Several months ago I photographed a Brazilian Actress named Gisele Fraga for a magazine down there. Here people put together a video of the shoot. Here it is:

Gisele Fraga – Kinda Behind-The-Scenes from Mark Leibowitz on Vimeo.

Backstage at the shows during fashion week there are between 5 and 25 photographers at any given show. This doesn’t count the 25 to 100+ who may be in the pit at the end of the runway.

Shooting for Glamour, I travel to NY, Milan and Paris for the shows. There is a core group of photographers who I see in at least two of the three major cities (NY, Milan and Paris). Note that many of these photographers are not on exclusive deals and license their images to as many publications as possible (More on that below).

The photographers and the primary publication for whom they shoot are:

James Cochran – British Vogue
Matt Lever – British Elle
Robert Fairer – Vogue US
Jason Lloyd Evans – Various International Publications
Antonello Trio – Italian Grazie + Various Italian Magazines (+2 assistants who also shoot)
Bardo Fabiani – Italian Vogue (+1 assistant who also shoots, Natalie)
Sean Cunningham – Harpers Bazaar
Greg Kessler – NY Times & Style.com
Lucca Canonieri – MAC Cosmetics
Franz Walderdorff – Allure
Me – Glamour
Doug Bassett – Vogue Spain
Luca Lazzari – Various international publications (uses whichever publication he can to get access and then licenses to as many publications as possible)
Fabio Petinari – Various international publications (same situation as Luca)
Thibaut De Saint Chamas – Was French Vogue, now maybe Elle US??
Patrick McMullen – Special projects only (NY Only) – But I included him because he’s made his name in this kind of work.
Roxanne Lowitt – Special projects only
Dan Lecca – Primarily a runway photographer but has one of the best know names at the fashion shows so he ocassionally pops in backstage or has someone there shooting for him
Steve Wood – Cosmo Germany (not a major publication but he’s a pro at slipping past the security so ends up backstage at most major shows)
Dave Yoder – (Milan Only) – Shoots reportage for WWD/W
Delphine – (Milan and Paris) Shoots Beauty and Fashion for WWD/W
Kyle – (NY Only) Shoots Beauty and Fashion for WWD/W

Add on to this list a variety of local photographers, the house photographer (if it’s not of the above photographers), and the TV/Video crews and that makes up the circus of media coverage that is now backstage.

This has become a modern classic:

Our job is to create images, yet most of us have relatively few images of ourselves and our peers. This came to light yesterday when I had two requests for photos that I could not fulfill.

The first request was for an environmental portrait of myself for the contributors’ page in Conde Nast Traveler. I’ve been using the same tired headshot for almost five years it’s most definitely not environmental. The solution, dragging my poor assistant out of the hotel room to the piazza behind our hotel for him to photograph me. It’s admitedly an awkward shoot but something that my mother was quite appreciative of when I emailed her the result.

The second request was for a photo of Luis Fernandes. Luis was a videographer who worked the fashion shows for Fashion File and then Style.com (Blog about him HERE). He had a fantastic smile puntuated with his gleaming gold tooth. He passed away just prior to the Milan shows and when an email went out to the photographers asking for a photo of him, the response was very underwhelming. It makes me sad to know that we spend so much time documenting the world around us but often miss the most obvious photos – our friends, family and co-workers.

I’m going to embark on a new photo project shooting simple portraits of my friends and colleagues. We’ll see how it goes.