Joan Didion to David Hockney: facing up to the art stars – in pictures

A new exhibition features bracing, intimate portraits of compelling cultural figures by Brigitte Lacombe, Catherine Opie and Tacita Dean

Main image: Joan of art … Brigitte Lacombe’s portrait of Joan Didion. Photograph: Brigitte Lacombe

  • Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio (Filming The Aviator), Canada, 2003 by Brigitte Lacombe

    Brigitte Lacombe’s oeuvre could be described as a who’s who of the second half of the 20th century. Along with her studio portraits she has a long-term project of shooting on director Martin Scorsese’s movie sets. Face to Face: Portraits of Artists by Brigitte Lacombe, Catherine Opie and Tacita Dean is at The International Center of Photography in New York from 27 January until 1 May. An illustrated catalogue is published by ICP and Mack
    Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio eyeball on another, DiCaprio in white tie costume, on set.

  • Patti Smith, New York, 2014 by Brigitte Lacombe

    Singer-songwriter Patti Smith: ‘A good writer can get into any gender, can get into any mouth. When I write I may be a Brando creep, or a girl laying on the floor, or a Japanese tourist, or a slob like Richard Speck. You have to be a chameleon when you’re writing, and to get caught up with being a Jewish girl or a black girl or a divorced girl or a girl period, to me that’s a big bore and a lot of silly bullshit’
    Patti Smith looking uncompromisingly into the camera, hand over her mouth.

  • Maya Angelou, New York, 1987 by Brigitte Lacombe

    Maya Angelou: ‘I have kept a hotel room in every town I’ve ever lived in. I insist that all things are taken off the walls. I don’t want anything in there. I go into the room and I feel as if all my beliefs are suspended. Nothing holds me to anything. No milkmaids, no flowers, nothing. I just want to feel. I’ll read something, maybe the Psalms, maybe something from Mr Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson. And I’ll remember how beautiful, how pliable the language is, how it will lend itself. If you pull it, it says, “OK”’
    Maya Angelou, in hoop earrings, looks off to the side.

  • Joan Didion, New York, 2005 by Brigitte Lacombe

    Joan Didion: ‘In many ways, writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions ... but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space’
    Joan Didion brings her fingers to her mouth

  • Fran Lebowitz, New York, 2010 by Brigitte Lacombe

    Fran Lebowitz: ‘Contrary to what many of you might imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks – chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to actually sit down and write. This demand is peculiar to the profession and, as such, galling, for it is a constant reminder to the writer that he is not now, nor will he ever really be, like other men’
    Fran Lebowitz in white shirt, dark blazer and camel overcoat with padded shoulders

  • Glenn Ligon, New York, 2020 by Brigitte Lacombe

    Glenn Ligon: ‘What are the conditions under which works by black artists enter the museum? Do we enter only when our “visible difference” is evident? Why do many shows with works by coloured people (and rarely whites) have titles that include “race” and “identity”? Toni Morrison says that the writers of slave narratives often stopped short of describing the true horrors of slavery because they feared that white audiences would be turned off by graphic accounts. What are contemporary examples of that? What do black audiences not want to hear?’
    Glenn Ligon in dark double-breasted jacket with the collar turned up

  • Angela Scheirl, 1993 by Catherine Opie

    Catherine Opie is known for her early images of members of the LGBTQ+ community, using traditional portraiture to bring underrepresented people into the mainstream of contemporary culture. The photographs by Opie in Face to Face span three decades, from 1993 to 2019
    Angela Scheirl sits on a stool, legs akimbo, in dark suit and patterned tie with white socks

  • Lawrence, 2012 by Catherine Opie

    Lawrence Weiner was one of the founders of conceptual art. His work employed language as its main medium. Often, in Opie’s photographs, the sitter does not meet the gaze of the camera, such as in this image of a shirtless Weiner smoking a cigarette. The results are images of artists plunged into their own thoughts, both solitary, melancholic and slightly magical
    Lawrence Weiner, with grey beard, smokes and gazes off to the side

  • John, 2013 by Catherine Opie

    John Waters: ‘I’m hardly what you’d call a mellow person. When audiences see my movies, they always seem appalled that I find such humour in the violence I lovingly depict. “How could you think such awful things?” liberal critics always ask. “How else could I possibly amuse myself?” I always wonder. I tremble to think how boring my life would be without the throbbing excitement of violence always surrounding me. It’s not that I want to harm anyone – I’ve never initiated physical violence in my life – but thinking about violence seems to relax me and give me comfort’
    John Walters in skull-patterned jacket, half smiling, with his trademark thin moustache very dark on his upper lip

  • Kara, 2013 by Catherine Opie

    Artist Kara Walker: ‘I was thinking about the themes that weren’t being addressed in my work, whether or not I was trying to avoid something. And I thought, OK, I have to do this – I have to see where I am in this race play … I want[ed] to create a talisman or some other kind of an object where it is the embodiment of your fear, your horror and your lust at the same time. It’s a way of taking the power away from the evil that’s out there and getting on with it’
    Kara Walker seen in the dark with light outlining her face, shoulder and arm in silhouette

  • David, 2017 by Catherine Opie

    David Hockney: ‘I sit in the studio a lot, just taking in the pictures. I like being in here. A bed in the studio would suit me. It would be great. You need to do an awful lot of looking. I think unless you do that, you’re not going to “get” a lot of things’
    David Hockey, in blue shirt and blue cardigan, sitting, shoulders hunched

  • Jerome Caja, 1993 by Catherine Opie

    Jerome Caja (1958–1995) was a painter and drag performer. The three bodies of work shown at this exhibition all play with the historical conventions of portraiture while nibbling away at its edges
    Jerome Caja in off-the-shoulder ruffled red dress, red fluffy mules, white socks

  • One Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting, 2021 by Tacita Dean

    Tacita Dean creates films that are studies of time and everyday life as it unfolds before the camera. On view in Face to Face is Dean’s One Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting (2021), which records a conversation between the 99-year-old painter Luchita Hurtado and the 49-year-old artist Julie Mehretu; their combined ages inspire the film’s title
    Seen as if through a crack between two walls, Julie Mehretu talks to someone at a table

  • Tacita Dean, Portraits, 2016 by Tacita Dean

    In contrast, Dean’s 16-minute film Portraits captures the artist David Hockney’s approach to art in his Los Angeles studio. The film opens with a shot of the artist standing with his back to the camera, smoking and reading a book. Watching him read and smoke, the viewer is witness to the artist’s working process, appreciating the small moments that make up an artist’s practice
    A close-up of David Hockney smoking
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