6 Photographs

The Art of Capturing Hollywood's Finest: A Chat with Art Streiber

• Mark Nixon • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Imagine stepping into the world of iconic Hollywood photoshoots, capturing the essence of legendary stars like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio - sounds unreal, right? Well, that's the reality for my guest, Art Streiber, a top editorial, celebrity, and portrait photographer whose work has been featured in all the "V"'s,  Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Variety amongst countless magazines. In this fascinating conversation, Art shares his captivating journey into photography, starting from his grandfather's darkroom and his self-taught path that led him to become the Go-To photographer in Los Angeles and beyond.

We dive into the behind-the-scenes action of some of Art's most memorable photoshoots, such as the publicity campaign for 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' featuring Pitt and DiCaprio. Art uncovers the challenges he faces on set, his approach to composition, and how he captures the perfect lighting and mood for each photograph. Plus, we explore his experiences with the "Morning After Oscar" franchise, including the inspiration for it, the famous Terry O'Neill photograph of Faye Dunaway at the Beverly Hills Hotel Pool.

But it's not just about the glitz and glamour - Art opens up about the responsibilities that come with being a director when shooting portraits, the importance of treating everyone with professionalism, and his process for working with both celebrities and everyday people. We also discuss the impact of imposter syndrome and Art's love for behind-the-scenes content, which he shares on his Instagram page as a way to document lighting setups and tell stories. So come along on this inspiring and insightful journey with Art Streiber and discover the magic of capturing the perfect moment.

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Mark:

Hello and welcome to Six Photographs. When I look at a magazine and I see a photograph that stops me in my tracks, i always think I wonder who took that? And more often than not, it's my guest today, art Streiber, who is one of the top editorial, celebrity and portrait photographers in the world. Art regularly shoots for top magazines, including all the Vs, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Variety, and he works with the major Hollywood studios to create stunning photographs for movie publicity and posters. He also freely shares his hard-won experience with others, giving lectures and speaking at seminars. On his Instagram page, @as pictures, he shows behind-the-scenes lighting setups and all the staging that goes into each shoot, which, up to that, no other photographer I know of has ever done.

Mark:

We talked about how he got started, why he's still learning on the job, what he says when someone asks him to do the impossible, dealing with celebrities, having access to all areas at the Oscars, and so much more. So if you're interested in finding out what it takes to create such beautiful work, have a listen Or, better still, head over to my website and have a look at the photographs Art talks about first and then have a listen. Art was beginning his day in Los Angeles and I was finishing mine in Dublin. Luckily, all the software worked, so thanks, Gerry. Hi Art, welcome to Six Photographs. Good morning. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it, of course.

Art:

how you been. Yesterday was a holiday here in the States, so today I think that everything is coming back with a vengeance and I'm interested to see what lands in my inbox. There's a couple of shoots coming up in New York with a lot of moving parts, so we are treading lightly and just taking it one moment at a time.

Mark:

I've known your work for years and I'd gone to Palm Springs Photo Festival once, and then I noticed you were on the next year, so I had to go back again.

Art:

I glad you did.

Mark:

It was worth the trip for that one day seminar that you did was just absolutely incredible. Thank you, Thank you. Tell me when did you start photography or how did you get into it?

Art:

Wow, all right. The backstory is that my grandfather was a very avid amateur and he had a darkroom at his house. Simultaneously, my great grandfather, his father, had started the first wholesale magazine distribution business in Los Angeles.

Art:

So, my great grandfather started the business. My grandfather worked there, my father worked there, my uncle worked there. I would, as a kid, go in on the weekend and I was just bathing in comic books and magazines and glossy imagery. I think that had a really profound imprint on me. My father had a camera. My grandfather, like I said, had a darkroom. I thought the process was magic, that you could walk into this dark room with a yellow light on or a red light on, and if you took this thing and ran it through these chemicals, at the other end of the process there were pictures.

Art:

Yeah, and by the same token. Then you took this strip of negatives and put them in an enlarger and beamed it down onto a piece of paper and ran the paper through the soup, mind blowing Yeah. All of a sudden, once again you had an image, a print. So round about eighth grade, I'm 12 years old my grandfather sold me and my brother, paul, a Canon AE-1 for $5. He threw in the lens for another $2. And I put some Tri-X in the camera, took it to school, took some pictures, came back to his darkroom, we developed the film and I was totally hooked.

Art:

I stayed with it in junior high school and became the photography editor of the school paper and the college paper Sorry, school paper, school yearbook. And then, when I went to college, i was going to my grandfather's alma mater, Stanford. He sat me down And this is the guy who had got me excited about taught me photography, and he said photography is an avocation. It is not a vocation, this is a hobby, not a job. And I said yes, absolutely, you're absolutely right. And I got to college and the very, very first thing I did was I walked into the St for Daily and said you know what, sign me up, i want to take pictures. How does this work? And I was hooked. I was hooked on this path of being self-taught And I still believe I am on that path of being self-taught.

Mark:

Yeah, did you ever use that to get into gigs or get access to anybody or something you wanted to photograph?

Art:

In college I became the photography editor or co-photography editor of the college paper the Standard for Daily, and that was absolutely between my friends and I,. we were deciding which American football games we wanted to shoot, and so there was definitely this idea of having access and this other idea of being behind the scenes and going places that very few other people could go and seeing things that very few other people could see. I'd always loved the idea of I don't know what you call them in Ireland, but in the States in elementary school they're called field trips where all the kids pile onto a bus and you go to a farm and see how cows are milked, or you go to a bottling plant and see how the liquid gets into the bottle milk or beer or whatever. To me, that kind of process behind the scenes how does this work, where does this come from? How do all of the pieces come together That was always just fascinating to me, the access afforded by photography and the photography process itself all combined to just again explode my brain.

