UNEASY Steve Martin

Premiere magazine photo editor Linda Liang came to me with the idea to do an homage to Robert Doisneau’s 1952 Picasso portrait. She said, “I was in yoga class, and I looked down at my hands. I thought: ‘Bread hands!’”

In the original, Picasso is wearing the classic horizontal striped shirt, and I obviously wasn’t going to dress Steve Martin like that—I wanted Steve Martin to look like Steve Martin. At some point with an homage, it’s best to throw away the reference photograph—it’s meant to be a stand-alone picture. If you recognize the reference, that’s great; if you don’t, it will still be a curious image.