Kim Alexis, left, and Christie Brinkley on set during the filming of About Face.
When photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders walked
into a party honoring supermodels of the seventies and eighties, he
walked out with an idea. The photographer, who has shot presidents,
Nobel laureates, and just about every celebrity imaginable, rounded up
the famous faces he met that night—Patti Hansen, Christie Brinkley, and
Beverly Johnson among them—for a portrait. (It was published in Vanity Fair
in 2010.) What emerged from the sitting, however, was bigger than any
photograph. "I was smart enough to film all of them over two days when
we created the shot," Greenfield-Sanders says, and 25 hours of footage
later, he had the beginnings of his next documentary film. About Face: Supermodels Then and Now
catches up with the top models of the forties through the eighties,
touching on their lives and their careers with interviews, vintage video
and film, archival photos, and more. (There was so much material, in
fact, that "if we didn't get into Sundance," Greenfield-Sanders jokes,
"I would be still making it.") About Face premieres July 30 on
HBO. Before its debut, Style.com met with Greenfield-Sanders to discuss
these iconic women, as well as fashion, Photoshop, and the one who got
away.
I got very excited by the material I had and thought this could be a fascinating film. It could be so much more than a photo shoot, or the making of a photo shoot, which is not that interesting. The film explores issues I find interesting, like aging, insecurity, race, drugs, and the great fun of being beautiful and having the world at your fingertips. It's easy to look at the world of these women and pull it apart and say how terrible it is. But there's also a lot of excitement and beauty and artistic endeavor. These are such smart women. You had to be more than just beautiful to have survived all that.
They are among the first ever to be given the tag "supermodels." What does that designation mean to you?
It's a funny word. I come out of the Warhol era. He created the word "superstar," which was a joke about drag queens. These women he surrounded himself with—as well as misfit socialites—he made them bigger than life by calling them superstars. But what we have here are actual superstars. These women are extraordinary. Five-hundred magazine covers, and not just one of them—several have that. They lead incredible lives and have had such influence. You can look at the beauty and the way we see beauty in America, and it's not just designers and clothing. There are also certain faces that define it and these are the faces that have defined beauty in America for a long period of time. They are the ideal of beauty.
The term "supermodel" is often thrown around today, but is there something in your mind that distinguishes these women from the models of today?
There are supermodels today, but it's different. The life span of a model is different; the importance of a model is different. They're not on the cover of magazines anymore; they're not in ads anymore. Those all go to movie stars. This was the golden era of modeling. Their faces were in our home every day on the coffee table—they were in all the ads we saw. We knew these women. They were bigger than life. I don't think that can be said of too many people today. The opportunities for the women in my film don't exist today. Magazine covers and ads were huge. Magazines were so important, and they're not important anymore. Photos have become less important because so there are so many photos out there now, and because of the Web, photos are less meaningful. It used to be about the big campaigns by Versace and Calvin Klein and it was a big deal and it would be everywhere and talked about. I don't think it exists today because media is so broad. It's not just magazines—it's television, the Web, Twitter. There are so many ways to disseminate information, and it's harder to have an impact.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, with Paulina Porizkova
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