask whether photography is art, but I think the question is of absolutely no interest.

SEYDOUX: Is there a link between your painting and pictures?

LINDBERGH: Everything is linked. It's about expression or about taking a position. The photographer, even in fashion and portraiture, has to have a standpoint. It's important to know what you stand for, no? [laughs] Most people just take pictures but they stand for nothing. They follow trends and don't know why.

SEYDOUX: How did you come to fashion?

LINDBERGH: When I started, art photography, like that of Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Struth, didn't exist. There were artists doing photography, like Michael Heizer and [Walter] De Maria, but they were just documenting their work. So fashion photography was the creative path for a photographer. Comme des Garçons came to France in the '80s, and getting commissioned by them was as artistic as it could get. I still think Rei Kawakubo is more an artist than a designer, no? I thought fashion was just the pretext to do images with lots of freedom and get them published in magazines. You could express your point of view, make statements about women and about what you believe in.

SEYDOUX: What was the industry like then?

LINDBERGH: In the end of the '70s, everything was starting. Karl Lagerfeld was in Paris. I was sent to Milan to photograph Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace, and nobody knew them yet.

SEYDOUX: What was your first shoot that really broke through?

LINDBERGH: While I was in Germany, I photographed primarily for advertising. My images were apparently different. At one point somebody from the editorial world saw my work and said, "I want you to work for Stern magazine." It was the big German magazine at the time—not fashion, but twice a year it had a 14-page spread reporting on the shows in Paris, which was usually shot by Helmut Newton, Hans Feurer, or Guy Bourdin. I was really surprised when they called me. I didn't have much culture at this time—I didn't take inspiration from other photographers—which in a way helped to find my own images. The first fashion series I did for them was ridiculously successful. And from there, I got calls from Paris, from magazines like Marie Claire, saying, "We'll give you a contract. Come work for us every month."

SEYDOUX: Who are your favorite subjects? Is there a type of woman you find exciting to photograph again and again?

LINDBERGH: When I start thinking about a story, I don't start by thinking about the fashion, but about who I want to photograph and what the story should be about. In the story I just did, I wanted to photograph a woman who left her house and her family and took a ferry boat from England to the French coast, where she has never been, to come to terms with herself. To work like this is a very beautiful process.

SEYDOUX: Is there anyone you wish to photograph?

LINDBERGH: God, yes. I would love to photograph Angelina Jolie. A friend of mine is working with her on her next film and told me what I was already suspecting, that she is extremely interesting. I have never seen a picture of her that conveys all of her complexity. That would be a fabulous challenge, to find that in a photograph.

SEYDOUX: What are your favorite photographs that you've taken?

LINDBERGH: In 1990 I did a story with Helena Christensen about a woman who lives in a trailer in the middle of the desert and finds a little crushed UFO with a martian who has survived the crash. She takes him home, and they fall in love. Later he has to meet with his fellow martians who have arrived to rescue him. It's a sad ending. [laughs] This was my first truly narrative story and apparently the first narrative story in fashion photography.

SEYDOUX: Who are your inspirations, the photographers you love?

LINDBERGH: I grew up with [Richard] Avedon, Irving Penn, and Helmut Newton—the masters of the previous generation. Each had a distinctive and totally personal style. But I also love and admire photographers like Don McCullin, a British war reporter, who worked for The Sunday Times and said of himself, "I want to be the toughest photographer in the world." And Sebastião Salgado, the great Brazilian master of social documentary. I admire Diane Arbus for her intense honesty and Bruce Weber for his own distinctive style.

SEYDOUX: Can you tell me a little about your meditation practice?

LINDBERGH: In the beginning of my twenties, I started transcendental meditation. For years I did nothing else. Every holiday I went to courses. Meditation is a real simple instrument. You don't need a long beard or a sari. It's meant to bring you to yourself. It's as easy as that. And that's what it's all about, being alone with yourself every day, for 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening.

SEYDOUX: What do you do?

LINDBERGH: I have a mantra, which I start thinking, or rather, feeling. And by feeling your mantra inside of you, you slowly separate from everything around you. After a few minutes, you are just with yourself, without any thoughts. Just you. I've been doing it for over 45 years and, because of it, have a very different relationship with myself. You become another person, with a very different sensibility. That sounds very dramatic, but it's a very simple thing.

SEYDOUX: I have a last question, Peter. Why do you photograph?

LINDBERGH: Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and everything you are to say something about and be part of the world around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself. No?

