CThru.com Presents Tony Ward

It is hard to believe that a decade has passed since I published my first two books on erotic photography with the charming little bookstore, La Musardine located at 122 rue du chemin-Vert, Paris. Friends in the states informed me about the renowned French publisher, and its hardcore counterpart Alixe Editions. At the time, the late 90’s, I had found an outlet for publishing my most challenging erotic work under the creative direction of Penthouse founder and publisher, Bob Guccione. Many of the pictures that were originally photographed for Penthouse, were later published in my first two volumes Ogasm and OrgasmXL, under the editorial supervision of La Musardine owner Claude Bard and his insightful assistant and Anne Hautecoeur.

My first visit to meet Claude and Anne was a short walk from my apartment in Menilmontant, through the beautiful Pere Lachaise cemetery, were many notibles were laid to rest. A short distance to the unique erotic bookstore, La Musardine is mixed in with a variety of apartments, business’s and delicious French pastry shops, that are located along the busy Parisian street, If you don’t pay careful attention as you got close to the address, you could easily walk past it, as I have on many occasions. Once you enter the shop, hundreds of books lining the walls of the quaint environment overwhelm you. Erotic titles that you would never imagine would ever be published could be found in La Musardine’s extensive library. It was an education in itself, just looking around at all the literary works and photography books published on the subjects of sex and erotica. I knew at once that I found the right publisher for my vision and erotic imagination……..

The Art Of Caring

…..The first time I saw Jimmy Binns, he was driving around town in a beautiful Jag. His distinguished features and white head of hair against the backdrop of a deep blue perfectly clean auto immediately got my attention. After a while I started seeing Jimmy all over town. It appeared as though we lived in the same neighborhood. The other thing that I noticed, is that the car always appeared to be clean, even in the most inclimant weather. People who know Jimmy are not surprised. Fastidious, organized, a clear mind…..all the signs of a powerful attorney.

One day, I was a block away from the studio having coffee at my favorite breakfast place when Jimmy walked in. Tall, dressed to the nine’s, a commanding presence as he proceeded to sit down just across from me. It was very clear, that Mr. Binn’s was a man who enjoyed the finer thing’s in life, along with the custom made suits, a fertile glimse at the beautiful twentysomething year old who was serving us breakfast. It seemed as though Jimmy and I shared a similar aesthetic for beautiful women. We both new where to have coffee in the morning.

About a year later, a call came in to the studio for me to produce a portrait of Jimmy to accompany an article to be published about his career and philanthropy. Jimmy and I spoke over the phone to get acquainted before the sitting. I was flattered to learn that he was familiar with my work, especially the erotic work of the 90’s. He had a copy of one of my books on his coffee table at home, small world. We set up a date for the shoot shortly after the call and I decided to photograph him at his home, just around the corner from the studio, where I could pick and choose from an array of 4 digit suits. Jimmy was enormously accommodating and a bit of a ham before the camera. He even played himself in one of the Rocky movies, so I knew I was working with a man who knew how to control his visual image.

During the shoot we talked about a wide variety of subjects. The thing that stuck with me the most was his ability to care deeply about causes that he believed in.

I was most taken by his Hero Cop Program, whereby plaques are placed at locations where police officers died in the line of duty. Philadelphia has had its share of mourning the loss of fallen police officers. Four come’s to mind in recent memory. I was touched deeply one morning of the perils of police work when I stopped by a Dunkin Donuts on North Broad Street. The police tape was just taken down and the makeshift memorial was burgeoning with flowers and personal notes. I thought of Jimmy Binns immediately……

www.MikelElam.com

Guest Blogger Mikel Elam, “I think this self portrait says a lot about me and my work. My paintings have been mostly about signs and symbols. It started early in my life when I began to notice patterns of numbers shadowing my everyday existence.

First I thought it was just chance and then as time passed, I realize there are very few coincidences. In portraiture and figure studies there are a great deal of measurements used to create an accurate representation. As an expressionistic painter, I use my emotions and my imagination to create images which are symbolic to my thoughts. In essence, they become these dreamscapes and very surreal in nature. I am interested in that place which is somewhere between reality and the ethereal.

