Fall into the Gap

Dedicated to Tiff

GAP holiday lights, San Francisco, December 2008.



What do these photographers have in common? Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz, Mikael Jannson, Matthew Rolston, Inez van Lamsweerde, Michel Comte, Christian Witkin, Gus Van Sant, Albert Watson, Steven Meisel, Patrick Demarchelier, David Bailey, Peter Lindbergh, Brigitte Lacombe. They have all shot ads for the Gap, the San Francisco-based clothing retailer that was established in 1969.

Gap built itself on the strength of image and marketing. Its ad campaigns employed the best image makers in the business whose collective work for the company not only changed the face of advertising, but created a group portrait of celebrity during the last two decades.

Photographers themselves took center stage in Gap campaigns. Diane Keaton, Karl Lagerfeld and Peter Lindbergh made self-portraits for Gap. Annie Leibovitz photographed Steven Meisel and William Wegman in 1988, and Herb Ritts shot a magnificent portrait of Sheila Metzner in 1990.

























Gap's ongoing "Individuals of Style" campaign, which began in 1988, has featured hundreds of the most famous - and unlikely - endorsers to grace its print ads. Beyond their notable achievements, what these celebrities had in common was an idiosyncratic sense of style, not just in fashion, but in everything they did. Gap kept its finger on the pulse of the cultural scene, and brought its leading figures to the attention of the public-at-large: art world personalities such as Francesco Clemente, Santo Loquasto, Will Kemp, Aaron Eckhart and Isabelle Adjani. Gap didn't shy away from controversial personalities like Tony Kushner or Timothy Leary, and lured very private people like Joni Mitchell, William Burroughs, Marianne Faithfull and Ali MacGraw out of their hideaways and into the posters of Gap.






Gap campaigns were not just about image, they were also about music. Every pop musician at the top of his game has shot a Gap ad. The Legends of Jazz campaign featured wonderful new portraits of jazz greats like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie by Ritts and Leibovitz. And the "Favorite Songs, Favorite Jeans" campaign, which best captured the music+fashion philosophy of Gap image-making, featured young musicians like Joss Stone, Keith Urban, Jason Mraz, Michelle Williams, John Legend, Alanis Morisette, and Brandon Boyd (see video below).

Then there were the TV ads (a few are shown below) which showed impeccable taste in pop music. The songs "Tempted" by Squeeze and "Love Train" by The O'Jays were stuck in my head when the ads first came out. My friend, Jorge, recommends playing all the videos below at the same time to create a "wall of sound" -- the sound of Gap ads.



Joss Stone, Keith Urban, et al., "Favorite Songs, Favorite Jeans"


Will Kemp, "Stuff Like That" (Quincy Jones)


Scarlett Johansson, Ashton Kutcher, et al., "Feelin'" (The LA's)


Raoul Bova, "Tempted" (Squeeze)


Gap Holiday, "Love Train" (O'Jays)


Orlando Bloom & Kate Beckinsdale, "Love Is All Around" (The Troggs)


Khaki Swing, "Jump, Jive An' Wail" (Louis Prima)


Madonna & Missy Elliot, "Hollywood" (Madonna)


"Dress You Up in My Love" (Madonna)


Everybody in Leather, "Just Can't Get Enough" (Depeche Mode)


"Mellow Yellow" (Donovan Leitch)


Claire Danes & Patrick Wilson, "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better"


Raoul Bova, "I'm Free to Do What I Want Any Old Time" (Rolling Stones)


Khaki Soul, "Lovely Day" (Bill Withers)


SJ Parker, JC Chasez, Will Kemp, "Shinin' Star" (EW&F)


Herb Ritts, k.d. lang, 1990.
Herb Ritts, Chris Isaak, 1996.
Diane Keaton, self-portrait, 1989.
Karl Lagerfeld, self-portrait, 1993.
Peter Lindbergh, self-portrait, 1996.
Herb Ritts, Sheila Metzner, 1990.
Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel, 1988.
Brigitte Lacombe, Isabelle Adjani, 1993.
Patrick Demarchelier, Timothy Leary, 1993.
Annie Leibovitz, Santo Loquasto, 1989.
Herb Ritts, William Burroughs, 1991.
Herb Ritts, Joni Mitchell, 1990.
Annie Leibovitz, Tony Kushner, 1992.
Peter Lindburgh, Ali MacGraw, 2002.
Mikael Jannson, Will Kemp, 2002.
Inez van Lamsweerde, Aaron Eckhart, 2006.
Gus Van Sant, Francesco Clemente, 1993.
Mikael Jannson, Marianne Faithfull, 2002.
Peter Lindburgh, Jakob Dylan, 2002.
Annie Leibovitz, Miles Davis, 1989.
Albert Watson, Bryan Ferry, 1993.
James Houston, Keith Urban, 2006.
Christian Witkin, Scarlett Johansson, 2001.