FRENCH ACTRESS LÉA SEYDOUX’S UPCOMING FILMS INCLUDE SAINT LAURENT AND THE LOBSTER.

interviewmagazine.com

 

[Fiercification]

Nicole Kidman by Steven Klein

Styled by: Karl Templer
Hair: Garren
Make-Up: Diane Kendal



interviewmagazine.com

 

[Fiercification]

Cont.

Growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, Steven Klein wanted to become a painter, and while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, he became enamored with the work of English painter Francis Bacon. In retrospect, those kinetic portraits of turmoil for which Bacon is famous now seem to anticipate much of the provocative photography that Klein would go on to do. But, whether shooting a portfolio of Brad Pitt or Madonna (both of whom he has worked with regularly for years) or a fashion campaign for the likes of Alexander Wang or Dolce & Gabbana, Klein's images inhabit their own signature physical and psychological terrain. It is as if his pictures, frequently featuring nymphs and icons in various stages of bondage, have had all hope and celebrity and color siphoned from them to reveal some elemental otherness, a dream world purely of Klein's creation.

It was only a matter of time before the photographer, now 49, applied his vividly cinematic vision to the making of a movie, and that time seems to have finally come. Next year, Klein will direct his first feature-length film, a drama called Iced, under the watchful tutelage of director Lee Daniels, who is producing the film. In preparation for his big-screen debut, Klein cast Oscar winner Nicole Kidman as the latest damsel he directs into artful distress—a role well within range for the actress who plays a trauma victim suffering from amnesia in this month's Before I Go to Sleep, opposite Colin Firth. Shortly after the shoot, the actress and soon-to-be director caught up by phone to talk about loves, limbo, and the power of purpose.


STEVEN KLEIN: Hi, Nicole. The thing is that we both hate talking on the phone.

NICOLE KIDMAN: [laughs] I always said that. I had so much fun on the shoot. It was very inspiring. You create a beautiful sort of limbo world, which is nice to exist in.

KLEIN: I was curious how you felt. If it's like when you've built worlds—like working with Kubrick—constructing reality as opposed to being in reality.

KIDMAN: I like creating a bubble, and that was a bubble. I didn't expect it, so that's always good, too. But it does have a dreamlike quality. The whole thing felt like a dream. And at the end of the day, I went, "Did I do that?"

KLEIN: Oh, that's good.

KIDMAN: [laughs] So, when was the first time you picked up a camera?

KLEIN: Probably when I was 14 years old and a friend of mine gave me a camera. At the time, I was really into making things out of clay. I was digging in the backyard to get my own clay and making pottery. And then I started taking pictures and built my own darkroom. I would go out at six in the morning and just take pictures. There was a mental institution near my house, and I would donate time teaching mentally ill patients how to do ceramics. I photographed them as well. So those were my first pictures.

KIDMAN: That's amazing. And do you view the world through a lens?

KLEIN: Yes. I guess it's a shield as well as my tool. But that's the way I've always seen things and been able to express myself. I didn't do so well in the academic world, so I think the only way I could express myself was through visual art—anything I could get my hands on, whether it was glassblowing, sculpture, painting, or photography. I always wanted to be a painter. Or a farmer.

KIDMAN: A farmer?

KLEIN: I don't know why. That's my earliest memory, wanting to be a farmer. Isolated. I have a farm now, but I'm not an actual farmer.

KIDMAN: Do you like the simplicity of that?

KLEIN: I do. Growing up, that's how I saw myself, living very simply, an artist on a farm creating work. My work is the antithesis of that. And directing—when you have a hundred people around—is the opposite of that.

KIDMAN: Why do you love horses so much?

KLEIN: Oh, that's a very personal story, but I had a huge crush on a girl when I was 13 years old. This older guy—I think he was probably four or five years older than me—wanted to meet her and he had a horse. I lived in the suburban area, and he lived in a farm area. One day he came over to my house with his horse, and I said, "Well, let's go to my girlfriend's house and show her the horse." And so we went over to her house and then he took her for a ride, took her to the lake, and then they never came back.

KIDMAN: [laughs] The seduction of the girl—very powerful.

KLEIN: I went home crying. But I was just attracted to horses. I remember driving by a horse show and seeing this beautiful white horse going over jumps, and it looked like he was flying. He looked like Pegasus. I love horses and love being with them. I like the precision of training and riding.

KIDMAN: I like riding very powerful horses. And being a little afraid.

KLEIN: The fear factor—that's why I like jumping. I'm always a bit nervous even though I've been doing it for 20 years. I've fallen a bunch, but this recent fall, in June, was the first time I broke my arm.

