Someone did have to save me from myself

Blogger’s Note: A few of my past blog entries were deleted, so I’m going to repost them this week. If you already read them, apologies for the tedious sameness. This lost post was e mailed back to me by a Valiant Reader, who had cut and pasted it and sent it to a friend last week!

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I was thinking about trying two things that might be Huge Mistakes. Lemme know your thoughts.

First, I received an e mail from a too-cool-for-school-indie-rock-publicist last week and quite enjoyed her auto signature:

Name
Title
Address
E mail / Phone Number
 
Ask me about: [And then she lists her clients]

That’s smart, right? To list your clients right there? When I talk on the phone or meet with writers, they always ask me who else I work with, and yet that question rarely comes up in e mail correspondence. But if my clients were listed every time I pitched a story or responded to a request, journalists probably would “ask me about” my other clients via e mail, or at least think about those other clients for a moment and know I was the contact for any sort of future coverage.

I just created my new auto signature, though, and it looked mildly like a bright red button I might wear if working on the floor of a P.C. Richards & Son. “Ask me about the new LG Front Loading 4.5 Cubic Foot Washer.” (And also, “I do want to express myself, okay? And I don’t need 37 pieces of flair to do it.”) This may border a bit too much on artists-as-products, but I think I’ll throw caution to the wind this week and see what happens.

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My second idea requires me first explaining how I got to this 2005 series of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie photos called “Domestic Bliss,” even though our friend Brad was still married to someone else at the time. ((cough::cough)). Right, so, from Opera Chic’s Twitter feed, I got to W Magazine’s Twitter feed, which led me to this Tweet:

What’s it like having Manolo Blahnik as your uncle? http://tinyurl.com/yz6t9fb   
11:32 AM Feb 10th from web

…which I clearly clicked on (what IS that like?), and on the corner of that page was the “Domestic” “Bliss” (” ”  ” “) photos. Here’s an example from the shoot (photo credit Steven Klein):

The *air-quotes* domestic *air-quotes* bliss slide-show then brought me to this, from 2008, by which point–SPOILER ALERT–Brad had left his wife for Angelina:

As one of the most-watched women in the world, Angelina Jolie, who stars in Clint Eastwood’s new film, Changeling, has been photographed by thousands of strangers. But what happens when the man behind the camera is her partner and the father of her children, Brad Pitt? A whole lot, it turns out. In these remarkably intimate and unguarded portraits, commissioned by W, Pitt captures a week in the life of Jolie and their family at home in the South of France.

Here is the cover (photo credit Brad Pitt):

Side note: Is this the first time Angelina Jolie’s left breast has appeared on ArtsJournal? Am I even allowed to type “breast” on ArtsJournal? …breast? 

The juxtaposition of the (obviously meant to be ironic, in their way, but perhaps not as ironic as they turned out to be) “Domestic Bliss” photos with the natural photo above is interesting to me. I meet my fair share of artists, and I certainly see my fair share of artist photos, and they rarely match up very well. Sure, some classical musicians are polished and glamorous by nature, but others neither are nor have any desire to be.

As most of you have probably figured out by this point, I strongly believe that audiences knowing artists, or at least feeling like they know artists, is important. That said, how many artist photos have led you to actually feel like you know an artist? And if that’s not the point of publicity photos, then tell me what is? I imagine that photo shoots are incredibly awkward for most artists, since they are asked to do them often enough that they kind of know the drill, but infrequently enough that it’s not as natural as it would be for say, movie stars, who do these things all the time. Unless a musician has a long-standing relationship with a photographer, everyone is probably meeting for the first time at the shoot, and the musician is wearing clothes he or she has never worn before, in a space he or she has never been before. Hello Awkward!

So what could make photo shoots more comfortable, if we think they’re supposed to be comfortable occasions? Having friends around? Holding them in an artist’s apartment or favorite restaurant? At the very least, let’s let them wear their own clothes if they want to. It’s funny: I feel like I’m always saying “no” when artists mention that their “friend who’s a photographer” can take their photos (or another good one: “my neighbor’s a website designer” – abort! abort!), but maybe that’s not such a terrible idea? Would more natural photos snapped by artists’ friends (family, significant others) be more effective marketing tools? Does the public want an intimate behind-the-scenes look in press photos or do they prefer the idealized and staged?