Fashion Photographer Anthony Citrano

[Update 3, 11:45 AM: Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing brilliantly explains why this is important and why you should care.]

[Update 2, 10:15 AM: The volume of angry email I woke up to this morning has astonished me. People, think about this: I pointed out a blooper [read the earlier post here] & was threatened with legal action for doing so. Now the basis for that threat is totally blown away by W’s own sister publication. What would you do? This isn’t about a hip, it isn’t about retouching (I do not object to retouching at all – I do it very frequently), and it isn’t about Demi Moore. It’s about my reputation – and the rights of all bloggers to express themselves without being bullied with threats to their livelihood. Please consider this before writing to tell me how stupid/obsessed/vicious I am.]

[Update 1, 8:45 AM: fixed cover image now available on W Korea's web site.]

Right when you thought (hoped) this whole thing was over, something comes along that, as the Jerky Boys would say, puts a whole different paint job on things. I was back in Maine for Christmas (and of course, holding my breath for an apology and retraction from Demi Moore and her legal team), just hanging out with my Mom and her cat – and in came a cameraphone tip from halfway ’round the world. [Thanks, Joe!]

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[12/27 update: W Korea Takes My Side, Fixes Demi's]

On Tuesday night, I received an aggressive and threatening letter from Martin Singer, Demi Moore’s attorney. It is marked “Confidential Legal Notice – Publication or Dissemination is Prohibited”. However, since Mr. Singer and I have no confidentiality agreement, and it provides essential context to the matter at hand, I have decided to publish it.

I’ll start by expressing how bizarre it feels to be immersed in a controversy that should be no controversy at all. The question of whether a celebrity was over-retouched is not one I am particularly proud of spending my mental cycles on.

When I originally pointed out (in a friendly, lighthearted way) a simple retouching blooper, I had no inkling of the total shitstorm that would follow. It gained momentum quickly, and I commented to several media outlets on the matter, always sure to frame it fairly: I have no problem with digital retouching (do it all the time), no problem with Demi Moore (she’s a beautiful woman), think the image is a great shot (kudos, Mert and Marcus) – I simply thought the missing hip-chunk was funny. I thought we could all laugh about it for the day (maybe tack it up on a retoucher’s wall of shame) and move on to the far more important things. We are all human; we all make mistakes (me, more than my fair share.)

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Bowman and his colleague Rod Lamborn offer us a short film, Meridian, that I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did. The photography is brilliant, the music (by Tycho) is perfect, and they manage – without a word – to capture the ineffable Magic Of It All.

The story that follows is long and a bit convoluted, but it’s necessary to understand the situation and my reasoning behind releasing the images herein.

On August 29, I decided to go shoot some breaking-news images of the Station Fire, a massive wildfire conflagration which continues to burn as I write this in early October. I spent a significant amount of that day inside the forest shooting. The forest was closed to the public and I was admitted as media – told I was “on my own” which was just fine with me. Late in the afternoon, as I was making my way back out, I came across a rather eerie looking scene at a turnout a few miles from the forest boundary. It just looked and felt weird – the fire hoses sitting there in a box (apparently staging by the firefighters), the gnarly blackened trees, etc. So I pulled in and took a couple photos of the site.

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I am fascinated by abandoned places – wish I could photograph them more frequently. By “abandoned places” I mean buildings, offices, homes, anything that once was busy and is now dead, especially if it sits (relatively) as it was. A number of years ago I wandered through an old abandoned medical facility in Maine and saw calendars, pens, notes, coffee cups, etc.. something about that feels neat to me – as if you’re looking directly into the past.

On that note, check out Haiko Hebig’s stuff.

The Hollywood sign shot has been everywhere. It’s been really exciting. Thank you to all of you who saw it in your papers (Fargo! Tulsa! Edmonton! DC! London! Holy Moly!) and wrote to me. I feel really lucky this past week.

I was at the newsstand today to check the fresh Newsweek, because they finally ran the story on the John Hancock Tower for which they had licensed a couple of my shots. My shots didn’t make the final cut, so that was a disappointment.

But, knowing that TIME had featured my Hollywood sign shot in their weekly gallery online, I figured – just in case – I’d peek at their print edition. I dropped Newsweek, picked up its shelf-neighbor, TIME – and there was my baby, jumpin’ off the page! I was psyched.

[Apologize for the quality of the scan; the paper is so thin that it is hard to scan it well.]

I spent much of the afternoon and evening yesterday up in Angeles National Forest photographing the fires and general devastation up there. You can see some of the photos in my Station Fire photo album. The Associated Press has licensed a couple of them – and I’m pretty psyched about that. Let me know if you see them anywhere. (And, in the “dubious honor” department, my smoky Hollywood Sign image is on the front page of the Drudge Report as I write.)

Once past the police checkpoints, it got very eerie. The roads were debris-strewn and entire neighborhoods abandoned. I explored the neighborhoods briefly but decided to save that for evening.

Once up into the forest, I was prepared for the flames and the smoke – but not the sound. It was perhaps the oddest sound I’d ever heard. Not just the roaring-freight-train sound you’d expect a mountainside of fire to sound like – but a strange, squealy-popping sound – almost like a cackling scream. There were lines of fire everywhere. It was really touch-and-go and “intense” is understating it.

It was a humbling experience; I hope to write more later – but for now, check the images.

Check out these photo essays. I really want to do some of this kind of photography but have not pushed myself to do the necessary exploring. So, for now, I’ll live vicariously through photographers like Shaun. [h/t Sarah]

Alan Jaras, Twisting Light #21

You need to see Alan Jaras’ breathtaking photographic work. No PhotoShop, no digital camera – not even any lens. [thanks, David!]

Before I get into this story I want to set the psychographic stage, because I’ve been through this enough now to know what kind of conversations these controversies stir up.

My 2007 incident in San Antonio [see An Accidental Interview With Lieutenant Phil Dreyer] – which was much scarier and more flagrant than the one I’m writing about today – made me realize how out-of-fashion standing up for your rights has become, and also how much it opens you up to criticism for being a troublemaker (and more).

People like Thomas Hawk and Carlos Miller have famously faced this as well. The assumption (often verbalized) is that we’re belligerent, in-your-face assholes who go to places sticking our cameras (and our laminated, marked-up copies of the First Amendment) in people’s faces, looking and hoping for a fight. Sorry, but that’s just not true. I absolutely hate these confrontations and just want to make my pictures and be left alone. For instance, I had a terribly embarrassing and awkward police / photography incident at LAX a few months back and decided not to write about it because of the rather sensational issues it would raise. So trust me, I am not in this for the fight.

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