Born January 16: Susan Sontag, Francesco Scavullo

Born in New York City in 1933, Susan Rosenblatt [Sontag from her stepfather] came out to her diary at 15, had her first experience with a woman at 16, and married Philip Rieff at 17. Having started at Berkeley, she graduated from the University of Chicago and by 25 she was a divorced mom soon living with the writer Harriet Sohmers Zwerling. Toward the end of their relationship Susan had an affair with Cuban-American playwright María Irene Fornés, who was Harriet's ex. After breaking up with Maria, she lived with Italian aristocrat Carlotta Del Pezzo. Later partners were the German academic Eva Kollisch, Rothschild banking heiress/actress Nicole Stéphane, and choreographer Lucinda Childs. In 1978, twelve years after Against Interpretation (including her seminal essay Notes on Camp), she won the NBCC for her critical book On Photography, teeing up the penultimate irony of her love life, her last and longest romantic relationship was with Annie Leibovitz. Ten years on, in 1999, the world's most famous photographer and America's leading intellectual collaborated on a book unambiguously called Women yet the media still refused to mention the co-authors were lesbian partners. In 2000 Susan finally won the National Book Award (for her fourth novel, In America, less popular than her breakout third, The Volcano Lover) and in 2001, at 52, Annie gave birth to a daughter. In 2004, at 71, Susan died after a decades-long fight with cancer and her obituary omitted Annie. An old-time believer in the "open secret," Susan berated others' moral cowardice yet remained mostly closeted, though she did tell the Guardian she had been in love nine times in her life: "five women, four men." Her As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964--1980 appeared on Thebes' queer lit poll. For another view read Terry Castle's terrific essay "Desperately Seeking Susan" in The Professor.

Because he made a career of pushing glamor toward tacky, with his models sporting his signature huge windblown hair and Way Bandy's way too much makeup, it's easy to overlook the admirable aspects of Francesco Scavullo's sixty-three years as a fashion photographer. After learning the craft from Horst P. Horst, he published his first cover shot when he was still in his teens and he died of a heart attack when he was eighty-two on his way to photograph Anderson Cooper in 2004. The man was a workhorse. Born on Staten Island, his family moved to Manhattan when he was six, and his father bought him a carriage house when he was nineteen, which he used as his studio for the rest of his life. Some of his most memorable images are Diana Ross's b&w cover and full-color foldout for Diana, the Kristofferson - Streisand poster for A Star Is Born, the Julie Andrews poster for Victor/Victoria, Brooke Shields everywhere, the Bee Gees on the cover of Rolling Stone, Madonna on the cover of Time, and Sting in a loincloth. He shot Beverly Johnson for Vogue's first cover of a black woman and Burt Reynolds nude for Cosmopolitan's first centerfold. Scavullo lived for thirty-two years with Sean Byrnes, who not only managed and styled his shoots but nursed him through four nervous breakdowns in his ongoing manic depressive cycles. Among his many books are Scavullo: Photographs 1948-1984 and Scavullo on Men.

 

Comments

[Bob Smith]

I like Sontag's essays, but her not coming out was cowardly. It's a blot that's not going away.