KIDMAN: I've jumped for films, but I don't now. I mean, I used to jump out of planes and all sorts of stuff, but I've now tamped it down a little bit. Maybe when I'm in my seventies, I'll start back up with all that stuff, but I feel the desire to stay alive now.

KLEIN: Well, when you have children ...

KIDMAN: I just feel like I'm in the world right now. There have been times when I haven't felt in the world, when I haven't cared whether I was going to be here or not, so my relationship with being on the earth was probably not as intense. And right now, there's an intensity—I want to be here.

KLEIN: It's sometimes hard to be in this reality. Sometimes you feel like a foreigner.

KIDMAN: I suppose that's why I loved going into your set, because I love the limbo. I do believe that there are many different realms we can exist in, and a lot of this is just a dream state anyway.

KLEIN: It's supposed to be an illusion.

KIDMAN: Now you're going to do your film. That's a huge step for you.

KLEIN: I know, a scary one. [laughs] The funny thing is that I almost find it more difficult now to take a still picture than to be behind a moving camera. I'm just so much more inspired and comfortable and confident when I have that whole operation going. I feel more connected. Snapping a moment doesn't seem relevant to me anymore.

KIDMAN: I remember Jane Campion saying to me that she had the best film professor and that he would make her and her classmates tell stories with no words. You do that very naturally. I love acting with very little dialogue. As long as it's supported. I mean, in terms of cinema, you can have a great monologue, but if you're not supported by the images ... You can be feeling things and then you see it back, and you're like, "None of that came across." Or the angle of my face gives it a completely different interpretation than what I was trying to communicate.

KLEIN: It's so important—the fractions of inches. But I love that you're a risk-taker.

KIDMAN: From Stanley [Kubrick], I learned never to say no to an idea, to try things because you never know where it's going to lead, and I love the mystery. I love intimacy. I love being really, really close. That's probably why I don't do well in big parties, because I'd much prefer the deeper conversations, the one-on-one. I like deep intimacy.

KLEIN: That's how you get to really know somebody, but I think a lot of people like to know people superficially and don't go and investigate or challenge them. Even as friends, people don't challenge each other.

KIDMAN: I've just always been interested in how people lead their lives. How they survive in this world. I'm curious about people's damage, and navigating that and the way people forgive. I find it really interesting. That's why we have to transform on a daily basis, work on ourselves. It's work. I find the nighttime—3 a.m.—is when I have a huge sort of epiphany or gasp, like, [gasps] "What is this? What have I done? I've wasted my whole life. What is my life?" [laughs] Just at 3 a.m. "Why did I spend my 20 years doing this? What am I really doing with my life? What does it really mean? Who am I?" Ugh. That's when it really becomes apparent that this is probably all just a dream state.

KLEIN: I get those. But you have to just be, to stay awake in it.

KIDMAN: That's when I need to go swim in the ocean.

KLEIN: Does that help?

KIDMAN: It does for me. But I'm Australian, and I grew up with waves. I bodysurf. I'm excited for you to do a movie.

KLEIN: I feel really blessed that Lee [Daniels] is mentoring me. He's been so kind and helpful. What would you say are the most important things you get from a director?

KIDMAN: Understanding, space to create, and being incredibly detailed—being able to go, "I like that, I want that. I don't want that, I want that." Do you love having a passion in life, having something that you feel drawn to and still want to do?

KLEIN: Oh, I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world. It saved my life, because I was definitely going down the wrong road, and art, photography saved my life. I've known since I was 13 or 14 what I wanted to do. I was on this path, although I've had really difficult times, and maybe things didn't happen as fast as I wanted them to. But I feel like that's the lucky thing that I have is always knowing what I wanted to do.


NICOLE KIDMAN IS AN ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING ACTRESS. HER UPCOMING FILMS INCLUDE BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP, OUT THIS MONTH, AND WERNER HERZOG'S QUEEN OF THE DESERT.

interviewmagazine.com

 

[Fiercification]

Amber Valletta by Craig McDean

Styled by:Karl Templer
Hair: Eugene Souleiman
Make-Up: Diane Kendal

It's fitting that one of the early loves of British export Craig McDean was music. The photographer, who currently lives in New York with his wife, the shoe designer Tabitha Simmons, and their children, grew up frequenting clubs and shooting local bands in Manchester in the '80s. And he's translated that subcultural fluency into a career creating lyrical, graphic, and kinetic images for Interview, Vogue, and i-D and brands like Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, and Yohji Yamamoto—while regularly taking striking portraits of rock royalty (Yoko Ono, Thom Yorke, and Jay Z among them) along the way.

