Fashion writer Derek Blasberg on Richard Avedon, AI in photography, and why anything you can touch is booming

Speaker 2: And let me also tell you about Codex. Codex is the powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. Grab a seat. Welcome to TBPN. Thanks so much for hopping on.

Speaker 1: You just asked me where my suit is.

Speaker 2: Derek. What a heck of a question. A good question. Gotta wear a tuxedo. That that's what we decided is if I... He always goes one notch down from whatever I wear a tuxedo.

Speaker 1: He'll have... I did I do I do have somewhat of a defense, which is that I put on a lot...

Speaker 2: It's bulking season. It's bulking season.

Speaker 1: That is a really good excuse actually.

Speaker 2: Putting on masks.

Speaker 1: It's like... But but not perfect. I do have a couple that that still fit.

Speaker 2: Yeah. We'll we'll get you one of those really oversized nineteen eighties bodybuilder suits and then you'll have no excuse. Yeah. Because you can fill it out all you want, you got plenty of space. Anyway Anyways. Welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself for everyone

Speaker 5: who's I'm Derek Blasberg. I'm a New York based writer. Yeah. And I'm here today to hock a bunch of stuff.

Speaker 2: Let's hock, baby.

Speaker 5: What do we got? I have a book coming out

Speaker 2: Let's get it.

Speaker 5: Called Richard Avadon. Yeah. It's about his years at Harper's Bazaar. Yeah. And then tonight... Yeah. Jordy's coming tonight.

Speaker 2: I don't

Speaker 5: know what you're doing tonight. You've...

Speaker 2: I thought it was last night and I

Speaker 1: and I was... Not Not invited. But

Speaker 2: what is tonight?

Speaker 5: So tonight... So Richard Abaddon, I should start with who this guy Please. Richard Abaddon.

Speaker 1: Wait, can you start with who you are? You don't need... That's important. In most rooms, you don't need an introduction, but I think for our niche technology audience You don't think I'm Yeah. Big in I mean...

Speaker 2: After this.

Speaker 5: After this. What's own map?... Today. I don't even know how to start. Guess I'm a New York based fashion writer. Yeah. I do a lot of books and magazines for Larry Gagosian, the world's largest art dealer. I have a column in every issue of Harper's Bazaar, which

Speaker 1: is a fashion magazine.

Speaker 5: I'm a special correspondent at Vanity Fair.

Speaker 2: Are you a twin dad?

Speaker 1: And I have two kids. Twins? Twins, yeah.

Speaker 2: Me too.

Speaker 5: Five year old...

Speaker 4: How old

Speaker 5: are your twins?

Speaker 1: Two. We met briefly at this dinner party in New York That's right. That our Yeah.

Speaker 5: Mutual friend, Shelby, had organized. We talked a bit about the twins.

Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

Speaker 5: Great. But I can remember you had... What were your

Speaker 2: Boys. Two boys. Twin two year old boys.

Speaker 5: And they're identical? No. No. I have a boy and girl, so you'll be Amazing. Surprised to hear that I

Speaker 2: love twins. I'm just a fan of twins.

Speaker 5: I started kindergarten this which was Amazing.

Speaker 1: Amazing.

Speaker 5: Traumatic, you know.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a lot. How quickly it

Speaker 1: Emotional rollercoaster.

Speaker 5: And they're both go to single sex schools and it was and...

Speaker 2: Okay. That's lot for drop off. Anyway, tell us about Richard Avedon.

Speaker 5: So Richard Avedon was by far the most important photographer of the twentieth century.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: He was a high school dropout and joined the merchant marines at the end of the second world war.

Speaker 1: As most fashion photographers do. Is a real Enlist.

Speaker 5: Fertile educational traditional training ground for fashion photographers.... Shooting. Sorry?

Speaker 1: Pointing and shooting. Yeah.

Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting. So what he did in the Merchant Marines was take pictures of all the incoming marines, sailors, and so he shot them all in a white background. Wow. And a lot of the images... You may not recognize his name and and watchers and listeners may not recognize his name, but a lot of the most iconic images Sure. JFK's official president-elect portrait

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Marilyn Monroe, the sad Marilyn Monroe. You know, lot of those pictures were taken in a style influenced by the early passport polls of the Merchant Marine.

