The
tough thing about being in New York is that it's anonymous.
You just drop off your portfolio and no one wants to talk to
you. The good news about being in New York is that it's anonymous.
You drop off your portfolio and nobody wants to talk to you.
If they like your pictures they just call. I was very fortunate
in that people were responding to my work and they called."-Gregory
Heisler
Alonzo
Mourning
Deardorff 8 x10 Field Camera
and a Goerz Gold Dot Agor
12 - inch lens
Cal
Ripken, Jr.
Phillips 11 x14 View Camera
with 450 mm f/9 Nikkor M lens
Chances are you've
seen Gregory Heisler's work. It could have been a cover or Time
magazine, a photo essay in Life or Sports Illustrated, or
an advertising campaign in House & Garden. Heisler has
spent nearly 30 years losing his anonymity in the New York photo district,
but he didn't get there with a passive approach. In fact, it was his
boldness and aggressive attitude that landed him his first job in
the Big Apple.
With one year of photographic study at RIT
behind him, Heisler accepted his first job in 1975 as a photo assistant
with Playboy Enterprises in Chicago. "I worked there for about
a week," says Heisler."While there, I wrote a letter to
Arnold Newman, who was my idol at that time, requesting a job as a
photo assistant. He wrote back and said he wasn't interested. I was
so happy he wrote to me that I called him up on the phone. Again,
he told me he wasn't interested. That next Monday I took a plane to
New York to see him. I ended up getting the job and started working
for him the next week. I haven't left New York since.
Heisler worked with Newman for about 10 months,
learning a tremendous amount about the business and art of photography.
"I was inspired by his imagery, his portraiture, and his integrity
as an artist," says Heisler. "In a sense, it was his lack
of pretense. For Arnold, it was all about the pictures. It wasn't
about making more money or collecting tear sheets, it was just about
the pictures. That made an early and strong impression on me."
Liv
Tyler
Phillips 11 x 14 view camera
and 305 mm Zeiss Protar lens
New
York Point Guards Sinar Handy
4 x 5 view camera and
65mm f/5.6 Schneider Super-Angulon lens.
Joe
Torre Sinar
p 4 x 5 view camera and
600mm f/9 ED Nikkor-T lens.
The
apprentice photographer spent another year working under Bill King, a talented
New York fashion photographer, Eric Meola, a well known advertising photographer
and colorist; and John Olson, who specialized in corporate work. In 1977,
Heisler went off on his own, getting work by referral from Meola and Olson,
and quickly building a name for himself in editorial photography.
"I started working for a couple of editors
at Time Inc., and did a few jobs for Money magazine and Fortune,"
he says. "I thought it was thrilling just to be taking pictures, so
I would really kill myself on these assignments. Eventually, I began to
get corporate work as well, and my career started snowballing really quickly."
