Leica S Magazine No. 8

4 192346 409909

08

9,90 € · 12 US$ · 8 £ · 1.400 ¥ · 12 CHF

8·ENGLISH

01·2016

ELLEN VON UNWERTH

LEICA S

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EDITOR I A L

If a meteorite became the North Star of the heavens of fashion, then it might be Ellen von Unwerth. But how do you describe her style, so distinguished from her colleagues in a male dominated world of photography? Everywhere there is a certain sensuality in the viewing of her motifs, and that special angle of a woman is arguably her most distinctive characteristic.

Her models beam with life, there are composed scenes – here a bare breast, there the dangling, lascivious leg, turn one page and there is the laughter of a nearly nude girl – all creating desire without succumbing to profanity or vulgarity.

The whole production was shot with the Leica S – as was the accompanying video –, a tool which undoubtedly influenced the entire process. However, it was the extravaganza of freedom, an indulgent luxury every artist desires, that allowed von Unwerth to truly express her considerable talents.

So it is perhaps only logical that von Unwerth has been selected for this issue of S Magazine to realise her visions. The pictures are only superficially fashionable, but really about life itself. Quite frankly, they have something which puts her alongside the great masters, they have the essence of a classic – this preciously edited volume of photographs.

One should leave boundaries behind and feel moved as one takes in these almost cinematic sequences – for both the photographs and the short film are doubtlessly beautiful!

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CONTENT

Ellen von Unwerth Interview 7

Diamond Fever Part One 12

Let’s Party!

Part Two 54

The Secret Society Part Three 90

Instant Love Part Four 148

Cast Participating Artists 183

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I N T E RV I E W

ELLEN VON UNWERTH

I N T E R V I E W F R A N K P .

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S Magazine: Now the magazine is finished! Ellen, tell us in retrospect about the production of this issue.

where one of the girls is kidnapped by this truly evil villain. To raise the ransom, they have to sell everything they have. It’s the end of the dream. They are furious and lure the villain to this Western town to take him by surprise and hang him. But the victim has now fallen in love with her kidnapper and is heartbroken.

At the last minute, she manages to persuade her friends to save him from the gallows. Cut! And finally there is the big happy ending and they both get married. The End.

Ellen von Unwerth: It’s been a great project because you get the space you need and as much freedom as you want. This is something quite different from a magazine spread. It’s almost like a book. This is the reason why we came up with many, many ideas.

Three days before the shoot you revised the concept for this issue of S Magazine. This seems quite spontaneous!

Sounds wild. Why did you go with a Western?

Yes and no. In everything I do, it is important to keep my creative freedom. A concept is of course important, but I must have the possibility to react if I discover something special. In this case, we found that there were places that were suddenly available to us, like this great Western town and James Goldstein’s Lautner villa and they could give the story an entirely different perspective. We did not make the concept brand new, but instead adapted it for these locations. The same applies when you can unexpectedly work with a special person or when an unpredictable situation arises during the shoot. The concept for a shoot is important to me because it is a framework for action that leaves my options open.

Oh, for me it’s many different influences coming together. Westerns are somehow part of the zeitgeist.

The Western style reflects current fashion and then I was inspired by this Tarantino movie. But my Hateful Eight are just girls.

The story with Marilyn Manson and James Goldstein driving around was not originally planned.

How did it happen?

As I said already that it is important for me to be spontaneous in my work. You have to keep it simple. I was shooting a party the evening before and Johnny Depp and Marilyn Manson were sitting together. I told them what I had planned to do and Marilyn just asked if he could take part. And because I thought that he was a super fit into the Secret Society’s story and also extroverted enough, I agreed. Manson didn’t even think twice, he just wanted to know when and where, and asked what he should bring and whether his fabulous girlfriend Lindsay Usich could also join in. Of course, he was there the next day. They had fun doing it. It’s clear why we adapted the story, right?

How did you get the idea for this issue of S Magazine?

We realized quite quickly that we did not want to create a compilation of images from different shoots, but instead a coherent story. We wanted a narrative and then we thought we could create something even greater and almost cinematic. Therefore, we divided the story into four chapters and each of the shoots was organized as if we were making a movie.

And James Goldstein? Was his Sheats Goldstein Residence an original part of the story?

So you became the director!

