Robert Mapplethorpe - The Controversial Angel

Mapplethorpe was born and grew up as a Roman Catholic of English and Irish heritage in Our Lady of the Snows Parish in Floral Park, New York, a neighborhood of Long Island. He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in graphic arts.^[1]

Mapplethorpe took his first photographs soon thereafter using a Polaroid camera. In the mid-1970s, he acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. In the 1980s he refined his aesthetic, photographing statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and highly formal portraits of artists and celebrities. Mapplethorpe's first studio was at 24 Bond Street in Manhattan. In the 1980s Sam Wagstaff gave him $500,000 to buy the top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street, where he lived and had his shooting space. He kept the Bond Street loft as his darkroom.

Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989, in a Boston, Massachusetts hospital from complications arising from AIDS; he was 42 years old. His ashes were buried in Queens, New York, in his mother's grave, marked 'Maxey'.

Robert was such an important NY fixture it is hard for me to look at the city the way it was once for me.

You can see more of Robert Mapplethorpe's work at www.mapplethorpe.org

Peter Lindbergh - The German Touch

Lindbergh was born in Lissa, Germany and grew up in Duisburg. He studied painting in art school, but began photography in 1971 and established himself as an advertising photographer. Moving to Paris in 1978, to concentrate on high-fashion, he photographed many top models including Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Stephanie Seymour, Isabella Rossellini, Nastassja Kinski and Tatjana Patitz as well as other projects with Karl Lagerfeld, Daryl Hannah, Giorgio Armani and more. His photographs have been published by Stern and Vogue magazines. He also photographed Céline Dion for her perfume ad. A new upcoming project is an advert video shoot for Mariah Carey’s new fragrance, "M". He is considered to be one of the world's preeminent fashion photographers and is credited with helping create the supermodel phenomenon of the 1990s. You can see more of Peter Lindbergh's work at his official website www.peterlindbergh.net .

Herb Ritts - The Legend

Ritts was born in Los Angeles, California to a prosperous family. His parents, Herb and Shirley Ritts, owned a successful furniture business.^[1] He received an economics degree from Bard College in upstate New York in 1974 and soon after returned to Los Angeles to work as a sales representative for his family's business. He came out as gay to his parents while in college; they were accepting and supportive.^[2]

However, Ritts started taking night classes in photography and decided to dedicate himself to the art in the late 1970s. His first break into the business occurred as a result of taking portraits of his actor friend Richard Gere. These photos gained national exposure on the covers of many magazines like Esquire and Mademoiselle,^[2] and them get his first work, portray The Champ's actors by Franco Zeffirelli, successively he worked also for Andy Warhol and L'Uomo Vogue.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he worked with magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Elle, Vogue, Interview, and GQ on portraits of famous people and artistic photos of models, and worked for advertisements for companies like Donna Karan, Elizabeth Arden, Pirelli, Maybelline, Calvin Klein, Lacoste, GAP, Valentino, Lancôme, Guess, Gianfranco Ferré, Chanel, Levi’s, Gianni Versace, NEC, Ralph Lauren, Revlon, Acura, TAG Heuer, Victoria’s Secret, Absolut Vodka, and Giorgio Armani.

Subjects of his black-and-white celebrity portraits included Michael Jackson, Kofi Annan, Tom Cruise, Cindy Crawford, Mel Gibson, Tenzin Gyatso (the Dalai Lama), Ronald Reagan, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Monica Lewinsky, Tina Turner, Clint Eastwood, Antonio Rossi, Nicole Kidman, Dustin Hoffman, and Elizabeth Taylor.

Ritts proved himself to be successful in directing music videos. In 1991 two of these, Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game", which featured Danish supermodel Helena Christensen and Janet Jackson's "Love Will Never Do (Without You)", won MTV Video Music Awards. He co-directed Michael Jackson's "In the Closet" video, which featured British supermodel Naomi Campbell. He also directed videos for Mariah Carey's "My All", Chris Isaak's "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing", which featured French supermodel Laetitia Casta, Britney Spears' "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know", Jennifer Lopez's "Ain't It Funny" and Shakira's "Underneath Your Clothes", the latter was completed shortly before his death.

