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Paolo Pellegrin Turns in a Great Performance of His Own
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Date: February 6, 2009
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6 Comments
I’m not a magazine pack rat. Caroline, our product manager, keeps all of her magazines. Stacks and stacks. Reads every single word. But not me. Magazines are heavy, and once I’ve flipped through a few times, I throw them in the recycling bin.
But there is one issue of one magazine that I keep every year, and that is the Great Performers issue of the New York Times Magazine as we approach Oscar time. As you migth recall, I love movies.
The team of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadi shot the portfolio for a few years, and ragged copies of these issues lie in my room waiting to be viewed over and over again. So in 2007, I was a little bummed that they switched it up by going with a slew of photographers, one of whom was Magnum Photo’s Paolo Pellegrin. He shot this one of Maggie Cheung:
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
I was first introduced to Paolo’s work by my pal Kristen Ashburn. His work is generally pretty hard core conflict and documentary photography shot in Tri-X. This image is typical Pellegrin in all his action-filled, dodged/burned goodness:
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
I love his photojournalism, but I wasn’t so moved by his portrait of Cheung, so I had some trepidation when I saw that he shot the entire portfolio for the Times. But why hate, Allen?
From the moment I opened the multimedia piece, I was blown away. Let me show you what I mean. Here’s Kate Winslet, and oh, Leo in the foreground. I thought “hey, really nice reportage.”
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
Then I saw Robert Downey, Jr. and I had to pick up my jaw from the floor. Did we just fall into a Gregory Crewdson one-frame movie? Holy crap. This is an awesome portrait. (and is that a PX90 body?)
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
This stuff is inspired. Here’s Kat Denning. Michael Cera is under the water (I kid).
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
Many years ago when I moved to New York, I did a movie marathon on Christmas and we finished up with “Scary Movie.” I was sitting next to a black guy, who upon hearing a very funny joke, yelled out “THAT’S MILK!” as in, that is the bomb. That is the mother’s milk. This is Milk.
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
If that last one was milk, this is butter.
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
And my heart stopped for 2 beats when I saw this one.
Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos
Pellegrin traveled around the world to capture these movie stars in various locations. He also had the help of a post production team in Europe and the US to retouch the images. But I don’t think it dimishes the images — we want our movie stars to look immaculate and mythological. And these pictures do the trick. So apologies to Paolo for being a doubter. You killed it.
Go see the whole series with audio commentary, and buy the newspaper too.
6 Comments
2-9-2009
These are amazing Allen. Absolutely amazing. But I admit to being a little troubled by the fact that they were retouched by a post-production team. And two teams? Maybe it’s my control-freak side. Still, it feels odd that the final vision was in someone else’s hands doesn’t it? It doesn’t take anything away from the pictures themselves but while the moments captured are fantastic and the execution flawless, a lot of what makes these sing comes from the post treatment. My artist brain can’t help but feel strange about the idea of leaving that to a team – however supervised… But thanks for sharing. These are inspiring no matter what.
2-10-2009
As a member of the US team that worked on the images, I can assure you that there is absolutely no retouching done on the images. The work we have performed is simply “printing” the images in the conventional sense of the word, and should by no means take anything away from the great photographer that Paolo is.
2-14-2009
the service that work on the images is http://www.10bphotography.com the man is Paolo Lecca rome , italy
2-15-2009
Very nice portraits!
2-17-2009
I know the words “retouch” and photojournalsim squeak together… Paolo Pellegrin has been working with us for many years. We work directly on Paolo’s color images, and we formed people working on the BW ones. So we know Paolo and he knows us deeply. Relation between photographers and our team is the same as “analogic” traditional printers… We do not modify ONE PIXEL (talking about photojournalism), we just try to help viewers following photographers lighting. So you can say “toning”, “photoshop editing”, “color correction” or whatever you want but in my mind it’s the same Gassmann did with Bresson. So don’t feel strange about “teamwork” in photojournalism. Someone worked on pre-production (assistants) and production (photographer and assistants) and at the end, someone else on post-production (Paolo Lecca/10bphotography) and print/press (picturehouse). …and anyway : you push the button, we do the rest. better. claudio palmisano 10b photography director http://www.10bphotography.com
8-9-2010
Finest art Poor Rober Downey has been clearly fed steroids.He won’t last long if he’s not careful
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