Yes, Goldstein has a great house; I immediately wanted to have it for the story. I have known his mansion for a long time. Many movies have been filmed there like The Big Lebowski, but music videos too like Snoop Dogg’s Get Blown. The weather also played along with the story. This doomsday scenario we had been shooting at the villa has a very special twist. In addition, James is a pretty open-minded, entertaining type. With all the beautiful women and the great styling, of course he was interested in being in it.

You shouldn’t take the story too seriously. I’m not a screenwriter, but it’s a nice story, a nice framework which allows you to play around a lot.

What’s the story?

The story revolves around this girl gang and that’s why I used several figures and characters – because it would be boring otherwise – who take over this Western town and try their luck at diamond mining. And indeed, the girls are lucky and find that huge diamond.

Suddenly they have such an incredible amount of money that they can buy this great house – the James Goldstein villa. Then they try to host wild gambling parties with their money in order to meet people.

They get to know lots of people and are introduced to a secret society. It’s at a party for this Secret Society

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There weren’t only models featured but also photographers, performance artists and singers – why do you like working with people from diverse disciplines?

Yes, if they inspire me, when they feel like being a part of it and are easy to work with and not bitchy. Caroline Vreeland I met with Tasya van Ree and I thought that

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» I just like it when people move and something happens. Posed images are not really my thing. «

end, even though I was working with really great photographers. My problem was that I am very lively and wanted to do more in front of the camera. In the past, photographers always told me: “No, do not move!

Look left! Look to the right! Do not laugh!” So, I was never really satisfied. Once I started to take photographs myself I asked my models… …to do what you were never allowed to do!

Exactly, for example: laugh, move, and show your personality to the camera.

What is your favourite photography technique or style?

they were a great couple together. They instantly gave me a definite yes. I find it very interesting if the subjects themselves are artists – they can easily give you something unique. Also, it’s interesting to see how they look and what charisma and energy they have. Eva Doll is rather more of an actress, but also a model… kind of both. But a few models were part of it and it’s not difficult to see that in the pictures.

I already have the technology and the assistants, who are responsible for ensuring that it looks the way I like it. They know exactly how my light is supposed to be. They know how I will set up the camera and how I would like the background colours to look. Since I have my style, it’s true that I don’t even care about it myself, but count on my assistants to properly adjust everything. Otherwise, there is a fight. I prefer focusing on the image or scene and conducting the people so that they look good and interesting in the light.

If you look at the pictures, it is striking how much in character the participants all are. How did you achieve that?

Yes, it is! It always depends on how you direct them.

They must already be “on it.” I tell them just what they should do – not exactly, but that’s what it is like on a film set, actually. I tell them, “You are doing this, now you do that,” but I leave them the freedom to express themselves. Therefore, you also need people who are talented actors.

But your impression also comes from the choice of pictures because it’s not as if every image were perfect. You have to make multiple images in order to capture everything and feature everyone. Therefore, I always take a lot of pictures.

One of your assistants films you while you are shooting. He thinks he can only shoot you with a zoom because you move so quickly that it’s not always possible to know what you’ll do next. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to keep up with you. You are a photographer driven by the moment, right?

Yes, sure. Although I always set up the scene in advance, I love getting the special moments when something unexpected happens. I am very quick. That’s why I hate using a tripod while working. That’s a part of me.

I do not like to be tied down by anything. And that’s why I prefer working with a zoom, because I can quickly capture a moment. This is very important to me.

A former assistant once said that you are the centre of the action and that you act as a director.

And, you just said it yourself.

A characteristic element of your pictures is a motion blur. We asked you to take a few sharp images because we want to produce them in large format later. What’s the blur effect in your work about?

Yes, I just like it when people move and something happens. Posed images are not really my thing. Especially for this magazine I wanted that not to be the case. However, there are also a series of portraits in which I wanted to introduce everyone who has starred in the shoot. But mostly, I wanted the image to tell a story.

The blur is not always wanted. It often comes from those moments when I want to react spontaneously with the camera – this sometimes creates the blur.

But it is why these images often have an energy and speed and element of movement, which I often find very beautiful.

I am often tempted to pick just those images. It’s not that I’m looking for this blurring. For me it is precisely these pictures which are the strongest and have an artistic ambition for me. Because there is more emotion in them or something unusual.

Does having been in front of the camera play a role in how you work behind it now? Does this change how you work behind the scenes on the shoot?

