Mind Your Manners

Prince 1980                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    © Deborah Feingold

Back In 1980, NYC offered two alternative weeklies for those who needed to be in the know: the Village Voice and the Soho Weekly News.  I was shooting for both back then and this assignment came from SWN.  The shoot was at the Bottom Line, a club in Greenwich Village famous for showcasing new artists.  The subject that night was then known as… Prince.  My photo editor instructed me to shoot the usual concert shots but also asked that I wrangle a backstage portrait.  Usually the editors handled that part of the assignment logistics but not this time. The concert stuff was easy for me, but having to talk my way backstage … not so easy for this shy girl.  There was a lot of noise about this mysterious young musician from Minneapolis, so I showed up early and waited by his dressing room door.   After fifteen minutes of light door knocking, a large man opened the door.  I looked up at him as he looked down at me; neither of us spoke.  Then I heard a weird, high-pitched sound come out of me, asking to take a photo of Prince.  His eyes never left my face as he shook his head no and shut the door. Privately relieved that I would only have to shoot the concert, I turned away just as the door reopened and an even larger man appeared.  He introduced himself as Prince’s manager and told me, with words, that Prince did not do photo shoots.  “Okay, just had to ask. Thank you.” I smiled and dashed off to jockey for position.  As the lights dimmed and the opening act walked onto the stage, I felt a  hand on my shoulder.  Turning around, I saw Prince’s manager signaling me to follow him.  When we arrived at Prince’s dressing room, he smiled and said, “You were so damn polite, c’mon in and take some pictures.”

Ps.  I’m not sure who was more shy that night.  We shot for about a minute.  I was extremely nervous as I struggled to engage him in the shoot.  Not knowing what else to do, I handed him my camera and suggested that he take a picture, which he seemed happy and relieved to do!

Me 1980                                                    © Prince

Just the way you are…

Most of what I’d been shooting up to this assignment had been jazz cats and just-about-to-be-famous musicians.  This shoot was my first official “Rock Star” assignment as well as my first cover shoot for Musician Magazine.  The big moment had finally arrived and I was so ready for it.  I packed my small amount of gear (one camera/one lens/one light) into my 1969 VW Bug,  left my even smaller West Village apartment and headed out to the middle of Long Island, New York.  As I approached Billy’s cloistered estate, nicely placed along the moneyed shores of Long Island Sound, I quickly discovered that my confidence had left me somewhere between the Midtown Tunnel and Exit 25 on the L.I.E.  The housekeeper showed me into the living room, and within a nanosecond of meeting Billy I knew that this was a man who did not partake in small talk… or any kind of talk.  The shoot started immediately and I was too nervous to come up with anything beyond comments like: ”Could you please sit here, would you mind standing there?”  So that’s what we did for thirty minutes.  He sat here and he stood there.  I had entered this assignment with a preconceived notion of what a shoot with a “Rock Star” was supposed to be like, so I froze up when that didn’t happen.  In my naïveté, I’d imagined that this rock and roll icon would perform for my camera.  I was so preoccupied trying to make that happen that I couldn’t see what was actually happening.
But then I did.
Billy Joel was at home, just being Billy Joel.
Sometimes “Just the way you are” is as good as it gets.
Or even better.

Billy Joel 1982                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             © Deborah Feingold

Minimal Methods

This is what I knew about Brian Eno before I walked into his rooftop loft in Soho in 1981: He was a composer, producer, visual artist, and the inventor of ambient music…whatever that was.  As soon as he opened the door I learned one more thing: That he was a man of very few, carefully selected words with an acre of space in between each one of them.  So much for introductory chitchat.   It’s always interesting to enter someone’s live/work space, especially when there is no distinction between the two.  Eno’s loft was enormous.  His walls were painted a bright white, the furnishings were sparse, and what was missing in home décor was compensated with more electronic devices than I had ever seen outside of Crazy Eddie’s.  He was editing a video piece when I arrived so I waited for him to give me a signal that we could start our photo session.  Twenty minutes passed and no signal.  I started to worry about the shoot.  I was accustomed to musicians being very outgoing and eager to be photographed, but, clearly, Eno was different. So I walked outside onto his rooftop and soon found myself mesmerized by the space.  The angles, the lines, the darkness.  The longer I looked the more I saw.  And that’s when I got it.
The background can be as important as the foreground.
I finally understood the meaning of ambient.

Brian Eno 1981                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              © Deborah Feingold

How do you photograph LOVE… you get down on your knees.

BB King’s love affair with Lucille was legendary.   Going into this shoot I knew that I wanted my pictures to show that passion.
I arrived at the club early and was ushered backstage to the dressing room area.  BB hadn’t arrived yet but I was told to go ahead in and set up my equipment.  The room was small and painted a pale green color that someone, somewhere once decided was the perfect shade of awful for an artist to surround himself in before going on stage. But those walls faded as my eyes scanned the room and then abruptly stopped.  Leaning against the wall, proudly showing off her curves and high satin finish was Lucille.  A moment later, BB entered the room and everything suddenly became electric.  BB took Lucille into his arms, and cradled her across his chest.  He smiled and I started snapping away.  A few frames into the shoot, I knew I was feeling the love, but I sensed that I was not “seeing” the love.
I stopped the session and quickly switched to a wider  camera lens.  Then I dropped to my knees, positioning myself right under his belly. I must have startled him because he started laughing, unsure of what was going to happen next.
There should have been a musical cue right then… by simply changing to a wider lens and a lower angle, I was able to compress, exaggerate and then illustrate their affection.
And that’s how you photograph LOVE.

B.B. King   NYC   1985                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  © Deborah Feingold