Jeff Fasano Celebrity Photographer Capturing Moments That Will Never Happen Again
Riveting
Riffs Magazine sat down to talk to celebrity photographer Jeff Fasano just days
after the music world lost two mega stars, Natalie Cole and David Bowie and just
a couple of days before Glenn Frey passed away. In light of those tragic deaths
we thought it was appropriate to ask Jeff Fasano what role photographers play in
preserving the legacy of artists such as the ones we just mentioned.
“If you look over all of the years that David Bowie has
been photographed from the early, early days up until the latest shots, it is a
wonderful documentary of images of a Rock and Roll star,” says Fasano, before
continuing, “Let’s go to Jim Morrison. He died at 27 and he would be (72 years
old) today. There is an image of Jim Morrison taken by a woman photographer (he
could not recall her name) and it left a lasting impression on me. I was really
young back then.
For most of us that’s all we ever see, unless we know
the artist or we saw them in concert and it depends on the photographer and what
that photographer captured in that person and what you see in every single
image, especially of Bowie. All of the looks that guy had for all the years and
the personas, Ziggy Stardust and all of the different looks up until now. You
see many sides of a person and that is why photography is great, because you are
capturing an image in a moment of time and it will never happen again.
Some of Bowie’s record covers really stand out.
When I was at Parsons School the photo department was
run by Ben Fernandez who is a fairly well known photojournalist and Mario
Cabrera was a photojournalist with Associated Press, so I was learning
photography and all of the basics from the darkroom and the inside out from
photojournalists. I go all of the
way back to my favorite photographers and they still are to this day Walker
Evans, Eugene Smith and Dorothea Lange. My three favorite photographers were all
photojournalists and all of them photographed for
Life Magazine back in the day.
Dorothea Lange was shooting the migrant workers out here in California. Eugene
Smith shot World War II and all of those amazing places.
It was Walker Evans’ street photography.
It was all about capturing what happened in the moment.
That is how you do it as a photojournalist. You see it and that moment
will never happen again, so you capture it.”
Jeff Fasano shares from his own experiences, “I love
documenting the making of things. I documented six months of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway in
2008 (the all African American cast).
I just loved doing that. At that
time I knew it was the making of history on Broadway and what producers Stephen
C. Byrd and Alia Jones Harvey did by taking a Tennessee Williams play and having
an all African American cast. It had never been done on Broadway and it changed
Broadway. It brought people to Broadway. I
was there documenting from the first table reading to the closing party. It was
six months of all of this amazing stuff,
everything that happened, backstage, dressing room, all of the celebrities who
came to that. (It was) a historical thing. It was amazing. It was the producer’s
first play and they have a wonderful history of what went on every night. Those
are memories.
It goes right back to the question about David Bowie and
Natalie Cole. Just think about their past and all of the photographs that are
out there and who shot their live performances and the photographers who were
backstage with David Bowie or in his home. Think of all the portraits and the
record covers. They captured the entire lives of these people and (preserved)
many, many great memories.
If you have perused social media the last (few days) you
have seen a lot of those photographs. That is what a photojournalist does. You
are capturing moments in time and a photograph is capturing a moment in time,
even if I am going into the studio with lights and setting the whole thing up I
am capturing a moment in time that will never happen again. That is what is
great about photography.”
Jeff Fosano is one of America’s most heralded photographers and his body of work
reflects that. His photos have been published in magazines such as Paste
Magazine, Rolling Stone Europe, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Essence
Magazine, InStyle Magazine and Guitar One Magazine and that is only a small
sampling. His services as a photographer have been employed by BMI Pop Awards,
Bonnaroo Music Festival, Austin City Limits and the ASCAP Pop Awards. KCSN in
Los Angeles, WFUV in New York City and The Loft: XM Satellite Radio have all
featured his photos.
As if that is not impressive enough and again this is
just a small sampling here are some of the people that Jeff Fasano has
photographed, Terrence Howard, Keifer Sutherland, Taraji P. Henson, Bill
Pullman, Anette O’Toole, Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett. He has also
photographed, Quincy Jones, Billy Bragg, Mindi Abair, Steven Still, Judy Collins
and Aretha Franklin, to name but a few.
As amazing as Jeff Fasano’s accomplishments are, it is
even more amazing that he did not become a fulltime photographer until he was 40
years old. All of what was mentioned above, which is barely scratching the
surface of what he has done, has been accomplished in the past 17 years.
“I
quit my job when I was 40 to create a brand new life. I wanted to follow my
passion. Back in around 1988 at the behest of a friend I went to Parsons in New
York. I had been doing photography since high school and I took a class. My
brother and I had a dark room in our basement.
I was doing it for a long time, because I just loved it. Then a friend of
mine back in the late nineties said her boyfriend was taking a class at Parsons
and she knew I loved photography. It resonated and so I took a basic course and
in that basic course I met a gentleman named Mario Cabrera who was the guy!
