Music and Portrait Photographers, Chris Buck & Rick McGinnis

Chris Buck, an old friend, was the first person I ever interviewed at length, in 1996. That is to say, he was the first person I sat down with, and after pressing record on a cheap mini-recorder, attempted to have a real conversation with. Prior to that I’d done maybe a dozen interviews with musicians, not one of which was a memorable experience—20-30 minute obligatory affairs that did not yield a single interesting sound bite (my fault, not theirs). But Chris at that point was someone I’d known for ten years, we’d become good friends, and his career as a celebrity/portrait photographer (he moved from Toronto to New York in the late ’80s) was going gangbusters. It was a fun afternoon, and a fairly satisfying interview.

Rick McGinnis is also a photographer from Toronto, someone I’ve known for as long as Chris, though we’re not as close. But Rick and Chris are close, and the two of them have in parallel pursued a style of portraiture that sometimes speaks to (and early on, fed off) the other person’s work. I thought it would be interesting to bring the two of them together via Zoom (available here on the rockcritics YouTube page) to discuss their respective approaches to their subjects, their thoughts on each other’s work, and also on the aesthetics of rock photography itself: what works and what doesn’t. (We talk about other stuff, too, like music lists and Kiss.) I’ve known that Chris and Rick were big fans of Anton Corbijn ever since the two of them interviewed him for Nerve! magazine (our mutual early stomping ground) in 1987, but it was eye-opening to hear their thoughts on that era of British music photography in general. As they were talking on the subject, my mind flashed back to all those great early ’80s black and white NME covers, some of which I own, most of which I could only (on high school/college income) peruse on the local newsstand.

My guess is that a lot of people who read and/or write rock criticism don’t think all that much about the visual presentation of music publications, and how music photography itself, certainly at its best, does function as a type of criticism (though maybe not always intentionally so). I’m not sure this interview gets to the bottom of any of that but it was part of the impetus for bringing these two together. There are dozens of photos by each of them in this production—hopefully a good introduction for those not familiar with their work.

(For a different perspective on music photography, see also my 2009 interview with Laura Levine.)

Thanks to Chris and Rick for their time, and please check out chrisbuck.com and Rick McGinnis Photographs for more detailed information about their work (which is in no way limited to the subject of music; in fact, I don’t believe it’s been the focus for either of them for some time.).