VALLETTA: Well, I imagine that you were very smart. McDEAN: Probably not the greatest kid at school. VALLETTA: I know you photographed rock bands early on. ![]() It’s like a band, everyone having their say and experimenting. We all didn’t know what we were doing-let’s face it. We shot with Pat McGrath and Eugene Souleiman. I still look at the pictures today, and I still love them to death. I was totally new as well, humping this big old 8-by-10 plate camera around. That was at the very beginning of my career. McDEAN: That was the fun that came out of it. There’s a bit of madness, too, that happens when we work together. ![]() You allowed me to be the kooky, crazy kid that I was. VALLETTA: You saw me differently than anybody I’d ever worked with. When they caught up via phone in late July, Valletta got a rare chance to put McDean under the lens.ĪMBER VALLETTA: Do you remember the first time we met?ĬRAIG McDEAN: It was in 1993. His early assignments led McDean to one of his dearest friends and longtime subjects, supermodel and actress Amber Valletta, with whom he’s collaborated for over 20 years. And he’s translated that subcultural fluency into a career creating lyrical, graphic, and kinetic images for Interview, Vogue, and i-D and brands like Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, and Yohji Yamamoto-while regularly taking striking portraits of rock royalty ( Yoko Ono, Thom Yorke, and Jay Z among them) along the way.Īfter dropping out of art school and then assisting fellow Brit Nick Knight in London, McDean came into his own in the minimal-minded ’90s with campaigns for Calvin Klein and Jil Sander. ![]() The photographer, who currently lives in New York with his wife, the shoe designer Tabitha Simmons, and their children, grew up frequenting clubs and shooting local bands in Manchester in the ’80s. It’s fitting that one of the early loves of British export Craig McDean was music. I SHOULD HAVE BEEN STUDYING or WHATEVER, BUT I WASN’T. I USED TO GO TO all these CLUBS WHERE PEOPLE would DRESS UP. I WAS MORE INTO FASHION than I WAS INTO PHOTOGRAPHY.
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