This is the second episode of the conversation between Sandro Miller and Matthew Rolston, during which the photographers, based respectively in Chicago and Hollywood, reflect on their beginnings in photography, the nature of portraiture and where they’re headed next.
[Sandro Miller]
Not long after, in 1993, I was given three minutes with Michael Jordan. In 1993, Michael was an immense superstar. He was in front of photographers’ cameras constantly. When he wasn’t on the court, he was in front of a camera being filmed for this commercial or that commercial. I was given three minutes by the creative director, and in these three minutes, I photographed 72 portraits with Michael. I prepped myself for seven hours. It looks relatively simple, but when you have that type of pressure on you, zero mistakes can happen. You can’t let a moment like that go by without nailing perfection.
For my prep and pre-light I searched out a gentleman the same height, same complexion as Michael; I worked on that lighting all night long. I was at the facility until Michael showed up early that next morning. Michael walked in. He said, “Sandro, I have a couple of minutes here.” I gave him a turtleneck, he threw it on, and we got to work. I had prepared a list of emotions that I wanted to go through. At the start of those three minutes there was nobody in that room except for me and my assistant and Michael. But when I was done, because there was such verbal communication going on between us (almost to the point of yelling because I was trying to draw things out of Michael), that at the end, there was this huge crowd who had appeared, and in some ways I would have to say they were stunned at what they just experienced.
[screen shows two of Sandro’s portraits of Michael Jordan in succession]
Sandro Miller, Michael Jordan, from the book I Can’t Accept Not Trying, 1994
Sandro Miller, Michael Jordan, from the book I Can’t Accept Not Trying, 1994
And this image right here is probably one of the most iconic images ever taken of Michael. I had asked him, “Michael, we need to go to a place right now that really hurts.”
[screen shows Sandro’s third portrait of Michael Jordan]
Sandro Miller, Michael Jordan, from the book I Can’t Accept Not Trying, 1994
He had just lost his father three months prior. He dipped his head. You could just about see a small swell of a tear come to his eye. I shot it, and we moved onto the next emotion. This work went on to dozens of magazine covers around the world because it’s Michael – without a product. He’s not advertising anything. It was rare at that time to get a portrait of Michael Jordan not advertising some kind of product.
Michael did a book that was titled, “I Can’t Accept Not Trying”. It sold 1.4 million copies. It was made entirely out of my images and Michael’s words. This series along, with the Biker series, put my name on the map. The shoot with Jordan and the article in The New Yorker took the name SANDRO and put it on the map.
That was where it all changed for me, because ‘Sandro’ was becoming a household name around the world… that was when I started to get the calls for the big commercial work.
Matthew, what was your first break?
[Matthew Rolston]
Okay, so I was still a student at ArtCenter in Pasadena; that’s where I studied photography.
[screen shows Ellwood theme building at ArtCenter]
ArtCenter College of Design Hillside Campus (Ellwood Building) photographed by Regina Antonioli,1976
My older brother Dean, who was a New York gallerist at the time, had a scrappy little space in Soho, which was then like a bombed out, abandoned hellscape – there was nothing there. Well, there were some artists.
[screen shows Thomas Struth image of Soho]
Thomas Struth, Crosby Street, Soho, New York 1978
And Dean knew Andy Warhol. Andy had a circle of people around him, a social circle mostly made of, honestly, very attractive young men, may I say.
[Sandro Miller]
[laughs]
[Matthew Rolston]
Well I’m not one of those, but my brother certainly was. My brother was a bit of a dreamboat, so I got to tag along with my older brother and the crowd around Andy – who was constantly going to, like, five or six events in a single evening and dragging his entourage along with him – and I got to be, like, at the end of the parade, the one that sweeps up after the elephant [laughs]… I mean I was the last one in under the velvet rope, and I got to go, very young, got to go to Studio 54 and meet a lot of amazing people.
[screen shows image of crowd at Studio 54]
Robin Platzer, Andy Warhol and Friends at Studio 54, 1978
And all of a sudden, Andy’s magazine, Interview, needed somebody in Los Angeles to do a portrait of a young director who really hadn’t yet made his mark… Steven Spielberg.
[screen shows Frances Ing portrait of Andy Warhol at Interview offices]
Frances Ing, Andy Warhol, pictured at the Interview magazine office in his Union Square West Factory, New York c.1980s
So my first published portrait of any note was commissioned by the magazine because, out of convenience, they needed somebody in LA.
The photographer they normally work with in LA had turned them down. He was mad at them because he’d photographed Cher, and they’d cropped his photograph.
[Sandro Miller]
[gasps]
[Matthew Rolston]
Oh my God!