Speaker 1: Fascinating. So at 21... Yeah. Every time... I mean, I feel like so many of those pictures are just amazing, you know? Mhmm. You'll be like looking through your old, you know, family photos and things like that and you're like, this is an amazing picture, you know? For... And you know

Speaker 5: what they're for sale tonight, Jordy. We can put some of the There we go. Water and cash.

Speaker 1: There we go. We can have

Speaker 5: a little piece of history. There's, you know, amazing pictures of the Beatles. Wow. This was Jackie Kennedy.

Speaker 1: Wow. Iconic. Yeah.

Speaker 2: We can see.

Speaker 1: Seamless.

Speaker 5: And so Richard Abaddon, I'm a huge fan of Richard Abaddon. Mhmm. I've done a lot with the Richard Abaddon Foundation. He died in 2004 when he was 81 years old. Wow. He was on assignment for The New Yorker.

Speaker 7: Mhmm.

Speaker 5: And on a day like this, where we've had such, you know, incredible and surprising election results. In 2004, he was doing a project called Democracy for the New Yorker. And he was...

Speaker 2: Was that the start of Bush two? Was that year?

Speaker 5: That was... It was right after the Democratic National Convention.

Speaker 2: Okay. So one

Speaker 5: of the last portraits he took was of of a young senator called Barack

Speaker 2: Barack Obama. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 5: So he has an incredible portrait

Speaker 2: of Wow.

Speaker 5: Obama at at the end of his career

Speaker 1: Barackable. Yeah.

Speaker 5: With no gray hair. You know, because you can date it by the grays. Yeah. And he actually... He woke up with with like a, you know, a pounding headache. Sure. But he got... And he was supposed to shoot he was supposed to shoot a young... A teenage girl who was pregnant and was was gonna be denied an abortion. So he was like... He was documenting like real America who's sometimes overlooked by the the... System. By the system. Sure. And he got the shot and he went and laid down and it turned out he had had a, you know...

Speaker 2: Brain aneurysm?

Speaker 5: Brain aneurysm. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So he passed away. But he always said he wanted to go out with his boots on. Working. Yeah. So... I mean Respect.

Speaker 1: Sadly, bittersweetly Yeah. He did. Just a closure

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 2: To the story.

Speaker 5: And then I was told that you've got some film major people in here. Sure. Or some... Yeah.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. The whole production team.

Speaker 1: So I don't know if they all graduated, but... They wouldn't be here.... A film major.

Speaker 5: Yeah. They majorly liked film.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Fans here.

Speaker 5: So Ron Howard Yeah. Who's academy... There I've been in some some... I think they're I think they're thumbs... Thumbs up. Four thumbs up. Ron Howard directed a documentary about which will drop on that's what we say still? Do we still say drop? Do I sound like a middle aged dad if

Speaker 1: I say drop? No. We're dropping all the time.

Speaker 2: The drops are good.

Speaker 5: So it drops Yeah. On Netflix on November Cool.

Speaker 1: Eleventh.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 5: Yeah. So all fall

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Yeah. All Abaddon.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And...

Speaker 2: Yeah. Take me through a little bit more of his his legacy, the style. Like, if I'm looking at modern photography, modern fashion photography, what am I seeing that triggers, oh, that's Abaddon inspired.

Speaker 5: So a lot of a lot of the things that we credit Abaddon Mhmm. For establishing is number one in in in post war Europe, he established Paris as like the fashion capital. Okay. There's a famous picture...

Speaker 2: I thought that went back like hundreds of years or something. I don't know.

Speaker 5: Well, there... I mean, obviously... Yeah. There's the... Head chopped off for being a little too closely aligned fashion and excess.

Speaker 2: Sure. Sure.

Speaker 5: Sure. So there's definitely a precedent for that. Yeah. But... And and you know, after World War two Yeah. So much of European businesses and even culture was so decimated. Yeah. So Carmel Snow, who was the editor of Harper's Bazaar, really commissioned him and challenged him

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: To return and capture the opulence and and inspiration and

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: In Paris, and the most... If we measure success around here in dollars, the most expensive fashion photograph ever sold at auction was Jovima and the Elephants, which was a picture he took in post war Paris at auction for over $1,000,000

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: A couple years ago.

Speaker 5: And one recently resold in private hands for more than $2,000,000. Yeah. It's got a lot of money for...

Speaker 1: Is that starting a new trend? Photograph.

