After being in the top of the foodchain of celebrity photgraphy for so many years, Greg Gorman now share his time between his two passions: teaching photography and making wine.
Text & photo by Jeff Dunas.
Greg Gorman has been a force to be reckoned with in the world of celebrity photography since the early eighties. He came up in a group that included Herb Ritts, Matthew Rolston, Paul Jasmin and Bruce Weber. He was the classic one. His portraits were always clear and crisp; It was easy to spot his work. The black and white work seemed to extend the tonal range towards the left and right – his mid-tones are right about zone 6. It was largely a West Coast school – though he came from Kansas. Jasmin had been an actor/model, Herb grew up on the westside of LA – Greg was a tall, rugged looking kid from Kansas who had the right style and the right approach for the time. He also had longevity – it’s been a great 40-year run and he’s climbed all the peaks in the business. His list of good friends includes everyone cool in Hollywood. He’s a mensch. People speak highly of him. Then, about seven or eight years ago, another principal passion began to overshadow his love of photography – that being his love of wine. To know Gorman is to appreciate good wine. In fact, a smorgasbord of wine. This led quite naturally to him bottling his own vintages since 2006. His other great passion is teaching photography. This love of photography, wine and teaching morphed into his high-end, celebrated workshop series, based in Mendocino, California, where he maintains his personal retreat. Students come to learn how to photograph portraits as well as male and female nudes – and are treated to great food prepared by his award-winning chef and extraordinary wines, – lots of wine – and often served by the winemakers themselves. A class act.
Jeff Dunas: How did you become such a wine enthusiast?
Greg Gorman: I’ve had a love interest in wine since the early seventies. It’s actually a great story and few people know it. It dates back to photography, obviously. In the early days, studios had a lot of money and working on all those assignments and movies, we got paid a reasonable fee in the day for what we were doing – but we also had really amazingly open, no-questions-asked-expense-accounts. This included everything being first class; the airfares, the hotels and… of course, most importantly, the dining!
JD: On your shootings…
GG:Well, it really all got started when I was living in a little one-bedroom apartment in Laurel Canyon and, of course, I had no money. I’d just gotten out of film school and was just kind of kicking around. The first wines that were really affordable were the Spanish wines – the Riojas. Marques de Riscal. They were $6.99 a bottle back then! This was 1974. Little by little my passion for wine kept growing – the wines kept getting a little more expensive…. ! By about 1982 or 1983, I had done a couple of movies, and I got on the movie, Tootsie. I got on well with Dustin [Hoffman]. In fact, and this is hot off the presses – I only discovered the other day, that in fact, on the day when I first showed up there to make special stills for the movie, Dustin saw me with my cameras and asked one of the production heads to throw me off the set! He really didn’t want to be photographed while he was working! So – they told me I’d have to leave at the end of the day. Being stubborn, I shot my pictures, had my films developed immediately and stopped by Dustin’s trailer before leaving. He let me in, apparently surprised, (I don’t remember any of this!) and I showed him the film. I guess he liked it because he then told the production to keep me on the film. I ended up doing five weeks on Tootsie.
JD: And…?
GG:A long digression – but at nights, we’d go to dinner at a great Italian restaurant – Castellanos I think it was – and there was this wild, flamboyant wine sommelier there named Walther, who was incredible. I remember he had one lens cracked on his glasses; I’d eat and drink there every night and we’d drink pretty damned good! One night I got totally turned onto Tignanello. It was probably a ’78 or ’80. It was one of Antinori’s premier Super Tuscans and I said to myself, ’Wow this is a fucking good bottle of wine!’ So I kind of got hooked on wine. I came back to LA and started buying wines. I think the first wine I was buying back in the seventies is now a kind of yuppie wine – but a good one: Silver Oak. It was awesome. Very fruit-forward but easily drinkable, beautiful fruit, nice tannins – great wine. Back then it was like a $29 bottle. Now it’s probably a hundred bucks!
JD: They have some very nice reds.
GG:Well, when you start drinking wines, it’s easy to be a total fucking wine snob: ’I only drink red wines.’ or ’I only drink BIG red wines with big sticker prices.’ So stupid! It isn’t until you really start learning about wine that you realize you don’t have to drink a ball-buster to drink a great bottle of wine. You realize there are a lot of great wines out there and a lot of great values. You learn that white wine is more than acceptable and many white wines are really amazing! A lot of people don’t get it. You don’t drink a lot of whites?
