Scavullo.com - Scavullo by Julian Bain

SCAVULLO
By Julian Bain

Recently I was told a story about a young boy who always loved taking pictures. He started when he was ten years old with his father's brown box camera. Whenever the family would go on vacation the boy would use his father's camera and take pictures of his sisters, recreating what he had seen in Vogue or Harper's Bazaar. The little boy was Francesco Scavullo.

It has been decades since those first photographs were taken and more than thirty years since his first actual photo shoots for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, but that passion for photography is still evident in the eyes of the artist. Sitting with him, we discussed a career that has spanned more than fifty years of photographing the world around him. His lens has captured more than just the vision he sees, it has produced the images that chronicle half a century of style.

More than just a pictorial history of a time and place, his work represents an evolution of all things beautiful and noteworthy. After only a few moments with Scavullo you forget you are speaking with a seasoned man of great accomplishments, for he speaks of his passion with all the exuberance of that same ten year old boy from decades ago.
Visit almost any web site on Francesco Scavullo and the same quote comes up in the captions stating that he is 'the dominant photographic influence on American fashion and beauty.' I asked him what he attributed this to. "Oh Wow! That is a big responsibility. I figure maybe it happened because I was an editorial photographer. I did not do advertisement photographs, very little. Later on I did some for Versace, and Dior and Valentino, but basically I was an editorial photographer. I started working for Seventeen magazine, when I was seventeen (he laughs), no I was nineteen I think. Then from Seventeen I went to Town & Country. There I worked with Tony Mazola and I began photographing celebrities. I used to go out to the Hamptons all the time and take pictures. Then I worked with other magazines like Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's. I've worked for Mademoiselle, Glamour, Time, and Newsweek. I worked for Harper's Bazaar, and then I worked for Vogue for ten years.

"Then in 1965 Helen Gurley Brown called me," he continues. "She was the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine at the time, and she said that she would like me to do the covers. I didn't even know what Cosmo was. I had never seen it. She said, 'I know all the magazines you work for but I want you to do all my covers.' I said, 'So let me do a cover and we will see what happens.' I started doing the covers and Helen liked them, but I wasn't too thrilled. So then I began going to designers like Halston, and all my friends, and I began asking them to make clothes for me because I didn't like the clothes that they were bringing in from Cosmo. Then I met Sean Byrnes in 1971 and he came and started working in the studio. He was fascinated by the Cosmo covers. He thought it really would be something fun to work on. So he went out and had clothes made and started picking all the girls. We produced the covers right in the studio, and it had nothing to do with Cosmo except sending Helen two or three shots. She was wonderful to work with because she never said 'I want to see the rest of the take.' She either said, 'I Love it' or 'No Way,' and if she said 'No way,' then you could have sent her a thousand more photos and it wouldn't have mattered. If she didn't like the dress or the girl, then it was out. I did the covers for Cosmo from 1965 to 1995, thirty years."

Ask anyone what they know about Scavullo, and undoubtedly they will mention the covers for Cosmopolitan magazine. "Well I think what people do know about me is the Cosmo cover. It became an icon and I became very famous because of the cover. Everybody knew the Cosmo girl, and everybody wanted to be a Cosmo girl. At that time there were Cosmo girls and there were movie stars, you know? All the other work I had done became sort of eclipsed and I was still doing all my other work. I was working with rock and roll stars, and I was working for Rolling Stone. Whatever I was working on I would become "your magazine's photographer." That's where I think I was very lucky. I could work for a teenage magazine or I could work for Ladies' Home Journal. I was able to put on my different eyes for whomever I was photographing. For McCall's I was working for housewives, for Town & Country I was working for celebrities and society women. I got on well with housewives, society women, teenage girls, and sex symbols. I then began to put out album covers. I did a lot of covers for Cher and Diana Ross. The famous cover of Diana Ross was the "Diana" cover, and that's the one where we practically had to knock her out to do it. No make up, wet hair, Gia's ripped jeans, and a wet T-shirt. She just didn't know what was happening to her. She showed the pictures to Cher and she said, 'I don't know about this. It has me very confused.' Cher said, 'Look girl, that's the best picture ever taken of you.' It was her favorite finally. She loved it."

