From The Straits Times    |

In 1982, famed American photographer Richard Corman found himself in the seedy lower east side neighbourhood of New York, in a telephone booth, dialling a very special woman he was supposed to shoot.

She was none other than fashion legend and queen of pop, Madonna.

Richard Corman photo exhibition
Richard Corman’s (above) exhibition includes photos of the queen of pop in her younger days. PHOTO: ST

Back then, however, she was still a young artist trying to find her big break, living in a tough neighbourhood.

Corman, 58, who spoke to Life! at the W Singapore hotel, recalls: “She said, ‘When you get to my corner, you have to call me from the telephone booth because Richard, if you walk into my building, they might kill you because there are a lot of drugs and junkies around’.”

Corman, who was then 28 years old and trying to find interesting people to photograph, adds: “She knew everybody and she had to let them know that I was okay to come in to visit and photograph her.”

His photos of a young Madonna – dressed in a denim jacket and ripped jeans, posing with her boombox with kids from her neighbourhood and on the streets of the lower east side – are now on display at the W Singapore hotel at Sentosa Cove till Jan 11.

The photos are up for sale through Rock Paper Photo (www.rockpaperphoto.com), along with pictures shot by fellow celebrated American photographer George Dubose, who documented Madonna’s first gig at Uncle Sam’s Blues, a club in Long Island.

Never released before, Corman’s portraits of the Material Girl are part of a travelling exhibition called Madonna: A Transformational Exhibition, which will also stop at the W hotels in Mexico City, Paris, Bangkok, Hong Kong and New York.

Richard Corman photo exhibitionYesterday, the exhibition’s official launch here saw New York street artist Alec Monopoly transforming a life-sized photo of Madonna into new art by spray-painting graffiti art over it.

Describing Madonna as “funny, sexy, who dressed unlike anyone”, Corman said he was introduced to her by his mother, Cis Corman, who was then a casting director for director Martin Scorsese’s film, The Last Temptation Of Christ (1988).

Madonna had auditioned for the part of the Virgin Mary but without success.

Corman says: “As my mother said to me, she was an original and it’s been true for so many years, whether you like her or not.”

He says he did not publish the photos until now because he never thought the “time was right”.

He says: “I think today these pictures are more modern than they were back then. Stylistically, from a fashion sense, from an intellectual sense, from an artistic sense, she looks like all the kids I see in NYC now. It’s also 30 years since her first single came out.”

Corman himself has gone on to be one of the biggest movers and shakers in the photography scene, shooting portrait shots of big-name actors, athletes and politicians, including Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali.

A self-taught photographer who is married with a 14-year-old son, he said the only formal training he had was a three-year apprenticeship with famed American fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Asked what was the most important skill he learnt from the late Avedon, Corman says: “It’s all about the quality and you are really only as good as the people around you.

“It is most often a collaboration. In the days I photographed Madonna, it was just she and I. If I did the same thing today, there’d be (a crew of) 40 people and it would be a different picture.”

Madonna: A Transformational Exhibition is on at the W Singapore – Sentosa Cove until Jan 11, 2013.

This article was first run in The Straits Times newspaper on December 15, 2012. For similar stories, go
to 
sph.straitstimes.com/premium/singapore. You will not be able to access the Premium section of The Straits Times website unless you are already a subscriber.

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