Three Men: A Series in Memory

The first piece is about Jimmy, who died in the eighties when he was in his early thirties. Jimmy was a real friend—I really liked Jimmy, and Jimmy liked me.

One time he wanted to go to this formal where he was going to wear a dress and wanted me to be his date, but as a friend. I got dressed up in a sort of fake tux, and we went. It was fun. Jimmy looked like a guy in a dress, but he was enjoying it and I enjoyed him enjoying it. That was fun for me because I knew he enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, Jimmy got sick and I used to visit him at the hospital. His mother would be there—she was a nice lady. He was from Baltimore, though this was in San Francisco. After he died, I called her to see how she was doing. She was distraught, and in her grief she told me that she wished I had died instead of her son. That was just how she dealt with it. I put it out of my mind for years.

Then one day I was in a thrift shop looking for ideas and I saw this dress on a mannequin. It had sequins and was just overdone—looked like a fifties party dress, all fluffy. I looked at that and said, "That is Jimmy's dress." It brought back all those memories of Jimmy that I had put out of my mind. I thought, "Oh my gosh, I've got to shoot this for Jimmy."

I had a number of different guys model it. I explained that I didn't want it to be drag queen—I didn't want it to be anything but representing Jimmy, who was a guy in a dress and looked like a guy in a dress, and that's what he enjoyed. So I did that shoot and called it "Jimmy's Dress."

 The second person I only met once, and that was Herb Ritts. I met him in New York, I think around 1980. He showed me some photos of Richard Gere that he had done. It was interesting—I enjoyed seeing his work.

I sort of followed his career a little bit. I purchased a poster he had done called "Fred with Tires"—Fred in a car garage holding some tires. Being the son of a mechanic, I always liked it. Herb died at age 50—he was about a year older than me, actually, and about the same height.

I took "Fred with Tires" and did a series on it to honor him. At the same time, I put it into more of today's view of masculinity versus what it might have been when he shot that in the eighties. I wanted to make it where the model was more my take on it. So it's a different take, but it's still an honor to the original work, I hope.

The third piece is called "Red Shoes." The red shoes has some meaning to me. There was a movie called "The Red Shoes" which I really enjoyed. My husband Bill was a huge movie fan, and I appreciate dance. I'm not a dancer, but I've always appreciated dance and I love colors. The color red is pretty cool.

But "Red Shoes" isn't really about the movie, even though I've taken some elements of it. It's really about Rick, who died recently—a little over a year ago. He was 74, about two years older than me. I know his son, and he's fantastic.

When his father died, he was the only son, so he went and cleaned out where Rick was staying. He came across a chest of drawers that had some clothes in it—women's clothes—and these pair of red shoes that would fit his father. I just thought that was so cool that the red shoes were there. I said to him, "We're going to have to do a shoot with these shoes," because I liked the color, I liked the aspect of it.

What people like, to me, is something to be celebrated and not to have any shame about. Not "oh my gosh, look what we found"—no, it was like, "Cool, great." Something that makes people happy makes me happy. My work tends to be happy.

I've done this shoot a few times and I've got some photos I think are fun. Even if you don't understand where somebody else is coming from—which I don't necessarily have to understand myself—I appreciate what people like. My husband collects vintage clothes, especially the vintage stuff, and I told him we need to have that in the house. He said he wasn't sure, but I said, "No, this is our house. Let's put it out there. Let's enjoy it."