Mark:

And then what about your first gig, first proper job that you got?

Art:

My junior year in college I had an internship at Life Magazine for the summer internship And when I graduated I had an internship at a newspaper called the Riverside Press Enterprise. That lasted for about three or four months And simultaneously I was working at a small camera store mom and pop, literally mom and pop camera store in my hometown and when I say hometown it is a suburb of Los Angeles called Pacific Palisades, which is way out west, wedged along the coast between Santa Monica and Malibu. And I was starting to understand the world of freelance, which is to say that I was continuing to freelance for the Stanford Athletic Department or the Stanford Magazine and starting to pick up freelance jobs in Los Angeles. There was a small, long gone magazine in Santa Monica called LA West And I remember some of my first cover shoots for LA West, but I really wasn't thinking necessarily beyond Los Angeles, although I did know what Time and Newsweek and Life in Sports Illustrated were. But this is the 80s and the glossy magazines, the Esquires of the world, were beyond my understanding. I was freelancing and my then girlfriend, now my wife of 33 years she was also at the internship in Riverside. She got hired full time. I got kicked to the curb. I came back to West LA working at the camera store, freelancing, and she got a job at Women's Wear Daily and W Magazine, which were part of a group of magazines at the time called Fairchild Publications. And she joined Fairchild Publications and I started freelancing for them. One thing led to another and they wanted to hire a full time staffer and the guy they wanted to hire turned them down. So I got the gig and I became a staff photographer at Women's Wear Daily and W in Los Angeles.

Art:

This is 1987. I am essentially thrown into the deep end with no training. I'm the only staff photographer, so there's nobody there to say this is how you do this and this. So I am learning on the job fashion photography, still life photography, food photography, event photography, portrait photography, just making it up as I go, 1989 rolls around. The two of us get engaged and simultaneously our bosses call us right after we're engaged and say how would you like to run the Milan Bureau? And we said we've never been to Milan and we don't speak Italian. Our bosses at the time were very well known for just throwing people into the deep end and having them go off to Paris or Milan and sink or swim. So in 1989, we got on a plane and moved to Milan and ran the Milan Bureau of Women's Wear Daily and W.

Art:

So now I'm in Italy shooting fashion, runway, food, travel, portrait, event, still life. I'm working in seven genres in a foreign country and I am still learning on the job. And to give you some idea of what I mean by learning on the job, i am having to shoot food And one of my best friends from elementary school had gone to Art Center College in Pasadena and I would call him up and I would say, Cam, how do you shoot food? And he would say shallow depth of field, put the light behind the food And I'd say thank you and hang up. So I was looking at other fashion work, other travel work, other food work, other portrait work, trying to figure out how to emulate the work that I loved. So it has been a constant, non-stop learning on the job.

Mark:

Yeah, yeah, and I know, when I started, i was constantly looking at magazine covers and you'd look into the eyes to figure out where the lights were. You'd see the photographer sometime in their eyes, or Exactly say a window or a big softbox or something.

Art:

That's right. Yeah, that is exactly right.

Mark:

Yeah, although these days they probably take a lot of that out, so you wouldn't necessarily see it.

Art:

You could still do some digging, and I still do some digging, and my studio manager, slash first assistant, is very interested in learning and he'll bring images to me and say how do you think they did this? And so I'm still in the what I would call the forensic photography business. I'm still fascinated. Yeah, absolutely.

Mark:

Brilliant. Okay, let's start with one of your photographs. This is an outdoor photograph shot on a hazy sunny day at a turquoise swimming pool in what looks like the Hollywood Hills. There are two men in sharp navy suits with white shirts sitting on chairs with their backs to the camera and one leg crossed over the other in perfect symmetry. They're sitting on either side of a turquoise sun umbrella with a little table underneath. At first glance you don't notice. They're sitting in about six inches of water in the pool, with the crossed leg above the water and the other submerged. The man on the right is in profile looking at the other, while the man on the left is looking back at the camera. The reason you don't notice at first they're sitting in the pool is probably because the man looking at the camera doing his best Brad Pitt impersonation is actually Brad Pitt, while the other is Leonardo DiCaprio. This first one is of Leo and Brad, so can you tell me about it?

Art:

Yeah, there is an assignment in and around entertainment called International Publicity. The premise of the International Publicity shoot is that a movie is about to be released, it's got multiple big stars. While those multiple big stars will probably sit for a US Vanity Fair cover, a US Vogue cover, a US Esquire cover, a British Vogue cover they aren't going to sit for and no disrespect, Greek L magazine or Australian Wired or pick your, literally pick your country and pick your magazine title. So what the studio does is it invites the stars and the director to a shoot, literally invites them is the word they use, because, keep in mind, the movie that's about to come out was made a year or two ago.

Art:

These people, they've moved on. They're working in far flung parts of the world. They have different haircuts, facial hair, looks and the studio invites the stars back, spends a day shooting as many different pictures as they can singles, doubles, triples, wardrobe changes, casual, elevated in character, out of character and then the studio distributes those images all over the planet Earth and gives them away to magazines and websites and newspapers for which the actors don't have time to pose. So this was an International Publicity shoot for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and this was back in 2019, in May, before it came out. My job was to photograph Brad Pitt, leonardo DiCaprio, margot Robbie and Quentin Tarantino, who, at the last minute, couldn't attend the shoot. Right Two weeks later, we flew to Cannes, where he was debuting the movie Yeah, and, in a hotel ballroom in Cannes, reproduced all of the lighting schemes for the shots we'd done in Beverly Hills at the location houses and dropped him in So if you see there's a foreshot of Quentin, margot, Brad and Leo at a bar.

