Sarah | |||||
Freelance Photographer; Special Projects Editor | |||||
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I started working at the Soho News in 1976 as a freelance photographer and stayed around also working as a writer/proofreader/anything-for-money person, including doing the weekly listings, after that. In 1980 I was told I was making "too much money" for a freelancer and so I agreed to be "Special Projects Editor" as a salaried staff person. As SPE I was the editor of Centerfold, the humor page, and special supplements including ones on education, gift giving and holiday entertaining. When Annie Flanders quit as Style Editor I even managed that section until Kim and Branka took over. No matter how many extra things got piled on to the catch-all job title, in the two years after going on staff I never got an increase of the 1980 salary. And, no matter how much I complained, I loved every minute of working for the paper. Admittedly the first four years were the most fun as that was the time when I wasn't tied down to any one thing. I liked the unexpected challenges of being a freelancer although being on staff had plenty of surprises, too. Photographing people and objects: celebrities, paintings and painters, movie stars, singers, cowboy boots, hemlines, children's clothes, writers, food, and women lifting sandbags to get in shape to take the test to be firefighters -- it was always a challenge and never boring. It was a thrill to have a photograph used on the cover. I guess I lucked out by being the only photographer at Sid Vicious' last performance just a week or so before he died. The October 19 - 25, 1978 issue (Vol. 6 No. 3) featured several pictures I took of Sid and one of Nancy Spungeon on the cover. About a year later a favorite cover with my photograph of Bernardo Bertolucci came out. (Oct. 11 - 17, 1979 Vol. 7 No. 2) He'd just made the film, Luna, and I showed up at his hotel having photographed a full moon the night before. With the film wound back into the camera I proceeded to take his portrait hoping for a serendipitous overlapping of his head as the man in the moon. Apparently I amused him and fortunately I got a good portrait of him without the moon. ©2003 Sarah Longacre |
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