Faces - Emerging, Evolving, Establishing
Phillip Wong Photography
Portraits
Faces – Emerging, Evolving, Establishing
Faces reflect the perceptions and experiences behind eyes. Without knowing it, we read character, heart, thought, memories and spirit, as well as emptiness, behind every expression.
I’ve photographed people for various reasons, some for myself, some for them, some because of a magazine and a project . . . often, people want to “look like . . . ” someone famous, but because they have their own journey, their own experiences and the thoughts they’ve learned, merge with experiences they’ve had, the camera captures each face differently.
I am intrigued by the urgency of today, but the timelessness of where we exist. We believe that we are different than anyone else, and we are . . . . but we are also very much the same as others who came before us. Each face shows both the unique, and the timelessness.
Gear Magazine
Phillip Wong Photography
Editorial
Gear Magazine
Gear Magazine was a publication that emerged when Maxim and FHM made their way over from Britain and their explosive success revealed latent markets in America.
Gear was different, but couldn’t brand itself differently. Gear was started by Bob Guccione, Jr. who had launched Spin Magazine earlier, and who’s father had brought Penthouse to America from Britain.
Edgy, offbeat, but serious about a new crop of artists, actors, musicians, emerging and defining a new culture, Gear recognized my informal, direct and honest approach matched their perspective with my photographs of Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron, and brought me onboard. They asked me to pitch personalities and story proposals.
As I saw how they developed layouts, graphics and content, I quickly saw the potential in his vision.
But they couldn’t keep up the financing, marketing, or production necessary to continue competing with Maxim, FHM, GQ or Esquire at the same time, technology was changing digital publishing.
Funki Porcini - Mixer - New York
Phillip Wong Photography
Portrait/Editorial
Funki Porcini – Mixer Magazine
While in London, I became friends with models who often spent nights going from pubs where they would gather information about various raves, and we would be invited to squats and warehouses, junkyards and undergrounds.
I knew something about the House music scene emerging from Chicago, and London blew the scene up. When I came back to New York, I began working with a small publication MixMag, which changed to Mixer, which highlighted the DJs who emerged to become the stars of the underground scenes.
Funki Porcini was one of the many artists who I was introduced to, and his mocking of money in his work made me hunt down handfuls of play money to burn in our shoot.
Like the London publications, young American designers were seeking to push the edges of design, but with a constant pressure of deadline and budget, we can see differences.
Javier Bardem
Phillip Wong Photography
Editorial/Portrait
Javier Bardem
I worked for a number of small independent publications that were writing about films and music that were new, ambitious, under-explored.Their focus converged with my own interest in newly discovered or emerging artists.
Javier Bardem was in Before Night Falls when I was asked to photograph him to support the interview which was being written.
Angelina Jolie
Phillip Wong Photography
Editorial/Portraits
Angelina Jolie
I had been working with models from Elite NY and one of the bookers called to ask me to see a model who they wanted to shoot with, but also to ask my opinion about what could be done with her.
Angelina Jolie was sure of herself, unafraid, and precocious. She didn’t see herself as a model, but she wanted to act. We spent hours talking, shooting, talking some more, but I realized she was right about herself. She probably would be very good. (I never knew who her parents were, so I treated her goals the same as anyone else.) She was intelligent and would occasionally say things that seemed to be testing me, checking to see if I were actually listening, seeing if I took her seriously. We talked about modeling, acting, directing, perception, and how audiences see. We drifted into the differences between religions, philosophies, values, goals and the need for, or importance of success, before discussing our impact in the world.
I had no doubt that whatever she chose to do, she would succeed at, but what she would DO with that success would be just as important.
Charlize Theron
Phillip Wong Photography
Editorial/Beauty/Portraits
Charlize Theron
I met Charlize Theron in my hotel in Milano. Christan Burran, the makeup artist I had been traveling the world with, had seen her and insisted that we shoot with Charlize.
Christan had a superb passion and eye for faces, makeup and colors, and doing one more shoot was something I could always find time for.
Charlize was beautiful, sexy, headstrong and complex. She knew how to project her focus and attention and as we flowed through the day, we talked about acting, South Africa and about the need to use her fame and success as a platform in the future.
A New Covenant
Phillip Wong Photography
Portraits
A New Covenant
Some friends who were representing musical talents had me on their list to shoot for musicians, singing groups, and in the case of A New Covenant, a gospel group.
They arrived to me on a Sunday morning, after church (when they could all be available at the same time), and when they were setting up, changing, checking hair, and makeup, it was like an open casting call. People everywhere. They came in several vans and we drove to the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan.
In shooting, I wanted a wide range of images that revealed the energy, the exuberance, and joy that they brought to their performances. Their changes of clothing were from their non-church performances with resplendent Sunday church wear, to zoot suit-like men’s wear.
Franco Moschino
Phillip Wong Photography
Editorial/Portraits
Franco Moschino
ID Magazine’s Iain Webb contacted me from London when they were planning on doing a profile on Italian fashion designer Franco Moschino. ID was one of a series of influential British publications that rose through “street style” to showcase the irreverent designers that would put a huge stamp on fashion through the first 20 years of the 21st century.
Iain sent me a number of questions he wanted me to touch on in an interview I was conducting, but my discussion expanded into Franco Moschino’s views on designing, the growing direction of fashion into name branding, the diminishing of designers as labels ascended, and the pricing and commercialism of fashion.
Franco Moschino was the son of an Italian ironworker, and he approached designing from the perspective of craftwork, but he was overseeing 27 labels when we spoke.His expression to described how he approached his fame.
Blues Musicians
Phillip Wong Photography
Editorial/Portrait
Blues Musicians
When I was in Italy, I proposed an overview story of Blues Musicians to editors at Italian Vogue. I didn’t necessarily think that it would have an angle at Italian Vogue, but L’Uomo Vogue, Vanity or one of their smaller publications might have an interest.They turned it down, because they didn’t see how it could be produced.
Believing that this niche story had value, I flew back to Chicago, where my family was still living, and for three weeks, photographed and interviewed Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Lefty Dizz, Junior Wells, Sugar Blue, Lonnie Brooks, Son Seals, Sunnyland Slim, and then back in Italy, as I was finishing the writing, Albert Collins and B.B. King in Pistoia.My interviews were wide-ranging and free-flowing touching on how their music and the musicians they met, guided their lives, framed their views on race, and war, and society and relationships.
Producing the finished interviews and photographic story, Conde Nast picked it up as they tried to decide which one of their publications would run with it.
Red Shoe Diaries - Brigitte Bako
Phillip Wong Photography
Portrait/Editorial
Red Shoe Diaries
Brigitte Bako
Brigitte Bako was in Red Shoes Diary which was being directed by Zalman King. I was being asked to shoot with some of the female stars by their publicity unit and get them into multiple publications. I met her at one of New York’s boutique hotels as she was doing a promotional tour.
Our team of stylist, makeup artist and hair stylist prepped her so that we would be able to release multiple sets for multiple publications – but the look had to be cool, sexy, elegant, and reflect the character she had been playing in this new series.