Mark:

Yeah, so yeah.

Art:

Quentin was shot separately two weeks later in Cannes, right. Anyway, the very first shot of that shoot was Brad and Leo. We were shooting at two different insanity location houses about three blocks apart in Beverly Hills. We had this idea to get the two of them seated in suits in a pool, and it was the first shot of an all day marathon. Brad and Leo came out of the house They're dressed to the nines And I said all right, you guys see those chairs, you guys are going to sit in those chairs in your suits. And Brad looked at his pants and his shoes and he said I'm not going in there. And I said it's okay with your wardrobe stylist If it's okay with you, and I think it's going to be a great photo. And he just shrugged. He and Leo sat in the pool And, for what I hope will be the photo nerds and photo dorks that listened into this, that was lit with one reflector board, no strodes sir. And the two of them just sat there.

Art:

The thing about a good composition and incredible talent and an absurd idea that these guys are sitting in a swimming pool. The pictures just came together And though that I think is probably one of the most iconic photos from that shoot. And I'm not. I am setting out to get the picture and not just a picture, but you just never know which picture is going to be the picture. And that picture has become the picture. Yeah, because it's got the infinity pool. The Los Angelesness, the Hollywoodness of the imagery is implied because there are some palm fronds. It's a modernist house. There's just an absurdity to it, and the light cooperated and it just all came together.

Mark:

Yeah, that was the start of the day.

Art:

That was the beginning of a marathon.

Mark:

So where did you go from there with them?

Art:

We did at that house. We did two other setups with Leo, we did a setup with Margo and we did a four shot which was a three shot that became a four shot in the screening room at this house, which just happened to be a very cozy room with a lot of fragile art and a huge screen, and we did a shot of the four of them as if they are watching a movie. And that was just that house. Yeah. Then we moved to the other house and did singles, doubles, triples. We built ourselves a bar, we brought in my set designer, got a couple of the vehicles from the movie, we built an outdoor movie set with the dolly track and the camera and the lights and it was craziness.

Mark:

And did everything work.

Art:

And it came together.

Mark:

Yeah, i mean, you do a lot of stuff like that, don't you?

Art:

There is a lot of, i would say, not crazy, but pretty crazy stuff. I think that speaks to my penchant and my love of problem solving Just this idea that I learned from my uncle years ago about. He used to work, coincidentally, in the athletic department at Stanford University and he was the vice president for major gifts, so when his phone rang it was usually a very big, wealthy donor asking for something. My uncle told me that his workflow was to answer the phone and say the answer is yes. Now what's the question? I just again mine was blown. One of those epiphanies where I went oh okay, just say yes and figure out how to make it work.

Mark:

Yeah, so that's what you do.

Art:

I say absolutely Okay.

Mark:

This next photograph is a huge group shot on a very large set in Paramount Studios. There are white steps the length of the stage at the bottom with three additional sets with railings rising up on the left, the middle and the right. The background is black with the huge Paramount Studios logo. Some of the people are standing, some are sitting on the steps or on stools and in chairs. There are group shots and there are group shots. Let me I have a list here of people in this. I won't read them all 116, but let me just read a few well-known names George Clooney, glenn Close, tom Cruise, leonardo DiCaprio, kirk Douglas, robert Downey Jr.

Art:

Pretty crazy group. Yeah, harrison Ford, steven Spielberg, Mark Wahlberg, sean Penn, JJ Abrams, cameron Diaz, jamie Lee Curtis, robert De Niro, bruce Dern, adam Sandler, chris Rock, chris Pine.

Mark:

And you don't even have the list. I do not have the list.

Art:

I'm glancing out of the corner of my eye at Jane Honda, Olivia O ivial Newton J ohn, J ohn john Barber Streisand. Honestly, when I look at the photo I and this is 10 years ago I'm just blown away at who was there.

Mark:

This was Paramount ramounta . Yes, sir. It was their 100th anniversary. Yes sir, and they wanted to do a group shot of everyone who's working at at . Pyraminds.

Art:

So the studios have a tradition. Some studios have some tradition, i should say gathering their stars for anniversaries. Completely coincidental to this interview, this is the year that a number of Hollywood studios are celebrating their centennial. aremount P is , is 10 years older. This is Disney's 100th, warner Brothers' 100th, columbia's 100th. They all started in the 20s.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

And it turns out we're in the 20s again.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

. They have done, i think, a 60th, a 75th and a 90th and this was the 100th. Presumably there are 100 people in this photo, but it turns out there are 116. 16, they couldn't say no to Yeah, they don't say no, and this was shot, and I'm going to get this wrong, so maybe what I'm going to do is surreptitiously actually get you the right answer. But this was shot on the Friday before the Golden Globes in January of 2012.

Art:

We were on a soundstage at Paramount The set. They started building the set right after Christmas. We started lighting on a Monday. We shot on a Friday, once everybody had loaded in, and now I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you the answer. Once we started shooting, we shot 64 frames and we shot for five minutes and 12 seconds. Wow, that's it.

Art:

And the reason that you only shoot for five minutes and 12 seconds and the reason you only shoot for 64 frames is when you're doing a group, regardless of the size. When you're doing a group of eight or more in my opinion, seven or more all of the work is in the arranging and the lighting. Once everybody is set, all you're doing is making tiny little tweaks to your group And those tiny little tweaks could be the difference between crossing your arms and putting your hands in your pockets, or turning your shoulders to the left or turning your shoulders to the right. Once they're in place, they're just sitting there or standing there, so to go beyond five minutes is insulting. Yeah, this image was shot in pieces. I shot a left and a middle and a right, and a left and a middle and a right, and I am backed up maybe 40 or 50 feet or more from the talent on a really long lens, and my retoucher did a brilliant job of seeming everybody together. We added nobody in post.

