Warhol was a man of few words and wielded an antique polaroid camera and insistently took polaroids which he then dropped on the floor, without looking at them. I said ‘Are you going to open the polaroids Andy? He said, ‘No, I like them to cook because the colour becomes more intense.’
I always like casting shadows in my pictures and not just casting light, which is something that I don’t think people think about closely enough. There is always the moment of the big reveal that has the most incredible power and dynamism.
The scene reminded me of an Andrew Wythe painting that I had always adored and had influenced me so much in my own painting and into photography. I felt the extraordinary poetic beauty of the synchronicity of being in the same landscape he had viewed and which had inspired him and now inspired me.
The wonderful and gifted British Vogue editor Grace Coddington myself, model Anne Schaufuss (my then love and muse) and Willie Christie (my erstwhile assistant) set off early one morning in my custom red Gordon Keeble sports car (with a Chevy engine) for Deauville.
The assistant came back out and said in a shocked tone “He’s sticking them on Roys face!” I said “Really, not pinning them into his skin surely”. He said “I don’t know”
Fashion editor Grace Coddington was my reluctant model when the model that Vogue had booked got lost cycling along the … More