[Sandro Miller]
[laughs]
[Matthew Rolston]
So he refused. Refused, “I’m not doing it.” And they said, “Well, let’s get… wait, isn’t Dean’s little brother that photo-kid? Let’s get him to do it.” So I did it, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was already going down the path of a conceptual photographer without really knowing what that was.
I’m not educated in an intellectual way. I’ve learned and taught myself a lot since that time. But of course, the first step… what’s the first step of any project? [to the audience] Anybody? What’s step number one for everything we do? What is it? It’s research, isn’t it? Yeah, research. Can’t say anything about something you don’t know anything about.
[screen shows Matthew’s portrait of Steven Spielberg]
Matthew Rolston, Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters, Los Angeles, 1977
So I called several people that knew Steven Spielberg, arranged for by Andy and Bob Colacello, the editor, of course. Andy and Bob also arranged for me to go to a private screening of Close Encounters – which hadn’t come out yet. Spielberg had just made Jaws.
And so this lighting, as simple as it is, was conceptual. It was as if he’s in the landing lights of a hovering spacecraft. It’s done in a very simple way, but even then, I was trying to add a conceptual touch, to make a comment… to make my photographs a kind of entertainment experience all unto themselves. Steven walked in wearing that t-shirt. I had a whole rack of clothes for him and I decided, rather than style him… not to. Just let him be who he is and make my mark with the simplest of means, light and a lens. And that was very well liked, and one thing led to another. My break was kind of a slow build…
Within a few years, I was shooting a bunch of Interview covers.
[screen shows Matthew’s Cyndi Lauper Interview cover]
Interview Magazine | Cyndi Lauper
Interview Magazine cover, special “Music” issue featuring Cyndi Lauper. Photographed by Matthew Rolston, illustrated by Richard Bernstein. April 1986
… which led to other magazines. Jann Wenner particularly opened doors for me. Many people at that time followed Andy and copied everything he did. And honestly, Jann Wenner – who was the founding editor and publisher of Rolling Stone – if Andy wanted something, thought something was cool, then Jann wanted that. And Jann wanted to change his magazine from a reportage rag, uh … that’s not very nice, not rag, but just really kind of a rough and tumble, almost newsletter with only backstage photography, on-the-road photography… and of course, Annie [Leibovitz] was the star of that. Jann wanted to change, to alter his magazine as the culture was altering… to a picture magazine. And Interview at that time was the showcase of picture magazines.
[screen shows Matthew’s Rolling Stone cover featuring Bono]
Rolling Stone magazine cover, featuring Bono photographed by Matthew Rolston, 1987
So Jann wanted Matthew Rolston and Herb Ritts and Greg Gorman… three Interview magazine photographers – not to mention Richard Avedon and a few other significant portrait photographers – came to work for Jann at Rolling Stone. After that, I got noticed by Harper’s Bazaar. So culture changed, and I was there. Right place, right time.
[screen shows Matthew’s Harper’s Bazaar cover featuring Isabella Rossellini]
Harper’s Bazaar magazine cover, special “style” issue featuring Isabella Rossellini photographed by Matthew Rolston, 1989
[Sandro Miller]
What a story. That’s great. What an opportunity too, Matthew.
I just wanna say, Matthew, you were very fortunate because you came up in a time where there was the opportunity to become the superstar photographer. You were photographing and making icons out of these great people, and I feel like that’s kind of been lost. Our world is so filled with images and it’s so sought after to become ‘superstars’. You were part of making those stars into superstars.
[Matthew Rolston]
There were very few platforms. There was, of course, no internet, no social media, no Instagram, no TikTok. So if you had a platform like Interview, Rolling Stone or Harper’s Bazaar, a lot of people paid attention to it. It’s very different now. And I was very fortunate.
So Sandro, new question.
“What are the primary influences on your work?”
I can’t wait to hear this.
[Sandro Miller]
The primary influences …very early on … you go to my first image here.
[screen shows series of three Diane Arbus portraits in succession]
Diane Arbus, Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J., 1966
Diane Arbus, A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C., 1966
Diane Arbus, Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1962
Diane Arbus… for her risk-taking. I started studying Diane’s work very early on. She was doing photography that nobody else was doing. She was venturing into an arena of the odd… the misfit… the singular… and she was giving a stage to folks that normally wouldn’t get the stage. I loved Diane Arbus’s risk-taking.
[Matthew Rolston]
Diane Arbus also (not unlike you, Sandro), she and her husband, had a successful commercial practice in fashion photography. And this new aesthetic of hers was a wholesale rejection of those values… a very powerful one.