Definitely! I was always somewhat frustrated as a model. From the beginning of my career and until the

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The crew on set: Ellen von Unwerth, Deborah Afshani, Walter Barnett, Michaeline Becker, Ruby Bravo, Aja Davis, Eva Doll, Jonathan Field, Cynthia Hadden, Sandy Hubshman, Kirsten Layne, Judith Manzour, Meredith Mickelson, Tasya van Ree, Masha Rudenko, Alex Seiler, Caroline Vreeland and Mynxii White

Once again regarding movement. The Leica S is not exactly a lightweight device. Does it impact your work in any way?

If you look at your pictures an erotic element plays an important role. Or is sensuality the better word?

Thank you for mentioning it! (laughs). No, the camera is great. The picture quality is beautiful, but it is heavier than other cameras I work with. It is not that heavy – for a medium format camera it is not heavy at all – but already heavier than full-frame cameras. And when focusing I have to watch it because you only have this one focus point in the middle. But that is just a question of habit. On the first day it was difficult, on the second day it already started becoming a part of me. On the third day it was still better, even though everybody moved a lot and danced back and forth. But it’s good to be able to work like this with the S. Well, you have been keeping an eye on it, so I also produced sharp images.

I’ve managed. But it is good that many of the blurred images have made it into the magazine (laughs again).

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I would say sensuality. And a love of life. And pretty women. Perhaps a little frivolity.

Very few photographers let women occupy centre stage as explicitly as you do. Helmut Newton has indeed worked in a completely different way, but there are certain parallels. Newton women are statuesque, aloof in their own way and intimidating but your women seem to explode with sensuality while simultaneously portraying very strong personalities.

That’s exactly it. The casting plays a major role. The women who I pick must be distinguished by their sensuality and personality and they have to be alive in front of the camera. They must have fun, be very feminine and sexy. And they must be able to celebrate femininity.

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This is precisely what causes that unsuppressed sense of fun and puts women on a pedestal. But in a different way than Newton does, who highlights their statuesque shape and strength rather than their personality or the kind of fun I have with women.

Yes, but at the moment there are only these small films that I do with my director of photography (DOP). We still play around quite a bit.

A real film I have not done so far. Actually, I want to do one sometime soon, but I’m always going back to photography. It is easier and you can be more spontaneous, which is very important for me. One has the photos the next day and can begin editing. In film, the process takes much longer. This has always stopped me. But as I said, I intend to make something in the immediate future.

Would you say that men can’t take pictures of women like this?

(Thinks) I would say they do it differently. I really love Newton’s photos. I think they’re great. But they are just different. Everyone does it differently.

Perhaps the women I photograph have more confidence in me and therefore appear differently than they would with a man. Perhaps because they would react differently to it. But there are also many other women who photograph women, and everyone does it differently. Therefore I cannot generally confirm this.

You initially said that this S Magazine project was fairly large. What did you like about it, or do you prefer working on smaller stories?

No, I thought it was absolutely great. I was so happy to be able to do this. It was pretty exciting to do something like this at least once in your career. The project was actually like a book. And it’s fun to focus exclusively on it. I am doing a lot of fashion shoots for magazines.

Then you’ll get eight or ten pages, but you can’t let your imagination run freely. But here I’m able to say “I’ll do this today and this and this and that” and then compile, and talk to people about it – and this is very exciting. And then there is the quality of the publication and the camera, which has been pretty great!

You often highlight androgynous elements and seem to blur gender boundaries. Especially here in the party scenes it becomes clear that… …I have always liked androgyny (laughs). I always thought that it was exciting, fascinating, beautiful and exotic. Let’s put it this way: vibrant personalities attract me.

How much freedom do you usually have with contract work?

When is a picture finished? You once said that when you started taking photographs, it was very important to develop the images, edit and retouch them yourself. What role do you play after the photograph has been taken?

The customers who book me know what they are getting into. They book me for my style. On the other hand, I also know what you can do for which customer and how far you can go. I’ve been doing this now for quite a while and I know what the customers want – for some I have to tone down everything, for others it must not be too sexy, and for the next one it cannot be too tame. The bottom line of course is that I always try to take good pictures. As I said earlier, I know my customers and they know me. They know what I’m doing and they want to have this love of life. I love projects which offer creative leeway for individual ideas.

