Early and Multiple Beginnings

In 1987 I had a photo studio in Deep Ellum, a wearhouse district in Dallas with many lofts, pricey hair salons, cool t-shirt stores, hand-made jewelry and hundreds of young people from 15 to 30 cruising the sidewalk looking for meaning in life. I was 45, young enough to be on the fringe of relevance and old enough to be trusted in a business sense. I did mostly family portraits and an occasional portfolio of a beginning model. My wife, Mary, did all the hair and make-up. I would ride my bike to work. Life was not opulent but the ship was floating and I was regarded as being hip.

One night there was a party in the mode of Andy Warhol gatherings where the super-hip could see and be seen. My assistant, darkroom specialist and brother-in-law, Bob, attended this party, took a camera and shot some pix. He found that one of the girls he shot was with a new modeling agency, Esprit, I think, and sent the 8x10 to them along with the contact number of Curt Newbury Studios. The pix were flash-on-camera snaps without any artistic merit, but Esprit started sending me beginning models to do headshots and portfolios. Now I was "fashion photographer." How hip can you get?

Next thing you know, I was getting models from Esprit for model portfolios and models from other agencies. We got pretty busy from opening to closing. I was learning the parlance of the fringe of the modeling game, (I don’t think that look is right for you. You need to key in on those legs, girl.

Often, we, in house peeps (the Curt Newbury Studios staff), found that most of the models were pure wannabe's, not meeting the standards of the fashion industry. Many were charming, all of them between 13 and 30, but, truthfully, it didn't seem fiscally responsible to decline shooting them. After all, every attractive girl, even if moderately so, should have a portfolio and these girls were getting their day in the sun plus pictures to prove it for about a $100. I thought it was win, win. To be truthful, it was a steal.

The girls would have their modeling pictures in nice portfolio, their comp card (card with four or so poses) with the name of the agency on it and the ability to, without reservation, tell everybody that they were models. The cowardly lion got his heart from the wizard, authenticating his courage and the girl's got their pix and comp cards.

After a period of time the girls would find that they didn't get any requests to actually model professionally. They did get lots of requests to buy purses with the agency's logo, invitations to "commercial acting classes," or anything to convince the model to part with his or her money. I did a very unsophisticated survey and found that aspiring models spent more money buying classes, introductions to game changers and overnight bags with the agency logo than they ever got from the agencies.