Greg Gorman

Greg Gorman: In Their Youth
Text by Audrey Wells.

In Their Youth: Early Portraits comprises over 200 of the California-based photographer's previously unpublished portraits from the last three decades, featuring famous actors shot when they were still unknown young men, from teen years into their early twenties. "I decided to do a project that expressed my infatuation with male beauty," Gorman explains, "especially in terms of youth... the portraits don't have lots of backgrounds, they're straightforward. It's really about the person, not the elements. It boils down to the graphics of the individual more than the graphics of the setting." Gorman's intimate celebrity portraits hinge on the sense of his subjects' vulnerability. Here, famous young men are juxtaposed with photographs of promising unknowns: one of the first shots of Tom Cruise, for instance, shares a spread with some anonymous ephebe that Andy Warhol met at Studio 54.

Publication date: October 2009