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.
Bridal - Richard Glasgow
Phillip Wong Photography
Fashion
Richard Glasgow
Bridal
Bridal is one of the niche areas of fashion that remains couture. Very specific, very focused, and classic, it is detail oriented, and each image takes a team of people working for longer periods of time to obtain the designer’s desired look.
Richard Glasgow designed gowns are still sought after by elite bridal shops around the world. Most top end designers work on a single piece for a single client to be worn once. The workmanship and detail is of premiere importance, and designers loved my attention to their detail, my understanding of their form, shape, and subtleties. But the patience of models to shoot only six garments per day, and the detailed arrangement of a fashion piece while on their body, was a trying experience.
Over several seasons, my choice of lighting was based on understanding how the gown was designed, what it was meant to achieve and how a wedding audience, and sales audience differed in their focus.
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.
Rust Belt
Phillip Wong Photography
Editorial Photography
Rust Belt
Rust Belt was one of two editorial fashion stories shot at the same time at the Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge.
Back in the early 2000s, Peter Jackson produced three films in the Hobbit tale at the same time – utilizing the ability to produce the stories in sequence, while maximizing the budget of cast, crew and location. Since then, multiple television films have been shot the same way.
That had always been my goal, to produce editorial that would utilize story to thread elements together.
It takes greater coordination and communication to do this, but the output can be significantly greater.
Caushun
Phillip Wong Photography
Editorial/Portraits
Caushun
Caushun is a gay rapper who wanted to come out, when the Hip Hop community wasn’t receptive to gay rappers.
He was bold and brash and “in-your-face” and talented. More than anything else, he was a paradox to all the images of Rap, and of Gayness, that the rest of the world imagined.
