A couple of Sundays ago, his only day-off, André De Shields and his long-time friend/impresario Merle Frimark warmly welcomed us in his Hell’s Kitchen eagle’s nest, cramped with his many books, records, scripts and his own writings, around the rehearsal piano; in a corner of the room, the wig for his acclaimed Frederick Douglass role.
And before you ask, yes it actually is Diana Ross on the photo above him.
A few days before, Kat Malott at The Wall Street Journal had gotten me invited for tea time to illustrate the ‘house call’ interview of the Mansion weekly supplement. She didn’t know it yet, but she had just offered me one of the loveliest moments of my career.
Now, I am usually fairly selective on here, but when the ‘Wiz’ dances and does his Jerry Lewis impersonation for you, you forget branding and you post the photos!
Bassem Youssef has quite a biography - from heart surgeon to being the ‘Jon Stewart of Egypt’, hosting a satirical show “Al Bernameg”, and subsequently pissing off both the Muslim Brotherhood and the military regime to the point that he had to stop for his own safety.
A couple of weeks ago, I spent a moment with tech’s most well-dressed “enfants terribles” Rameet Chawla & Ryan Matzner, the minds behind Fueled. Read Adweek’s profile here
Laurence Fink founded Blackrock in 1988, his company employs 10.000 people, has $3.5 trillion under management and his annual salary is equivalent to the GPD of Bangladesh.
Therefore, last Thursday, from 4.17PM to 4.20PM, he met me.
You can read the excellent profile by Alexandra Wolfe here.
Fun fact: All numbers above are accurate.
A couple of month ago, Leslie Dela Vega asked me, almost as a favor, if I could stop-by Rolling Stone’s offices, for literally 5 minutes, as she had managed to coerce legendary senior editor David Fricke, a notoriously reluctant subject, into posing for a new contributor photo.
Last december, American Way magazine sent me on a mission to portray Michael Davies and Roger Bennett, aka the Men in Blazers.
Props included 6-packs of Guinness and a soccer ball, chaos ensued…
I wish to express my gratefulness again to the two interns who had to clean beer off the ceiling, and to the Men in Blazers for not making us pay for the dry-cleaning, the carpet and the two broken lamps.
You can check the issue online here, or by booking an American Airlines ticket going somewhere cool.
Where they serve colorful cocktails with those funny paper parasols.
I have a very fond memory of a morning spent with him and his wife/muse Janice, in their tiny book-filled Upper-East side apartment, on assignment for The Wall Street Journal.
Christmas came early this year!
Just a few days before I left, the amazing Ronnie Weil at The Wall Street Journal, who will get showered under french treats upon my returnal, sent me to photograph Christoph Waltz at a midtown hotel.
Although he had spent the day doing those god-awful press junkets, Mr Waltz accepted all my fantasies with extreme patience and kindness.
Last september, I was sent to shoot fellow portrait photographer Tina Barney, at her Gramercy Park apartment, for Barron’s glossy quarterly supplement Penta.
I was asked to come with minimal equipment, no assistant, and to make it as quick as humanly possible.
Upon arrival, I realized that, as she put it herself, Mrs Barney “wasn’t really interested in this”, which I truly don’t judge severely since I would, myself, rather give you a lap dance in the nude than let you take my photo.
After a few shots near the window, and since there was no way i was going to avoid reflections in that mirror wall, I decided to own it and send in a self-portrait on my first assignment for Barron’s…
5 minutes later, Mrs Barney got up and just said “ok”.