Without Mario I wouldn’t be where I am today or shooting the way that I shoot
today, because I studied with Mario for two years at Parsons and I learned the
craft through him. I took a couple of more classes and I kept on doing it and
doing it.
A little sideline, I was dating a woman back in the
early nineties and she said to me Jeff you hate your job, you hate your life and
the only time that you are ever happy is when you are with me.
I used to have a blast with her and I also used to photograph her a lot. I
was taking these classes and she saw my talent and she really was pushing me to
do it, but I never really listened. After we broke up and when I was on a train
in New York City, I thought I heard a voice, Jeff you hate your job, you hate
your life and the only time you are ever happy is when you are with me.
What came to me right away was it is time to grow up, so I went straight
home and I took out a legal pad and I wrote up at the top, what do I want to be
when I grow up? (I wrote down)
all of these things that I could do and it all came back to photography.
Starting the next day I spent every waking moment of my life really studying the
craft and building something with the intent of leaving my job one day.
When I talk to people now I give them the same exercise
and it is a wonderful (thing to do).
What do you love doing? What brings you the greatest amount of joy? Part
of my life plan is to help people find that in their life. That is how I got
into shooting music. I was at my day job one day and this woman where I worked
said what do you want to do with photography? I said I love music and I want to
shoot music. That is pretty much how it all came about.
She said I have a friend at RCA Records and I said okay, can we go and meet
her? She was in the Classical department. I brought my portfolio up and she
passed it on to the art director in the Classical division and a couple of weeks
later they hired me to shoot James Galaway. That was while I was still
working at my other job.
I dedicated most of my time if not all of my time to
really working and practicing and shooting. I setup a dark room in my living
room in Manhattan, because I was printing my stuff. I would breakdown my living
room and put up background and lights and I would have photo parties. I would
bring in people to shoot and to practice. I would shoot every day on my lunch
hour at work. That’s what you have to do and that’s what Mario Cabrera told me.
One day during that time I was channel surfing and I saw an old, old interview
with Frank Sinatra. During the interview with Frank Sinatra he was asked what do
you tell young singers? He said you wake up in the morning thinking songs, you
eat breakfast thinking songs, after breakfast you think songs, while you make
lunch you think songs and after lunch you think songs and he kept on going and
the audience was laughing, but what he was saying was this is your life.
That is pretty much what I did and that is how I got into music. That’s
how I started shooting musicians and it opened the door to so much more,” says
Fasano.
However, before Jeff Fasano became a fulltime
photographer he received some wise counsel from his father.
“One of the wonderful things that I did and I credit my
father, when I got excited and said I got it, I got it and I am going to quit my
job and he said you aren’t ready to quit your job.
He was right. That is why I spent those
years still working. When I look back, I had an income and unknown to me I had a
pension at the place where I was working.
I was being paid, I lived in New York City and the rent was about $800 bucks
a month at that time and I would just save as much money as I could from any
(photography) jobs that I got. In the middle of all of that I went and got a
$6,000 job in Chicago, shot James Galaway and I saved it. I honed my craft for
about four years. Mario and I stayed friends and he would come over and he would
look at my stuff. I would work and
work and work and practice, practice, practice.
I would shoot and have fun.
I would make some money on the side and I would do some photo shoots for people.
Really it is about knowing the craft. It is about the
integrity and the impeccability of knowing your craft. Mario Cabrera once said
to me are you going to get paid cash money doing this?
He said you better know five ways of giving your client what they want and
then five ways of giving them what they need and they don’t even know it until
you give it to them. He said you better know what you are doing. You had better
know every which way of when a client wants something, of all the different ways
of giving it to them and learning everything that you can learn about this.
What Mario meant was when you get together with a
musician and it is all different levels from working with the musician directly
or working with an art director with the record company. It is the same when you
are doing a record cover or a record package. What’s the record?
Let’s listen to the music. What’s the
mood and what are you thinking about? What are you looking at? Do you want to
shoot on the beach or do you want to shoot in a studio? You go through all of
that and you put your heads together.
I’m a very democratic person, so I invite all ideas to come in and that is
how you eventually get to (what you are going to do).
A great example is I did Dave and Phil Alvin’s album
Lost Time and their whole idea was to
shoot them in the studio, while they were recording and that is what we did,” he
says.
We wondered how the advent of digital photography
affected Jeff Fasano’s approach to his work.
“When I started I was still shooting film. As I said
earlier, I built a dark room and I learned photography from the dark room out,
which most photographers have done. Most of the old time guys learned from the
dark room out. When you are in a
dark room you learn how to use light and you print everything. I went kicking
and screaming to digital. I was shooting medium format and I still have that
camera with 120 film. I usually went to SXSW every year when I was shooting with
Paste Magazine back in the day. I had done a couple of SXSW with 35mm film and
this one time I went I can’t do that. I need to go and buy a digital camera.