This definetely plays a huge role. I was perhaps one of the last to have switched from analogue to digital.

But in principle, it’s still the same. We can tweak the colours, and we can now do even more, which is great on the one hand, but difficult on the other, because there are so many possibilities.

It is always difficult to find your own style. Therefore, it is very, very important that, for example, the black and white clicks, that the grain we use is not too heavy or too light, so that we get this dark, dirty vibe in a good way. The same applies also for colour – it’s fun to play around with it. I work together with my team until it works.

What you have done for this S Magazine is both nostalgic and modern all at once. Do you see the images as capturing the zeitgeist or as something more timeless?

Do you give up control?

A bit of both. It is very current because of the people who were involved. But I believe that the images, when viewed in 20 years, will still be up to date because they are not too much focused on fashion. My images age well because they are more about life, love and personalities than about style and fashion. At least that’s what I hope! It would be nice if the pictures live on and you can rediscover them and then say, “Oh, these are still great.”

I have people who know exactly what I want. And we look things over repeatedly until it all fits. No, unfortunately you cannot do everything yourself. That is why it is so important to find the right people to work with.

There is a whole series of movies by you – including this story here.

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PA R T O N E

Diamond Fever

With cunning and revolvers, a gang of hot cowgirls occupies a Western town in California.

The clever ladies aren’t just searching for precious stones and other treasures but luck itself. And they will find it.

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PA WEOI T ER I LT ZTW

Let’s Party!

The favour of fate is with the girls: they find a diamond and are suddenly rich. But the stone is only half the fun. They buy a house and really let it rip.

Good prospects for an exciting life above the roofs of Los Angeles.

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The Secret Society

Plenty of champagne, wild parties and exciting new acquaintances are to the girls’ liking.

The motto “good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere” applies. But, suddenly a member of the glorious band is missing.

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PA R T F O U R

Instant Love

A villain has it in for them and blackmails the gang.

But he hasn’t reckoned with these girls. They overpower him and seek revenge. But things turn out differently than you think: the abductee has other plans!

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CAST

» It always inspires me to work with people from all kinds of disciplines. « E L L E N

V O N

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C A S T

Meredith Mickelson MODEL

The 16-year old has properly taken the modeling world by storm. Labels like Calvin Klein or Jonathan Simkhai have already been impressed by Meredith Mickelson. Ellen von Unwerth had her play the lead role in her photo shoots.

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Eva Doll MODEL

Eva Dolezalova, alias Doll, is an author, actress, musician and model – the latter brought her to the cover of almost every trendy fashion magazine. No wonder Ellen von Unwerth has declared the graceful girl her own personal favorite!

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Caroline Vreeland SINGER

The grande dame and legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland was Caroline’s famous grandmother.

She is well connected in the fashion and glamour world. But actually, the well-built blonde with icyblue eyes is a singer and songwriter.

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Masha Rudenko MODEL

A jewel among Ellen von Unwerth’s models is trained gemmologist Masha Rudenko. The young Russian won the Elite Model Look, was photographed for L’Officiel, Dazed & Confused, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire and Citizen K.

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Zoi Mantzakanis MODEL

Not only are her brown mane and sensual pout distinctive features of the Swedish model Zoi Mantzakanis, but she is also a promising acting talent – as seen in the fantasy adventure film Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters.

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Tasya van Ree ARTIST

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PHOTOGRAPHER

Long-haired Tasya van Ree, who is actually never without a hat, is a short-film director and photographer with a strong penchant for black and white. Images of Cara Delevingne, Amber Heard and Katherine Moennig have made her well known.

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Marilyn Manson M U SICIA N

T E X T D E A N

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One day before her The Secret Society shoot in the grand 1920s setting of Carondelet House, Los Angeles, Ellen von Unwerth met Marilyn Manson at a party. She asked if he would like to take part and, without a second thought, he agreed; then told her that he could bring some of his costumes if she liked, and that his girlfriend, model and photographer Lindsay Usich, could come too (that’s Lindsay in the opening spread, with his hand inside her knickers). All of which is fairly unsurprising because, of course, the story itself is very Manson-like: black and white, and soaked in champagne, it offers a glimpse into the darker side of high society, with plenty of Ellen’s signature eroticism and a dash of bondage also. Manson was right at home at a von Unwerth orgy and, in fact, the whole affair was rather evocative of the video for his cover of Tainted Love, 2003, in which him and his gothic friends take over and corrupt an American high school party that descends into a bacchanalian fantasy of sex acts in the jacuzzi and girls in huge bunny masks bouncing around in the bedroom.

