Showing posts with label Robert Mapplethorpe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Mapplethorpe. Show all posts

Andy Nelson for Miguel Cruz 86 by Robert Mapplethorpe

Brand: Miguel Cruz
Year: Fall/Winter 1986
Models: Andy Nelson
Ph: Robert Mapplethorpe






Photographers: Bill King, tribute to the king of the fashion pictures

"In December 1987 the photographic and fashion worlds turned out at the Frank Campbell funeral chapel in Manhattan to pay respects to a young photographer who had taken the industry by storm.

Bill King, who had died of complications of AIDS, was a “wonder boy” best known for his witty, energy-filled fashion images, shot elegantly against white seamless, in French and American Vogue. Today, however, King is barely mentioned in books and other histories of photography and fashion. “He has been erased,” says Naudet. “He needs to be remembered.”"

Jean-Jacques Naudet
American Photo's editor at large

------------

Photo Italia1988, February
"Bill King: Tribute to the King of the fashion pictures, Bill King remembered by Franceline Prat from Vogue Paris, Jean Demachy from Elle France and fashion designer Enrico Coveri. "
Models: Walter Schupfer, Brian Lucas, Nick Constantino, Gale O'Neal, Renee Simonsen, Estelle Lefebure, Ashley Richardson, Janice Dickinson, Cindy Crawford, Elle McPherson, Brooke Shields, Annete Stai, David Bailey, Helmut Newton, Patrick Demarchelier, Mike Reinhardt, Arthur Elgort.










Vanity Fair
Year: August 1994, Issue #408
Models:  Jerry Hall, Iman, Carol Alt, Kim Alexis, Kelly Emberg and Rene Russo
Ph: Portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe.

"It has been seven years since photographer Bill King died of AIDS, but he has yet to be laid to rest. His final years remain a mystery to most of the people who thought they knew him best.

His story was not told when he died because he was one of the first major figures in the visual arts to be taken by AIDS, Although King died at 48 he had a prodigious output, his signature photographs were studio shots that were seamless in both background and foreground, rich celebrity photobiographies and energy-infused fashion photographs of "jumping" models.

There were also unpublished nudes-artful ones done at sittings for unfinished book projects, and others, taken at pre-safe-sex parties, which many top names in fashion and entertainment are praying never turn up.

The fortune he should have amassed as, in the words of one magazine art director, "probably one of the best photographers ever" is either spent or lost. And his bewildering will is still tied up in a legal battle between members of his family and his last protegé.

His considerable visual legacy is in limbo, And the story of how it got that way - and of how he came to be beloved, reviled, honored and pitied - is still quizzically whispered about in the fashion world, where faces come and go but behind of scenes giants such as Bill King survive the styles."





Andy Nelson for Miguel Cruz 87 by Mapplethorpe

Brand: Miguel Cruz
Year: Spring/Summer 1987
Model: Andy Nelson
Ph: Robert Mapplethorpe

Andy Nelson 1992

THE BALTIMORE SUN
Andy Nelson poses in line with beliefs A MODEL IN MANY WAYS
March 15, 1992| By Mary Corey | Mary Corey,Staff Writer

First, the face:

At a glance, it's more a study in geometry than a series of features. The jawbone as angular as an isosceles triangle; the faint lines etched like graph paper around blue eyes; an aristocratic nose, long with a squarish tip; and setting it all off, a nest of blond curls.

Put all these together and you have the face that has launched a thousand ads -- clothing, liquor and cologne -- and made its owner, Andy Nelson Jr., one of the most celebrated local models.

From the pages of GQ to the runways of Giorgio Armani, the man with the chiseled good looks and easygoing style has worn everything from tuxedos to torn jeans for the camera. In the process, he's earned a reputation for being a professional in a world of prima donnas. And that has brought its reward: an annual six-figure salary.


Brand: Miguel Cruz
Year: Fall/Winter 1986
Model: Andy Nelson
Ph: Robert Mapplethorpe




But behind the money-making visage is not a glamour guy but a devoutly religious 38-year-old man who now refuses to do liquor ads or to accept assignments that keep him from his wife and two daughters for long.

His decision raises a question: Can a man with scruples make it in the modeling business?

To ask Andy Nelson Jr. that you have to travel far, past haystacks, rolling hills and grazing cows to a small white cottage he rents on a horse farm in Glen Arm.

His wife, Christine, and daughters, Natalie, 3, and Olivia, 17 months, come tumbling out of the back door dressed in floral cotton outfits. Cats and dogs roam around the picnic table, and the sun shines for the first time in nearly a week.

