robert hart photography » Beauty

Shaken, Not Stirred

robert — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:53:23 +0000

It’s not every day that you’re in the studio working with one of your long-time friends and favorite models when 360 West magazine art director, Meda Kessler, emails and writes, “Hey, shoot me a photo of Hendrick’s Gin for our upcoming issue. Shoot whatever you like.” Knowing that I keep a bottle of Hendrick’s in the studio at all times, she assumed, correctly, that I’d be eager to come up with something for the June issue.

If you haven’t tried Hendrick’s, you owe it to yourself to get thee to a spirits store post-haste. A long-time fan of Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire, I have now relegated them to mixer status. The art of the martini is a delicate one and for my money, Hendrick’s is the only gin worthy of my shaker.

Now one of the many great things about working with Meda is that she’s all about collaboration. She wants the photographer to bring his or her vision to everything she assigns. It’s why top photographers all over north Texas are clamoring to shoot for her and it’s why her magazine, now in its 14th issue, is so gorgeous to look at. Meda is one of those rare art directors who hires the best then leaves them alone to do what they do.

She does not feel the need to change or tweak or put her mark on a photographer’s work. Those art directors are the bane of any creative shooter’s existence. They are insufferable. There’s a special ring in hell reserved just for them.

Page 80, 360 West magazine's June 2010 issue

So, with model Liz Ashley in the studio in a new Zac Posen tuxedo, we conspired to create the photo you see here. Liz and I had been talking about the tux shoot for more than a year and the Hendrick’s shoot just fell neatly into place.

Every once in a great while the planets align and stuff just seems to work.

This and other images from The Robert Hart Studio are available in my searchable online archive:

NYT’s nifty little photo-slider-Flash-tool

robert — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:25:49 +0000

The New York Times' nifty Flash tool for before and after affects

. . . at least that’s what I’m calling it. It’s a damned nifty little tool that lets us see the before and after of models shot by Greg Kessler in and out of makeup at Milan fashion week.

It’s used in T Magazine‘s The Moment blog and the reader comments are overwhelmingly positive. A great use of Flash, imo.

Kudos to the propeller-heads at NYT.com.

Video from Maybelline’s 2010 calendar shoot

robert — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:19:40 +0000

A behind-the-scenes peek at Maybelline's 2010 calendar shoot with photographer Kenneth Willardt

Seems as if everyone is shooting video of their studio shoots. That’s a good thing.

Check this out: “V” magazine’s video of the Maybelline calendar shoot. Dallas native and former winner of the Fashion Dallas/Kim Dawson Model Search, Erin Wasson, is featured.

NYC street shooter, Clay Enos, in “Wired” video

Robert — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:01:38 +0000

I’ve long been an admirer of Clay Enos‘ “street studio” sessions. Nothing the least bit pretentious about his subjects–real people who pause just long enough for him to make a photo, then return to their lives.

Wired magazine has just discovered him and produced this video from one of his shoots.

Elizabeth Wurtzel discovers gravity

Robert — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:44:21 +0000

I’m coming at this a month late, but it’s a little gem from the pages of Elle magazine written by my former Dallas Morning News colleague, Elizabeth Wurtzel, and it’s too good to pass up.

Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation"

Wurtzel’s article, “Failure to Launch: When Beauty Fades,” is yet another homage to Wurtzel’s favorite celebrity: Elizabeth Wurtzel. A Harvard grad, and a graduate of Yale Law school, where, as of February 2009, she had yet to pass the bar, she’s made a career out of over-long introspection and exposing the ongoing train wreck that is her life. Her first book, Prozac Nation, a memoir published when she was 26, chronicles her struggle with depression.

In this article she mourns the loss of her looks at 41 and eulogizes the relationships that she either killed or let die through neglect. In typical Wurtzel-fashion, she’s brutally honest about her failings but her sincerity is always in question. It’s the curse of the self-absorbed to indulge in intense introspection and self-analysis only to conclude that, “Hey, I’m a mess, but I like me.”

As she rages against the ravages of time and gravity, she warns that ” . . . at some somber and sobering calendar date, most of us lose our looks and likewise one of our charms — and I will lose mine. At which time, for me at least, there won’t be much point to life anymore at all.” And I suppose that’s correct if you’ve lived your life chin-deep in self-obsession. By most standards, she’s still stunning, still brilliant and still remarkable but that’s not enough for Wurtzel.

Ultimately, Wurtzel’s tragedy isn’t her depression or her fading looks — it’s her absolute inability to get over herself.