JD: I’m partial to French reds myself.
GG:Oh MAN! White wines are awesome! You gotta get into white wines! I drink a ton of white wine. Almost as much as red! There are so many great, great whites. In the early days I thought it was all about drinking big Cabernets, big Rhone blends or big Syrahs. Then, after drinking and enjoying so many great wines all these years, I realized it’s really about Pinot Noir. That’s my favorite grape. The real essence of wine is an elegant Pinot Noir. There’s one that just came out for example– absolutely wonderful, made by Chuck Wagner of Caymus fame. Considering the price point, it’s a tremendous wine! Jeff, you’re a Francophile – I’m not at all! It’s not really about French wines or Italian wines, which I prefer over French – it’s about your palate. Of course I love French wines. It’s just they really take their toll on your pocketbook if you’re drinking the great DRC’s or Burgundies, which I totally love! I prefer the match sticks, tobacco and sweaty saddle notes that go with Italian terroir over the barnyard notes that I often get from many of the French wines! It’s a question of finding what you like. I like to tease with you, because of course I love great Bordeaux’s and the like very much!
JD: You prefer Italy over France?
GG:I do! Italy for me is one of my favorite countries in Europe – one of the greatest in the world. It’s one of those countries you can go to on a first visit and you think it looks almost like a third-world country and all of a sudden you realize it has the best food, the best fashion, the best furniture and of course, the most beautiful girls – it’s got everything! Of course, how it works, and how they hold that country together is way beyond me…! I’ve fallen in love with Bologna. Bologna to me is probably one of the most extraordinary cities– so under the radar. I’ve published my last two books there with Damiani and I’ll hopefully do my next one there.
JD: How did you come in contact with Damiani?
GG:I’ve never really chased publishers. I’ve been very lucky, having published so many damned books. They called me and asked me if there was anything I wanted to do. It was kind of a war game to get the first one done the way I wanted but it worked out very well. It is a funny story. I had a book I wanted to do called In Their Youth, about young actors before they hit their mark. They were more vulnerable, more accessible; they didn’t have an image they had to promote yet – they could just be themselves. Damiani had a great design firm they wanted to work with – so they did the layout and sent it over. I don’t know why I agreed to that – you know me – I’m such a control freak! That’s one of the reasons I never became a cinematographer with my degree in film – I need too much control over my imagery and my image-making. So – I was excited with Damiani and agreed to send off a [hard] drive with all the photographs on it. I’d scanned everything myself, prepared all the files. The first layout came back and… it was hideous! Pink, blue and yellow pages ! I said, ’What fag did this fucking layout?’ I can say ’fag’ because I’m openly gay but I mean some fuckin’ fruit fly did this Goddamned layout that was ludicrous! I asked them if this jerk had taken the time to notice that I was a 60-year old man that shoots classic pictures – you know – I’m not a hip, trendy photographer. I’m certainly not the flavor of the month! The bottom line was this guy didn’t do any homework. I just said – ’Wait a minute. This is ridiculous.’ After a second disastrous attempt, I ultimately took all my pictures up to my home in Mendocino and called a couple buddies to come up and we did the layout in InDesign. I’m grateful I did the design myself because the book has my feeling, my flavor, my touch. Big advice to anyone doing a book – do your own layouts! A lot of the personality that goes into your work stems from how it is all put together. Now I’m very happy working with Damiani. Plus – going out in the evenings in Italy is not too difficult. So yes – I love Italy.
JD: Speaking of the Flavor of the Month – you were the flavor of the month at one time.
GG:Yes – back in 1910 or 1912!
JD: It was when you worked for Interview Magazine.
GG:Interview Magazine is what I really attribute to launching my career – shooting all those covers for them in those years. It was the early 80s.
JD: It was [Paul] Jasmin, Herb [Ritts]…
GG:It was Herb and Matthew [Rolston], myself, Bruce Weber and Mapplethorpe.
JD: For everyone else at the time it meant… something was happening, and ’we may not be in on this…’ It seemed like a club – and Interview was the magazine to work for. Everyone in NY looked at it. It was hugely influential.
