HOW ANNA WINTOUR MADE A JOBLESS EX-CONVICT A JOURNALIST
Anna Wintour, Vogue magazine editor, New York Fashion Week, 2006. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
The following is from my memoir in progress, HIDDEN WORLDS THAT SHINE: My Odyssey from Killer to Journalist, from Rikers Island to the Whitehouse and the Outlaws I Met Along the Way.
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Being a reformed killer is tough. No one wants to believe you're actually reformed.
The power to reinvent one's self is taken for granted by most Americans like it's a fundamental, Constitutional birthright. Not for me. I don't have that luxury. I shot a man to death back in 1990, when New York was a warzone and the City was the murder capital of the United States. It was a case of what criminal defense lawyers call "imperfect self-defense." Instead of murder, a jury convicted me of manslaughter. I decided to make the most of the second chance the jury blessed me with. On my way to serving almost 13 years in prison, I went to college and earned an associate's degree.
When I was paroled in 2003, I resumed my studies on the outside, at New York University. It was a great school—and it was right down the block from my new West Village apartment.
I graduated with a bachelor's degree and the highest possible academic honors in 2006 but my fancy sheepskin was no match for my rap sheet: it sabotaged my job search. No one would hire me. That was a tough moment. It really tested me. I had done everything I was supposed to do and it still wasn't good enough. What was I going to do now? A weak person might have wavered. Someone with less resources might have returned to their “old ways” or bad habits. I kept my commitment to myself—and to the jury who gave me a second chance. I stayed strong.
I liked to walk. Walking always made me feel better. I walked the same Downtown Manhattan streets Theodore Roosevelt and Jacob Riis walked while they talked about how they would reform the NYPD and other troublesome areas of American society ripe for Progressive change. While I was walking, I noticed some restaurants kept their kitchen doors open for ventilation. That allowed a behind-the-scenes glimpse into what went on inside. Sometimes it looked like something Riis might have photographs in a turn-of-the-century Five Points tenement slum. I’d worked as a cook as a kid, so I thought it would be cool to document that. I bought a professional-grade Nikon camera and hit the streets.
I never took even a single photograph of a restaurant kitchen.
The first time I took my new camera out I rode the Sixth Avenue subway from West Fourth to 42d Street and the first thing I saw were steel workers. They were welding the new Bank of America Tower being built at the corner above the subterranean station. While I was shooting the steelworkers, I noticed a few exceptionally well-dressed men and women strolling by. They captured my eye. My camera seemed to be magnetically drawn to them. It followed one woman all the way across Sixth Avenue.
New York Fashion Week, Fall 2006. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
That's when I looked up from my camera and saw big white tents in the background, in Bryant Park. It was Fashion Week.
Fashion Week was still Fashion Week back in 2006. It was still pretty cool. I crossed the street, strolled into the tent everyone was walking into or out of and talked my way into a Fashion Week press credential. They wouldn't just give me one. I had to buy it—for $100. The guy I was negotiating with wouldn't take my debit card. He would only take cash. It felt a little illicit, like a drug deal. I had to run across the street to an ATM machine to get the money. I ran back and handed the man the cash, and he handed me an official New York Fashion Week press credential. I'm pretty sure he didn't just pocket the cash, but I'm not totally sure and I wouldn't have cared if he did. All I cared about was seeing what treasures the rest of the Fashion Week tents held.
I didn't know anything about the fashion world. The only thing I knew about the fashion world was Anna Wintour. Anna was so famous her name was known around the entire world—not just the fashion world. We'd even heard about Anna in prison. In fact, in my mind, Anna Wintour's name was synonymous with fashion. Anna was fashion. She edited the fashion world's bible, Vogue magazine. She was always impeccably dressed, always wore her hair in that perfect bob, always wore big, dark sunglasses and thus was always instantly recognizable.
Anna Wintour (second from left), Vogue magazine editor, New York Fashion Week, 2006. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
Suddenly there she was, Anna Wintour the fucking fashion world legend, breezing past me in Bryant Park with her entourage.
I didn't know where to go, but I knew Anna definitely knew where to go. All I had to do was follow her, so that's what I did. I ended up standing almost next to her beside a runway photographing some of the most beautiful women in the world.
New York Fashion Week 2006. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
I took my first paparazzi photographs over the next few days, inside the tents and outside in Bryant Park. I photographed actors Kevin Costner, Lauren Hutton, Emmy Rossum, Sarah Michelle "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Gellar, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gina Gershon, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Mischa Barton, Kate Bosworth, actor-director Sofia Coppola, comedian Nick Cannon, singers Brandi, Usher and LeAnn Rimes, tennis star Venus Williams, music producer Tommy Mottola and his wife Thalia, socialite sisters Paris and Nikki Hilton, fashion designer Rachel Roy and producer Damon Dash.
Candid celebrity photography, New York Fashion Week, Fall 2006. Photo credits: JB Nicholas.
Emmy Rossum was so cool she posed for me on the street.
Rossum burst onto the Hollywood scene in 2003 with Mystic River. She followed that with roles in The Day After Tomorrow and The Phantom of the Opera in 2004. The native New Yorker was on a roll—and she was feeling it. It was drizzling rain when she left a fashion show but she popped a giant baby blue umbrella and pretty much skipped down the street. She hammed it up for my camera as she walked along in the rain in front of a brick wall. She even turned and gave me the classic "over the shoulder" look as she walked away.
It was really sweet, innocent fun. She was new to fame. I was new to a camera.
I was so new to a camera I messed up the photographs.
When I walked away from Rossum and looked at my pictures I was crestfallen. I misfocused all but one—and even that one could've been better. I had a long way to go before I learned how to actually shoot a camera with real professional skill. Still, I used a big chunk of the last bit of money I had to buy another camera, another flash and more lenses, including a “long” 200mm telephoto lens. I would succeed at being a photographer, or I would fail. If I fell, I would fall hard because now I had no safety net to catch me. I was alone in the world. All that stood between homelessness and me was my cameras.
I had to shoot them, and shoot them well, to eat, pay rent and have a life. And that's exactly what I did.
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