About Face

As he worked on his new book About Face, celebrity photographer John Russo found himself creating more than just photography; he was creating history. In an odd twist of fate, Polaroid Type 55, the medium for Russo’s striking collection of male portraits, unexpectedly went out of production as the project neared completion. It was, perhaps, a suitably natural terminus for a project that developed organically and holds uncontrived beauty at the core of its aesthetic.

The Book
For several years, Russo had been creating simple, natural-light Polaroid’s of actors and models before shoots and on castings. “I had the Polaroids laid out one day,” Russo recalls, “and thought, ‘Wow. I should do a book of these.’ ” From that point, he began shooting everyone in the same light and in the same place in his natural-light studio. “When I was doing a shoot,” he says, “I’d pull the model or actor aside and say, ‘Hey, I want to get a great shot of you with some Type 55 Polaroid.’ They were all very open to it.”

Eventually, Russo decided to focus his efforts on male subjects. “When shooting guys, they’d usually have their shirt off,” he says, “so the images were really clean.” The women’s shots, on the other hand, lacked this uniformity; one had on a turtleneck, one had a necklace, one had earrings, etc. “I felt that the clothing took away from the raw beauty that was going on with the Polaroid itself. My male images were a lot stronger.”

As Russo gathered and scanned this material, he soon saw an amazing body of work developing and decided to approach Pixie Press Worldwide (www.pixiepressworldwide.com). “The owner, Jordana Woodland, immediately loved the idea of these beautiful men—these incredible faces—and the consistency of everyone being shot with virtually the same light, in the same position and with the same expression. She wanted to bring this book out,” he says.

From there, everything fell into place. “It was almost like a dream collaboration,” Russo says. “I got my dear friend Robert Rausch to design the book, and he did the most amazing design. I gave him total creative range, and when he came back with the first proof, I thought, ‘This is exactly what I would have done.’ ” In addition to the photos, Russo decided to add a selection of quotes. “Although these guys speak with their expressions, I just thought words would complete the book,” he says. 

Styling
In keeping with the natural qualities of his medium, Russo photographed his subjects unstyled. “If I was going on a shoot where there would be hair and makeup, I would usually shoot the Polaroid portrait beforehand or after—when they had washed their face. I didn’t want the men to look like mannequins. I wanted them to look like guys. And that was a really fun thing.”

For example, Russo says actor Taylor Kitsch (“Friday Night Lights”) asked if he could come to the shoot straight from the gym. “He literally came from a workout with his hair still wet,” Russo remembers. “He pushed his hair back, just completely raw, and that’s my favorite image. I have it blown up huge as soon as you walk into my studio—and it’s amazing because his eyes are so intense. That’s the kind of feeling that I wanted to create.”

Similarly, actor Jason Lewis (the “Sex and the City” star who appears on the cover of the book) is someone we are used to seeing as “the pretty boy.” Russo, however, shows us a rougher, more quintessentially masculine side of the actor. “The day he showed up he was unshaven and kind of had this ‘I don’t care’ attitude—and that’s just what I wanted. I didn’t want an over-posed, predictable shot,” Russo says.

“Although 99 percent of the guys in the book are very good looking,” Russo adds, “I tried not to make it about ‘everybody’s really good looking.’ I tried to make it about interesting faces.”

Why Polaroid?
“In college,” Russo recalls, “we used to play around with Type 55 Polaroid, and I love the fact that there’s a negative and positive. And I love the unevenness, the grittiness that you get with the Polaroid. Having shot hundreds of guys with the Polaroid, I can honestly say that you never know what you’re going to get. The consistency in the print quality, the emotion, the contrast, the grain—you never know. It all depends on what batch you got and how old the batch was. I love the idea that it’s a little bit of a surprise.”

Retouching
“With the Type 55, you’ll sometimes get speckles all over,” says Russo. “That’s not flattering on the subject’s face, especially when you’re working with models and actors, so we needed to do just a little retouching to correct that.” Ultimately, however, Russo tried to keep the Polaroid images of each subject as raw and natural as possible—and some of them aren’t retouched at all. “We just did some basic spotting and contrast adjustment. I really wanted to keep the raw beauty.”

In Closing
Despite the complications it presented, the demise of Polaroid was, to Russo, one of the things that made the book so special. “I didn’t know it was going to be that way. But when it was, I thought, ‘This is really cool; no one is going to be able to duplicate this book or this process.’ Unless, of course, Polaroid comes back. If it does, great; if it doesn’t, that’s probably even better for me and the book.”

Also benefiting from the book is a charity called Smile Train, which assists children with cleft lip and cleft palate. “I wanted to have the book help a charity—and there are so many great ones,” Russo says, “but the book is about faces, so I decided to find a charity that benefits people with facial deformities and was immediately drawn to the Smile Train. They were happy that we wanted to do this for them, and it turned out to be a really good thing.”

Moving ahead, Russo plans another project involving charitable contributions: a collection of portraits showcasing people from all walks of life, not just celebrities, who are making a difference through their charitable work.

To learn more about John Russo, visit his Web site at www.john
russophoto.com.

Michelle Perkins is a professional writer, photographer, and designer. She is the author of over a dozen books on photography; her latest, from Amherst Media, is 500 Poses for Photographing Brides.