Fashion & Celebrity Photography from Lincoln Center

With no one word to accurately or adequately describe how it all started for me I'll explain with a story and perhaps a glimpse into my mind.

The camera lens is an artistic window for me. Through which when I shoot I see not only what is in front of the camera, but also the history of the artistic world and the future swirl of the infinitely unknown.

Finding a location or even the inspiration to shoot that encompasses both the past and present, the here and now, the beautiful and the surreal has always been a great challenge for every top fashion photographer. I have always found those things close at hand in New York's Lincoln Center. Even when I am elsewhere I am there.

The New York Philharmonic, Avery Fischer Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The New York Ballet, The Metropolitan Opera, The Julliard School, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The School of American Ballet, The New York Opera... These words alone are so complex and meaningful, they are beauty and passion far more sophisticated than the buildings concrete facades can ever hope to contain.

Fashion with Sophisticaion and Simplicity

It doesn't matter if I am shooting an aspiring model, or a professional opera star, the feeling is the same. And I hope you dont laught, but when I shoot in Lincoln Center I get tears in my eyes. The same feeling I would get if a great friend passed away or if one is married off. How can I make you feel it like I do? I hope you already do.

Sure I hope you see my stuff in Vogue Magazine with the other photographers I love, but the feeling I get when I shoot is enough payment for me. Those feelings are coming from Lincoln Center and places like that. Seeing the Nutcracker in the snow on Christmas Eve, walking alongside the limos and taxi cabs, weaving amongst the bicycle messengers, smelling the roasted peanuts on the New York sidewalks are the things I want my photographs to feel like.

Even when I am in the studio my thoughts are there and newspapers are blowing by in the winds of my mind..

How Can I Describe Beauty and Sincerity

You may be wondering in fact how can I want a photograph to feel like something. Though I honestly don't know how to completely explain it. 

I want every photograph I shoot to feel like it was shot with the New York Philharmonic playing in the background. I want people to hear the horses hoofs in the street when they see my images. I want them to hear Susan Erens, Carmen Monarcha, and Carla Mafioletti singing Ode to Joy. I want them to feel the students from the School of American Ballet standing on their toes for hours on end. I want them to remember the feeling like I remember the Nutcracker on Christmas Eve.

My photographs are my music. They are my ballet, and they are my heart and soul. They are every dream every model has ever had, and every round of applause every designer has ever heard. My images are from all over the world yet somehow I've shot every one while standing in Lincoln Center.

Andrew Richard