ML - Michigan Avenue

2013 - Issue 2 - Spring

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/109585

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 59 of 147

VIEW FROM TOP continued from page 57 assignments from Marshall Field���s, which started his years of working nonstop in the Windy City, making this city���and the LaSalle Street studio, which he opened in 1952 and still calls home���one of the hotbeds of fashion photography throughout the world. Reasons Skrebneski, ���[Marshall Field���s] kept pouring out the photographs that I was doing, so I figured, I���m going to do the same thing out there in New York, so why not just stay here? And that���s what I did. I stayed here because of that.��� More than a half-century later, Skrebneski is a Chicago icon��� Dennis Hopper and for much more than just his work in fashion. His decades-long (1990) partnership (and close friendship) with Chicago International Film Festival founder Michael Kutza resulted in a series of iconic posters, featuring hard bodies wearing torn, barely-there film festival T-shirts that gave the event a serious dose of sex appeal. (Says Skrebneski, ���Michael said he needed something that would make people go, ���Oh, my God!������) Much lesser-known is the fact that Skrebneski is also a designer, who at the request of former Mayor Richard M. Daley remodAndy Warhol eled the Mag Mile���s historic Water Tower and park, which included the (1972) planting of 500 velvet green boxwoods, 18,000 English ivy plants, as well as locust and elm trees, all bordered with 18-inch-high stone walls topped with wrought-iron fencing. Skrebneski says of his passion for the project, ���I have feelings for everything that I do, and [that project] was very important to me.��� At the opening of the park [in 2000], Daley said, ���Thank you, Victor������I was sitting behind him���he said, ���Thank you for doing this park.��� And then he looked at the audience,��� Skrebneski says with a laugh, ���and he said, ���He bothered everybody in City Hall.������ Celebrated fashion photographer, accomplished designer, highly honored citizen of Chicago (the street outside his studio still bears a street sign that reads ���Victor Skrebneski Way���)���after a life of such accomplishment, I ask Skrebneski, what drives him to continue to pursue his art? Typically to the point, he smiles. ���The fact that I enjoy doing it. That���s all.��� ���Works by Victor Skrebneski��� runs July 13 to October 13 in the Main Gallery of the Erie Art Museum, 411 State St., Erie, Pump Room PA, 814-459-5477; erieartmuseum.org MA (1953) CANDID CAMERA Victor Skrebneski discusses some of his favorite subjects. Iman ���Iman is a great model because she knows exactly what to do. It���s her feeling of where she is, what she���s expected to do, and she gives. Most girls don���t understand giving��� they just stand there like this and look. Something else needs to happen there.��� Cindy Crawford ���Cindy Crawford was 16 years old when she came in.��� I said, ���You sit here and you watch Iman, and everything she does I expect you to do tomorrow because I���m going to book you for a job.��� So when the next day came and Cindy came, she did it���. So that���s how she started. I booked her every day. I needed somebody who had some emotion about her and knew what we were supposed to be doing.��� Dennis Hopper Bubble Pack Black 58 ���I used to photograph Dennis Hopper a lot. One day he heard that John Ford was dying, and he���d like to say hello to [Ford] because they���d never met. I said, ���But he���s in Palm Springs.��� Dennis says, ���Let���s go to Palm Springs, and you can photograph him.��� So I sat behind him on his motorcycle for two and a half hours from LA to Palm Springs���. and I photographed [Ford].��� MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 056-058_MA_SP_VFT_Spring13.indd 58 2/11/13 5:57 PM

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of ML - Michigan Avenue - 2013 - Issue 2 - Spring