Mark:

Everybody's there. Yeah.

Art:

That is by far the biggest group shot I've ever done. The scale is Like even now I can't wrap my head around it. You're asking me to talk about it made me revisit it and I did a little digging. We had 10 assistants. We used 80 packs, 30 bi-tubes, 15 heads, 40 pocket wizard transmitters just astounding.

Mark:

What about the posing? How did you figure it out?

Art:

The set designer, Rick Floyd. He attempted to set everybody. There were probably two dozen people telling people where to stand. We had that was all diagram where everybody was supposed to go. Rick, I don't know that he got to all 116, but he did manage to get to a majority of them and say please sit like this, please put your elbow here, please, because one of the things you want to avoid in a group shot is you want to avoid having everybody look like they are posing for a football team photo or that they are grooms mice or brides babes at a wedding. You want to avoid everybody doing the exact same thing. You want a group shot like this to have some movement, have some energy and be dynamic.

Mark:

Yeah, was it easy enough to get their attention.

Art:

Funny, you should say. We shut off all of the lights in the stage. We put up a four by eight white panel behind me so that if you're in an all black room your eye is going to go to the light. Yeah, that was working, except when I had to adjust people. When I adjusted people, i would say Harrison Ford, could you turn this way? and Brad Pitt, could you turn this way? and Natalie Portman, could you put your hand on your hip? I had to call them out by name.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

Those 116 people. There wasn't a receiving line, so not everybody knew who else was there. Right, We all assume they know each other. Yeah, they don't all know each other. All of them are fans of some of the other ones that are there. Yeah, when I say, george Clooney, could you take your hand out of your pocket and put it on the railing, everybody else goes oh, george is here, rad rad Pitt, could you turn this way? Oh, there's Brad. So people are looking around. I have to get everybody's attention.

Mark:

Yes.

Art:

It does take the idea of hurding cats to a whole other level.

Mark:

Yeah, did just sleep that week, wrong running enough to it.

Art:

I was probably a nervous wreck. I tend not to remember that trauma And I don't want to overuse the word trauma, discomfort, anxiety, but like once the light had been nailed down, then it was really about the talent. I got a little bit of kind of relief as the actors and actresses started to trickle in, because I talked to a couple of them It didn't ever occur to me that they would be as nervous as I was. So Paul Rudd said to me what am I doing here? And I said dude, i have no idea how you got on the list. And he goes OK, great, thanks. At one point I noticed that before everybody had gone up on the set, leonardo DiCaprio was just staring at it.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

And I said hey, leo, rt triber I photographed you a couple of weeks ago for the cover of The Hollywood Reporter And he didn't look at me, he just kept staring at the set piece And he said this is epic. I went oh God, oh, esus esus Christ. So y y anxiety and energy was channeled at making sure that 45 heads fired, then it was posing people and then it was over. You know weeks and weeks, months of work. Yeah, in five minutes.

Mark:

Yeah, did anybody mess around?

Art:

If you look at the photo, you'll see Justin Bieber screwing off.

Mark:

Is that the one kind of leaning over with the arm?

Art:

Yeah, leaning over and waving.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

And an tute listener s he r listener will say what is Justin Bieber doing in a paramount photo? And the answer is that the documentary about his life up to that point I think it was 17, 18, had just come out and had made paramount a lot of money.

Mark:

Did anybody not want to sit beside anybody else or want to be moved, or anything like that?

Art:

None of that.

Mark:

Well, that's good, that's good.

Art:

No, they were all fairly agreeable.

Mark:

This photograph was taken in what looks like a luxury hotel room. On the bed is a woman relaxing against a padded gold headboard in a white bathrobe. She has lost in thought. looking off to the left, she's a pair of glasses in her hand and their newspapers scattered on the bed and the floor. There's an evening dress lying on the bed with high heel shoes. on the floor. beside it There's a bedside table on which there is a lamp, a coffee cup, beautiful fresh floors, a mobile phone and an Oscar. The light is coming in from the left, creating a lovely soft glow across the room. Okay, and this next one is of Kate Blanchett in bed with looks like an Oscar esider. Can you tell me about that? Yeah?

Art:

there is a very famous Terry O'Neill photograph of Faye Dunaway at the Beverly Hills Hotel Pool The morning after she had won her Oscar. That has always been one of the most iconic to me images of Hollywood. I'm really fortunate. My longtime dear friend first assistant executive producer, now agent, irish woman, elaine Brown, gifted me a Terry O'Neill print of that print And Entertainment Weekly sometime ago had started this annual franchise shoot called the Morning After Oscar Right, and the premise was we are going to chase and recreate that idea of the morning after.

Art:

It turns out that the Terry O'Neill Faye Dunaway shoot was A done right after the sun had come up, without permission from the hotel. Of course it's 1973, 74, so all of that machinery didn't exist And it wasn't found. It was created But it still looks and feels like a real moment And that is something that I'm constantly trying to achieve in my portraiture as opposed to my reportage. So I'm trying to find and create the lighting, the mood, the set dressing and the body language of a moment. So Entertainment Weekly has this franchise. I was very fortunate to do it for a number of years The night before Kate had won her best actress Oscar I think her second for Blue Jasmine. It's 2014. These shoots are a very difficult thing to get the actress and actresses to agree to, because they have been doing press and promoting the movie for 10 months, starting in Cannes Cannes in May, venice Film Festival in September p and thep ublicity , interview terview t interview interview. They're also parents, spouses, and they're working on something else, so they've had a very exhausting 10 months. When they win, that's an adrenaline rush And they're up all night. They might go to the Vanity Fair Party. They might then hop on with the American Broadcast Network Morning Shows at 4am. By and large, their publicists say no, we're not going to do it. I always say I get it, it's a pain in the neck, it will take 10 minutes and you will have this forever. So I try to sell it and I've come to understand this about my photography, about all photography, is it's a pain in the ass right now, but this picture is forever. This picture is about 20, 30, 50, 100 years from now.

