"After all, she's a real princess."
"After all, she's a real princess."
Princess Stephanie of Monaco lights up a room.
If I had married my college girlfriend I would have become a Viscount, but even that isn’t close to the real deal, daughter of hell-O, Princess Grace Kelly and His Serene Highness Prince Rainier. Rolling Stone called and assigned me to photograph Princess Stephanie of Monaco. I was on the dirt bag beat, more used to slimy heavy metal dudes or a rapper named Princessa than actual living breathing royalty.
My photo agent at the time, Daniel Roebuck, called when he heard about my latest gig. I answer the phone, Danny’s like, “Uhhhhh, Princess Stephanie… of MONACO?” he’s so disbelieving his voice inadvertently slides up an octave on the last word. I know, crazy, right? “Well, then, have fun.”
I had worked for Rolling Stone, that most prestigious of clients, for a couple years, mostly shooting B and C list celebrities for one-picture stories in the back of the book. Apparently the young royal had created a disco single.The Princess here qualified, I suspected they were just allowing the access to humor Jann Wenner and would end up skewering the record in the accompanying review. The Princess’ record company was releasing it and allowing certain elite media outlets to cover it, as one does. I still had dreadlocks down to my butt at that point, and that was only the beginning of my royal issues. My visions of styling her, wardrobe fit for a princess, perhaps some fabulous location, were dashed in a moment as I contacted the publicist who was to be my nemesis throughout this entire experience.
“You will be shooting in Her Highness’ hotel room, at the Rihga Royal Hotel.” you can have an hour to set up, but only ten minutes with the Princess. She will arrive camera ready, dressed and in makeup.” OK, OK, not too bad, except for the makeup thing. “I would like to bring my own makeup artist, even just for touch ups, it’s good to have someone on set,” She cut me off breezily, “not necessary. After all, she’s a real princess!”
As it turned out, royal blood confers neither skill nor taste: tacky outfit and terrible makeup made my job infinitely harder. I know, saucer of milk, table two! I am writing these memoirs some thirty years after the events at hand. It’s not so much the memory, as how the technology of film and labs and therefore lighting and people to carry it begs the question of how I did it. If I got that job now, I would waltz in there with my little photo purse, pull out my Canon with the big lens, or heck, my iPhone 13, and take more, better, awesome photos in whatever light and location I find, and then sending the work to the client from the cab home, well, looking back on pre-cellphone life is difficult, imagining how different the photography angle was is heartbreaking.
Back with the Princess, we got our shots, though I can’t say I feel like I really captured anything particularly trenchant. These gigs were hard, and it’s funny, but nobody, least of all the client, ever cared to even hear about how many restrictions and difficulties presented to make their photos. The photographers who lived in LA and just went outside in the beautiful weather presaged our modern ease of capturing amazing photographs. I did it the hard way, shooting high stakes make-one-little-mistake-while-shooting film, under ridiculous constraints. Does that make the photos any the sweeter? Hardly, almost the opposite. I mostly think about how easy some of my most difficult shoots were and how easy it would be to crush those gigs if I were to get them today. The whole technical angle was a huge part of why people hired you. Irony of ironies, I gave my pro analog photo equipment to a friend of mine’s kid. She’s now a producer for a hugely successful photo agency whose young photographers shoot only film for jobs, even, maybe especially in this digital age of ours. Whippersnappers, what do they know?