Von Unwerth and Manson might go to the same parties but they inhabit different worlds. Hers is a bright, joyful one, full of the pleasures of life and femininity, while his is a sinister counterpart, much darker, more iconoclastic and perverse. He was born in 1969 (rather appropriately, with all its saucy connotations of writhing, upside-down bodies) and became world famous in 1996 with the release of his album Antichrist Superstar – an industrial metal opera inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche that outraged the religious right in America, and much of the left too. Of von Unwerth’s four stories in this magazine, the one in which Manson appears is the most unsettling by a distance: a masked ball that descends into an orgy – French maids in blindfolds and chains, dominatrixes and submissives, young women spanked in front of mirrors, making out in the shadows – and then a kidnapping. With a strange, ritualistic mask taped across his eyes (bringing to mind the black stripe he had painted across his face in his video for The Beautiful People, from Antichrist Superstar) Manson, holding a black finger to his lips, seems somehow involved in the kidnapping; perhaps he is even the mastermind behind the message, “Give us the $$ & nobody gets hurt.”

Manson represents the darkness, and von Unwerth the light, but flicking through The Secret Society you can observe their worlds intermingling, all the shades of grey in-between, and where their visions and desires join. One of these joins is their love of art: Manson is a musician but also a painter, known for his macabre selfportraits in luridly psychedelic, bleeding watercolours.

But, not only do Manson and von Unwerth love art, they also love to transmute pop culture (a record, a fashion shoot) into art by raising it up to grandiose and operatic levels, to surreal planes of ambition. Consider his trilogy of Marilyn Manson concept albums – Antichrist Superstar in 1996, Mechanical Animals in 1998,

and Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) in 2000 – then think of the tetralogy of interconnected Ellen von Unwerth shoots published in these pages, and all of the complicated narratives that unfold amongst the characters in those pictures and songs.

Another join between Manson and von Unwerth is how they delight in toying with our preconceived notions of gender. Look closely at the party scenes in The Secret Society – turn back and look closely – and in amongst the plumes of smoke pouring out of black cigarettes, the white roses held aloft and liquids dribbled over blindfolded figures, you’ll find all kinds of gender-fluid characters: lurking in the background are beautiful topless boys in make-up, gorgeous feminine men that at first appear to be women. Nothing is quite what it seems in this place. Von Unwerth’s women tend to explode with what she likes to call “sensuality” (what the rest of us might call “outrageous sex appeal”) but recently she has developed a crush on androgynous beauty and it is everywhere in this shoot. It’s something that Manson likes to play with too, the gender binary – from the very beginning when he chose the stage name “Marilyn.” In the most notorious image of him ever made, the cover art for Mechanical Animals, he appeared before a shocked late-20th century audience as an androgynous naked figure with prosthetic breasts and an airbrushed, featureless void in place of his genitalia (this was his alter-ego Omēga, a genderambiguous glam rock alien who played in a band, The Mechanical Animals, and spent his unhappy nights self-medicating in the Hollywood Hills). Halfway through his extraordinary performance of The Dope Show at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1998, he stripped down to reveal the same smooth, prosthetic latex body underneath his clothes. That year, Manson stole the show.

What makes Brian Hugh Warner (that’s his real name) so compelling, and such a great performer, is that he is a composite of different personalities. His stage name (but all the world’s a stage for him, really) was inspired by Marilyn Monroe, with all her connotations of beauty and trouble and the perils of fame, and Charles Manson; failed musician, leader of a murderous 1960s Los Angeles commune, and to many the living personification of evil, Charles Manson’s black aura still resonates across the city and he has once again captured the public imagination with the roaring success of the You Must Remember This podcast series on Charles Manson’s Hollywood, 2015, and Emma Cline’s debut novel The Girls, 2016, loosely based on the killings and surely the literary phenomenon of the year. In many ways Marilyn Manson represents a kind of old Hollywood glamour and terror, a dark and occult underbelly of celebrity, a magical weirdness and willingness to take on any challenge (can you imagine any other pop stars appearing in a shoot like this at the drop of a top hat?) that has largely been lost in the Hills but is everywhere in The Secret Society.¦

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Lindsay Usich MODEL

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PHOTOGRAPHER

If there were a perfect it-girl, a girl who succeeds at everything, it would probably be 31-year old Lindsay Usich who was born in Miami, Florida. That she’s with Marilyn Manson, sometimes more and sometimes less, reports the breathless staccato of the press covering celebrity news anyway. Depending on when, how and where she will be seen on the side of the singing superstar.