Art:

Entertainment Weekly's workflow is to reach out to all of the nominees Best actor, best actress, director And if there's any well-known musical acts, reach out to them as well. And so that's 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 people they're reaching out to And they might get one or two or three people to say yes, but those one or two or three people who say yes might not win. So it's a total crap shoot. Kate said yes. She was incredibly gracious. This is her suite at Ironically the Beverly Hills Hotel. There's a beautiful window off to the side. I think we put up an umbrella out on the patio. That's the dress she was wearing, the shoes she was wearing.

Art:

Then I just wanted to throw in a little bit of that homage to the original photo with Faye Dunaway. There's the newspapers. That's her on the newspaper on the floor. She's got a cup of coffee and she's holding her glasses, as if she's just taken off her glasses. So we're creating that exhausted. What just happened to me? oh my god moment. And you know what I am going to look right now, because I can, because of the miracle of F Studio and this is not a plug, it's just simply a fact that within seconds I can tell you that I shot Let's just add these up 32 plus 16 plus 12 plus 21. I shot 81 frames for rolls of 220 and we were done. And that speaks to this idea that if you've done your homework, if you are prepared, if you are flexible, if you are calm, cool and collected, you can and should be able to pull off a great picture under duress.

Mark:

Well, you didn't know she was going to win. I imagine a few other people agreed, so it was kind of really.

Art:

that night you find out whether she won that night or that morning, like we are on call.

Mark:

So you don't know where you're. You know you're going to shoot, probably in a hotel room, but you don't know what. We have been in a hotel room.

Art:

We have been at their house. We've been at a friend's house. Let's dive into my database and just see if we shot anybody else that morning, because I think we did So that was 2014. Let me do a quick search here. All right, here we go 2014. Oh yeah, we shot Steve McQueen, the director.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

And the night before we shot the team from Gravity.

Mark:

Right, busy, busy. There's a lot going on. In this next photograph It is set in a large studio. There's a painted backdrop of a country scene with grass, trees, clouds and mountains in the distance. In the foreground there is real grass and boulders blending into it. On the left, you can see outside of the set with the wall behind. There are a bank of lights with large soft boxes, underneath which is a stuffed bear, a table of food, including a cooked turkey, and a man on the phone.

Mark:

Next over on the set is a man and woman waving at a video camera which is on a tripod in front of the set on the floor. Next behind them is a man waving a sword with one hand and holding a dagger in the other. The next person, a man, is sitting on the grass near the front playing a lute. Next to him is a woman lying propped up on one arm while the other hand is reaching up to a bunch of grips which is being offered to her by the next man, who is sitting on a chair reading a newspaper. Beside him is another man standing leaning his arm on the back end of a white horse. There are also two framed headshot photographs propped up on the grass. One of the things you're renowned for are your group shots or your big cast ensembles. So there's one of the Princess Bride which looks like it took quite a lot of pre-planning.

Art:

Absolutely did. Interestingly, you chose, good for you, a number of entertainment weekly shoots Iconic, crazy Creative, just lying by the seat of your pants. This was shot in 2011. One of the other annual franchises that Entertainment Weekly had is they would do these reunions Not necessarily tied to anniversaries of the movie or the television show, but they would do reunions of the cast. That was a lot of heavy lifting on the part of the magazine, in this case getting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 of these people together at the same time. As a matter of fact, they didn't get all eight of them together at the same time because one of them and I'm going to not tell you who, you can look at the image and guess one of them wasn't there when the other ones were there.

Mark:

Right.

Art:

And that is a classic conundrum, because that person had to fly out that morning to go shoot a television show. So this was particularly daunting because the only stage that was available at Smashbox wasn't available until the end of the day, the night before the shoot. So instead of having the entire day to pre-light, we didn't get into the studio until 9 o'clock Right. Then we put up the backdrop and I kind of realized we could try and hide all of the light. but maybe this is the opportunity where we just show off all of the lighting. So we went to work lighting it and trying to tell a story, or tell 10 stories with this cast and give it the sense of fantasy and have all these moving parts.

Art:

I think we were done at one or two in the morning. I think we came back at six or seven, photographed the one person who I'm not telling you. They got on a plane, then the rest of the cast trickled in. The other thing that happens on these shoots is we're shooting singles and doubles on a seamless. back in those days Entertainment Weekly would, as they still do, bring in a video crew and shoot video for one of the or both or all of the entertainment television shows. So choreograph the group shot, shoot singles, do video, get a horse into the stage like again crazy making stuff.

Mark:

Yeah, and there's a backdrop, but there's also the grass and the yes Which?

Art:

arrives damp, in order to make it safe, so you can see that nobody is directly in it, and I C evenCary Elwes C Always is sitting . something Like that backdrop already existed. So we're having to find a grass that looks like the grass in the backdrop. When you use a backdrop, you are married to the light in the backdrop. So I'm staring at this backdrop, which was painted, and I'm saying, okay, where's the light? Okay, it's in the upper left hand corner. So we motivated our light from there and then wrapped the light around all of the talent to make it look as if they had come out of this backdrop.

Mark:

Yeah, and of course yeah. you were doing all this pre-planning on paper before you even got there.

Art:

There's a lot of pre-planning. There's also a lot of just seat of the pants. Try it like this Put that over there.

Mark:

What about the horse?

