When Julian Wasser first shot Joan Didion in her home in Hollywood in 1968, little did he know that his nonchalant images of the literary hero would inspire a fashion campaign almost 5 decades later. Posing with ease and carelessness, Ms. Didion, shot for Time Magazine after the release of her book “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, unknowingly anticipated her current status as fashion icon and model for the French brand Céline. After causing much internet upheaval – the campaign was shot by notorious Mr. Teller and shows Ms. Didion hidden behind a pair of oversized black sunglasses – the great writer is now the main subject of a show at Danziger Gallery in New York. As part of their ‘project’ series, the gallery showcases selected images of Ms. Didion shot by Julian Wasser, posing with her Corvette Stingray car, or while smoking or with her daughter Quintana Roo on her lap. Recalling the afternoons spent at the writer’s house – the photographer would shoot her five times over the next couple of years – Mr. Wasser said: “It was a nice, cozy house. And she was a very easy person to talk to. No Hollywood affectations.” And it is exactly that atmosphere that still appears in Ms. Didion’s portraits, even those ‘staged-not-staged’ images set forward by Juergen Teller.
