Part 4: Making of the Book

Thursday, June 25, was a shock for me. I'd just achieved my goal of assembling my proposals for the book the day before and feeling quite satisfied with myself. And then my wife comes into my studio and tells me Michael is dead. I shook my head. Half stunned, half in disbelief. I was in a room surrounded by photos of his face looking at me or staring off into the distance. How can he be dead, I thought, he's all around me in this room. I stopped working and left the studio, turned on the TV like millions of others and watched it all unfold. I hadn't seen this much continuous coverage since I was a child and JFK was assassinated. Suddenly I realized the significance of my photographs had changed. But I was not fully prepared for what would unfold in the following days.

Part 4: Making of the Book

Part 3: Making of the Book

Last May I reached out to my childhood friend and one time photo partner Neil Zlozower, he was Van Halen's photographer and published a successful book on the band. Neil told me to contact Steve, his editor at Chronicle Books. Steve and I talked, he expressed interest in my story and I promised him he'd receive a proposal in a month or two.

On Wednesday, June 24, I finished printing three sets of proposals in the digital lab at the university where I teach. Each proposal had 40 pictures and a four page introduction sample of my written narrative. I planned to send them to Taschen Books, Chronicle Books and hadn't quite figured out who the third would be for. I slept well that night because I'd met my goal and the book proposal was ready to send out.

Part 2: Making of the Book

Last summer of '08 I started developing an exhibition and book of photographs documenting the time I worked for Michael Jackson in the 1980’s . Sometime around February of ’09 I contacted Victoria Dailey, editor extrodinaire, and art book publisher. She came by my studio, examined my photos and insisted that I make a book that reaches far beyond the art community. Victoria said this would be an excellent pop culture book. Convinced, we spent the next few months reforming the project into a compelling story of my time with Michael. By the time spring rolled around I had an edit of 90 photographs and several pages of text I’d use as a book proposal. Now all I had to do was figure out who to send it to.

Part 1: Making of the Book

The genesis for the Michael Jackson Before He Was King book was born from a conversation I had with German photographer Oliver Sann at the Chicago Art Fair in 2008. The fair mainly featured staged cinematic photography and lacked the power of the documentary photograph. This appeared to be the perfect time to embark on a documentary project and Oliver encouraged me to do so with my Michael Jackson archive.