Art:

Hoping the horse cooperates. All of that, Yeah. Now are you going to take a guess as to who we shot at 6am and who left and got on a 9am flight?

Mark:

I'd say the guy at the back on the phone.

Art:

That is Wallace Sean and that is incorrect.

Mark:

Which one was it then?

Art:

It is Mandy Patinkin. He is sitting in a chair and just to push it, as I always do, i wanted his not being there to not even be an issue, so I said, okay, we are going to have him feeding grapes to Robin Wright, to connect him to the photo, so that if anybody looks at this they will never think it was him.

Mark:

Right, very good, brilliant. Okay, the next one. This photograph is a close-up of a man, shot against a dark grey background. He's resting his elbows on an either side table with his hands meeting in the middle, one on top of the other, resting against his face just below his bottom lip. The top of his head has been cropped out and he's staring straight into the camera. He is wearing a muted red shirt and black waistcoat. He has a watch on one wrist and wooden beads and a metal bracelet on the other, and his glasses are hooked into his shirt in the middle. Quincy Jones, i love this. It's a very simple portrait. I love your simplicity in some of your portraits and this is just a stunning portrait of him.

Art:

Thank you very much. When I have the very good fortune to deal with icons and legends who know themselves, just about any pose is mind blowing, so my job is just to not screw it up. If you recall, you might have seen the behind the scenes on this. That is a four by eight piece of bone core with grey seamless paper attached to it, four feet wide. We are in, i think, a pantry off of his service entrance that was no more than six feet wide. That's my posing table and stool and literally one medium strip, and that's it.

Art:

There are a number of amazing poses that he gave me. I cannot remember whether or not I asked him to put his hands on his chin or he did it, but this picture became the key art, the advertising for the documentary about him, and this was shot for Los Angeles magazine. We are incredibly honored and privileged to be at his house. We photographed him not only in this little tiny mini studio but at his piano, put up a couple of lights, put his Oscar on the piano and a shot there as well.

Mark:

Yeah, that's amazing shot as well.

Art:

Thank you very much.

Mark:

That is incredible. So he's Quincy Jones. So he's himself? Yes, he is, but when you're photographing actors, they are used to playing parts that is correct, given direction. How do you find them then, when it comes to being themselves?

Art:

That is such a fantastic question the answer is then that it's not easy for a lot of them. Let's dig into your assumption, which is correct. They are playing a part, they are trying to convey emotion, they have lines to recite, they have movement, seen blocking to execute. They are in costume, so they are another, another person, so, more often than not, left to their own devices, to just be photographed as them, it's very uncomfortable. I have had to answer their request. Please tell me exactly what you want me to do, which is what their directors do.

Art:

I was given a gift 10,000 years ago by my best friend from college, who is a video producer, who came to one of my sets and he said, oh, you're a director. And I said, oh no, i'm a photographer, i'm a photojournalist. And he goes oh no, no, no, you're a director. And I said, oh, wow, i get it, i see what he's saying And I didn't really appreciate that it was my job to run the set and elicit a performance from my subject. This applies to anybody shooting portraits. You're a director And it's your responsibility to not only light it and compose it, but then get, on a very basic level, everybody to smile, to look their best Like. The imagery on your wall is a perfect example of that. You are a director as well. All of us that are shooting portraits are directors, and once I realize that, once you realize that, once we all realize that it is freeing And it's also an incredible burden, now it's on you to get them to perform So with an actor in particular?

Mark:

would you paint a scene for them to play a character?

Art:

or Not necessarily to play a character, but to imagine. Imagine you're in your living room, imagine you're talking to a friend. Put your kids in your eyes, just distract them, which means that you're doing a little bit of homework about them.

Art:

Do they have kids? Are they a Yankees fan? How do I engage with them? Here's the other huge rule You treat real people like celebrities and you treat celebrities like real people. So when a celebrity walks into the studio or into the photo shoot, you do not fawn all over them. You don't say oh my God, i loved your last movie, i'm such a huge fan. Oh my God, my sister thinks you're amazing, because that's what they hear 40 other times that week. They are there to get a job done, be treated as a professional and expect professionalism from me.

Mark:

So I try to give it to them To find that it helps to if you had some kind of concept for it and you had some photographs or tears. Oh my God, absolutely yes.

Art:

I bring them in and I say this is what we're doing today. We're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this. We got this thing going over here. The waterfall is over here, the giraffes are here, the video crew is here, the flame throwing dragon is here, but don't worry, you're not going to get any flame on you. And if you have any thoughts or questions oh my God, i love dragons. I'm terrified of giraffes. Okay, we'll keep the giraffes apart. Great. So you bring them in. You're collaborating And, conversely with people who aren't famous, you are completely fawning all over them.

Art:

If you have to photograph a professor or a butcher or, let's just say, a baker or a candlestick maker, you do your homework and say tell me about the different cuts of beef, like, where did you get that wax? Why is that wax better than that wax? You are in it because, it turns out, people do like to talk about themselves And you are talking to the non-famous person in a language they understand butchering, baking and candlestick making or giraffe wrangling and getting them into a space where they're an authority, because they also are not going to enjoy the photographic process. Very few people do. The people that do are models who know they look like a million dollars, and even some of them don't enjoy it, but for the rest of us, it's dentistry. It is literally something you have to do once or twice a year that you don't want to do. So appreciating that the person walking onto your set feels like they're going to the dentist.

Mark:

I know I say that all the time to my clients. I know you feel like you're going to the dentist, but you will leave thinking you actually really enjoyed that, and that's what happens.

Art:

There you go.

Mark:

And the only ones who really do enjoy it are kids.