He died in UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles at 8:55 a.m. from pneumonia-related complications. He was HIV-positive^[3] and according The Advocate magazine his health was precarious for a long time. He was survived by his partner Erik Hyman.

He was a dear friend and I miss him greatly. RIP my dear.

Mary Ellen Mark - An American Classic

Mary Ellen Mark is both one of the world's most respected photo journalists and portraitists, her subjects often beleaguered, belittled and marginalized. Mark's black and white images tell the tale of a nation whose growing pains are something tangible.

Mark began photographing with a Box Brownie camera at age nine. During high school, she was head cheerleader with a knack for painting and drawing. Pursuing a career in art, she studied painting and art history for a bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania around 1959. She turned professional as a freelance in the mid-1960s when she returned to school at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating, in 1965, Mary was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to photograph in Turkey and other countries in Europe for a year.

Mary's photography has addressed difficult social issues, including homelessness, loneliness, drug addiction and prostitution.

Mary has had three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Robert Kennedy Journalism Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and five honorary doctorates. She was a member of the Magnum Photos photography agency from 1977-1982.

In 1988 she received a George Polk Award for photojournalism.

Mary is a classic in so many ways. My life is better for having known her.

Kevin Abosch - The Face of Fame

Kevin Abosch consistently, unerringly, produces the type of honest portraiture which almost melancholy in its manner, manages to transcend the obvious promotional aspect of celebrity photography. Abosch's images are wonderfully austere and quiet. Italian Vogue says that Abosch "knows the true face of a star" and from his portraits of Johnny Depp and Steven Spielberg to the likes of Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep, we are confronted by not just the personage, but the essence of the person. This truth does not come at the expense of beauty however as Abosch's portraits are some of the most stunning of his subjects. Abosch's work has graced the pages of VOGUE, ELLE, BAZAAR. Abosch has been suspiciously absent from the spotlight since 2005 and for good reason. He now lives in Paris and has turned his energy toward the silver screen. If his movies have the same qualities as his images, we are surely in for a treat. You can view more of Kevin Abosch's photography at www.kevinabosch.com . Kevin is one of those people who is so selfless it makes you want to be a better person.

Paolo Roversi - Italy's Great Impressionist

Italian born Roversi's career began by assisting fashion photographer Laurence Sackman. Based in Paris, Roversi has carved a niche in the world of fashion photography, renowned for his often impressionistic, classical images which regularly grace the pages of Italian Vogue. Roversi's book "Nudi", a collection of ethereal nudes of virtually all the world's top models is a testament to the respect the fashion world holds for this important photographer. He works more often than not with large-format Polaroid film and in the studio where he is able to control the light and the expsoure times. His images are often blurry and colorful bordering on the truly impressionistic. In the world of fashion where clothes are the focus, he manages through his emotive imagery to capture shape, color and movement while not obsessing on detail. One cannot help but feel a sense of classical treatment of his subjects from the positioning his models and the quality of the light sources.

More of Paolo Roversi's work can be seen at the photographer's website www.paoloroversi.com. Paolo is like the father I wish I had. A true gentleman.

Steven Meisel - Fashion's Reigning Master

Few fashion photographers have enjoyed such long-lived success as Vogue staple, Steven Meisel. Meisel has shot campaigns for Versace, Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein and Prada. In 1992 fashion's most celebrated photographer shot to international fame for his work on pop-star Madonna's controversial book "SEX". One of Meisel's first jobs was to work for fashion designer Halston as an illustrator. Meisel never thought he could become a photographer. He admired photographers like Jerry Schatzberg, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Bert Stern. Later on, while working at Women's Wear Daily as an illustrator, he went to Elite model agency where two girls working there allowed him take pictures of some of their models. He would photograph them in his apartment in Gramercy Park or on the street: on weekdays he would work at Women's Wear Daily and on weekends with the models. One of them was Phoebe Cates. Some of these models took their pictures to Seventeen magazine to show their model books and the people at Seventeen subsequently called Meisel and asked if he wanted to work with them. More of Steven Meisel's work can be seen here. Steven makes me remember why I got into this business... The heat!