Erykah
5am to LGA to Dallas . It was me, Alain Ket, the photo editor from Vibe, Melanie Harris the makeup artist and Jonathan Fasulo, my assistant. We were going to shoot Erykah Badu nude for the cover of Vibe. She had recently released a video for her song Window Seat where she walks through Dallas stripping off her clothing.
The night before had been a flurry of conversations. Erykah had decided that she wanted to work with her personal photographer in Dallas. I was disappointed and had called Jonathan to tell him the job was off. We had our tickets but Erykah was nervous about the shoot. So I had a glass of wine and started to hang out at our friend’s party thinking I didn’t have to work the next day. At 10pm, Alain calls me and says “ You are back on for tomorrow”. I change my gear into packing mode.
12 noon. We arrived in Dallas and bought our backdrop and were kind of killing time. Erykah’s camp sent word to come at 3 instead of 2pm. So we hung out at a Taco stand. I started thinking this might take awhile.
Erykah is an icon. I have been a fan since I used to listen to Baudizm while printing in the darkroom I rented on 3rd and Avenue C in 1997. I was still assisting and bringing my book around. I had done some shoots for Stress and Vibe. Ironically Alain Ket was the editor of Stress and he had given me my first job. Sometimes when I shoot artists whom I am a fan of I get disappointed. I already have my idea of who they are, I like their songs and I know that once I photograph them things will change in terms of how I listen to their music. Because in some small way I will feel like I know them, because we have had this shoot and connection. And I have photos to tag each memory of the day.
3pm .So walking into the Erykah shoot I was feeling weird knowing she didn’t want me to be the photographer. Erykah has a very sarcastic sense of humor and I was taken aback at first. Erykah lives in a house surrounded by powerful women and she is the queen. She has three children. Two of them were there. Her daughter Puma is around the same age as my daughter Maya. Puma was the sweetest loving child. As a mother when I see someone who has good children I have respect for them. It is not easy to raise a child who is not a brat. I struggle with it. I have seen celebrities use their kids as pawns and show ponies and I have to say that the first thing that impressed me about Erykah was just that she is an awesome mom. Erykah’s mom Queenie helps her with her kids. Erykah has a baby who was still nursing and we took lots of breaks for this.
Melanie Harris has been working with Erykah since the beginning. Melanie is one of the funniest people you will ever meet on a photoshoot. But more than that, she does beautiful makeup. I have worked with her many times over the years and am always amazed by her sense of color. She and Erykah had an idea about body paint. We walked around the house and outside and found 6 great places to shoot. A treehouse, a kind of Buddhist backyard, an atelier, and the porch attached to her room (which had tons of cool kids books sprawled across the floor).
6pm We did a cover try first with Erykah’s hair natural. After I shot off a few frames, Erykah said let me see it.
( Ok, I hate that! Maybe I don’t have it where I want it. Maybe I’m still figuring it out. And women are the worst. Just trust me! I’m not going to pick a bad picture. For this I miss film.)
So Erykah says “Erin, this is how I work.” …And so I handed over the camera. But then it was fine. She saw what she needed to do. Erykah is a pro and knows her best angle. Alain wanted to do a shot with her saying shh with her finger up. We talked about different words to put on her finger and they came up with Amerykah. Vibe wanted some shots of her around the house in various poses nude. Erykah was less into the idea. She came out with a beautiful rainbow wig and we took some pictures with it… And then it started pouring rain. So we couldn’t shoot in any of the outdoor locations.
Erykah’s house has a lot of stuff. It’s a huge house with so many rooms and side rooms and porches and yards. Colorful paintings, posters, plants, books, magazines, photos and just tons of stuff. Everywhere you look there is something unique and cool. At this point it was 8pm. We had done just the cover try. We had to figure out the feature and all of our locations were out. We started doing a shot of her painting and I wasn’t really feeling it and then she wasn’t either. 9pm…
Jonathan in Erykah’s atelier
We all sit down for a meeting and Erykah says that she doesn’t want to do the nudes around the house. So after much discussion and me having to let Queenie, her mom, also look at all of the pictures(!), we decided to do the body paint.
10pm. Erykah took a little meal break and invited me up into her bedroom. She had the most amazing spread of vegan food.And then we just hung out for an hour alone. And that was really cool. I was showing her music I like and she showed me some photos. Her room is like the rest of her house amazing with tons of cool hats, clothes and shoes lining every inch of the walls.
Melanie doing the body paint. Alain Ket with the reference. Queenie behind Erykah.
11pm Melanie starts the makeup .
Midnight We do the first body paint shot.
1am Alain takes over doing some of the body paint. Baby Mars is awake and running around keeping us all entertained. Plus I learn tons of interesting things about Erykah which are private and I can keep a secret.
Jonathan catnapping during the tons of waiting time
2am We do the next body paint shots and decide to reshoot the cover. This ends up being the cover shot.
Erykah in the opener shot
3am The final final shots. And we are finished. At this point Erykah wants to see every shot. I’m just so tired that I let her. But then she also wants to delete every shot she doesn’t like…
I’ve never.
Done.
That.
Before.
But now its 4am and I’m so tired and she is telling me that she doesn’t want certain shots out there. Which I understand but I also think she should trust me because I’m not that kind of photographer. The she says she will send her mom after me if anything bad comes out and I’m kinda scared because her mom has been shooting us dirty looks since we arrived. Haha. We wrap and leave and are all zombies. Jonathan tells me as we leave that he had already backed up the entire shoot before she looked at it.We get to the hotel at 430 am. We have to get up at 630am to be at the airport by 830am. The End.
this was shot at 4am. photo by Jonathan Fasulo