[Sandro Miller]
This is all Diane. This is all personal work by Diane. These were projects that she chose to go out and do. I think that she really went to her editors and told them (or maybe asked them) what she would like to shoot. I don’t know that these were specifically assignments that came from the magazines. I think she had a lot of her own ideas of what-
[Matthew Rolston]
[interrupting] These were entirely personal projects, as far as I know the history of this work.
[Sandro Miller]
[screen lingers on Diane Arbus’ portrait of “A Jewish giant…”]
Diane Arbus, A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y., 1970
Of the giant?
[Matthew Rolston]
Yeah, she was interested in subcultures…
[Sandro Miller]
Yes, subcultures.
[Matthew Rolston]
… one of your passions, Sandro. And especially outsiders and people that were a repudiation of straight, typical, bourgeois values.
[screen shows Irving Penn’s portrait of Joe Louis]
Irving Penn, Joe Louis, New York, 1948
Let’s talk about Joe Louis by Penn.
[Sandro Miller]
Okay, so let’s go to Irving Penn. Irving Penn is my biggest influence. I aspired to his lighting. His lighting and his technical skills, and especially his technical skills inside of the darkroom were just magnificent.
[screen shows Irving Penn’s portrait of Miles Davis]
Irving Penn, Miles Davis, New York, 1986
Penn would spend hours and hours printing his own work, and he would do these just magnificent platinum prints that were absolutely stunning, gorgeous and printed to perfection. They’re absolutely meticulously printed. When you go see an Irving Penn show, you are looking at the master. Every print you are seeing in front of you is done with intent and done with perfection.
[Matthew Rolston]
And completely handcrafted. No digital magic.
[Sandro Miller]
This is Yousuf Karsh here.
[screen shows Yousuf Karsh’s portraits of Churchill and Hemingway in succession]
Yousuf Karsh, The Roaring Lion, 1941
Yousuf Karsh, Ernest Hemingway, 1957
Yousuf Karsh had a way of making his sitters noble and heroic; I really enjoyed that about his work. The different camera angles he used helped me figure out where to put the camera, how to make somebody look stronger and nobler – more powerful.
[Matthew Rolston]
Do you feel that Karsh’s work continued the tradition of 19th century portrait painting? I think his work from that period is very related to painting, more than the modernism of photography.
[Sandro Miller]
Well, that’s interesting that you say that, because I think my next image is classic Renaissance painting.
[screen shows Bellini’s Doge Loredan and the Mona Lisa in succession]
Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan, c.1501-02
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, c.1503-1507
So much of my work is inspired by Italian Renaissance paintings. What you see in a great painting is a nobleperson who probably has some wealth, who commissioned a painter to come to their castle and paint them. So you’re inside of this castle and there weren’t windows everywhere in these castles. The painter would find the light that came through these small windows and sit their subject in that light.
This light was very directional, forming a ‘highlight-to-shadow’ effect on the sitter. This is referred to as ‘classic’ lighting. It’s this classic lighting found in the Renaissance paintings, Matthew, that I developed my style of lighting for my portraits.
[Matthew Rolston]
I feel there’s a fair amount of reference to Rembrandt in your work too. Is that fair?
[Sandro Miller]
Yes, absolutely.
Okay, Matthew, the primary influences on your work?
[Matthew Rolston]
Well, I’m gonna start with, really, childhood, because beyond getting to visit the doctor’s office and see Hollywood portraiture, my house was filled with magazines.
[screen shows Avedon’s October 1954 Harper’s Bazaar cover]
Richard Avedon, Cherry Nelms wearing Royal Canadian Opaline fox stole by Ritter Bros., diamanté necklace and earrings by Schering, Harper’s Bazaar (October 1954). Cover photo
I grew up in mid-century America. My dad was a corporate business attorney. My mom was a homemaker, and she had collected Harper’s Bazaar since her teens and kept them all. So by the time I became aware of them, age six or eight years old (it would’ve been the early ’60s), I had my nose deep into her collection of the Bazaar. By the way, my mom was not a fashionista. She was more athletic and a horsewoman. She didn’t wear makeup or go to the beauty parlor, but she loved beauty, and she loved to read, and Harper’s Bazaar, I don’t know if you know this, published incredible fiction. Harper’s Bazaar under the editorship of Carmel Snow was a truly intellectual magazine.
So I read all those articles, Carson McCullers, stories by Truman Capote, et cetera, but the photography… you know, kids of my era, little boys would maybe know their favorite sports stars. They’d know Mickey Mantle and they knew the batting averages and every detail, all chapter and verse at age six or eight. I knew the masthead of Harper’s Bazaar.
[Audience]
[laughs].
