Home: Los Angeles and Mendocino, Calif.
Studio: Los Angeles, 7,000 square feet total, 1,600 square feet of shooting space, 18-foot ceilings.
Staff: A studio manager, three assistants and an in-house caterer.
Fine-Art representation: Fahey/Klein Gallery, L.A.
Favorite subjects: Bette Midler, Djimon Hounsou, Bette Davis, Leonardo DiCaprio and actor/model Tony Ward. "I like working with those who are willing to experiment; those who will take chances and be creative, regardless of other people's expectations."
Equipment: Canon EOS 1DS, Contax and Hasselblad. Digital editing: Macintosh G5's; Adobe Photoshop; Adobe Camera Raw; Gretag Macbeth color management; Colorbyte's Image-Print; Sony Artisan monitors; GTI Lightboxes; Epson Stylus Pro printers; Extensis Server software; Apple Xserve and Xraid; and Imacon's Flextight 848 film scanner. In the studio, "I'm a big fan of Briese lights," he says. "Their 2,500-watt HMIs put out more light than my 6,000-watt Arriflex."
Greatest influences: American portrait photographer Richard Avedon. European fashion photo-graphers Guy Bourdin and Peter Lindbergh. "The most important influence for me was Helmut Newton," who died on Jan. 23 at age 83, Gorman says. "When I first saw Helmut's work in a gallery in the early 1970s, I knew that's what I wanted to do. His death was a great loss."
Books: Greg Gorman, Volume One, 1990 (CPC Publishing), black-and-white personality portraits with male and female nudes; Greg Gorman, Volume Two, 1992 (Treville Press), male and female nudes; Inside Life, 1996 (Rizzoli International Publishers), a retrospective of Gorman's work from 1968 to 1996; Perspectives, 1999 (Art Books International), celebrity portraits and nudes; As I See It, 2000 (Powerhouse Books), a collection of male nudes; and Just Between Us, 2002 (Arena Editions), erotic nude studies of model Greg Knudson.
Advice to new photographers: "A lot of kids today are not clear on the importance of establishing an identity," he says. "They keep varying their imagery and style according to the flavor of the month. Develop and showcase your own style, and get an assignment that reflects where you want to go. Don't be afraid to be original."
Website: gormanphotography.com