Speaker 2: In art collecting, fashion photography, reaching into that Christie Sotheby's world a little bit more?

Speaker 5: So he... Apadon's really credited with a couple of other photographers, including Irving Penn, which was sort of his frenemy. They they sort of came up the same time. He did a lot for Harper's Bazaar while Irving Penn's entire career was spent at Vogue. Mhmm. Abaddon joined Vogue Mhmm. Later with Diana Vreeland. These are...

Speaker 4: Mhmm.

Speaker 5: There's maybe one or two people who are following me on this on this name...

Speaker 1: TBPN of fashion would have been putting up like traded cars for these moves. That's what I... That's how closely I'm following.

Speaker 5: Prediction market for how long will stay in In this

Speaker 2: a different world historical prediction markets, for sure.

Speaker 4: But he

Speaker 5: was one of the first guys to try and establish photography as a fine art medium. Sure. And it's tricky because of course when there are negatives Yeah. You can duplicate things

Speaker 2: Of course.

Speaker 5: In a different process

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Than say a painter.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: So when he dies Mhmm. His estate prevents the posthumous printing of photographs. So it's like... Yeah. The show, when you come to tonight, you'll see the pictures have all been printed by him in his lifetime and signed. Mhmm. So there is like this

Speaker 4: It's finite.

Speaker 5: A finite amount of of images. Mhmm. And there are other photographers who have since passed away after him who have modeled their estate and their, you know, their market value.

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Speaker 5: On that sort of pretext.

Speaker 1: Yeah. But there's other photographers that when they die, they sell their their negatives and their rights to their images to like Getty Images.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And you can you can go on Getty Images right now and buy a Slim Aaron's picture of

Speaker 2: Mhmm.

Speaker 1: The bathers at the Hotel Du Cap in the South Of France for like $15.

Speaker 2: That's cool.

Speaker 5: That will never be worth more than $15.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It might be a steal.

Speaker 5: But maybe.

Speaker 2: Might be

Speaker 5: nice But go the Dovima picture hopefully that Yeah. Someone bought for $2,000,000 will not be worth 15,000,000 Yeah. Of course. Of course.

Speaker 1: What's what surprised you, if anything, about the explosion of of AI imagery? Sort of interesting, at least in my experience. The things that I never would have gone out of my way to hire a great photographer for, I'll make images for that. But all the stuff that I historically would have hired a photographer for, I'm still hiring the photographer. I have no no demand at all to like replace those like really special moments or or things in my business with...

Speaker 5: AI to create like special moments or do you

Speaker 1: use I'm saying I'm saying like I'll use AI as a joke. Then and then anything that I care about, I'm like, well obviously we need to get the real image.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Right? Because it's like Yeah. It's capturing because it's like so emotional, it's like a it's a memory whether it's in like, you know, a family photoshoot or in a business context.

Speaker 2: Mhmm.

Speaker 1: Right? And so I have like no demand for what I would call serious imagery in an AI context.

Speaker 5: Or maybe precious. Yeah. Precious. We were when we were working on this book, you go into his archives Mhmm. And he would be shooting Meryl Monroe, for example. And there would be like a finite amount of negatives. Because at this time, in the early sixties... She died in 1962, so he he shot her just before she passed away. Also shot her in the nineteen fifties. Film was expensive. Processing was expensive. And the biggest difference that I see when it comes to AI created images and the golden age of photography is that we have... I have like a 160,000 pictures on my phone. I've never printed them. They're totally disorganized. But the difference between then and and now is that that was, you know, you... Sometimes you would you would draw a picture before you took it, you know, you would you would not waste the film. You wouldn't waste the... Interesting.

Speaker 1: You're like, let's test this, basically.

Speaker 5: And now I think some photographers use AI to falsify the image. Mhmm. Like if I'm taking a picture Yeah. Of Jordy.

Speaker 1: Oh, and then trying to recapture the real thing.

Speaker 5: And I would put you in a suit and try and, you know,

Speaker 1: dress you up a little, have a little respect for your passion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Would

Speaker 5: import the image and say, you know, put this guy in maybe blue suit. Yeah. Put him on Sunset Boulevard. Yeah.

Speaker 1: And then we would try and recreate

Speaker 5: that image, but hopefully better and more realistic. Yeah. Not And without like those weird facial disfigurations that you get

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: In in AI. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Fashion media feels like it's completely rejected for the most Going

Speaker 5: great, don't you think? Everything's going great? Magazines, paper products?

