I want the look of a movie to be secondary. I really want people to be engaged in the story and the characters and not think about a style or think about me or think about the director of photography and what a great job he's doing. I never feel like that should be there.
I think creating the clothes is about creating historical images - and that's about more than fashion. It is about the fashion, the photography, what you are doing in the moment. It's what we call in French rechercher, or the search for that thing. So even though fashion is not scientific, I think being a designer is somewhat like being a scientist.
In my teens I was interested in photography. Then I decided that I should learn something about the world of commerce. And I came to America at age 17 to escape Europe. I went to NYU - nothing better than being 17 years old and coming to New York.
Photography has always been important to me for that, being able to make sense of something or understand something or remember something or laugh at something.
The problem in the 19th century with information was that we lived in a culture of information scarcity, and so humanity addressed that problem beginning with photography and telegraphy and the - in the 1840s. We tried to solve the problem of overcoming the limitations of space, time, and form.
By itself photography cannot deal with the unseen, the remote, the internal, the abstract, it does not speak of Man, only of a man ; not of Tree, only a tree.
At birth we begin to discover that shapes, sounds, lights, and textures have meaning. Long before we learn to talk, sounds and images form the world we live in. All our lives, that world is more immediate than words and difficult to articulate. Photography, reflecting those images with uncanny accuracy, evokes their associations and our instant conviction. The art of the photographer lies in using those connotations, as a poet uses the connotations of words and a musician the tonal connotations of sounds.
The best photographs are made by the best people.
Digital [photography] has sped up the process to a point that it's a bit self-destructive. It is like driving by a new neighborhood without stopping for a walk. Special discoveries need time.
[The most important factor in making a good picture is] to know who or what you are photographing. It is not about photography; it should be about life.
Some of the young photographers today enter photography where I leave off. My "grandchildren" astound me. What I worked for they seem to be born with. So I wonder where Their affirmations of Spirit will lead. My wish for them is that their unfolding proceeds to fullness of Spirit, however astonishing or anguished their lives.
Students were taught by doing.
The development of a love of medium and a responsibility for one's own pictures is an overall goal.
We emphasized the creativeness that happens at the moment of seeing over the kind that takes place in the dark room.
Photography really is all about lines, and so is clothing. I worked for Oberto Gili for a couple of years after I was at ICP; we worked in fashion, travel, interior design, everything. I was inspired by his styling choices within fashion photography, and I think those experiences helped steer me towards fashion design. I love photography as a medium, so I think I will always take inspiration from it.
I never designed before. I wasn't formally trained in design, I went to photography school at the ICP. But over time, I taught myself to draw, and I studied different techniques, various hemlines, and then I would take the ideas to a manufacturer and a patternmaker and have them produced into garments.
I like the drawings. And as a photography fan myself, I would look at Helmut Newton or Irving Penn and like to see the initial notes or drawings, to see where the ideas grew from. Also my sketches are key to my work because I came to realise early on that by doing drawings, I could formulate a plan of what I was thinking of - I could take control and direct the work.
I got really excited about finding new ways of using video, and the immediacy is different, in a way, than painting and photography. The creativity comes with the editing. You can layer and cut and paste. I really love that it's like another form of making my smaller collages but in video form.
I struggle against photography. I struggle against the fact that it is silent, that it is just a piece of paper on the wall, often presented in a tedious white matt frame.
I take pleasure in working with the non-art photographs that reside in public archives, essentially authorless and owned by the world itself, because I find the world of fine art photography to be pretty silly and pretentious.
None of us works entirely in a vacuum. Unless you are uncompromisingly working to please yourself you must think to whom your photography is directed and how is it likely to be received.
If the quality of professional materials continues to erode or even dries up, then many of us silver photographers would have to follow the digital tidal wave. It certainly wouldn't be the end of the world, but in my opinion, having no silver material available would be a huge loss to photography.
Instant gratification in photography is not something that I need or desire. I find that the long, slow journey to the final print captivates me far more.
I think it's very dangerous for a free society to have all the information distilled and packaged by our government and given to us. Do we know to this day who we killed in Iraq? I don't think so. If bringing war into the living room means that we as a people will say we don't want to do it that way anymore we want to figure out other ways to solve these conflicts, then I would say that photography and television have done us a great service.
Photography, for me, is something I can control fully. It's wholly my own expressions.