Born March 5, 1939 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Norman Seeff has over the past 45 years been a photographer and filmmaker that has captured many of the world’s most recognizable faces— from Ray Charles and Carly Simon to Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol—in their most unguarded moments. The authenticity of his images reflects his skills as a communicator documenting the creative process, passion, and essence of the innovators.
In 1969, he immigrated to the United States to pursue his creative passions and artistic abilities. Soon after arriving in New York, Seeff’s photographs of the people he encountered in Manhattan were discovered by the famed graphic designer, Bob Cato. He introduced Seeff to the world of album cover design and his first major photographic assignment for The Band brought him immediate recognition. His film archive of more than 400 shoots with musical artists, film directors, authors, television personalities, scientists, visionaries, and entrepreneurs provides a unique insight towards artists and innovators in the act of creation.
You practiced medicine for a few years in your native South Africa during your twenties. What made you move to New York City in 1968 to pursue a photography career?
I was working in emergency medicine in Soweto just outside of Johannesburg. This was during the apartheid era. It got a little dangerous for me because I was anti-apartheid and the government didn’t like my politics or my friends who were all activists. Since childhood, I had always had a fascination around how things worked in science, and a spontaneous ability to draw. Did I want to go down the road of creative expression or did I want to go down the road of being a medical doctor and doing healing work? I thought medicine was about healing at that time, but I discovered it was about fixing. I wanted to find my true voice and what my real dream actually was. On the spur of the moment I woke up one morning and thought I’m getting out of here. Literally within a few weeks I packed my bag and resigned and headed to New York City.
Why did you choose New York City out of everywhere in the world?
I wanted to go to what I considered to be the most exciting, most advanced place. But I found to my terror that this was not just about rolling up and saying, “Okay I’m going to start a new career.” I discovered that people didn’t really care who you were because everyone was trying to survive in an unbelievably, overwhelmingly competitive place with thousands of young photographers all trying to find work. Within four months I hadn’t made any money and it was prohibited to bring any money out of South Africa. So I’m literally close to starving on the street and I’m thinking that the whole romantic fantasy of being an artist was a delusion. I made up my mind that I would do a photo session a day. And so I would just go to wherever I could find interesting people, like a club downtown called Max’s Kansas City. At that point it was a kind of subculture hub where Andy Warhol and his mob were and Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith hung there as well. All kinds of musicians and artists and crazies were there.
How did you end up shooting Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe?
I saw these two highly expressive people in the way they dressed. Their whole personality and way of relating was kind of new to me. When I met them they were probably sitting at the bar and I said, “You guys look really amazing. Could I do a session with you?” and we ended up becoming friends. At that point a couple guys who were photographers had let me live at their place, so I had access to a studio and a darkroom. Robert and Patti came over and I took photographs. She had made this necklace of skulls and this was the first time that Robert wore it. For me at that time it was just a way to build my portfolio but who knew that they would become such interesting and successful artists. When I asked Robert what he did, he said that he was an airbrush artist. He asked if he could work on one of my photographs, so I gave him a couple of images and I didn’t think much about it. Then a couple weeks later I shot him again with some other friends and he had these two prints that he’d airbrushed and I was stunned. His work was gorgeous. He said at the time, “I’m really thinking of being a photographer, would you mind if I came and hung out at your sessions and watched how you work?” I was thinking I didn’t even know how I worked myself. Of course, history is history from that point on. And, people love those images of them.
You ended up living at the Chelsea Hotel for a while.
Patti was living with a writer and she invited me to come down to the Chelsea to meet her social connections there. I ended up moving in for a little amount of time because I got into a relationship with an Avedon model and moved into her place. The Chelsea was like “A Clockwork Orange.” It was like a crazy house. There were some really wonderful people there. Everyone across the spectrum in that place, but what was great was that it was a hotel and you could rent on a monthly basis and make it a home. So for me, everything I did was like a discovery process: Who are these people? What are the various social environments? What do they find interesting? How do they express themselves? What’s the cultural expression of the time? That was very interesting because it was the emergence of The Factory. During the early days of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, the music at that point was the biggest social and political force. Somehow within six months, I found myself within this whole subculture and it sort of felt like I was embraced and I felt a part of it. But it was a shitty, hard time just trying to make enough money to buy food each day.
How did you finally end up shooting your first album cover?
So for a year and a half things were tough and then finally I met a famous art director in the music world. His name was Bob Cato. He was a kind of legend. He saw my portfolio and I saw tears in his eyes. He opened up the door for me and gave me my first shoot which was The Band at Woodstock. That particular cover was made into a poster and it was up all over the city. Suddenly from being an artist that couldn’t get an appointment, art directors were calling asking to see me. The point is, I didn’t know there was such a thing as the music business and there was a way to make a living shooting bands and designing album covers. It was like a revelation to me. So with Bob’s help I am introduced into the music business and because I was also an artist, I started designing album covers and being paid as a designer too. Suddenly I was in demand.
Especially in the 1970s when you first started shooting album covers, like for Frank Zappa and Johnny Cash, how do you think they functioned as a larger part of the culture of the time?
The album covers became, I say this tongue-and-cheek, almost religious icons. They said how to dress and how to behave. Later I shot Exile on Main Street, and the way the Rolling Stones looked would influence the way people dressed. So the attitude, just the feel of everything became, sort of “Hey, let’s live that lifestyle because it would be the hip thing to do.” It started out that it was just packaging for the product, but later on it became the art itself and that is what was interesting about the time. The Rolling Stones had a series of album covers that were a breakthrough in a certain way. They wouldn’t work with anyone unless they thought that person was going to push the envelope and do something that no one else does. You were under really hefty pressure to produce something that would be a “Stones moment.”
Let us know about your time with Joni Mitchell. You’ve photographed her multiple times, right?
About ten times. I would photograph her at different phases of her career. She’s a very interesting person to shoot from the point of view that she’s a visual artist as much as a musician. She had a conceptual mind. Unlike a lot of people that come in and are like whatever, Joni was always interested in coming up with an idea and bringing it into my studio. This was not the way that I worked in the beginning. I would say, “Let’s just get started and see where it goes.” I don’t like preconceiving a concept, but she would say, “No, no, no I have this concept.” Our sessions were always a little bit of a fight at the beginning, but at the end we both gave each other what the other wanted. I would have artists perform and sing and dance and do new things. The session was a happening where people did spontaneous performances, not just standing around being photographed. But I would go down the road of her concept as well, so in the end it was very valuable for me too because I was able to utilize her ideas as well and make them work at the emotional level. It gave us a real range, a real variety of things. One time she rolled up to the studio with a bunch of wolves and we had to make an electric fence. Another time she came dressed up as a black man. We didn’t even know it was her when she walked in, she was in men’s clothes and in black face. I had said to my crew, just make sure that when Joni comes in you lm her entrance. And we’re waiting and we’re waiting and I’m looking at this crowd and there’s this black dude and he’s sort of dancing and wearing all this bling. And I’m like, “Fuck, that’s Joni.”
This interview is part of a series conducted by Holden Luntz Gallery, based in Palm Beach, Florida.
Interviewer: Kyle Harris
Holden Luntz Gallery
332 Worth Ave
Palm Beach, FL 33480
USA