[Matthew Rolston]
I knew who Diana Vreeland was. I knew who Alexey Brodovitch was. I read every single bit, so my nose was very deep in the Bazaar, which is where I began to discover the work of Richard Avedon, who’s probably had as much an influence on me as Penn has had for Sandro.
I don’t think you could grow up in mid-century America interested in magazines and portraiture and not be influenced, not be the ‘children’ of these two twin great photographers, Penn and Avedon. There’s just no way.
[screen shows Avedon’s fashion portrait of model Dorian Leigh]
Richard Avedon, Dorian Leigh, Evening Dress by Piguet
Helena Rubinstein Apartment, Paris, August, 1949
This is probably the image of my childhood. I had this pinned up on my wall. This is Dorian Leigh in the bathroom of Helena Rubinstein in Paris. This was just the epitome of elegance to me. The form. It was so unreal and magnificent and elevated and magical. So this is a very influential picture for me as a child.
[screen shows cover of Charles Addams’ Homebodies]
Charles Addams, Homebodies, cover, 1954
As a child, my favorite storybook, the one I wanted read to me, was a New Yorker compilation of Charles Addams cartoons. It was called Homebodies. Of course, the glamour of Morticia and the black humor. Let’s look at one.
[screen shows Addams Family cartoon featuring Morticia]
Charles Addams cartoon for the New Yorker, 1952
This was my favorite childhood cartoon. “Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive!”
[Audience]
[laughs]
[Matthew Rolston]
And there was another one that showed Pugsley and Wednesday bellowing the fire, building a huge roaring fire in the ruined parlor and Morticia and Gomez looking in, and Morticia says, “Oh, the little darlings. They still believe in Santa Claus.”
[Audience]
[laughs]
[Matthew Rolston]
So now we’ve got the glamour of Avedon, the dark humor of Charles Addams, and this high style, and then discovering Andy Warhol as a teenager…. and you’ll see square image photography of mine.
[screen shows Warhol’s Turquoise Marilyn]
Andy Warhol, Turquoise Marilyn, 1964
Again, so much resonance you, Sandro, have drawn from this particular image. Yours is right here in the room with us! [points to Sandro’s Malkovich recreation of that image on the wall]
There are many versions of Andy’s Marilyn, but Turquoise Marilyn is THE Marilyn. And that is the one that you created with John Malkovich, and it’s the one that attracted my eye more than anything else. So this had a lot to do with layers of understanding about “what is fame?” and “what is an elevated state of presentation?” And I think our modern culture’s take on fame – we call them the ‘gods and goddesses’ of the screen. It’s a kind of twisted substitute for deity worship. It really is.
I mean, think about a photo shoot of a celebrity, especially a beautiful woman. It’s a modern form of worship. If she’s the goddess, she’s anointed… well, that’s hair and makeup. Then she’s led to the ceremonial chamber, the photo studio. That’s the altar. She stands on the ‘mark’, right? I’m kneeling before her, very low angle with my camera, and the ‘celebrants’ are the crew! I’m not saying that that is a healthy thing, but that is the twisted nature and the contradictory nature of being human in today’s world. Absolutely.
So a lot of things are wrapped up in this image for me. These are my primary influences, I would say, if I had to narrow it down to just a few.
[screen shows Hurrell’s 1977 portrait of Tere Tereba]
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George Hurrell, Tere Tereba, portrait for Interview Magazine, 1977
This is an important part. This is really what set in motion my desire to re-create old Hollywood. I created a series of photographs in my early professional years – you’ll see some of them in my retrospective called Hollywood Royale – where I really went deep into my knowledge of the ’30s glamour photographers, particularly George Hurrell. Same Hurrell I’d been exposed to as a child. This is a Hurrell image from 1977.
Here’s what happened. Andy had met Hurrell. I think that Andy Warhol, George Hurrell (who was still alive in 1977 obviously, who took this picture), and Helmut Newton are the fathers of the late-70’s rebirth of glamour. And the children [photographers] of those three men are myself, Herb Ritts, Greg Gorman, and a few others. This picture was of a friend of mine. Her name is Tere Tereba. She was a Warhol ‘superstar’, meaning a starlet that Andy was interested in, because she looked a lot like old Hollywood glamour star Hedy Lamarr.
And so Andy decided to get the George Hurrell to resurrect glamour – and he hadn’t taken a glamour picture in something like 15 or 20 years. And this is authentically… I mean, it looks like it’s from the ’30s. Completely real. And it was published in Interview. That’s around when I first got published in Interview, and that was a big clue and a huge influence that that world of glamour, that skin, that heightened sense of mystery, could come back. Maybe in an ironic way, for my generation, not in a sincere way. But nonetheless, it could come back. So this is the last of my influences to share with you.
To be continued…