GG:Who knew? I was actually on the set of an Alan Carr movie called Grease II. I was photographing Maxwell Caulfield who was the flavor of the month – he’d just done Entertaining Mr. Sloan off Broadway and they wanted him for a cover. That was my entrée into Interview. They called and asked if I could shoot him – telling me he had a ’bad boy reputation’ and that he was ’going to be difficult’. This was back in the day – so I can talk about this now: It was my first cover for Interview and I ended up going over to his house… this is such an 80’s story! I had a little vial of marching powder with me which I sent up to him, and we made great pictures [LOL] and to this day he and his lovely wife Juliette are two of my closest friends. A real 80’s drug story!
JD: How did you come to realize celebrity photography was going to be your thing?
GG:In the beginning, I’d never been able to shoot anything that couldn’t talk back to me. I started shooting rock’n’roll concerts in Kansas City. My dad didn’t want to have anything to do with me because I was a ’hippie’ – I had long hair then and pork-chop sideburns! So I came out here to LA and got a little apartment next to the Magic Castle. I basically started doing head-shots for actors and actresses. $35 a day and I thought I was making a killing. I paid my dues. In fact when I moved here after college at KU and then at USC, I drove a truck delivering photographic supplies in East LA for about a year and a half. So there I was, doing headshots and little by little – it built. I never assisted anyone – that was the strange thing. I never did much editorial work although in the very early days I shot celebrities for After Dark magazine. A little later it began for Interview and that really helped get my pictures out there. Through Interview, I met this beautiful person named Barbara DeWitt, the late sister of Bruce Weber, who had a public relations firm out here. Through her I met David Bowie and then David hooked me up with Iggy Pop. I also did a lot of work with Frank Zappa in the early days. Those relationships really helped to get the ball rolling. Then I started working on movies. I remember I did a little Sci-Fi movie for Roger Corman in the beginning. Then I had the chance to work with Barbra Streisand, who liked my work. Then came Tootsie, Big Chill, Scarface and The Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day Lewis.
JD: Forging relationships was the key.
GG:Yes – establishing the relationships and friendships with the talent. That’s what would hurt me now if I still wanted to do this work. Today the young art directors want to have the control – they don’t want a photographer who has a relationship with the talent. That’s the last thing they want. For me, the relationships with the talent that I developed were far more important than the relationships with the clients because clients come and go – but the talent are going to be around for a while.
JD: You and Herb and a few others realized that in the early eighties. That was new then. At that moment, talent really grasped the importance of working with someone they could trust – that they cared about.
GG:Those are the friendships that became lifelong friendships. Herb had his stable of stars and I had mine. ’Do you shoot with Herb Ritts? – No – I shoot with Greg Gorman!’ Anyway – it was a great run and I really loved what I did and I did it for a long time.
JD: Then you wound down a bit and something else began to get your juices going!
GG:I realized that I was bidding jobs that I wasn’t getting, and I said to myself – this is getting old! I really didn’t enjoy it anymore and there’s people out there that are a lot hungrier than I was by that time. I’m the least lazy person I know – it’s not that I was getting lazy – the passion and drive ebbs after so many years. I had the greatest time of my life doing it. I was on a roller-coaster ride and I was there when the studios really made it interesting to play the part! I couldn’t have had a better time but it reached a certain point where I felt I had been there, done that. In about 2005 or 2006 I kind of moved out of the genre of the movie work and was teaching a lot more. I love teaching, and I love wine.
JD: When did you start making wine yourself?
GG:I was asked by a major wine shop I knew in St. Helena called Acme Fine Wines if I was interested in shooting a wine label. Dave Phinney, a very talented young wine maker, had asked Acme if they knew anyone who might be able to shoot a wine label for him and they suggested me. He didn’t think he could afford me – but Acme told them ’You might be surprised – maybe he’d work for wine!’
JD: Did you?
GG:Of course I did! Actually I didn’t have to – we hit it off instantly and that night over dinner I kind of worked out a label design I shot for him in Photoshop. It’s a wonderful bottle of wine called Papillion. It’s just under his Mercury Head wine. Similar grapes- it’s a fantastic Cab blend. Beautiful. One night we were talking and I told him how I was such a wine lover – and of my dream to one day make my own wine. To my surprise, Dave said – ’Let’s do it – Let’s make some wine!’ So not knowing a lot about the actual wine making process- though I have a pretty good palette, I said ’What the hell! Let’s give it a shot!’