Speaker 1: Well well, we we actually... No.

Speaker 2: Completely rejected AI?

Speaker 1: Completely rejected rejected AI. I I can think of a handful of campaigns. Thought... I remember watching Gucci come out with this thing that looked like GTA inspired. I thought it was very weird and I thought it got like the right reaction from everybody which was like, why? Like, made made no sense to me. But the area that the area that I've heard is completely disrupted is like e commerce photography. Oh, really? And specifically impacting like LA. There's a whole industry here of like, hey, we have... We made a 100 new pieces of clothing, we need to get it photographed and different styles, models, etcetera. And I think like that is just like there's, you know, a tsunami there.

Speaker 5: The bigger influence of AI on the fashion business, and this is not media specific, it's designers used to make a shirt. Right? And you would have a team of people resizing and rescaling. What does that look like? What are the measurements and the sample sizes in a small, medium, large, extra large?

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 5: Now you can pump all those numbers into OpenAI and get Sure. You know, the the idea... The scale and sizing is faster, quicker, easier, cheaper Yeah. Less human labor.

Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of like the back office tasks and all that.

Speaker 5: And all and all that stuff is...

Speaker 2: Yeah. But the inspiration is still with the with the designer.

Speaker 5: And I also think a lot of designers now will sometimes... And I don't know if this will be ultimately beneficial to the creative process. And this is something that a... You could have a designer on here to argue with you about. But, like, let's say, if I'm a fashion designer and I'm inspired by, you know, Silicon Valley, JFK in the '19 Like you... Sometimes you could import all this stuff in Yeah. Into whatever open AI or Yeah. Program Yeah. Help

Speaker 2: We've seen some odd odd dynamics playing out in the in the car world where there's there's one Lamborghini that people are speculating like might have been designed with AI and and they think it doesn't...

Speaker 5: That the little one that Mark Neussen one?

Speaker 2: No. No. No. So so that is Ferrari. Right. And that is very clearly not designed with AI. And when it came out, everyone was making AI versions of that car and

Speaker 5: said Okay.

Speaker 2: Maybe we that's... Should have just done this and it looked like the most generic Ferrari Yeah. Possible and that was what people expected and then the car came out and was clearly designed with... Mark had been working on that design going back with Ford for like twenty years Yeah. Three years or something. So it clearly was not an AI inspired design. But a lot of people were like, no, I want the AI version. But then it seems like another company might have actually given them the AI version and they had organ rejection when they did get that because it wasn't bold enough. And so the the taste can be so so so odd that people can be longing for something that doesn't break the rules too much, but they don't want the thing that actually is just the perfect middle average that the AI produced. And so they wind up in this...

Speaker 5: Frustrating for car manufacturers or Mark Newsome that Yeah. Now using AI everyone can...

Speaker 2: Everyone thinks they're a designer... Everyone thinks they're an expert in everything now, for sure. For

Speaker 5: sure. Armchair experts.

Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. Thumb thumb based...

Speaker 1: Health of the... Let's call it coffee table books. Are aren't sales great?

Speaker 5: Oh, yeah. Do you know how much this book cost? How much? Like, a $150. I'm gonna give it to... Only brought one, so you two could fight over.

Speaker 1: Or you can fight over.

Speaker 2: Well, let's... Take it Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays.

Speaker 1: Cut it down the middle and then...

Speaker 2: I mean, work and I will be taking it home. We'll alternate weekends. Okay?... Complicated.

Speaker 5: I definitely think... Yeah. And also tonight Yeah. This exhibit... I actually think that the value of building in person exhibitions that you that you have to go to to see Yeah. Will become more valuable in a an increasingly digitally...

Speaker 1: Yeah. There's so many... We've this this happens like multiple times a week now, where we have an idea to do something. And we just think like, well, like everyone's just gonna assume it's AI. And and it's like it's sad because like a lot of like cool things are not gonna get done now because people will just assume that it was AI. Like we even... What do mean? We had pretty... So we had... I'll give you an example. So we had pretty serious Halloween costumes on last week dressed as Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. And if you missed it, I'll I'll show you I'll show you a picture.

Speaker 2: It was about four hours of prosthetic makeup starting at 6AM to 10AM.

Speaker 5: I thought you guys were

Speaker 2: You were dedicated. With 10 Hollywood makeup artists here doing

Speaker 1: This was us.

