Virtual Memories Show 305:
Deborah Feingold
“Photography students are begging me to teach them about strobes and lights, but it’s all about what you see. It’s all about looking at light.”
Legendary photographer Deborah Feingold joins the show to talk about the inspiration for her new personal project: photographing illustrators (which is how we fell into each other’s orbit)! We get into her approach to teaching ‘Portraiture and the Art of Imitation‘ at ICP, the process of learning through imitation and absorbing influence, how she moved from ‘professional girlfriend’ to ‘professional photographer’ in the ’70s while shooting pictures of jazz musicians. We also talk about how she made the transition to digital photography while hewing to her film-shooting techniques, how she boldly directs her subjects despite being an incredibly shy person, the unspoken pressure to ape Annie Leibowitz’ style when she shot for Rolling Stone, her stories of shooting early Madonna and pre-presidency Obama, finding the humanity in her subjects, and more! Give it a listen! Also, go buy Deborah Feingold: Music
“I have no fixed style, and that’s what’s kept my photography interesting.”
“Stealing is not a compliment.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Spanning more than 40 years, Deborah Feingold’s photography career began when she immersed herself in the jazz of the late ’70’s and simultaneously was shooting and keeping company with Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Tony Bennett and many other jazz legends. After working as the first staff photographer for Musician magazine for five years, she continued shooting musicians for album/cd covers and portraits for Warner Music for the next two decades.
As a contributor to Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, Newsweek and the New York Times, among many other publications, Deborah has also photographed most of the biggest names in pop culture. She has also created over 100 memorable author portraits for book covers and has shot numerous ad campaigns for print and television. Her work has been syndicated all over the world and is included in a number of music anthologies and private collections.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Ms. Feingold’s apartment on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones
(Bloomsbury USA)! We get into how his implied reader has changed identities over the years, the differences between writing memoir, autofiction and imaginative fiction, the boom and bust of the “gay fiction” bookstore category, the challenges of his massive biography of 
and how he navigated about French attitudes toward gossip, and having the gay version of a shotgun wedding. We also get into his HIV diagnosis in 1985, outliving what he thought was a two-year death sentence, and being crazy enough to take on a long-term writing project in the midst of it. In between, we get to his status as a blurb-slut, what it’s like for him to write on a computer for the first time, the pressure to write for a gay audience and how 
opened him up to a very different reader, and more! 
, 
, 
, and 
. His nonfiction includes 
, 
, and other memoirs; 
. He was named winner of the 2018 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. He lives in New York. His most recent book is 
(Norton)! We get into his decades-long interest in Kafka, the art of literary adaptation, why the constraints of working with an existing story can be liberating, how to talk about controversial artists in the present moment, the various translations of K he read before commissioning his own, and challenges of his adaptation-in-progress: Heart of Darkness. We also get into his post-2016-election mindset, the discovery of his New Yorker cartoonist line, his laborious process of breaking down a comic, what his dream adaptation project is, the time he got stranded in a village in Africa by an evil guide, and much more! 
, 
, 
, 
(which won the 2016 Eisner Award) and more. His most recent graphic novel is 
. I recorded the intro and outro on a 
(Liveright Publishing). We get into the image that inspired the book, the challenges & rewards of historical fiction, and the quest to separate Teddy Roosevelt’s myth from his story. Along the way, we get into ping pong, whether LeBron James should have gone somewhere besides LA, the magic of Allegra Kent & Balanchine’s ballet, the loneliness of Van Gogh’s garret, the joy of collaborating on graphic novels, and the miracle of Jerome becoming a writer. Leave a comment about this episode below to enter a raffle to win Jerome’s new book & a his earlier novel, 
! Check out the rest of the 
!
