I am preparing some shoots for Vogue Hommes and some clients.
I get a phone call from Ingrid Sischy in New York asking me to photograph David Bowie for Interview Magazine.
Well as you can imagine I was ecstatic, my first proper record was an LP that my stepfather gave me following a visit to London: Diamond Dogs by Bowie and I still have it.
Anyway, I am with the production team, that includes Paul Starr for make-up and Kim Bowen for styling at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. An hour later, I see a man in a sharp suit, it is David Bowie.
I introduce myself and tell him that he looks like a fashion icon straight out of a Luchino Visconti movie. Bowie smiles and says he's very much into neo-realist Italian movies.
The most unnerving thing while photographing Bowie was his intensity of looking, his eyes with those hypnotic dual colors felt like he was looking right through me. The shoot lasted an hour and I had a real blast.
In that time I tried to pay homage to Bowie through these portraits and indeed he looks like a character from Visconti's film Death in Venice.
MICHEL HADDI