……I’m sure everyone has heard by now, a legend of Photography, Irving Penn passed away yesterday peacefully in his home in New York at the age of 92. Another legend of photographic history is gone and hundred’s of thousands of Penn fans around the world will reflect on his life’s work and how it impacted the developing visions of those that aspired to be as great as he was. I tried to find a picture in the files that represented his influence on my photography. An image came to mind that I produced in 1993, simply entitled “Hailey”.

That picture represents what I felt most about Penn’s approach to picture making. The image must possess three intangibles; taste, class and style. Only Penn’s lighting could be taught if you had the patience to truly observe what light does for a picture. He possessed the intangibles in spades and that is what I loved most about his work. It was just a few months ago that yours truly was invited to participate in a group show at Galerie Hiltawsky in Berlin to pay homage to the legendary gatekeeper of fashion at Vogue. He will be sorely missed. It’s good for the world that he left all those great pictures…….

Issac Mizrahi

…Isaac Mizrahi started to make his own clothes in the late 80’s and began to show his wears at trunk shows at the famed Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City. The native new yorker born in Brooklyn, exploded on to the international fashion scene in the mid-nineties when fashion house Chanel bought a stake in his company.

When I met him to take this candid portrait, he was on a roll, as he was making a personal appearance at Neiman Marcus. Enormously creative, Isaac embarked on a number of different projects since, including a successful run when he designed a collection for Target beginning in 2002 to 2008, making his name commonplace in the American fashion culture. It will be exciting to see what Mr. Mizrahi produces next for Liz Claiborne where he is currently creating……

A Personal Remembrance

….Comments have been coming in to the studio about the recent blog about the passing of Lou-Pop. When you’ve lived for 93 years a lot of people are left with memories. Lou-Pop was an artist and a landscaper. One of the employee’s of Louie’s suburban landscaping business learned about his recent passing. In his own word’s Don Brunetti, now a singer songwriter from Nashville, Tennessee share’s intimate stories about the times he spent with Pop.

Lou-Pop

On September 19, twenty years ago, my mother died. The next day, on September 20, Irving Berlin, the great songwriter passed. Now Louie has left us on September 21. I’m guessing, if there really is a place called Heaven, the three of them are maybe listening to Trotter and Utah Phillips picking and singing.

Some people pass and are easily forgotten, while other people leave a “hole in the world” when they pass. Louie filled a lot of holes in my life at a time when I needed it most. He had the wisdom of the street, a kind of “bottom up” view of the world. In 1973, when the gas prices went up to the he horrendous price of 50 cents a gallon, I told Louie we were about to have a depression. “Youse hippies don’t know anything,” was his reply, “In a depression, the money doesn’t go away, it just goes someplace else.”

He sure knew how to follow the money. The following summer, we had our best year yet. Another time, he came back from lunch at the “Fox and Hounds” and started yelling at me from a crack in the window of his air conditioned car. No particular reason, he was not what you might call, “a hippie whisperer”. Finally he said, “Why didn’t you do that?”. I yelled back, “Louie, I was going to do that last”. “Don’t do anything last!”

You couldn’t “one up” him either. Louie would always have the last word. I think my favorite story was the time when Trotter and I were walking up the alley one morning. We were both hung over, at least a half hour late and holding each other up. When we got there, Louie was yelling at Louis and Mark for being late. Marko should have kept his mouth shut, and Louie would have turned his wrath on us, but Mark said, “What about those guys, they’re later than us”. Louie turned around with his big shit-eating grin and said, “Youse guys are Hippies, youse can be late!”

As long as I’m around Louie Pop will live on in these stories. And nobody will believe them. About 30 years ago, I moved down to Corpus Christi because I needed a job and Trotter put me on his landscaping crew. I was working with a guy named William, who had his PHD in chemistry, but who preferred to work outside. William and I were riding around one day and I said, “I wonder what Lou-Pop would think about all this?” William pulled the truck over and said, “There’s no such person as Lou-Pop. That’s a story Trotter made up. Nobody could be like that.” “Sorry William, there is such a person and Trotter’s stories are only scratching the surface.”