An ad team couldn't have created a more idyllic image, but what's being sold here? Despite making a living from his looks, in person Mr. Nelson doesn't try to impress. Words like "ain't" and "gotta" pepper his speech. His gray trousers are ripped at the seam. And sure, he'll show you pictures of himself taken by celebrity photographers Francesco Scavullo and the late Robert Mapplethorpe, but what he really values is a portrait of his father, Andy Nelson, a former defensive back for the Baltimore Colts football team.

"Modeling is a business," he says. "Most people think that all you have to have is an interesting face and somehow it's like easy street, but there are so many people like that. You have to work at it."

Aside from his distinctive features, Mr. Nelson has been praised for his physique -- a 6-foot, 1-inch, 180-pound frame he keeps toned through daily exercise -- and his ability to vary his looks.

"He can be a businessman. He can be a rough-looking, outdoors-type person. He can be slick, very stylized, and he can be all-American," says Ken Eggerl, vice president of 3 West Casting, a local modeling agency that represents him.

Mr. Nelson never intended to live his life in front of the camera. Growing up the eldest of seven in Towson, he planned to play pro football like his father.

Andy's father saw no early signs his son would choose modeling. "He was a skinny little fella," he says. "He wasn't pretty or anything like that. He kind of grew into it."

During his teen-age years, Andy "drank a few beers, had a battle or two, but I never had to go get him out of jail," he adds.

After graduating from the University of South Carolina in 1976 with a degree in physical education, Mr. Nelson tried out for the New York Jets and quickly realized he lacked the speed for the big league.

He moved on to managing a chain of local fitness centers, a profession that led indirectly to modeling. A club member who worked in advertising asked him to pose for a hospital ad.

"I said, 'No man, I ain't going to do that' . . . I assumed that all [male models] were gay. After doing some research, I found that wasn't the case," he says.

He never seriously considered switching careers until the fitness chain went bankrupt, and he found himself jobless at 29.

Not everyone liked his decision to try modeling. "My dad wasn't too thrilled about it, but then I showed him a few paychecks," says Mr. Nelson, who routinely makes $150 an hour.

Brand: Miguel Cruz
Year: Spring/Summer 1987
Model: Andy Nelson
Ph: Robert Mapplethorpe




He eventually signed on with the prestigious Elite Agency but only after promising to spend a year in Europe building his portfolio.

"Europe is almost like a farm team," he says. "When I got to Milan, it was full of models -- kids from California looking for a wave they couldn't find. I was a little older and I had a little more savvy."

During that year, Mr. Nelson also made another decision about his life: He wanted to marry his girlfriend Christine, whom he had met years before at a fitness club.

"I had a big crush on him," recalls Ms. Nelson, who grew up in Highlandtown. "I always dated . . . truck drivers. They weren't anything like him."

While he was attracted to her, he was intrigued by her traditional values, particularly her interest in born-again Christianity.

She persuaded him to attend services with her, but it wasn't until he lost his job at the fitness club that he became serious about it. "During that period when I was without work, I developed a relationship with Jesus Christ," he says.

He now attends Bible study groups and leads his family in regular prayers. An ideal day begins with a morning devotion, he says.

But at times his faith has been in conflict with his profession. Two years ago, he started declining liquor and cigarette advertising. "I don't think it's wrong to have a beer or a cigarette, but . . . I want to try to be an example that I can live without it," he says.

Although he has graced the pages of Esquire, Playboy and Men's Health, he admits that the decision has damaged his career. "I take it on the chin for that. At my age that's what I should be doing. Those [ads] are the home-run balls," he says.

Mr. Eggerl agrees: "He loses a couple bookings over it. Andy's now getting in that range of the Marlboro man."

Yet Jan Gonet, president of Nytro, a New York modeling agency, has mixed feelings about his client's decision. "There's a positive and a negative side to it," he says. "The negative, of course, is you don't get put up for the big money-making campaigns. You '' have to work harder to make it. The positive side is he can look at himself in the mirror in the morning. I have to respect that."

His wife supports his decision, too. Since becoming active in their church -- Cub Hill Bible Presbyterian -- his personality has changed dramatically, she says.

"He was really wild before," she says. "His personality was different. He was arrogant. . . . He wasn't faithful to me when we were dating."

Now family is such a priority that Mr. Nelson tailors his bookings around his family commitments, sometimes accepting less prestigious mall fashion shows instead of New York assignments.

Spending the last nine years modeling hasn't changed him, his family says. He rarely tells his parents what he's working on, so they are often surprised to open magazines and see him.

And his own taste in clothing is still less than stellar, his wife LTC says. She shakes her head when recalling how he once appeared on a talk show wearing pants that ended at his ankles.