Speaker 2: The three of us.

Speaker 5: This was us. Wow.

Speaker 1: And so we sent videos before the show started This was my friends.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Strange. That's

Speaker 1: my And I would say at least half of our friends just said just said like they they responded like, This is hilarious. Like, that's funny. And then as soon as we went live, then they texted again and said

Speaker 2: I can't believe this oh,

Speaker 1: I thought this was AI, like that's you guys are completely insane. Oh, thought it was

Speaker 5: like a filter.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. They thought it

Speaker 2: was filter. On single video...

Speaker 1: And so going back to this like IRL thing, it's like we should probably do a live show

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: In the full... Oh,

Speaker 2: that's probably it. Halloween should be our live show. I think that's good. That's a really...

Speaker 1: Hot and sweaty in

Speaker 2: there? It's terrible.

Speaker 1: Oh, it's horrible.

Speaker 2: It's insane.

Speaker 1: It's horrible. It feels like you're...

Speaker 2: It feels like you're suffocating. Yeah. It feels like you're being buried alive.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It feels like you're in a submarine

Speaker 5: and a... I demand the live...

Speaker 2: You wanna come on the Halloween show? Come on the Halloween show.

Speaker 1: Or the April Fools show. We'll get

Speaker 2: you in full Richard Avedon makeup.

Speaker 5: Or maybe you should do this like seasonally.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Don't

Speaker 4: want to

Speaker 2: leave too many plans but we have more.

Speaker 1: We're... Like

Speaker 5: a turkey

Speaker 1: this month.

Speaker 2: Oh, turkey?

Speaker 5: We need Santa Claus, but also in the North America. Have we have

Speaker 2: to really...

Speaker 1: Turkey is insane.

Speaker 5: Is insane. Or maybe one of Donald Trump and pardon the Turkey.

Speaker 1: Oh, okay. But but isn't the isn't the isn't the the coffee table book industry like doing better than ever?

Speaker 5: I think anything you can touch is now becoming Yeah. Better. Yeah. I saw you guys have...

Speaker 2: Because you can't get an audiobook of that and you can't get the summary of that and you have to enjoy... The only way to enjoy it... Think no one wants the Chad GPT summary of that book.

Speaker 5: I also your coffee table experience. 100%.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Is hard. Is hard. It's hard. Way to signal it's a way to signal too to your house guests that you're more sophisticated.

Speaker 5: You know who Richard Avedon is. I saw in your lobby that you have the Vanity Fair sports issue,

Speaker 1: and in that issue Yes.

Speaker 5: Came out a couple months ago, I wrote an article about how live sports... Yeah. You know, I'm I'm sure you guys have well... Yeah. It's been well documented here that the Lakers are sold for $12,500,000,000. Like, I think the the live sports industry has exploded because in a post COVID, post AI world Mhmm. Those in person experiences have become so much more

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Viable and enriching. And not only for us who who, like, want to see people and be out, but also even to the point about the the costumes you guys did, like you guys... People are now going out because they want to take a picture of themselves. Mhmm. They're looking for content.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know it's real because you were there.

Speaker 3: It's all the

Speaker 2: dunk you saw.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Friday Friday night, I I was walking by someone and I overheard them say, I don't even want to go to this party. I just want to get a picture and then we'll leave. And and I was like, that's actually a good use of AI. Like, you really save yourself... No.

Speaker 5: But they're

Speaker 1: they're like, I wanna I don't wanna... Yeah, don't wanna fully LARP.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: I just wanna partially LARP.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Maybe that's another business, guys. Maybe the...

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: The be there. Arfing as a service. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. We'll send people there.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: With a... Yeah. Get me up to speed on

Speaker 2: the golden age. You mentioned the golden age of of fashion photography. Like, what what years are we talking? What were the iconic moments?

Speaker 5: So probably post war was really great.

Speaker 2: Okay. It's the boom of magazines, so that's where people are consuming this?

Speaker 1: And also, this was a moment when you could really shift culture

Speaker 5: Yeah. In magazines. There's there's an iconic portrait in here of a model called Chino Machado Mhmm. Who's an Asian model. Mhmm. And Richard Avedon took her picture Mhmm. Submitted the submitted the the film, and the publisher of Harper's Bazaar called and said reshoot these pictures on a white girl.

