Jonathan Becker’s trajectory is incomparable with that of any other fashion photographer of our time. The native New Yorker apprenticed under Brassaï in Paris in the 1970s, snapping party photographs for Womenswear Daily’s party bureau at the age of 20, before returning to New York to start a new post as portrait photographer for Interview Magazine. While working at the esteemed publication, he famously moonlighted as a taxi driver, giving rides to the likes of Diana Vreeland and Andy Warhol, and seemingly meeting all of the most notable characters 1980s New York had to offer in the process. “Andy would always come sit shotgun because he was afraid of taxi drivers,” he once said in an interview. He was so cheap, never tipped.”
Most impressive of all, though, is Becker’s 30-year tenure at Vanity Fair, where his flair for portraiture grew prolific and unignorable. Actors, artists, socialites and politicians have been immortalised by his all-seeing lens, taking him from Buckingham Palace to the Amazon jungle on assignments, and he has published countless books chronicling his many varied adventures both for this and many other publications. He is omniscient, photographing Valentino on his yacht in St Tropez, Manolo Blahnik leaning against a marble sculpture-topped plinth at London’s Sir John Soanes Museum, Robert Mapplethorpe entertaining visitors to his Whitney exhibition in the final year of his life. He photographs are the very definition of unexpected – capturing some unseen angle or aspect of his subject, crystallising them in his admiring and unflinching gaze.
To our delight, Becker’s new exhibition at SCAD FASH, the Atlanta-based sartorial younger sister of Savannah College of Art and Design, displays all of this and more in A Fashionable Mind, breathing life into Becker’s extensive archive by way of large-scale prints and walls covered in the fruits of his enviable career. AnOther spoke to the photographer to find out how he first entered into the world of photography, and what makes for a remarkable portrait.
On his first encounter with photography…
“As an eight-year-old I was taking pictures with a Brownie. As a ‘professional’ – at twelve years old – and in need of a summer job in lieu of continuing to bus tables in a fairly filthy restaurant out in Southampton, I decided to take portraits of much younger kids at amusement parks and on the beach, and sell them to their parents. That worked quite well, the pictures were engaging. So ever since, I’ve seen photography as my livelihood.”
On what makes a good portrait…
“The trick is to be inspired by any present subject - each and every one. I have no favourites. Everyone has a story. A good portrait is an image that narrates and reveals some truth about the subject.”
On his favourite part of the photographic process…
"Nothing beats the moment when you see a photograph that works – that hits the spot, and tells a story with visual articulation. If I’ve made the photograph, the feeling is not so much of pride, but of sure satisfaction."
On the process of editing through his archive…
"I have a fairly decent sense of what’s in my archive, I’m always editing, but there are surprises, of course. I’d made a prototype of a book with the help of master editor Mark Holborn, then André Leon Talley went through that prototype with great exuberance and enthusiasm, marking pages of photographs he wanted, and deciding on the spot to make the exhibition in his namesake gallery at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, and now SCAD FASH in Atlanta. André did all the work this go-round. It was exciting to watch."
