Leave it to Leonor #219

This week, I am thinking about democracy. The events of this week have left me without words, so I will leave it to the experts. If you've been paying attention, none of what is happening is surprising, but it doesn't make it less scary or upsetting. In the end, I've decided to send out the newsletter as initially written: a light-hearted investigation into an iconic photo. I hope it brings you some joy and distraction during this challenging time. Stay safe. 

This week, I am thinking about The Rock holding a rock. 

But before we get to that, let me back up. I have been obsessed with The Cut's absolutely brilliant column, I Think About This A Lot. From Prince William with hair to the prototype for siblings or dating to Keri Russell post-blizzard in stilettos, to me, it is the perfect combination of irreverent and serious. I can't get enough of it, so I wanted to bring some of that energy here. I asked my photo editor friends to tell me about a photo they can't stop thinking about and I got a bunch of great responses. It's going to be smart, visual people talking about beautiful photos and why they are drawn to them over and over again. I'm excited to share them in the coming weeks.  

My friend and colleague Aeriel Brown had an immediate response to my request, "I literally didn't even have to think about it," she wrote, attaching the image of The Rock holding a rock. As a huge fan of this image myself, I was very excited to read her thoughts on it. 

She wrote the following: 
For as long as I can remember, I've been celebrity obsessed. I blame this mostly on my mother who was both an actress and a lifelong People Magazine subscriber. She held on to this subscription even when we were living most of our lives out of a van in the name of art, or the roof was leaky or one of her divorces was getting costly or when the beloved family dog needed a hysterectomy we couldn't afford (I used my college savings; she lived another seven years). No matter what, she always found a way to afford People Magazine. 

I mention this because it explains a lot about my life and my career path. I love movies and tv and fashion and, above all, celebrities (I also know a weird amount about Emelda Marcos and Tammy Faye Baker; People in the 80s! What can I say!). And so, for most of my 30s, I worked producing photo shoots for movies and a large, beloved entertainment magazine.  I won't lie: it was the fucking best. 

Part of the job means coming up with shoot concepts and corresponding references, and then presenting them to the talent for approval—which really means presenting them to the talent's PR and coterie of professionals they employ to make them look good. I would dig and present and get shut down and then dig and dig and dig some more. When you feed your imagination a steady diet of early celebrity photoshoots, you begin to really, really miss the 80s and 90s when people would dress themselves and say yes to just about any concept someone dreamed up. 

 Like this shot of The Rock (pre glow up) holding an actual rock. 

To say I pretty much love everything about this image would be an understatement. I love his puffy face. I love his bad haircut. I love the earnestness of this image — how he holds said rock like he's Mando with Baby Yoda. I love the school picture day blue background. I love the tribal arm band tattoo. And, I love that someone pitched The Rock on a picture of himself holding a rock and he was like "Sheeeaaaayyyyyaaaah! ALL IN!" There's an innocence in this image—it's like looking at a photo of yourself in your worst 8th grade outfit and just being like "Yep. I did that." I miss the days when celebrities were allowed to be people and make mistakes and grow. 

My mom no longer has the People magazine subscription and instead actually pays full price for the business magazine where I now work. She is its number one fan and now, instead of swapping celebrity gossip stories, she calls me up to express her disappointment in the head of the Europe Central Bank. The Rock, it's rumored, is contemplating a presidential run. I keep a picture of him on my phone for when I'm feeling really shitty about things. Because if The Rock can learn and grow, so can I. 

As I read Aeriel's essay, I knew I needed to get to the bottom of they why, how, and when this image was made. The pictures seemed to first emerge via a post on Popsugar in 2017. Amazingly, the post had a photo credit which took me to Getty where I discovered that it is part of a whole series.

Celebrity portrait photographer, George Holz took the photos in 1999. I spent an obscene amount of time googling George Holz to see if anyone had written about them before, but I came up empty. I couldn't let it go, so I reached out to Mr. Holz. In a phone conversation with him, he shared that the shoot was for none other than Aeriel's beloved People Magazine. He wasn't certain, but he thinks it was for the November Sexiest Man Alive Issue (I tried to get my hands on an issue with no luck). He'd seen the rocks at The Set Shop and loved how they looked real. Back then, Dwayne Johnson was just about to make his transition to acting and went to the shoot without much of a publicity team. He was down for whatever - including posing with rocks. Holz has shot with Johnson multiple times since then and says he is a genuinely very nice and affable guy. When researching, I found this interview with Holz from August 2020 where he said the following, "When I photograph a person I try not to do too much research. . .I don't want to be influenced, I don't want to know what his best side is. I always try to take an iconic portrait, to immortalize a specific moment in the life of my subject ”.

Mission accomplished, Mr. Holz. Mission accomplished. 

​This week in reading. . .
I read Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, a cozy, but weirdly chaotic book that has been recommended to me so many times. Next up is Alyssa Cole's When No One is Watching, a recommendation from Top Dogs newsletter writer, Eleanor Kagan. 

​This week in listening. . .
I've never heard of Oh I Like That before, but AITA is always on my radar, so an episode featuring some letters from there about gift giving. There is one that is a real doozy.

Bim interviewed Tracy! What could be better?

Rumaan Alam on Homophilia (Randomly the very beginning of this episode, before they start interviewing him, is very very sad. Skip to about 6 minutes in.)