Art:

That's right, Running around and seeing their faces on the monitor. It's honestly the difference between the development of the ID and the developed ID. The kids are all over the room. Yeah, it's just so open though That's right. There's no like how do I look, Oh my God. There's no self-consciousness.

Mark:

Yeah, and you find that I find the more beautiful, the more self-conscious they are and the more they don't think they're attractive at all. Do you find that?

Art:

I am not going to generalize about that. I will say that if you are told day in and day out for years that you are incredibly beautiful or incredibly talented or the best golfer there ever was, then you are being set up to be insecure, right, because this thing is fleeting Your golf talent, your beauty, your voice. So there's got to be and I think you alluded to this as well this imposter syndrome that at any minute it's all going to be yanked away, the rug is going to be pulled out from underneath you.

Mark:

That was one of my questions for you. Actually, do you suffer from imposter syndrome? Absolutely, i do as well, all the time, and I don't know if someone trained as an assistant to another photographer and learned a lot of stuff from that. Maybe they don't have imposter syndrome, but I feel it's a lot to do with being self-taught.

Art:

Yes, absolutely Yeah. I think it's well. It's being self-taught and we work in a really subjective artistic field And you're only as good as your last image, so it's pretty tender ground.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

You have to believe in yourself, you have to have some faith in yourself, but if you project anything beyond that, then you're an arrogant pain in the ass Right. So you're on a tightrope.

Mark:

Yeah, i remember when you first went on Instagram, i think you had only a couple hundred followers. I'm not sure how many you have now, but you've always shown the behind the scenes and your lighting setups, and no other photographer I know of up to that ever did that. It was always and again, maybe through insecurity or maybe they didn't want other photographers getting their jobs.

Art:

Or they weren't taking those photos.

Mark:

Right.

Art:

Which we used to do and document as a way to remember our lighting.

Mark:

Right.

Art:

And then we went back to the top, again back to the top process storytelling. How the hell did we do this thing with 116 people? Yeah, and if we ever get asked to do something similar, let's take a bunch of mediocre photos. So we have been doing behind the scenes, even in the film days. It really was a way I remember and I don't remember which to shoot Turning to my assistant and saying we should take pictures of this. This is crazy. So we've always had these photos. I started lecturing, probably. Well, let's look, i started lecturing in 2007. What I always thought was informative. What I want to see is how did you do that? Yeah, how did you milk the cow? How does that stuff get into a bottle? How's the sausage made? So my lectures became the big picture, how it happens behind the scenes, and I would go into great detail, like I'm going into detail with you now that I can't put on Instagram because I'm limited by the caption length and by 10 photos.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

If you look at my early, early, early Instagram, I was doing what everybody else was doing, which was look at these clouds. Here's a bright red stop sign against a blue sky. This is incredible. I know that other people will want to see this. I don't know. You know, when I thought what I should do is just do what I do with my lectures Yeah, I'd have to go back and look to see if I always did it as two different posts. But I realized with two different posts, I could write more.

Mark:

Right.

Art:

I could show more BTS and more of the final imagery. Yeah, again back to this idea of storytelling. every shoot you do has at least five stories, whether the talent, everything that went wrong with tech, everything that went wrong with name it.

Mark:

Yeah, i love reading between the lines and some of your captions, exactly.

Art:

So when I sit down to write those captions, i have to create a narrative. Yeah, what story am I going to tell? I can't tell all of the stories because I don't have the room. I can't tell all of the stories because I'm thoughtful and discreet. So I'm telling a story or two about the shoot. Yeah, it's usually about logistics, because that's the thing that you don't see, that I don't see. When I look at the photos, when I look at your photos, when I look at my photos, when I look at everybody else's photos, i don't see the logistics. So it's usually about the logistics. How this thing came together. Yeah, now they're brilliant.

Mark:

It's very generous of you, i think, to show all that, and I think it really helps a lot of photographers as well, just to see what goes into it and why they might like something I really appreciate that I am happy to share.

Art:

But again, i might say that we put up an Octobank, but there's a difference, as you know, between putting up the Octobank like this and like this, and there's a difference between putting it here and putting it here. I just don't have the time or the memory to get into those really subtle differences.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

I am happy to share, i am happy to answer questions. Each of those Instagram posts is maybe 10%, if that, of everything that went into the shoot.

Mark:

Yeah, and finally four different photographs from the same event, the Oscars. And since Art talks , I let him describe them. So we'll go to your Oscar photographs now. Yes, there's a bunch of them in there, and these are all reportage.

Art:

Yes, sir.

Mark:

When did you start doing that?

Art:

You know what? Let's be accurate And let's go into the database. I grew up in Los Angeles. I've always been a huge, huge fan of the Academy Awards. When I was a kid, I remember watching them once and I don't even know how my father knew this, But I think he said to me you know, everybody backstage is wearing a tuxedo as well. He might have even been making that up For all I know. That fascinated me, that there was this entire ecosystem happening off camera.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

On a live television show, regardless of the live television show, but that was the pinnacle. That was it for Hollywood. So I started, according to the database, in 2000. It looks like I had a 15 year run through 2016. For a number of those years for the first five was for Premier Magazine, which is no longer with us They had exclusive access to what was going on behind the scenes.

Mark:

Right.

Art:

So I was the only guy floating around in the four or five days leading up to the Oscars and the night of Yeah. And then, slowly but surely, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, UPI, New York Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter. At one point there might have been seven or eight of us back there.

Mark:

Right.

