Bringing Dick Johnson To Life

In my early teens the majority of my brain space was taken up with the movies. It started with an obsession with Star Wars, and as I got older my taste broadened to include classic films, like North By Northwest, and later the cinema vérité of the 60s and 70s. So I was super-excited when The Criterion Collection approached me to shoot pictures for the Blu-ray cover of Dick Johnson Is Dead.

I had seen the film on Netflix when it came out and was very moved and impressed by how director Kirsten Johnson addressed death and mortality in a way that was, dare I say, almost fun, while still being respectful and deeply personal.

The assignment came from Criterion producer Abbey Lustgarten, and serendipitously, we were invited to a mutual friends’ cottage at the Jersey Shore one weekend.

It worked out beautifully, as we met on the front porch over coffees in the early morning, before the rest of the guests were up. She knew the film and the filmmaker well, and of course was also my client, so I was eager to hear her thoughts, as well as to bounce some ideas off of her.

Part of my process is to spitball dynamic ideas and then work to pare them back, making them more simple. Many of my best photographs are bold ideas, executed with restraint. I pitched some concepts around Dick and Kirsten sitting in the back of an open hearse, or creating a Viking funeral setting, and even toyed with an appearance by the grim reaper himself.

I was excited to flesh out these ideas, and share them with Criterion art director, Eric Skillman, and Kirsten, but Abbey said something over that coffee that lodged in my brain and stayed there. She said, "What holds this film together is Dick himself. When I think of the movie, I see Dick’s face: full of humor, empathy, and life. If the cover can convey that, then it will be a success."

We used that as a starting point with Kirsten. It turns out that she brainstorms like me, expansive and surreal, with interlocking ideas, and references. In the emails between Kirsten, and I with the Criterion team there was Buster Keaton, The Great Escape poster art, Charles Addams, and, most inspiring, Seventh-day Adventist tableau paintings. (I even had the chance to visit her summer house where we took brainstorming to the next level, spending 45 minutes in a crystal-clear lake treading water. The only thing that put an end to this extraordinary work session was my being on the verge of drowning.)

Nevertheless, the less is more approach of focusing on Dick’s magical face won the day. Kirsten is a fantastic visual storyteller, but she’s also a girl with a pretty awesome dad.

Top Image: The finished Blu-ray cover for “Dick Johnson Is Dead.”

Second Image: An outtake image from the session.

Bottom Image: BTS, Kirsten and Chris bond, with Abbey and Eric supervision.