Diana Ross is one of countless celebrities that have been seen by the world through the eyes of Scavullo. Someone recently said, "Anyone who has been a celebrity in the past thirty years Scavullo has photographed." Scavullo responds, "Probably, everybody but the Pope, but I have missed a couple of people. I would have loved to have photographed Maria Callas, and I didn't get to photograph Marilyn Monroe. I would have loved to." However, the list of those he has photographed includes everyone from Barbra Streisand and Mick Jagger, to Andy Warhol and Madonna. "She (Madonna) came in and she was dressed in Comme Des Garcons and Stephen Sprouse. I photographed her from the beginning of her career. I was working then for Harper's Bazaar and they were bringing all the new people in to be photographed. I have shot her many times over and over again. I didn't know who she was when I shot her the first time. They said, 'You are going to be shooting Madonna,' and I saw it on the books and I didn't know who it was, but I knew soon enough. She is very, very professional and very focused, as you can see by her whole career. She is not one to slough anything off. She was just great to work with."

When discussing his work Scavullo always mentions how much he enjoys working with the subjects of his camera. Perhaps that is part of the special magic that he captures. But the model he praises the most is the beautiful but ill-fated Gia. "She was marvelous. It was like working with a wild young horse. I mean she was just incredible! I had to learn how to work with her because of the way we worked in the studio. We had a string on the lights. My assistant would take the string and get it closer to the model for the picture, for the exposure. But Gia would be running all over the place, so we finally had to put the light on wheels so we could run after her. Once I got used to working with her she spoiled me. I really loved working with her."

Among so many acclaimed celebrity photo shoots I wondered if any one stood out in his memory. "I had one fabulous afternoon with Janis Joplin. She stayed the whole afternoon. I loved photographing Janis. I loved meeting her, and she was so different from what I thought she was going to be. She died a year later I think. But when she walked in the studio, I didn't know her and she didn't know me. We just called her agent and said we wanted to photograph her, and her agent said 'Yes.' She walked into the studio and I said, 'Oh, hi Janis, I'm Scavullo.' She looked at me and she said, 'I'd love to fuck you, only I got the clap.' And I thought, 'Wow, this is some girl.' She walked on in and there was a picture of Joe Dallesandro, nude you know, and she said, 'Oh, I'd love to fuck him, but he wouldn't have time would he?' Then she started looking at all the photos of the beautiful girls on the walls and she said, 'Oh they are so beautiful,' and I said, 'Oh no Janis. It's all hair and make up and lighting tricks.' Anyway, she went in the studio and we worked all afternoon."

I was curious what advice a Pop icon of the magnitude of Scavullo would give young photographers today. "I don't think that I am a Pop icon. I don't know. I don't think that I am Pop. When I think of Pop I think of Andy Warhol. I worked for Interview when Andy Warhol asked me to help him get the magazine going so they could get fashion advertising. Sean (Byrnes) was the fashion editor and I was the photographer. I also did some stuff with Rupert Smith, who was Andy's printer. I started silk screening in 1989. I met Rupert at 54. You met everybody there. He said, 'Why don't you start silk screening?' So I went down and we fooled around with it, and I started doing portraits. I did a lot of portraits." As for advice, "You have to love what you do, and I think you have to do what you feel. Don't let people tell you what to do. I think that's the terrible thing. I have seen so many photographers popping up in the last ten or fifteen years, and it seems to me that they are not creating any style of their own. Today they don't want style, they want you to change your look every week, every month. Young photographers today should create their style, and develop their style." Who better to know about a photographer developing his style than Scavullo? Through his books we see a chronological timeline of the growth of the artist and the development of his own unique and glamorous personal style. "I have a lot of books out. I did one of the first makeover books, which was called Scavullo Beauty, in 1976. It was a big success and a best seller. That was the beginning of it, and then everybody did makeovers."

A new book came out last fall, entitled Scavullo Nudes by Abrams. It is filled with a hundred striking images that celebrate the human body. Another new book by the artist is in the works as well. "Somebody just called me last week. I had lunch with her and we are going to work on a book, Scavullo, Twentieth Century Sex & Beauty. It is going to be a retrospective of all my work from 1948 until the year 2000. 1 am very excited about that." Undoubtedly, when future artists look back on the career of Francesco Scavullo they will recognize, pay tribute to, and most probably attempt to imitate the Scavullo style. I asked the artist what he thought that style to be. "I don't know if they will even look back. One thing I notice when people stop me and talk to me, they say, 'You always take the most beautiful pictures of people. You must really love women.' I think that is probably what the style is. It is more a caring about the person, and loving them and putting them in a good light. I have had a fabulous career and I had a great time. I am thrilled that people remember me and I am thrilled that the young people know me. That is very exciting. That is the most exciting thing about my whole career." Rest assured we have not seen the last of Francesco Scavullo. I asked him if after all he has accomplished in his career, will he continue to work? "I think so, if people want me. You can't spend your time not working. I just love taking pictures. I just keep working."