I never assisted much. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to meet a number of people that I admire, but I’m not a very good assistant actually. I only did it on rare occasions many years ago and each time it was a personal struggle. I was fixing the photographers’ mistakes, creating their lighting, bringing ideas to the table that they would get credit for and was wondering how they got these jobs in the first place. Perhaps I’d think otherwise if I had worked with different shooters, because I like being on set and I like helping out, but it was just bad dice rolls all down the pike.
There was one major commercial shoot where I was brought on as the American assistant to the “top commercial photographer” in Japan. I hooked the company up to the rental house I use in LA and they rented this ton of equipment. Eight 2000W packs, a fleet of heads, boom stands and enough duvateen to cover a square mile. I thought “right on this should be fun. A large scale shoot.” We get to the Paramount lot and I think we are going to light up the entire New York Street set. Turns out we are shooting a single person against a colored 12x12 flat on a little stage. Granted that person was Mila Jovovich, but still…
From an early age one of my big heros was Avedon, who for me is still the grand master. He did it all and broke boundaries that people still imitate today. Ralph Gibson was another early influence and I have deep admiration for photographers like Sally Mann, Julia Margaret Cameron, Mark Seliger, Duane Michaels, Rocky Schenk, Robert Frank. Robert Frank kills me…
Then there is the painter Andrew Wyeth who may have inspired me more than any of the photographers. Spirit lives in his work in a way that I haven’t seen any other artist. There are also the old and present masters like Carravagio, Rembrandt and Odd Nerdrum.
I never had any real mentors either. It’s something now that I am an adult that I grieve never having. I have always wished there was an Alexey Brodovitch to take me under his wing and show me the ropes, but that’s not the way things played out. I had to teach myself, make my own mistakes and perhaps that was just the way it needed to be.