When my son turned 30, he was starting to get upset about getting old. I used a “Louie-ism” when I told my son, “Don’t worry, the older you get, the more unique you become.” Lou-Pop was, if nothing else, was the most unique person I ever met, and I’ve met a lot of people. I’m sad for losing probably the best friend I ever had.

Drawings By Lou-Pop

Tony Ward Interview

S.M. Where does your work start?

T.W. With a good cup of coffee at 7:00 AM with friends at a cafe near the studio. First, I stay current with the news by reading the paper front to back. We cajole about current events and after a while I head back to the studio to ponder who I will photograph or write about next for the daily blog which was launched in August of this year.

S.M. What most inspires you?

T.W. Well, over a 30 year career I’ve been fortunate enough to have been inspired by many things and or event’s in my life. Early in my career, I was inspired by the great documentary photographers that produced pictures for the big glossies. Life and Look are a couple that come to mind that included the photograph’s of legends, W. Eugene Smith and Gordon Parks. When I studied photography in college, especially during my two year enrollment in the Master of Fine Arts program at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I became more interested in commercial, particularly fashion photography and it’s impact on our visual culture. At that time, the late 70’s, I was inspired by the work of Avedon, Newton, Hiro and Bourdon. In the early 80’s, I found inspiration in corporate culture by being employed by one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Smithkline Corporation. After a four year stint at Smithkline, I opened a full service photography studio that produced imagery for many fortune 500 companies. The 90’s inspired me to explore the world of erotica, to travel and photograph women, preferably in the nude at various locations in Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, Paris, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and of course Philadelphia, my home. This decade is still being defined.

Interview

S.M. What do you like most about your work?

T.W. The freedom to express myself and most recently to put my thought’s in to words via the blogosphere.

S.M. What are the worst bits of your career so far?

T.W. The worst has been, at times when I was raising my family, I produced many pictures purely out of the motivation to make money, a means to an end. At that point in my career, although I was making a good living, the freedom that I had always sought in my work, particularly the subject matter was lost. I like many folk’s was ruled by the almighty dollar and was seduced by America’s capitalist culture. The best is when I work with a new subject, like a piece of raw clay….alway’s fascinated to see how I can mold it and to see what evolves from the encounter.

TW Interview

S.M. What are your plans for the future?

T.W. My immediate plans are a full time commitment to the daily blog. There are two new book projects ready to go to press and the development of a new fragrance.

S.M. How do you incorporate the variety of influences in your work?

T.W. The best thing I have found recently is the blog. It allows me to publish a variety of my interests and influences under one communications platform.

S.M. Where are you from, born, living?

T.W. When I am asked this question, which is fairly often, I refer to our current president Barack Obama. I also come from mixed parentage. My father’s root’s were African, although he was born in the south, Savannah, Georgia. He and his mother and younger brother, like many other people of color during that period of American history, migrated north for better opportunity. For a time, they lived in Harlem, then moved to Philadelphia where he met my mother Jean, a white woman of Italian descent. She was born and raised in South Philadelphia. They had three children. I was the last and have been living in Philly ever since. The city of brotherly love.

S.M. What’s your favorite thing right now?

T.W. Publishing the new books, the blog and as always pursuing the next subject!

TONY WARD INTERVIEW

A Run For Congress

……I must admit it was a little intimidating. When I walked in to Pat Meehan’s office it was quite large and overlooked Independence Square in Philadelphia. It’s not very often that one get’s to walk in to a room that represents so much political power. He served as the federal prosecutor for the city of Philadelphia and its eight surrounding counties from September 17th, 2001 to July 15th, 2009. An appointment by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. senate. No small measure of responsibility placed in his hands.

Mr. Meehan became notorious for his investigations of “pay to play” politics in Philadelphia. One of those investigations led to the conviction and sentencing of city treasurer Corey Kemp an acquaintance of Tony Ward Studio. It is widely believed that Mr. Kemp’s sentence was excessive. Ten years for having a deck put on the back of his house.

Meehan For Congress?

On September 14th, 2009, Pat Meehan announced a run for the U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania’s 7th district. Pretty soon the voters will decide if that run is warranted…..