After dropping out of art school and then assisting fellow Brit Nick Knight in London, McDean came into his own in the minimal-minded '90s with campaigns for Calvin Klein and Jil Sander. His early assignments led McDean to one of his dearest friends and longtime subjects, supermodel and actress Amber Valletta, with whom he's collaborated for over 20 years. When they caught up via phone in late July, Valletta got a rare chance to put McDean under the lens.


AMBER VALLETTA: Do you remember the first time we met?

CRAIG McDEAN: It was in 1993. We made you silver for French Glamour. We've worked together ever since.

VALLETTA: You saw me differently than anybody I'd ever worked with. You allowed me to be the kooky, crazy kid that I was. There's a bit of madness, too, that happens when we work together.

McDEAN: That was the fun that came out of it. That was at the very beginning of my career. I was totally new as well, humping this big old 8-by-10 plate camera around. I still look at the pictures today, and I still love them to death. We shot with [makeup artist] Pat McGrath and [hairstylist] Eugene Souleiman. We all didn't know what we were doing—let's face it. [laughs]

VALLETTA: No, we didn't. [laughs] But we figured it out together.

McDEAN: Yeah. It's like a band, everyone having their say and experimenting. It was a wonderful day.

VALLETTA: I know you photographed rock bands early on. What were you like as a kid?

McDEAN: Probably not the greatest kid at school. I should have done better, but ...

VALLETTA: Well, I imagine that you were very smart. Why didn't you do better?

McDEAN: I don't know. I was really into music and I spent a lot of time in Manchester jamming around. I also had a great love of fashion, especially what was coming out of London. Growing up in Manchester was a big inspiration. The Happy Mondays were just coming out, and the Stone Roses. Before that was the Clash and that punk attitude. I was very young at the time, but I was interested in that dress sense and what was going on. I was more into fashion than I was into photography. I used to go to all these clubs where people would dress up. I should have been studying or whatever, but I wasn't. [laughs]

VALLETTA: Well, it paid off. Did you have any hobbies?

McDEAN: I was into motorcycles from a very young age, so on the weekends I went to motocross and was documenting that. My father was an amateur filmmaker, and I started taking photographs from a young age. I never thought that I would make a profession out of it. It was just something that interested me—recording. To be honest, at the time, I was more interested in war photography. National Geographic was my favorite magazine as a kid.

VALLETTA: Do you ever dream of doing stuff like that now?

McDEAN: Of course. I guess the closest I've ever gotten is the sumo wrestlers [McDean's 1990s photographs of sumo wrestlers in Japan were published in 2011's Sumo]. Most of my college projects were photographing landscapes, so I did that for years. When I went car-racing, I documented the whole thing. I got to see a lot of America doing that.

VALLETTA: You studied photography. When did you go to London and get into fashion?

McDEAN: I was at Blackpool [and the Fylde] College but left before I finished my degree. I was looking at a lot of photographers at the time, and I really loved what Nick Knight was doing in i-D. I wasn't that big a reader of fashion magazines. I just wrote to Nick and [stylist] Charlotte [Stockdale], asking, "Is there any place I could stay? Could you give me a job?" I was coming to London to see museums and exhibitions, so I stopped by Nick's printer's one day when he was printing a story for Arena Homme Plus. I sat with him, talking for hours, and then I said, "I'll come down next week and work for free." That was where it all started.

VALLETTA: Would you hire someone now if they wrote to you? Would you give them time and energy if you talked to them and liked them?

McDEAN: Definitely. A lot of my assistants come that way.

VALLETTA: That's so cool. What did you admire about Nick's work?

McDEAN: It was something I'd never seen before in photography. He was doing these beautiful catalogs with [graphic designer] Peter Saville for Yohji Yamamoto. To see those pictures of Susie [Bick] smoking [for Yamamoto's Fall/Winter 1988 ad campaign]; it was just so ahead of his time.

VALLETTA: I imagine he's still a great friend of yours.

McDEAN: Every time I'm in London, I see him. I never saw myself as an assistant. I just saw myself as a friend, hanging out and talking to him about photography for hours, late nights and evenings. We were best friends. Did you ever work with him?

VALLETTA: I did. I worked with Nick a lot back in the '90s. I just remember how gentle he was. There was always flexibility, but he also knew exactly what he wanted. The interesting thing for me about working with different photographers was, once you've worked with them, you know their style, you know their mood, the way they move creatively. I shape-shift. I bring a part of myself, but my job is to interpret what they're dreaming.

