Brooke insisted on pulling me into the picture against my fervent objections.

Everyone was standing in the lobby, and Bill was about to photograph the then-co-chair of the museum’s board, Brooke Garber Neidich, who was wearing her signature multistranded pearls. Stephen Soba Director of communications, Whitney Museum of American Art It was fall 2014 and the final party at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Madison Avenue building, before the museum moved downtown. I’d wear that with brothel creepers, that’s like a shoe with giant crepe soles. I would mix everything: bondage, T-shirts with safety pins, a Day-Glo man-tailored shirt from Fiorucci. Then I got into punk and gave up Studio for the Mudd Club. I’d come to work from Studio 54, completely crippled from dancing in them, and Bill would chase me. I used to have this giant leopard scarf that I would wrap around me and wear as a dress, and knee-high, black leather stiletto boots. Bill would run after me when I got off the subway because I was dressed crazy: I would be wearing leopard print everything, and a motorcycle jacket with fringes if I’d been up all night clubbing. Kim Hastreiter Co-founder and editor, Paper Magazine I met him in 1977, when I was working at Betsey Bunky Nini and living in a dump on Prince Street. And then Cher wore it a week later on Letterman.

He gave me his notepad and said, ‘Write their names down, Child.’ After he was done, he turned and smiled, then snapped a picture of me.Įd Filipowski President of KCD Worldwide When Stephen Sprouse’s store was opening in the ’80s, he wanted me to wear his God Save the Queen jacket so that Bill would photograph me in it. He turned to me and said, ‘I want to get some artists.’ So I walked him over to a group of people, and he started taking photos. I knew who he was and I just hovered behind, watching him in awe. I don’t remember what I was wearing, but it was 1989, and he was darting around the room shooting people at an event. Thelma Golden Director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem The first time he photographed me, I was a curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art. I was wrapped in one of my wild outfits, I think a Loden cape from Bavaria, trousers and a motorcycle racer’s leather cap. Being German, we paid no attention, of course, and set out into the snowstorm on Fifth Avenue with our 5-year-old, Fabian. There was a terrific snowstorm - you could see from our penthouse people sledding and skiing on Park Avenue. We are trying to suppress our laughter, as Bill always made us smile ear to ear.īeatrix Ost Artist, writer filmmaker My oldest memory of being photographed by Bill was in the winter of 1978-79. Ruben was wearing a hand-me-down Antonio Lopez suit, his father’s hat and carrying his artwork in a metal photographer’s case. I was wearing my own design, a red denim horseshoe skirt, a suede hunting jacket and Victorian tango lace-up shoes. Isabel Toledo In 1985, he snapped a pic of us walking up 57th Street after dropping off a delivery of my clothes from my first collection at Bergdorf Goodman, where Dawn Mello met us at the delivery gate. He wanted to photograph Isabel, who was wearing one of her early teenage design experiments: a dress of white tulle shaped like a balloon held up with invisible fishing wire. Bill chased us out of the club at 4 or 5 in the morning when we were leaving. Ruben Toledo Artist and the husband of Isabel Toledo, fashion designer We met this wild, lovely, mannered man when we were 14 or 15 years old at a dance club called Xenon.

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