But she is herself already a star, Lindsay has taken photographs, and obviously not bad ones! So her boyfriend has already trusted her with several record covers, such as Born Villain, as well as the banner backdrop of the Twins of Evil tour and the Masters of Madness tour, both portraits of Manson that also originate with the artist. The path to image design opened

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early to her: even as a little girl in Miami she, along with her twin sister Ashley, experimented with Polaroid shots and later 35mm film until they finally found the right visual technique. As an autodidact – she tried a classical education, but broke it off because it appeared barren to her – instead she traveled around the world and developed her intuitive photographic style. The photos on her blog Born from the Dirt document her journeys and moments from her daily life.

“When I take pictures, I never start with a concrete idea. I start with an aesthetic idea, the rest then develops rather organically, so I create my own microcosm.

Often I am the subject, or my sister, and if one finds that narcissistic… the interpretation of my pictures is just up to you!”¢

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Love Bailey ARTIST

Love Bailey is a fashion stylist, creative and art director. His fantasy creations are considered extremely cultish. As a model, he knows how to employ feminine and masculine characteristics in a complementary and eccentric way to set the scene.

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Charlie Wright MODEL

The Bananas model Charlie Wright embodies boyish and girlish attributes with a serving of frivolity.

Ellen von Unwerth involved him as a capricious party accessory for her story in the Sheats Goldstein Residence in Los Angeles.

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Jason Patrick Galvin MODEL

Provocative and full of feeling, young male model Jason Patrick Galvin knows how to present himself in front of the lens. In our story he is an interesting contrast to the girl gang in Ellen von Unwerth’s Western story – a real boy of today.

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James Goldstein MILLION AIRE

The fashion-obsessed basketball fan is well-known for his outfits – crocodile skin hats, ostrich skin suits and python shoes are just part of his everyday look. Goldstein, who made his considerable fortune through real estate and clever investments and runs his own fashion label, is also passionate about photography: “I take photos everyday, wherever I go.” Goldstein resides high above the hills in Los Angeles at the Sheats Goldstein Residence, a stylish but unique single-storey concrete structure. The house, which was built by his friend, architect John Lautner, has become a place of pilgrimage for architecture fetishists and fashion photographers. “Helmut Newton, Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier, Michel Comte, Steven Meisel are among the photographers who have shot there. I have been

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able to study their techniques and shoot alongside them. And some have photographed me.” Often strangers wonder how he does not get tired of using his home as a backdrop, but when it comes to the people from the art world, they “...understand and appreciate what I have helped to create.”

Ellen von Unwerth was happy to take him up on his offer to capture some images for S Magazine in his bungalow, “I first met Ellen more than 15 years ago when she did a shoot at my house. Since then, we have run into each other frequently, especially in Paris at fashion shows and parties. And she has taken many photos of me.” Even though in the S Magazine shoot there is hardly a glimpse of his iconic home, one thing is clear – he had a great time shooting with Ellen.¢

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Mynxii White M A K E-U P

ARTIST

Mynxii White is in demand not only as a model – but as a good make-up artist in the business. Currently she is a beauty editor at Schön!, a fashion, beauty and culture magazine: “I see it as my job to turn people into unique, living works of art.”

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Nana Ghana ACTRESS

The model, director, actress and screenwriter with the statuesque body and unmistakable hair is known for films such as Savage, Nana and Water Warrior: “I am spontaneous, uncomplicated, funny and futuristic” – Ellen von Unwerth was unable to escape…

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Micah Fitzgerald ACTOR

Actually the actor with the distinctive facial features and a hard, unpolished masculinity wanted to go to another set and that he landed on the shoot with Ellen von Unwerth was pure coincidence. Or a happy accident: The photographer immediately saw her chance and built Micah Fitzgerald into the production as the Lonesome Cowboy. It’s not unknown for him to stand for a photographer for a fashion spread in front of the camera – this time a starring role for the robust actor!