There is a wonderful rental place lab in New York City and I used to rent
equipment from there whenever I would shoot. I used to go in there and rent a
body (for a camera) and I would use it as a backup in case something happened,
while I was shooting.
I saw this guy one day and I can still see his face, but
I can’t remember his name and he looked at me and he said the reason you are not
shooting digital is because you are frightened of a digital camera.
Those guys knew me and they were
friends. I went why do you think that? He said, because you think that a digital
camera has all of this stuff going on and you are frightened of it. He went into
the back and he brought out this Canon and he goes here hold it. Now go in and
set it on manual. I went okay and he said that’s all you have to do (Fasano
laughs). He says shoot the damn thing like you are shooting film, because you
know what you’re doing. He said a digital camera is a camera for dummies. He
said, put it on manual, go in and look at it. He showed me here is your ASA and
he said you can change it in the middle of your shoot.
I was like wow! Why don’t
you rent one and play with it. I did that and I rented the one that he had and I
took it for a weekend. The next thing that I did was to buy myself a Canon 20D.
I went to SXSW for a week and I shot a gazillion images with that camera and I
went oh cool. Then of course the next step is you have to get Photoshop or now
Light Room or any other similar (software). I had to go in and learn Photoshop,
because Photoshop was my new dark room.
I went in and I found all of my dark room tools. I
looked for my burning tool and my dodging tool. If you know how to use a color
enlarger they based all of this stuff on enlargers and dark room techniques. I
needed to go in and find what I used to do in a dark room. I would call
photographer friends and they would say go in and it is this little brush or
this or that. I found it and I
started with Photoshop Element Six and I went in and like everything else I put
photos in and I played and played and played.
Here is a cool story Joe.
I got my Canon 20D and then I said I need to get another camera, so I
bought a 30D (Jeff Fasano now shoots with
a 50D Mark II, a 22 megapixel camera). At
SXSW I met Katherine DePaul who was working with Judy Collins and they hired me
to do a PR shoot. We went to the Carlyle Hotel and they got a suite. Judy was
performing and doing her residency there. When we finished the shoot I came home
and I downloaded all of the photos. I shot everything in color and I looked at
this one photo and I went you know what I wonder how this changing from black
and white thing works? I got on the phone
and I asked (a friend) how do you change a color photo to black and white? He
said just do this, this and this and I went in and I did it. I took this photo
of Judy and I Photoshopped it and I went wow that looks pretty cool! For the
heck of it I sent Judy and Katherine the photo and I said hey check this photo
out. The next day Katherine comes back to me and she goes we want this photo to
be the cover of Judy’s Lennon and McCartney record (Title:
Judy Collins Sings Lennon & McCartney). She
was doing a whole bunch of Lennon and McCartney songs.
She said we had a photo, a whole package
built and when Judy saw this she said this has got to be the cover of the
record. That was the first photo
that I learned how to change from color to black and white.
Now if I am in a record store and I see (the record) I tell people that
is the first photo that I learned how to go from color to black and white using
Photoshop. It became the record cover,” says Fasano.
Jeff Fasano says you do however need to be aware of the
differences between film and digital photography.
“It is apples and oranges. It is not film. It is just
like digital recording is not like recording on tape. Digital is digital. It is
not the same and there are a lot of wonderful things about it, but it is still
not the same. There is not as much
depth in the photographs. I shoot with a Canon 50D Mark II now. They don’t make
it anymore, now they have the Mark III. It is the closest that I have gotten to
film. That is a SLR series, which most photographers use and then you have the
Hasselblad digitals and the Maya digitals, with $60,000 photographs and I am
still wondering how close you get to depth with that camera.
It is different and you can turn out a lot of photographs.
One day I kept on shooting and I think it may have been somebody that I
(photographed) on film once and people went wow Jeff you are shooting a lot of
photographs and they said why do you do that? I said, because I can. I am not
shooting a roll of fifteen images and then taking that roll of film and having
to develop it. You cut back on film
and money, because you can take an 8 gig card and shoot over 1,000 images. It is
one of those things, why are you shooting so many images, because I can. I don’t
have to, but I can do it. It is a whole new way of doing things. The depth of a
photograph is not there anymore. Certain colors wash out such as digitally
bright red and bright yellow. Sometimes street lamps will put a hole in it,
because it is all pixelated where with the depth on film and the detail in it is
different. It is what it is and that is the world that we are in now.
It is a different world these days,” he says.
Although, Jeff Fasano is known for photographing celebrities he also continues
to work with independent artists and emerging artists sometimes. Some of those
individuals later went on to establish themselves as artists whose names people
easily recognize, such as Leighton Meester and ZZ Ward.
You can find Jeff Fasano
on his website and on the front page of the website you
will see photos of some of the celebrities with whom he has worked.