Sandro Miller: The Pundit of Portraiture

With a powerful portfolio full of poignant, cutting-edge portraiture, Sandro Miller admits that he “never really followed the trends”—and he never really needed to.

His accomplishments are vast. In 2001, he was invited by the Cuban government to shoot and take part in the first U.S.-Cuban collaboration since 1960 (when the trade embargo was first imposed). A Nikon Ambassador who added motion to his repertoire in 2008 after he was asked to make videos for Nikon, Miller has made a series of short films—including “Butterflies” starring John Malkovich, for which he won the Best New Director Award at Cannes in 2011—as well as various ad campaigns for clients such as BMW, Dove, Nike and the U.S. Army.

Actor and frequent collaborator John Malkovich as Alberto Korda’s Che Guevara. All photos © Sandro Miller

This year, Miller finished a project called Eyes of Morocco, which became his seventh photo book and granted him the nomination for the prestigious “International Photographer of the Year” award through the Lucie Foundation’s International Photography Awards competition.

His résumé is one of the most accomplished and impressive out there, yet when Miller talks about the work that keeps him so incredibly busy these days, the sense of refreshing wonder in his voice is palpable—practically infectious—like that of an emerging photographer just getting started.

FROM PENN ON
It was Irving Penn’s work that first moved Miller at age 16. He remembers sitting on his bed at home in Elgin, Illinois, leafing through a copy of American Photo magazine and seeing Penn’s portraits of Colette (the French theater actress) and Pablo Picasso. Miller didn’t even own a camera at the time, but still, he says, “everything changed. It just hit me like a brick in the head. They drew me in and kept me there, and I could not turn the page.” 

Miller came from a family with “zero art background” in what he calls “an extremely dysfunctional home with a strong road to going nowhere.” Aside from taking art classes in school, he had no prior artistic experience, but with Penn’s photos in his hands, he knew he wanted to take powerful portraits of people. “And I knew I had to do it to perfection,” he adds. “I didn’t want to be mediocre.”

Miller bought his first camera, a 1968 Nikon F. After taking photography classes at a community college, he went on to assist commercial shooter David Deahl. By his mid-20s, he went solo in Chicago (where he’s still based) shooting products; it paid the bills and taught him how to deal with clients, but a few years later, Miller felt the tug to shoot portraits. “I really came to despise shooting products,” he says. “Something was missing in my soul.”

Blues musician Hubert Sumlin.

With the daunting task of building a portrait portfolio from scratch, Miller went to blues clubs to photograph musicians—players like Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and John Lee Hooker—at 2 or 3 in the morning and then showed his work to agencies for critiques. He soon earned himself portrait assignments, photographing mostly African-Americans—including Michael Jordan in 1995, a shoot that wound up being one of his most memorable.

He had set up for a seven-hour studio shoot with Jordan, only to find out once the basketball player walked in that he only had three minutes. Miller still managed to shoot 72 frames of Jordan spanning an enormous range of emotion. He asked him to think of a great loss he’d had (Jordan’s father died a few months earlier); seeing him dip his head down with a tear in his eye, Miller snapped the photo, and it became one of his most iconic photos to date, granting him his first big break in the industry.

GOING VIRAL
Miller has since moved to shooting with the Nikon D800 and D810 as his main cameras, but he uses a Hasselblad H3 for portraits (he prefers it over the 35mm format). Considered a master of versatile lighting, he can work with just about any available light, but he’s also a gear guru, using anything from strobes and softboxes to continuous light. This ambidexterity in knowledge lets Miller reinvent the wheel all over again, in a certain sense; he considers his shoots separately from anything he has done before.

One of his most recent endeavors is the continuously circulated exhibition “Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to Photographic Masters,” a prime example of his versatility. Miller met John Malkovich 17 years ago when he first shot him (and other actors) for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company; they’ve kept in touch since, collaborating on projects whenever Malkovich swings through Chicago.

Miller began the “Malkovich” project with this replication of Irving Penn’s portrait of Truman Capote

When Miller thought of the “Malkovich” project—a collection replicating some of the most famous and recognizable work by the photography greats—he didn’t want anything to get lost in translation, so he flew to Malkovich’s home in France to explain the concept to him in person. “You could see him visualizing it in his mind immediately,” Miller says, “how he would morph himself into these subjects.” Malkovich—sometimes humorously, always adeptly—transformed into such iconic subjects as Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” Diane Arbus’ “Identical Twins” and Alberto Korda’s Che Guevara portrait.

Since revealing the project last fall, Miller has had requests from museums worldwide to show the collection. “I would have been a fool to have thought that this would be picked up all over the globe and shared, but I think it’s the power of a great idea,” he says. “It was the meeting of two minds that brought this to what it could possibly be.”

As for Malkovich’s part, Miller received a note from him that read: “‘Sandro, you created a f***ing tidal wave,’” he recalls with a laugh. “Can you print that?”

TAKING A BREATH
Currently in the midst of directing his first full-feature documentary (about the artist/musician Nick Cave), Miller will appear in a documentary that will showcase his and Malkovich’s collaboration—it should be finished by the end of next year, he says.

A portrait from Eyes of Morocco.

“I’m working on personal work every single day of my life,” Miller says. “If I’m not in the middle of a project, I’m thinking of a new one or promoting one.”

How does Miller’s schedule not overwhelm him? It’s simple: “I breathe. Really, I do. I go out for motorcycle trips, I spend very close time with my family, I enjoy nature,” he says. “I’m up at my log cabin in Michigan now—writing treatments, talking to clients, talking to you—but I’m surrounded by every color of the rainbow in trees, and that helps keep me balanced. If I was all work, I feel like I would easily run out of gas. But I know when to take breathers and really enjoy life.”

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Portraits shot for the Dance for Life Foundation, a pro bono project of Miller’s.

A NUGGET OF KNOWLEDGE: ADVICE FROM SANDRO MILLER
Get involved and shoot for foundations pro bono. “A lot of photographers don’t work unless they’re getting paid, and that’s mistake number one,” says Miller, who shoots promos for the AIDS fundraiser Dance for Life, among other nonprofits. “If you’re asked to do something, do it. You’re usually allowed your own creativity, and something good always comes out of it.” 

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