CNN Connie Chung Tonight chatted with photographer Steven Klein about his big layout of Madonna in the new issue of W magazine. Klein told Chung, “I always saw Madonna as a performance artist. And I think what I wanted to portray was the process about how a performer arrives at their work.” Read on for a transcript.
For more than two decades, she’s been a pop idle, projecting different
images as the times change. Her videos show it well. We’ve seen her in
her early days as pure and chaste. Then Madonna transformed herself into
the sex goddess and she morphed into a disco queen. And now the chameleon
of rock is reinventing herself yet again.
The April issue of “W” magazine features an unprecedented 44-page photo
spread showing the material girl today. They’ll be part of a video exhibit
at a gallery in New York’s Soho later this month.
Photographer Steven Klein shot the pictures all in one day. And he’s
with us to talk about this photo shoot.
Congratulations for doing that incredible shoot.
STEVEN KLEIN, PHOTOGRAPHER: Thank you, Connie.
CHUNG: Now, she actually approached you about doing this photo shoot.
KLEIN: Yes.
CHUNG: So when she asked you, what did you think? What was your reaction?
KLEIN: Well, my first impression was, what am I going to do? Because
I felt that Madonna’s has done everything. And I thought, how could I do
something different than she’s ever done?
But once we started talking and I would send her images and send her
pictures that I’ve done, we kind of starting a dialogue and we evolved
the idea together.
CHUNG: Why did she want to do this?
KLEIN: Actually, she didn’t really actually want to do — she’s really
not into doing fashion pictures or doing photographs. I think maybe she
responded to my pictures and wanted to work with me. And that’s how this
project came about.
CHUNG: I think everybody wants to know what she’s like. I sat next to
her at a Knicks game and she didn’t say boo to me. So tell us, what was
Madonna like?
KLEIN: For me, she’s been — it’s been one of the great experience of
working with somebody. Usually, with a celebrity, they come in for the
day. You really don’t have any kind of communication before. With her,
we talked and e-mailed for like one month about the project, developed
the idea together.
So, for me, it’s been a great experience to work at this level with
her, where, on the premise, she wasn’t really so interested in doing this,
but then, once she committed, she was like there 100 percent to be totally
involved with every aspect of the shoot.
CHUNG: Now, when you actually picked the pictures, you picked them with
her, right?
KLEIN: No, I edited the pictures myself.
CHUNG: Oh, you did? But wasn’t she involved? She was perfectly happy
to choose pictures that weren’t flattering.
KLEIN: Yes.
The thing is, what I did is, I sent her a selection. And out of the
selection, she probably chose two-thirds of what I sent her. She was less
concerned with the pictures where they were more self- conscious or where
she looked maybe more perfectly beautiful. She was more interested in the
more fascinating, intriguing pictures as photographs.
CHUNG: I had no idea that she was so flexible, you know that? It’s incredible.
She’s in such great shape.
KLEIN: I had no idea either until she did that.
CHUNG: Yes, great shape after two children and everything. It really
is amazing.
KLEIN: I think she works. She does yoga every day. And I think she’s
been a dancer all her life. And I think that’s what it is.
CHUNG: When you were developing what you were going to do, how would
you describe what it was?
KLEIN: The thing is, I always saw Madonna as a performance artist. And
I think what I wanted to portray was the process about how a performer
arrives at their work.
And the thing is, what she had talked about as well is that, before
a concert, which she finds very interesting is the rehearsals and the straining
and the maybe she would like injure herself and have to tape her arm up.
And she said the process of making the video or the process of making the
concert sometimes becomes more intriguing than the final result.
And like myself, I think, sometimes the final image, to me, the perfect
image sometimes isn’t as interesting as some of maybe the outtakes or the
unfinished pieces.
CHUNG: Now, you have taken pictures of a lot of people, Justin Timberlake,
right? Name a few.
KLEIN: Justin Timberlake, Brad Pitt, Julianne Moore.
CHUNG: How do you go about capturing these celebrities in a different
way? Because I’m sure they’ve been shot so many times.
KLEIN: What I do is, I usually reference — I’ll like have painting
references or other photo references or journalistic pictures. And what
I do is, in my mind, I’ll put together a collection of images that — where
I’ll kind of build a world where these people can partake in. Like Madonna,
I built her the world for her performance.
CHUNG: All right, Steven, thank you so much for being with us.
KLEIN: Thank you as well.