Photographers on Film

Yesterday's post made me watch "Funny Face" again, an ugly duckling turns into a swan movie that is equally about the photographer who transforms her. Especially wonderful is the scene where Fred Astaire, channeling Avedon, sings the title song of the movie while enlarging a high-key, blow-up portrait of Audrey Hepburn (actually made by Avedon) that gets Hepburn the modeling job in Paris. "Funny Face" made me think about feature films and documentaries about photographers and cinematographers.

My favorites:

Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography. The greatest cinematographers in the world (Vittorio Storaro, Gordon Willis, Nestor Almendros, John Bailey, Vilmos Zsigmond, Conrad Hall) talk about their work and the movies that influenced them; the history of cinematography is revealed through breathtaking scenes from more than 120 films, from Battleship Potemkin to the Godfather.

Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography



Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens. The most celebrated photographer of our time talks about her work, vision, personal life, and celebrity subjects, who return the favor with admiring anecdotes about the experience of posing for her. The documentary was directed by Leibovitz' sister, Barbara, who uses home movies and interviews with other family members that give the movie a very intimate quality.

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens



Blow-Up. Yeah, baby. David Hemmings plays a morose and drugged out fashion photographer in swinging 60s London in this stylish murder mystery by Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni. The character was based on English photographer David Bailey, who epitomized "birth of the cool," later parodied in the first Austin Powers movie. The movie also inspired Brian di Palma's Blow Out. The fashion shoots are a hoot.

Blow-Up



War Photographer. Christian Frei's camera follows James Nachtwey on assignment and shows us why he is the greatest war photographer working today. A video camera attached to Nachtwey's still camera puts the viewer right into the heart of the war in Kosovo and other places as Nachtwey weaved himself in and out of them. An extraordinary look at how a photographer works and a cry for peace in our troubled times.
War Photographer



Under Fire. From War Photographer to war photographer as action hero. In his best performance ever, Nick Nolte plays an embattled photojournalist covering the war in Nicaragua in this finely crafted, but underappreciated, thriller. Great acting all around from Gene Hackman, Ed Harris and Joanna Cassidy, and written intelligently by Ron Shelton, screenwriter of Bull Durham. If you haven't seen this yet, rent it now.

Under Fire (Spanish dub)



The Genius of Photography. This six-part BBC documentary is not your average crash course on the history of photography; it is riveting, idiosyncratic and entertaining, explained with panache by some of the best in the field. Just take a look at the clip about Bresson below and you will be spellbound. If you missed its cable run, the DVD will be available next month (finally!) from amazon.uk.

BBC - The Genius of Photography



Born into Brothels. The liberating power of the camera becomes reality in this film about eight children who live in Calcutta's red light district with their prostitute mothers. Filmmaker Zana Briski gave each child a camera and taught them how to use it. In the process, she showed them how to see the world differently. At the core of the film is hope and the transforming power of kindness.

Born into Brothels



Sven Nykvist: Light Keeps Me Company. A son's loving tribute to his father, Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who created cinema's most unforgettable images for Ingmar Bergman's greatest films (Virgin Spring, Persona, Cries and Whispers, Fanny & Alexander, From the Life of the Marionettes, Autumn Sonata, Scenes from a Marriage, among many others); a career that spanned nearly 60 years.

Sven Nykvist: Light Keeps Me Company



Masters of Photography: Diane Arbus. A 1967 documentary of Arbus, in her own voice, and the voices of friends and admirers: photographer Lisette Model, Marvin Israel, and John Szarkowski, MOMA director of photography. A fascinating look at her incipient but quickly evolving vision of photography at a critical time when success and recognition were nearly upon her.

Diane Arbus



Bruce Weber: Chop Suey. This film is a spicy melange: Robert Mitchum, vintage photos, dogs, his long-time collaboration with model Peter Johnson, chanteuse Fanny Faye, Diana Vreeland's apartment, wrestlers, Georgia O'Keefe, Jan-Michael Vincent; in short, anything Weber fancied. Got this as part of a 5-disc box set that includes his documentaries on Chet Baker ("Let's Get Lost"), boxing ("Broken Noses"), and dogs ("A Letter to True").




Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye. Bresson's humor, tenacity and sense of mischief are wonderfully on display in this series of interviews filmed late in the photographer's life. Cartier-Bresson's reflections on his photographs are a veritable survey of modern history. Film actress Isabelle Huppert, writer Arthur Miller, photographers Josef Koudelka and Elliott Erwitt are on hand to talk about the great man.