UNEASY Todd Haynes

I first photographed director Todd Haynes in 1991 when his landmark film Poison was released. I was already familiar with his work, having been a fan of his underground film about Karen Carpenter, Superstar, so I was excited, and prepared for this opportunity. Haynes was an easy and willing subject, resulting in some dynamic portraits, seemingly built around using flowers as props.   

I photographed him again in 1995 for a piece about Safe which is a fairly serious film, so we didn’t want the pictures to be too silly. We started doing some Polaroids to test the lighting and he made some really cool faces, very Jaggeresque. I thought we would try to replicate that. He really went all out and made all kinds of really weird faces. I like the final image, because he looks serious but at the same time his face is twisted in a bizarre way.