[Leica] this is how the fashion industry works....

[Kyle Cassidy <KCassidy@asc.upenn.edu>]

So, it would stand to reason that eventually my telephone number would fall
into the hands of the folks who publish Gothic Beauty, the, er, "gloomy"
fashion magazine. Can I shoot something for them? Of course I can. I'd
actually sent them a portfolio a year ago and they never called me back. I
think it wise not to remind the editor of this. So he puts me in contact
with this model from New York who they want to use, Darenzia. Problem is,
the only weekend she's free is three days before the deadline. This wouldn't
have been much of a problem were this today, but this was in August, in my
pre-digital days -- i was actually using that stuff you put in the camera
back in those dark days .... So a week before the shoot, these FedEx
packages of clothes start arriving at my house, there's some business with
some custom designs going on and meetings are set up with Fetishes Boutique,
who's doing some of the wardrobe too. Darenzia comes down with a hairdresser
in tow on Friday night. She has bright blue hair. We all go to Fetishes
after closing and Darenzia tries on, oh, twenty outfits. We load up two
steamer trunks full of clothes and shoes and march back to my house where we
all drink like fish. Someone's running around the house in the gorilla suit.
It all gets hazy from there. Next morning we're up at 8:30 and the hair
dresser starts to put her hair up in a mohawk. This process takes four hours
and involves a lot of swearing. 1:30 in the afternoon we're out in the
studio, we shoot untill 10 in the evening. M6, 28, 35, and 50mm's. One
umbrella, one strobe.

http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/temp/gb1.jpg
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/temp/gb4.jpg
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/temp/gb7.jpg
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/temp/gb10.jpg
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/temp/gb11.jpg
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/temp/gb12.jpg

And we're out in the middle of the street shooting:

http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/temp/gb13.jpg

my neighbors, the same ones who watched from their porches in some panicked
morbid terror at 2:00 a.m. as i dragged a coffin up the steps of my house
just a few months ago, are all peering out their blinds wondering just what
the hell kind of a crazy weirdo lives across the street and isn't there some
sort of zoning against it.

Darenzia and the hairdress jump on a train and head back to new york.
Throughout the day my assistant's been messengering film over to the lab. i
go to sleep and pick up the film Sunday morning. The magazine wants these
huge 24 megabyte .tiff files so i'm scanning. i'm scanning. i'm scanning.
The color correction is terrible, i realize i have no idea what the hell i'm
doing. In one shot the background's blue, in another it's red. I call the
magazine and ask if they can take 18x12 prints. They can. So I go back to
the lab and ask if they can print me 14 8x12's in the next five hours. Sure
they can but it'll cost me more than a 12 guage Browning over and under. I
threaten them with some bailing wire and a plastic knife but it does no
good. I pay for the prints. Monday morning I fed-ex them to Gothic Beauty.
Then there's a lot of this "we'd better get the cover" -- Darenzia calls me,
"they better put me on the cover." i say "they better put you on the cover."
These phone calls back and forth last for two months. "i heard they're
putting someone else on the cover. i'm going to make some phone calls."
"okay, they might put us on the cover." Darenzia calls the day after
halloween. "i saw the issue, we're not on the cover. and they didn't even
print our shots in color (D'oh!) and they cropped me out at the knees."

so, i haven't seen it. but the issue's out.

 www.gothicbeauty.com

somehow this one wasn't as funny as the album cover story....

kc
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