CITYist

In some cultures, to photograph someone is to steal a part of his or her soul. For legendary celebrity photographer Roxanne Lowit, that has been her objective all along.

“In a loving way, I feel that when you do it right, that’s what you do. You steal their soul,” she says. “I just try to keep that person, that spirit, that energy alive.”

Lowit has spent the past 30 years keeping her shutter clicking at the biggest fashion shows, parties, and clubs across the U.S. and Europe. She has captured iconic images of everyone from Andy Warhol to Pamela Anderson, and has counted supermodels among some of her closest friends. This fall, she is releasing her fourth book of candid photographs of the celebrity world at work and play.

In the late 1970s, Lowit, who started out in a successful career as a textile designer, received a cheap, 110 Kodak Instamatic camera as a gift from a friend. A self-proclaimed voyeur, Lowit carried the pocket camera everywhere and fell in love with the idea of getting to look at people from the safe distance behind a lens. She photographed everyone she liked. Anyone who inspired her.

“I love taking pictures of strong people, interesting people, powerful people, beautiful people . . . I find them irresistible,” she says.
Annie Flanders, the then style editor at The SoHo News, got her hands on Lowit’s tiny photographs and

knew Lowit had talent. Flanders told Lowit that if she could find herself a real camera, SoHo could publish her pictures. Soon after, Lowit purchased a nicer camera for a business trip to Paris.

“I read the instructions on how to load film into the camera while I was on the plane,” she says, laughing. Hours after learning how to operate it, she took her shiny new camera to the top of the Eiffel Tower, where she met up with friends Andy Warhol and Yves Saint Laurent for a timeless photo shoot.
Her pictures landed the cover and center spread of SoHo, and the paper’s readership soared, according to Lowit. She threw out her paintbrushes and quit her job.

“It was so much fun,” she said. “I never, ever looked back or regretted it. Photography was definitely what I was cut out for.”

A lover of fashion, Lowit longed to shoot runway shows next. But she lacked the front-stage credentials, so she had to rely on her model friends to sneak her in the back. The girls claimed she was their makeup artist or hairdresser, and Lowit slid right in. She took pictures of the models getting dressed and the clothes hanging on racks, which no one had taken pictures of before. Some say Lowit single-handedly created the backstage culture.

“The back had a special thing for me,” Lowit says. “You could speak to the girls (the models) and the girls had personality.”

One of Lowit’s favorite and most popular images throughout the years is a 1989 black and white picture of “The Trinity”— Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington — sitting around a table at a party and imitating the proverbial “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” wise monkeys.

She rapidly expanded to shoot celebrity parties and spontaneous moments among the famous. She became a hit. Lowit said that for 15 years, she was the only photographer doing what she did, especially backstage. But gradually, more and more trickled in, telling Lowit that the papers they represented told them to shoot “everything Roxanne shot.” But she didn’t mind.

“Those people didn’t bother me one bit,” she says. “Everyone has different visions. Even if we’re standing side by side and shooting at the same thing, there will always be different pictures.”

The environment backstage and surrounding celebrities everywhere soon changed. As the press flowed in around them, so did the handlers and the agents, creating moats between the famous and the photographers. Lowit said the people in between her and her subjects made it much harder to work. She said it was much easier to capture a glimmer of someone’s soul early on, before a handler was instructing him or her how to stand and how to look.
“It used to be so direct, right to the point,” she says. When she started feeling crowded and pushed out, she just found other ways to get the shot. “I just have to be smarter than everyone else. If I can’t catch someone at the front door, I go to the back. It’s always a challenge and it’s always interesting to see what I can do.”

One of her craziest photo shoots was of magician David Blaine, who flung himself over a building and held on by his fingertips. Being held by her ankles, Lowit was lowered over top of him, over the ledge, to get the shot. Blaine also had Lowit photograph him driving a motorcycle at her full speed — while he was blindfolded.

She believes fashion and celebrity pictures have become more of an art form over the years, at least for her. This fall, Lowit will release her newest book, a collection of photographs shot backstage at Dior runway shows, where her feet “never touched the ground.”

After three decades, Lowit believes people are still drawn to her photos because like her, they find others irresistible, and want to be entranced in the glamorous lives of artists, actors, models, and socialites.

“The important thing all along has been to capture an image that lasts,” Lowit says. “There’s enough misery in this world. I want to show the happy side, the fun side. I just want to do my part to keep everyone feeling good.”