Speaker 2: Oh, wow.

Speaker 5: And his contract was up for renewal and he said, will not renew my contract if you don't run these pictures.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And so

Speaker 5: this woman became the first non white model in

Speaker 1: a nationally syndicated fashion magazine, not because

Speaker 5: Yeah. A magazine was suddenly progressive Yeah. It's because this guy was gonna quit. Yeah. He would... They were

Speaker 1: blackmailed into doing that. Yeah. He also, you

Speaker 5: know, the the Beatles, he shot Bob Dylan, he shot... Yeah. He he was obsessed with with young people with... What

Speaker 2: was the crossover there? Like, why why are the Beatles and and Dylan relevant to the golden age of fashion photography? Was this the moment when the musicians were becoming fashion icons? Like, always?

Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, sure. Beethoven, you know, he was obviously a... Mozart. Another great costume guy. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Another... Think of the wig....

Speaker 1: So hard.

Speaker 5: I'll come

Speaker 2: back for the

Speaker 5: wig for the wig show.

Speaker 1: Okay. Okay.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Unbelievable. All the...

Speaker 1: You're good at this. You're good at at this. In another life, you were a technology, you know, live streamer. Or

Speaker 5: a New York Post headline writer.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.... Headline writer. We try and track... Try and channel that every time we can. It's always the best. Puns are so good.

Speaker 5: I think in the sixties, like youth quick culture

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 5: Suddenly all of these influences Yeah. Were smashed together. Yeah. And that's what I think, for me anyway, and the argument that we're making in this magazine Yeah. That was sort of the golden age of

Speaker 2: photography. What's coming back right now in terms of fashion photography? Because it doesn't feel like we are in a moment where everyone's ripping off Richard Avedon right now. Maybe that'll happen in a decade, maybe in two years, maybe it already happened. I don't know if there's been a revival movement yet. But what is the trend currently? What what is the trend calling back to currently? Do have an idea?

Speaker 5: That's a great question. Yeah. When you think of fashion photography now, you actually think of multiple deliverables. Yeah. So like when Abaddon was taking these pictures, he would take 10 shots. Yep. And now, if you're booked for a job Yeah. You're taking 10 pictures, you're taking, you know, a couple cut down reels to put on social, maybe you do a hero video for the YouTube page.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a lot.

Speaker 1: So there's... I don't know if the... You know, so

Speaker 5: much of Abaddon's work with the white background... Do you guys remember when we were young? I think we're... I'm probably a little bit older than you, but we're probably the same generation. Do you remember the the early CK one ads, white background? Yep.

Speaker 1: Totally. That was, you know, that was Yeah.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Avadon work Injuries. Which Calvin Klein has Yep. Has recycled

Speaker 2: That makes sense.

Speaker 5: Even after his death. So there's definitely callbacks to his influence. But did you guys see the the Gucci holiday video that broke yesterday? No. It's Mariah Carey.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 5: It's Mariah Carey walking into a house party singing like and...

Speaker 2: It's Christmas themed? It's... What's... I'm in. Say no more.

Speaker 5: I just...

Speaker 1: Sounds brutal.

Speaker 5: What was the... She has a famous holiday, so the...

Speaker 2: Yeah. All I Want for Christmas. There we go.

Speaker 1: Yes. That was a test. I just wanted to see if you...

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's fifty days. I'm I'm warmed up. And... I've been on the road to Christmas for two months. Okay.

Speaker 1: And I think that that is sadly what... Well, sadly because I I...

Speaker 2: The Kitsch revival? Camp revival?

Speaker 1: I think... Yeah. Maybe? Did you see Matt Damon and David Letterman doing cameos on the Gilded Age Sunday night? No, I didn't.

Speaker 5: I think the Easter egg, the Kitsch Okay. Revival the sweet nostalgia, I think we're...

Speaker 2: Yeah. That's where we're having fun.

Speaker 1: And maybe that is because

Speaker 5: the the the world, maybe until last

Speaker 1: night anyway, the real world has seemed so scary Sure. That we are searching for

Speaker 2: our... Release.

Speaker 1: Are there any new ideas in fashion? Because it's funny because I saw there was a there was a founder of a of a... Leave this very general, apparel brand.

Speaker 5: Mhmm.

Speaker 1: They were just completely crashing out writing this super long... All these all these were all these words complaining that like people were copying their photography style.