McDEAN: It's funny because when I photographed you, you always seemed to "get it." [laughs] I would say something like, "I don't want something that's normal," and you always seemed to have it.

VALLETTA: I think that is from working together a long time, but I also think the people you work with best are the people who you connect with on a deeper level. If it's somebody I can't interpret, then I can't give them, ultimately, what they're looking for. I mean, you and I have been good friends for, like, 20 years, right?

McDEAN: Oh my God, we're like soul mates.

VALLETTA: What were some of your first big breaks in fashion? I know the Jil Sander campaign [in 1995] was big. And Calvin Klein [in 1995].

McDEAN: The Jil Sander campaigns, with you and then Guinevere [van Seenus, in 1996], wrote a new chapter in my life. Coming to America and working for W magazine with Dennis Freedman, that was really the launch pad in America. Then, Harper's Bazaar and Fabien Baron. It was such a creative place to work. But, going back to Jil Sander and working with [art director] Marc Ascoli, and the very late nights ...

VALLETTA: [laughs] Yeah, we put in some long hours.

McDEAN: Up to two, three in the morning? I don't know.

VALLETTA: I think at five everyone started discussing the meaning of a sweater.

McDEAN: We were talking about a shirt for, like, four hours.

VALLETTA: [laughs] It's funny, I don't remember tons of shoots, but I remember almost all of our shoots. I wanted to ask you about the other women you've worked with over the years and how they inspired you. Kate [Moss], Shalom [Harlow], and Guinevere [van Seenus] have been big. Especially Guinevere and Kate, because you did a book [Amber, Guinevere, & Kate Photographed by Craig McDEAN: 1993-2005] with all three of us.

McDEAN: The most important thing is that, when you work with somebody, you build a rapport with that person. They have a certain trust in you. You don't have to explain that much. It's very hard when you photograph someone who's a fresh face and then you don't work with them again for six months. All these people I work with over and over again have qualities that I love. There's something very free about them or there are some slight imperfections about them. I think the more you work with someone, the pictures get better and better. To tell you the truth, all you girls make my life so easy.

VALLETTA: Even though we're getting older and the lines are getting harder? [laughs]

McDEAN: You just can't work till three in the morning anymore, that's all. I get it. Me neither.

VALLETTA: Would you ever make a film?

McDEAN: I start filming in September.

VALLETTA: What are you shooting?

McDEAN: Oh, ****, I don't want to say. It will be revealed soon.

VALLETTA: We should make a short. That would be cool.

McDEAN: I won't kill you in 20 minutes though, Amber.

VALLETTA: You promise? My TV show, Revenge, tried to kill me, like, four times and I kept surviving. [McDean laughs]

McDEAN: You keep coming back. That's amazing. You're like a cat, really. What haven't you done that you'd like to do?

VALLETTA: I'd like to do a sick feature film with somebody like David Lynch. Fashion has seen me like that, but film hasn't. They always want to make me the pretty girl next door. They don't realize how twisted I am. [laughs]

McDEAN: I could give them a whole dossier of that. Well, I'll try to write a film for you. I'll work a twisted film for you. Okay?

AMBER VALLETTA IS A MODEL AND ACTRESS CURRENTLY LIVING IN LOS ANGELES.

interviewmagazine.com

 

[Miss Dalloway]

Absolutely disgusted by Klein/Kidman story! Nothing creative there, just cheap controversy bait edit, go home!

 

[mistress_f]

Yeah i'm usually a big fan of klein's work, even the most controversial, but this just rubs me the wrong way. there's not an inch of sensuality or sexual tension, just uneasiness here

 

[kokobombon]

Is this the first time that Keira posed naked?

 

[schiapschiap]

Peter Lindbergh's shoot is just gorgeous. He captured her so well.

I'm not into Steven Klein's shoot at all. It's icky without being interesting.

Thanks very much for posting, Fiercification!

 

[Fiercification]

Absolutely disgusted by Klein/Kidman story! Nothing creative there, just cheap controversy bait edit, go home!

MTE...although I'm honestly not surprised. There's literally no fashion in the story and so many repetitive shots...

Let's wait for Jansson's story but I imagine there's more to the content than the photogs' stories, as most of the typical advertiser's clothes haven't even shown up so far.

 

[kokobombon]

There are some interesting pics in Klein´s editorial, very film noir. But unless you point the reference, I just don´t see it... I still get the r*pe feeling.

imo M&M´s pics are the most underwhelming of the whole issue.

 

[GlamVal]

OMG M&M's book is coming ?

 

[blueorchid]

I think I enjoyed Lindbergh's interview the most.