The photographer behind Columbia Pictures’ iconic logo says both he and his model “enjoy the attention it receives even today.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kathy Anderson for her work documenting Hurricane Katrina for the New Orleans newspaper Times PicayuneHe recalled photographing model Jenny Joseph in 1992 in a recent interview with Yahoo Entertainment.
According to the newspaper, after Anderson and Joseph’s photo shoot, artist Michael Deas used the photos as inspiration to paint the logo that evolved into Columbia Pictures’ 1992 logo, which the company still uses today.
Columbia Pictures had commissioned Deas to update its longstanding logo, showing a woman holding a torch similar to that of the Statue of Liberty. The artist then asked Anderson, who works here. Times Picayune to take pictures at that time. “She said yes right away,” Anderson said, based on her past work experience with Deas.
According to Yahoo Entertainment, Jenny Joseph, who eventually modeled for the shoot, was working as a graphic artist for the newspaper when Anderson asked her to join him during her lunch break one day.
“It turned out to be perfect,” Anderson said of Joseph, who was 28 at the time of shooting. The photo session took place at his home in New Orleans, which Anderson says he rearranged to fit Deas’ vision of the shoot.
“After ditching my dining table and transforming the living room of my apartment into a studio, I installed a mottled gray backdrop,” he said. “I put a few boxes on the floor to keep the fabric sagging. I put a Polaroid on the Hasselblad camera to start some test shots.”
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Kathy Anderson Photography | @kathyandersonphoto
According to Anderson, Deas brought props for the shoot, including “sheets, cloth, a flag, and a small lamp with a lightbulb sticking out from the top,” which Joseph eventually wore and kept for the photos.
“The lamp vaguely resembled a torch,” Anderson told Yahoo Entertainment, describing “a fun-filled and creatively fused several-hour shoot” with one-time British model Joseph, who never worked as a model before or after shooting.
Kathy Anderson Photography | @kathyandersonphoto
Neither Deas nor Anderson expected Columbia Pictures to actually use the image in their films, so Anderson said he was “surprised when I first saw the logo appear in a movie theater.”
“It seemed surreal to see the image come to life on the big screen,” he told The Outlet. “After a while, the image took a life of its own, and it completely surprised me. Decades after its creation, people are still fascinated by the image.”
Talking to local New Orleans news station 4WWL about the 2012 photo shoot, Joseph and Deas recalled that the model had revealed that she had “just discovered she was pregnant” during the shoot.
“Now my daughter can claim to be there too,” Joseph said of the shooting at the time.
Anderson told Yahoo Entertainment that he and Joseph are friends today and are still “surprised by the logo’s notoriety.”
“Until now, Jenny sends me funny GIFs that people make out of the logo from time to time,” the photographer said, noting that she “thought I was cool” when she said that even her two now grown children made reference photos for them. logo.