JD: Thus the Gorman Wine.
GG:Yes – he and his wine making assistant Kevin Fox – pulled together a bunch of barrel samples and we sat down and began tasting and evaluating what I liked. All blind – they didn’t say if it was a Merlot or a Cab – Cab Franc, Petit Verdot or whatever. We sampled all the wines – and I said I really liked this or that and that’s how we did the first 2006 vintage. It was really a Merlot and Petit Verdot blend, believe it or not. They were fantastic teachers, letting me take the lead on what I liked or didn’t like. That’s how I’ve begun to learn!
JD: No Pinot?
GG:No – there’s really not a lot of Pinot being grown right in Napa. The 2007 blend I did was very fruit-forward, primarily Cabernet. ’08 was like my ’07 – primarily Cab but a bit more complex and integrated. The ’09 is really a coferment with some Cabernet Franc. I’m very proud of this. If I could produce 1000 barrels a year I’d do it – but you know you’re relying on Mother Nature, the ripeness of the fruit, etc. I’ve stayed pretty true to my Cab vineyards I’m working with. I am doing 300 cases this year. It’s mostly St. Helena fruit. Now I have five vintages in the bottle!
JD: Do you visit the vineyards providing the grapes?
GG:Of course! I’m there for the bottling as well. What we do is get the general blend down – then it’s barreled, it sits there for 18 months basically with some racking (LOL!), we taste it as it gets closer, then we start tweaking it when it gets really close. I might add 5% of the next vintage fruit. If it’s the ’09, I’ll add, for example, 5% of the 2010 vintage. It strengthens the mid palette of the wine. Sometimes I’ll trick it out with a little Malbec or Petit Verdot and usually a little Merlot. This 2010 was pretty much a straight Cab. I didn’t make any wine in 2011.
JD: It wasn’t a good year up there.
GG:Right – it was cold; the fruit wasn’t really ripening. At the end people were letting it hang – then it rained a lot so there was a lot of rot and then heat etc. Aspergillus was a real problem in 2011. For 2012 the Cab Franc was really ripe.
JD: When did you realize that your passion for wine had overtaken your passion for photography?
GG:I’ll tell you – shooting for me in the early phase of my career was like getting all jacked up – it was invigorating. So much energy! Then I realized something – that energy was waning. But – when I’d meet wine makers and I’d be up in Napa, or the Central Coast or Tuscany or wherever – all of a sudden my energy was higher again. I’d get really amped up and excited! I held a very high level of respect for these folks. I love meeting wine makers. I love hearing their stories. This led me to realize that this was what I needed to be doing at this stage in my life. I loved what I did for a living – I loved being a photographer working in the movie business. I made so many awesome relationships. Then it began to take a back seat for me. I did it for a long time. Sure I did my male and female nudes as a kind of escape but my job was the movie business.
JD: And now?
GG:Now I really get excited when I see I’ve really turned the lights on for one of my students. You learn as a teacher never to discourage anyone. It’s great when you can make that difference for someone. It’s amazing-helping them find their way.
JD: I understand. It’s very moving when you see something click in a young photographer.
GG:If you get down to the nitty gritty – it’s about one concept: People. Relationships. Communication. Connection. That’s what gets my motor going. What’s great about meeting the wine-makers is it’s like meeting the stars I met before. They’re like my new heroes. My movie stars of today. They’re really glorified farmers – and awesome people.
JD: What are you going to do next?
GG:I’m finishing a book on street photography – a real one-off. Workshops – exhibitions and lots of speaking engagements occupy my time now when I am not off fishing.
JD: Your body of work is always going to be of interest. The young Gorman was working for you.
GG:Well, I’m not going nuts but I’ve had a great 2013 thus far and that has made me very happy!
JD: Last question Greg: How is it possible to drink at least a bottle of wine a day?
GG:It’s easy – you take the cork out of the bottle! The truth is, I can go a week or so without even drinking. I really don’t drink much liquor. Although I am beginning to grow fond of cocktails… but that’s another story!
Jeff Dunas
