Famous Brooke Shields Photographer Dies At 73

Written by Dennis Hevesi Thursday, 23 June 2011 20:21

New York.- Garry Gross, a fashion photographer known for his 1970s nude images of Brooke Shields, taken when she was 10 years old,  died of a heart attack  at his home in Greenwich Village. Mr. Gross, who in recent years had focused his cameras on dogs, was 73. Though Garry Gross earned his reputation as a celebrity image-maker — his pictures graced the covers of albums by Whitney Houston and Lou Reed — in 2002 he switched careers and became certified as a dog trainer, but it was the images of  the young Shields that marked his career most significantly. In 1975, the actress' mother, Teri Shields, consented to allow her daughter, then a child model, to be photographed nude for a Playboy Press publication. She and her mother earned $450 for the shoot, which included a full-frontal nude image of the girl standing in a bathtub. Jane Feldman, who managed the studio on Broadway and East 20th Street where the photographs of Shields were taken, said they were part of a series intended to explore young women coming of age. "Garry saw it as art," she said. "It's an exploration, but it was done with great respect," she added.

Within a few years Ms. Shields had become a star with her equally controversial appearance as a pre-teenage prostitute in the 1978 film “Pretty Baby.” And when she was 17, she tried to block any further sale of the photos, contending that they were an invasion of her privacy and caused her embarrassment. Shields sued Gross in New York to stop him from selling the images, arguing they were an invasion of her privacy and caused her embarrassment, but New York State’s highest court ruled that she could not break the contract. In its 4-to-3 decision, the Court of Appeals said that Mr. Gross could continue to market the photos as long as he did not sell them to pornographic publications. In the minority opinion, Judge Matthew J. Jasen wrote, “I see no reason why the child must continue to bear the burden imposed by her mother’s bad judgment.” By then Mr. Gross was already a figure in the New York fashion scene. His work had been featured in magazines like GQ, Cosmopolitan and New York. He also shot portraits for the record industry, including a well-known cover of Lou Reed holding up a hand mirror, but not bothering to look into it, for his 1979 album, “The Bells.”  After winning the court case against Shields in 1981, Gross went to Italy, where he worked for an agency. The protracted court battle cost him his career, saddling him with legal fees and marring his reputation among art directors."He went through periods of times where he was really angry about it," said Feldman.

The photo shoot continued to make headlines decades later. In 2009, one of the images, appropriated by American artist Richard Prince for a work, had to be withdrawn by the Tate Modern museum in London after Scotland Yard warned that the image could break obscenity laws. The protracted court battle cost him his career, saddling him with legal fees and marring his reputation among art directors."He went through periods of times where he was really angry about it," said Feldman.

In a curious twist on the Shields case, Richard Prince, a pioneer of what is known as appropriation art — photographing other people’s photographs and enlarging them for exhibition — appropriated the most revealing of Mr. Gross’s bathtub shots of Ms. Shields. Like other unwittingly appropriated artists, Mr. Gross objected and reportedly received a small payment from Mr. Prince in an out-of-court settlement. The photo was shown at an exhibition of Mr. Prince’s work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2007, but two years later the Tate Modern in London removed it from an exhibit after Scotland Yard warned that it could violate obscenity laws.

Garry Donald Gross was born in the Bronx on Nov. 6, 1937, to Albert and Sylvia Gross. His father was a furrier. After graduating from City College in 1958, he became an apprentice to noted photographers, first Francesco Scavullo and then James Moore. He also studied with Lisette Model and Richard Avedon.

A lifelong animal lover, Mr. Gross had worked as a teenager at the stables in Van Cortland Park, near his home in the Bronx. With photo assignments fading after the Brooke Shields controversy, he decided to become a dog trainer. And in 2001, with Victoria Stilwell, who is now host of the television show “It’s Me or the Dog” on Animal Planet, he opened a dog training school in Manhattan.He soon combined his passions, creating large-format studio portraits of dogs, lighting them the way he would fashion models and usually focusing on their eyes. “He wanted to look into a dog’s soul, especially with senior dogs, to show how much life they’d lived,” Ms. Stilwell said on Monday. And because he was a dog handler, she added, “he was able to train the dogs so they weren’t freaked out by the flash.” "He was very concerned about the destiny of old dogs," Linda Gross said. "When their owners die, they end up in shelters. But people don't typically want to take them home." She said he had hoped to produce a book about aging dogs and had taken many photographs for the yet-unpublished work.

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