"He's really a country bumpkin turned model," says Mr. Eggerl. "He's not part of the model community. They all stick close together, and he doesn't hang out with them. He does a show and goes home to his wife and kids."

He and his wife tried living in New York briefly after they married six years ago. "We had no grass, no backyard. We had a little 450-square-foot place, and that was it," says Ms. Nelson.

Since returning to Maryland, they have been unable to sell their New York condominium, which has put a crimp in plans to build on the 4 acres they own in Glen Arm.

As age 40 nears, Mr. Nelson admits he's looking toward his last photo shoot. He works occasionally as a personal fitness trainer. But most of his spring and summer months are devoted to Andy Nelson's Southern Pit Barbecue at Valley View Farms, a carry-out and catering business he and his father run from April to December. They recently began selling the family's 80-year BAMA barbecue sauce and basting dip to area gourmet shops and are negotiating to open a restaurant.

But surely there's still some place Andy Nelson Jr. longs to see his face one day.

He looks over at his daughter, Natalie, sitting on her mother's lap, and smiles.

"Yeah," he says, "over my daughter's mantle in her own house someday."

THE NELSON FILE

Occupation: Model.

Born: Dec. 14, 1953; Memphis, Tenn.

Education: B.A. in physical education from the University of South Carolina, 1976.

Current home: Glen Arm.

Family: Married since 1986 to Christine; two daughters, Natalie, 3; Olivia, 17 months.

Hobbies: Exercising and listening to arch-conservative radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh.

How he deters female fans: "I just show them my wedding ring and show them pictures of my kids."

If he didn't look like Andy Nelson Jr., he'd like to look like: "Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's got a big smile and big muscles."

Andy Nelson by Robert Mapplethorpe

Brand: Miguel Cruz
Year: Spring/Summer 1987
Models: Andy Nelson and ?
Ph: Robert Mapplethorpe



I found an online Vanity Fair article about Roberto Polo, the owner of the Miguel Cruz brand, it says something about the campaign :

In December 1985 he (Roberto Polo) purchased the fashion house of a designer named Miguel Cruz, a fellow Cuban whom he had met through Maria Felix. A second-echelon but respected designer with a faithful following, Cruz had been established in Rome since the 1960s. When he approached Polo to borrow money from him for his business, Polo is supposed to have said, “I don’t lend money. I’ll buy you.” Fashion had always been a business that fascinated him. Now it became the business that would destroy him.

From the beginning, Polo played an active part in advertising and promotion, hiring the models, flying them to New York to be photographed, even staging the fashion shows. Fashion experts say that the campaign didn’t work commercially, even if the photography was sometimes great.

Like so much about Roberto Polo, his advertising sent out mixed signals; there was confusion as to whether he was selling his wares or his models. He claimed that he would make the name of Miguel Cruz known through the shock value of the ads. “We’re living in a society that wants to be shocked,” he told one interviewer.

A Robert Mapplethorpe photograph for the Miguel Cruz men’s line showed the back of a seated naked man removing a sweater over his head. For the women’s line, a two-page ad showed a dimly lit female model in a black jeweled evening dress with one fully lit naked man behind her and another sitting on the floor in front of her.

It enraged Polo that while no one questioned the propriety of Calvin Klein’s massively nude advertising campaign, which was going on at the same time, his own campaign was labeled prurient and offensive. “They object to my ads but not to Calvin Klein’s.” The advertisement showing the bull’s-eye picture with the male rump may have offended one segment of the public, but a more lurid segment bombarded the New York office for copies of it.

Polo always knew more about everything than the experts. Soon he started directing Mapplethorpe’s photo sessions, and Mapplethorpe, a bit of a prima donna himself, resented the interference. Eventually there was a falling-out, and Mapplethorpe resigned the account. Not to be topped, Polo wrote the photographer a letter firing him, and sent copies to several prominent people in New York.



It seems that the famous 1987 Mapplethorpe serie of Thomas was photographed in the same place or even in the same photoshoot.

Mapplethorpe!

Rolling Stone Magazine
"Body Guards"
Issue 518, 1988
Models: David Moore, Rick Dietz and Lisa Marie Smith.
PH: Robert Mapplethorpe



David Moore outtake


Rick Dietz is the male model who did the famous 1995 Valentino Campaign photographed by Herb Ritts.

Blog Labels

Look for more ads, models or editorials:





DATABASE SEARCH

New! An advertising database covering more than 20 years of stylish male imagery

LATEST DATABASE RECORDS




"Nineteen" by Daryl Janney








Recent blog Posts








recent Comments