Micah Fitzgerald, an L.A.-based actor, model, musician and entrepreneur, is the second generation of a drama family. He was born in Brooklyn and grew up in San Francisco. He can look back on rich film, TV and theatre work. His first big role came in 2013 as

the villain Yakov Yurovsky in The Tsarevich, but his breakthrough came in rather sinister parts. He starred in horror movies like 13/13/13, Sweet Madness, and My Haunted House. On television, he appeared in the pilot of Fear the Walking Dead and in the series From Dusk till Dawn.

The success in this genre he owes to his imposing size of 1.90 metres and an uncanny representation of enigmatic characters, to which he also attributes to his deep-rough baritone. And who sees him light a cigarette in Ellen von Unwerth’s Western images and film knows why he’s a real man. To the delight of the girls he cuts a good figure. In the industry, Fitzgerald has shown a great talent for improvisation – exactly the right thing for Ellen von Unwerth!¢

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Millie Brown PERFORMANCE

The fact that she was born in idyllic Bath, England, which since Roman times has been a haven of health, healing and cleanliness and a magnet for the highest levels of society for 300 years, is rather ironic: Millie Brown likes to vomit – in public and especially on stage. She even did it at Madison Square Garden and on Lady Gaga during the musician’s performance at the SXSW conference in Texas: Brown drank a bottle of green milk before coming on stage and doing her thing. Her form of creative expression has provoked an outpouring of reactions. The fact that this is seen as art, has received an Emmy Award and has made Brown quasi famous, is due to the dynamics of the art market.

Her success has many colours, which she achieves (yet another irony) by ingesting quantities of coloured milk.

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ARTIST

“Before a performance I eat nothing for two days,” she says, then proceeds to create a liquid rainbow, primarily on or in front of celebrities such as Nick Knight, Ruth Hogben and, no doubt, some other poor victims.

This untraditional use of her body for her “performances” is probably what Ellen von Unwerth finds interesting; but fortunately it is not reflected in her photos of the young Brit. Brown firmly rejects accusations made by saner circles of society that she glorifies bulimia. “My performances are misunderstood by many.” For her The Wilting Point project, the artist went without a morsel of food for seven days while meditating among freshly cut flowers, and for Suspended by Optimism she hung from a helium balloon for four hours. Enjoy your meal!

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Los Angela MODEL

She’s sexy, lascivious, extravagant, yet romantic: Los Angela, model and actress, is often seen in productions by Ellen von Unwerth. She is currently playing a role in Brooke Candy’s latest music video, Paper and Plastic.

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I M PR I N T

S Magazine

Photography

Ellen von Unwerth

A Special Edition of Leica Fotografie International Talents

6th year – Issue 01·2016

(in alphabetical LFI Photographie GmbH

order)

Springeltwiete 4, 20095 Hamburg,

Caroline Vreeland / Next Models Charlie Wright / Bananas Models Eva Doll / Wilhelmina James Goldstein

Germany

Jason Patrick Galvin

Phone +49/(0)40/226 21 12 80

Lindsay Usich

Fax +49/(0)40/226 21 12 70

Los Angela

ISSN 2192–8355

Love Bailey

www.lfi-online.de

Marilyn Manson

E-Mail mail@lfi-online.de

Masha Rudenko / Photogenics Media Meredith Mickelson / New York Models Micah Fitzgerald / LA Models Millie Brown Mynxii White

Editor-In-Chief

Art Direction

Editorial Office

Frank P. Lohstöter

Nana Ghana

Inas Fayed

Tasya van Ree / Next Models

Alessandro Argentato

Zoi Mantzakanis / Next Models

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Hair

Dean Kissick

Make Up

Harald Nicolas Stazol Photo Editor

Manicurist

Edyta Pokrywka

Prop Stylist

(Photographers’ Relations) Editing Translation

Production

Oliver Holzweißig

Project Coordination

Nicole Heringer Osanna Vaughn

Deborah Afshani / The Wall Group Danilo / The Wall Group Mynxii White Ashlie Johnson / The Wall Group Walter Barnett / Opus Beauty Cynthia Hadden / Lyric Productions Anne-Marei Heinrich Clara Rea Aurore de Bettignies

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Casting

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optimal media GmbH,

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