This text will appear in Part II of the finished book.
One of the most enjoyable locations for fashion photography lies just 110 miles east of New York City, on Long Island near Montauk. Deep Hollow Ranch, America’s oldest cattle ranch, was founded in 1658 — and is still going strong as a very private hideaway for equestrian pleasures by the seaside. Avedon used it several times as a setting for both editorial fashion and commercial advertising photography.
The most exciting of these was on July 7, 1963, when he shot the spectacular image of Suzy Parker in a chiffon dress leading a frightened and excited white stallion through the foaming surf off Montauk Point to promote Revlon’s latest lipstick and fingernail polish color. In the dead of night. For six hours. With raging water all around. And with an 8”x10” view camera for maximum clarity. What a production that was! Supermodel Suszy Parker, the gal in the picture, speaks about the Revlon Stormy Pink job: Revlon’s ad copy was as purple as the skies were dark. A sample: “Revlon Unleashes An Angry Young Pink — the killer-color of the year! Stormy ‘Pink,’ a wild-and-arrogant pink…cross-bred with red…this lightening change for Fall! (Don’t you sense it in the wind?) Suddenly, ‘Stormy Pink’ is stealing the thunder from red — turning the tide of fashion from dark to light (overnite)! It’s the runaway trend of our time. Why fight it?” At my end, the technical problems were severe, especially in seeing to it that nobody got electrocuted. There of course was no place to plug in the powerful Balcar strobes needed to get enough depth of field for the 300mm lens on slow Ektachrome sheet film. I solved this by borrowing a Jeep from the ranch and mounting a gasoline generator on it along with the flash head on a tall pole. This I drove slightly out into the surf. I was concerned about the sync wire to the camera and the fact that both Dick and another assistant were standing in water, but they never got so much as a tingle. The resultant ad appeared quickly all over America, produced by Revlon’s ad agency, Norman, Craig & Kummel. In the November 1963 issue of Harper’s Bazaar the tall ad ran sideways, covering pages 14-15. I cannot overemphasize just how important commercial work like this was to financing the more serious photography that established Avedon as a true artist, recognized by major museums around the world. Dick used the Montauk ranch at other times, including several days in May of 1960 for beach fashions (photo of me with horse, below); these appeared in the September 1960 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, pages 242-249. It must be noted that he was quite familiar with horses and often rode in New York’s Central Park. I rode with him once, across the Arizona desert at dawn in November, 1962. After fellow assistant Jim Houghton and I established our own studio in late 1965 we also worked out of Deep Hollow Ranch a few times. Avedon surely loved Montauk, since around 1980 (some 15 years after I left the studio) he purchased a 7.5-acre mini-compound on a desolate cliff overlooking the sea, less than two miles southwest of the historic 1795 lighthouse at Montauk Point. Featured in the 1995 PBS documentary Darkness and Light (see chapter 00), it had 6 bedrooms, a studio, a stable, an orchard, a pool, and gardens. It was here that he played country gentleman by growing apples and raising chickens for the next 20 years. Deep Hollow Ranch is located about three miles beyond the town of Montauk, on State Route 27, just east of East Lake Drive, on the left. The beach is nearby, south of 27, on the Atlantic Ocean. Check it out at www.deephollowranch.com. Quotation from Susy Parker was taken from Fire and Ice — The Story of Charles Revson by Andrew Tobias, © 1976 Ad © 1963 by Revlon Other text and map copyright © 2010 Earl Steinbicker "We worked at night (double the fee) off Montauk Point, in the ocean, and I had to hold a stallion. We really did that. It was very dangerous because it was windy and the pebbles kept rolling out from beneath the horse's feet, and I'm trying to hold him down. We worked on that for almost six hours in the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean (well, not quite), and I was in a chiffon dress. I think the reason I was such a good model wasn't that I was such a particular beauty or anything, but that I was as strong as a horse. And that occasion proved it."
In the map above, #1 is Deep Hollow Ranch, #2 the spot on the beach where we did the photography, #3 Avedon's Montauk home 1980-2000, #4 the historic Lighthouse. CLICK ON MAP TO ENLARGE.
This is fantastic!
Posted by: Kelvin Pinney | 08/11/2011 at 08:34 AM