Speaker 5: Thought it was funny... The designer was complaining about the photography?

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Just like the presentation of the Founder

Speaker 2: one brand is saying founder of other brand is making their website photos look like my website photos.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Our our brand, you know, basically just mimicking. But the photos are... Well, thought it was interesting because like they clearly had just found like from the archives like a specific style that had been done by someone else. They were the first to adopt it.

Speaker 5: So the complainer was already mimicking.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Because somebody brand new. It like, wow. This idea of like being... If I was first to it, then I own it. I... Yeah.

Speaker 5: Like, which which I

Speaker 1: don't necessarily agree with. Like Mhmm. We've had plenty of people take inspiration from TBPN and I'm always kind of, you know, however...

Speaker 5: You should write them

Speaker 1: a long email. Yeah. Well, done that because we didn't invent television. Yeah. Exactly. As much as I would have liked to invent television, we didn't. Yeah. A handful of people got there first.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Isn't that sort of the problem with AI though, is that it's it's written entirely in existing stuff?

Speaker 1: Yeah. But I feel like all new ideas are based entirely on remake, like

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: When when... Have we had a new idea in like the last eighty years?

Speaker 5: Work it out in the remix. That's what you should tell your friend who was complaining about...

Speaker 2: Work it out in the remix. Yeah. What what do think? No.

Speaker 1: But but that's the thing, like AI is just drawing from all these different inspirations.

Speaker 5: That exist.

Speaker 1: That exist. That's also exactly how like all the most creative people I know generate new things.

Speaker 5: Yeah. They're just

Speaker 2: like Take inspiration.

Speaker 1: Pulling from the archive, pulling from something that's

Speaker 5: that's not specific to fashion or photography. Think we see

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Know, anytime you see a new film, there's always a... Oh, they nicked this sequence off of...

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. You you mentioned Richard Avedon had a contract that was up, and that was a a one to one relationship effectively. He he he was only working for Harper's. Is that right?

Speaker 5: And this was also a time when you could afford to keep photographers on This

Speaker 2: is changing. So I saw someone talk about how I think it was New York Magazine and a other publications...

Speaker 5: Interview Magazine, They

Speaker 2: hired the same photographer and the cover photos looked identical because it was the same photographer because the photographer needs to work for multiple publications.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And so it's harder for Elle to have their look and and New York Magazine to have their look or whatever the examples

Speaker 7: were.

Speaker 5: That's a little new that that photographer doesn't have an agent.

Speaker 2: Okay. Oh, oh, because they would have sold an exclusive for this period.

Speaker 5: Think an agent or something. I don't know. I don't... So that story was everywhere.

Speaker 1: Okay. Especially in my little... Better, so tell...

Speaker 5: People were horrifying that that this guy accepted commissions from so many competing publications Yeah. And his style is so distinctive. Yeah. One would assume an agent would have been like, maybe you say yes to Elle or Vogue. Yes. You don't say yes to Elle and Vogue in interview. I think there were five or six.

Speaker 2: There were really four. And and one of them or one pair even had like the same clothes.

Speaker 5: Yes. Same Chanel dress. Look at you.

Speaker 1: Hey, Caleb. Okay.

Speaker 2: But but yes. So so so it was mostly just a mistake, lack of agent, because an agent would have intermediated that a little bit more.

Speaker 1: Yes. And I think historically Mhmm.

Speaker 5: Like even as far back as the nineties, as recently as the nineties, most publishing houses locked down photographers. Yeah. So, for example, Annie Leibovitz only shot for Vanity Fair

Speaker 2: That's right.

Speaker 5: And Vogue. Yeah. You know, they had these million dollar contracts.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 5: And now... It's changing. Because of the diminished fortunes of the publishing world in fashion magazines. You can't lock down

Speaker 1: Yeah. This new hot... I think he's

Speaker 5: a Polish photographer. Yeah. His name is very... There's like a lot of consonants in there.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Do it. Predominantly. I'm not gonna... Please.... Tempt to say.

Speaker 2: He seemed like he had a really cool style. I thought the photos were beautiful.

Speaker 1: It... Super unique style, so when you do that unique thing Yeah.

Speaker 5: The same dress in several publications Yeah. It became a...

Speaker 1: Yeah. But it's also not uncommon now... Let's bring him to tech.

Speaker 2: He's the so humble...