Art:

But I was the only one, except for the photographers hired by the Academy that was documenting anything and everything. I was backstage, I was front of house, i was out on the street, i was everywhere I could be, because it was all fascinating to me, like unrolling the red carpet on Hollywood Boulevard. Oh my God, that's incredible. Or you chose one of the pictures of Oscar getting polished.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

I love that, love it, love it, love it, love it That there is a guy whose job it is to scrub Oscar and take gold spray paint and touch him up And, honestly, some of my all-time favorite pictures from that incredible 14-15 year run are of Oscar And I think I sent you one of an Oscar statue just laying in the street.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

He's always holding his sword. He's always got the same look on his face. So he's got this nobility, this regal-ness, regardless of whether or not he's got a plastic bag wrapped over him or he's being shoved into an elevator or he's being hoisted in and out of a truck on the back of a crane. That constancy in the sea of production chaos was magic. So you picked a picture from 2003, 2004, one from 2012 and one from 2015. You inadvertently, geniusly, picked, kind of a something from the street, something from rehearsal, something from backstage and something from after because, I think you're a genius.

Art:

So the picture from 2015,. That is and I forget his name, i've got it written somewhere the guy who's in charge of making sure that the Oscars look amazing. That's on Hollywood Boulevard, but I wanted to get rid of all of Hollywood Boulevard. Aimed my camera up palm tree, blue sky, oscar. This guy on a scissor lift touching up his forearm. The picture you picked from rehearsal is of Bill Murray.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

And in that picture from 2004, bill is coming to rehearsal. A number of the nominees are asked to be presenters, so I believe that Bill was asked to be a presenter that year. So the presenters have to come in and rehearse.

Mark:

Yeah.

Art:

So Bill comes in the Oscars are on a Sunday. Bill comes in on Friday or Saturday. They show him where he will be seated, they show him backstage, they show him where he will enter, they rehearse him speaking on the teleprompter. Bill had never been to the Oscars. A lot of actors and actors haven't been. He is being shown where he will be seated. As you can see in the photo, there are placards where the nominees and the presenters will be sitting So that the cameras can rehearse where to go. So they've just shown Bill his seat and now he's looking at the stage and he's doing what a lot of people do. It's a lot like the Paramount 100, where they are, and I've done this seven times now on this podcast. Their mind is blown, and that's that moment.

Mark:

That's great.

Art:

The picture you chose from backstage is from 2003 of Jack Nicholson and Nicholas Cage.

Mark:

Yeah, love that.

Art:

They are in the smoking area which, in 2003, was literally just an ashtray on the loading dock. Now, much like every other grand event, every year it gets ramped up and elevated right. In this case, that smoking area is now a tented seated, ashtrayed, different, elevated experience. But in 2003, this is what it was. I honestly don't remember whether or not these guys were smoking, but this was one of those moments where, right before the Oscars start, i run out to the loading dock just to see who's out there. Oh my God, these guys are out there. And I think Jack was already in his sunglasses and Nicholas Cage said to me do you want me to put on my sunglasses? And I said sure, and he puts on his sunglasses and I said you guys should just chat as if I'm not here. And I got that moment.

Mark:

It's great. And the ashtray with all the butts make it. That's brilliant. And then the Meryl S one is a lovely, lovely caught moment.

Art:

Mark, after you've won your Oscar, you are ushered into the adjoining hotel. In the adjoining hotel, you are going to meet the press. Where you meet the press is in a series of conference rooms in this hotel. So the first thing you're gonna do in this hotel is you're gonna go to the deadline press room, where it's a bleacher filled with a hundred photographers, and you're just gonna stand and hold your Oscar. Then you're gonna go talk to deadline press. Then you're gonna go talk to long lead press. You're gonna have your picture officially taken for the Academy. This is where Oscar winners might run into each other, and this is and Octavia Spencer running into each other in 2012. And they decided to toast each other's Oscars.

Mark:

I thought they were kissing each other's Oscars because of kind of kissing.

Art:

You know what, it could be a kiss.

Mark:

I thought it was a toast.

Art:

I'm going to say we're both right. This is one of those right place, right time. you know, one frame, two frames, so let's all the photographs art.

Mark:

Just a couple of little questions here. What's the most impossible thing you've been asked to shoot and that you succeeded?

Art:

Paramount 100 is pretty close to impossible. But I will say that every shoot is impossible until it's done, And it's degrees of impossibility And it's degrees of problem solving. But the scale of the Paramount 100 is I don't know that I'll ever do anything like that again.

Mark:

What about any of these other 100 u? You haven't got the call for those yet.

Art:

Hollywood is in a little bit of a funk. There's a writer strike, the streaming bubble has burst Yeah.

Mark:

Why do they call you? Why do they call you to do the job?

Art:

I relish the problem solving. I say yes, i figured out. I love making it work. My team and I are agreeable, helpful and professional, reliable. Yeah, agreeable, helpful, reliable, professional.

Mark:

You told me at your seminar many years ago that they consider you a safe pair of hands.

Art:

Yeah, And look your clients, my clients, all of our clients. They are frenzy, they are stressed out, they are overworked, they are underpaid, They are afraid for their jobs. They've got other shoots to do, They've got other stressors. So my job, your job, our job, is to make this as easy and painless and problem solving as possible for them.

Mark:

Yeah, Yeah, brilliant. But one final question. My son, c, loves the walking dead And he wants to know what Norman Regis is really like.

Art:

Norman is fantastic And the most recent time that I photographed him was during the pandemic, in the back of my mind, like in the backyard here at the office and then in an alley nearby. He's lovely, he's a pro, he is willing which is more than you can ask for that he's game to be photographed. He's an absolute delight.

Mark:

Brilliant Art. thanks a million. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy life, absolutely, mark.

Art:

Thank you for having me.

Mark:

Well, i hope you enjoyed that as much as I did o. c You can check out Art's work on his website, comartstreiber., and all his behind the @ photographs ictures ictures AS Pictures. You can find all the links in the show notes. Thanks for listening and until next time. bye.