Debbie Harry - London 1977
I had met Debbie Harry and Chris Stein a number of times and when the NME decided to put her on the cover in 1977 I suggested that we shoot the photos in the Studio instead of the normal reportage style that the paper usually did. I had previously shot a studio cover of the Clash earlier that year on a white background so I figured that Debbie should be on black. The session was booked for ten o'clock in the morning but we all went out together the previous evening, staying up well into the middle of the night. Debbie Harry virtually defines the word photogenic and I knew that no matter how little experience I had in the studio we would produce great photos together. Unfortunately, when she arrived she was still very tired from the previous evening and her eyes were hardly open. I immediately handed her a pair of Ray Bans and suggested the sunglasses would make the photo look cooler. As a person who is very easy to photograph the session lasted only about fifteen minutes, wearing a Rudolph Valentino T-Shirt and a short denim skirt Debbie sat on the stool and we went thru a variety of poses. Once we did the photo seen here we knew we had what we wanted, I shot a few frames like this and a few of the same pose in full length, the job was done and this photo appeared on the cover of the NME the following week.