Speaker 1: Tech people tech people will not seen any any of these things. They'll be in the clear. Truly.

Speaker 5: You could

Speaker 1: do all the headshots

Speaker 5: and the very distinctive... Probably.

Speaker 1: It was a great

Speaker 5: picture of him with Will and Dafoe Yeah. Having like a dollhouse on his head. Okay. Uh-uh. So it'd be very unique tech world imagery. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Till you found your building a house of cards on top of their head. It was.

Speaker 1: It was, wow. Car today. No. I I really wish that we had a magazine because we we like there there's no one in in this sort of like no new media businesses and technology truly understand the gap between a good photo and a great photo. I think... That's what

Speaker 5: we can do together.

Speaker 2: It'd be fun.

Speaker 1: I think so. That's our next project. Let's do it. Let's do it. We're we're ready. I mean, there's a lot of people For sure. That that need a good photograph in this industry that have a

Speaker 2: 100%.

Speaker 1: Interesting story to tell.

Speaker 5: Or I can just face tune

Speaker 1: them, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Just the sloppiest AI. Yeah. I mean, we've been laughing about the... This idea that people will eventually be nostalgic for the AI art of 2023, the six fingers, the sloppy...

Speaker 1: Did you see Katy Perry clockable.

Speaker 5: Wore six finger on the red carpet of the Met Gala?

Speaker 2: Yes. It's already coming back. It's already being adopted as as camp and ironic.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And

Speaker 2: I I think that as much as everyone really hated that era of AI art, they might come to remember it fondly because no one was getting fooled.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: It was so clockable. Every time you'd see it, oh, ArtStation style, sci fi style, oh...

Speaker 1: What's fascinating about that though is how quickly that cycle comes back. Yeah. In fact For sure.

Speaker 5: In fashion we sort of joke that the nineteen eighties was just the nineteen forties on cocaine.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Like it was... It used to

Speaker 5: take decades for... And if you think about it, they Yeah. Were all big shoulders in La Mei,

Speaker 1: which is what the post, you

Speaker 5: know, after the depression when people were working and they got back the big shoulders. Yeah. So it took... It used to take decades. Now we're nostalgic for the sixth finger that popped out

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Much more recently.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you do you have wearing skinny jeans at all yet? Or is that like next year for you?

Speaker 5: You saw that Prada show with the really super super...

Speaker 1: Well, I know. It's obviously it's obviously back. It's just whether or

Speaker 2: not you I just up on the big pant trend like six months ago. Jordy was like, stop wearing the skinny jeans. Those have been out of style for six years.

Speaker 1: No. You were so close. I should have just let you. Yeah. I should have just let I know. I should've just... I honestly couldn't I honestly couldn't do one more meeting though with John and just a pair of skinny jeans. I was like,

Speaker 5: I reached my breaking point. A broken clock is is right twice a

Speaker 1: decade, maybe. Yeah. Twice a century.

Speaker 5: Twice a century.

Speaker 1: But they are allegedly back,

Speaker 5: but I don't know if I'm gonna do... I don't know if...

Speaker 1: Let's go let's go this. Yeah. No. After this, let's go get a pair and let's let's take the leap together tonight. Okay. Fine. Yes. All over this good day. There we go. Amazing. Well, where can people get the book? Where should they get the book?

Speaker 5: I mean, book's on Amazon. Okay. The exhibition is at Beverly Hills. It opens tonight. Can't wait. It's on through the holidays. And on November 11, Ron Howard's documentary about this photographer Richard Avedon

Speaker 2: Is on Netflix.

Speaker 5: Will premiere? Yeah. Will drop?

Speaker 2: Drop.

Speaker 5: Will emerge? A launch. Yeah. Will launch?

Speaker 1: I like launch better than drop. Yeah. Drop is like going down. Yeah. Launching upwards. Up.

Speaker 5: Right. Oh, okay. Wow.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Launched.

Speaker 5: So new on. Okay, Jordy. Launched. Launched. Launched. Magically appears. Magically appears.

Speaker 2: That's some great Netflix content. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.

Speaker 1: Amazing. Well...

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming.

Speaker 5: We're gonna have...

Speaker 1: You're gonna close out the show with us. Always... Five stars. Wow. We're do something

Speaker 2: Sign up for earning... That you

Speaker 1: may not have seen. It's called the Flash...

Speaker 2: On tbpn.com. See you tomorrow.