The photo duo that lensed the ice cold 90s, Courtney Love and Janet Jackson

Guzman look back at an extraordinary archive of work that subverted traditional images of femininity and womanhood with the most revered women in music

25May 2021

On his first day at the studio in 1983, Constance Hansen remembers asking Russell Peacock to clean the stove. She laughs at the reversal of gender roles and then adds, “It was for a photo shoot. I remember asking Russell what photographers he liked and what he wanted to do and he started talking about riding his bicycle through Europe for six months and sculpture. Meanwhile I was in full commercial mode, working around the clock.”

A bustling still life photographer, Hansen’s posh client roster included Bergdorf Goodman, Bonwit Teller, Lord & Taylor, and Balducci’s – but things began to change when Peacock began collaborating with her. Paging through the luxurious art book style catalogues for Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons, inspiration struck. “We thought fashion photography looked like fun, not knowing how difficult it was,” Peacock says.

After business hours ended, they opened studio to the downtown scene, inviting club icons like Dianne Brill and Marilyn for portraits, styling them in clothes by emerging designers like Marc Jacobs and Isabel Toledo, and publishing in the Village Voice, aRude, Taxi, and Interview. To establish a distinct identity, they adopted the name Guzman.

“There were no doubles in photography at that time and everyone was against it except Paula Greif,” Hansen says. As creative director at Barney’s, Greif got Guzman its first big music gig – shooting the cover of Rockbird, Debbie Harry’s 1986 solo album. “We worked with Stephen Sprouse, Andy Warhol, and Linda Mason. We were trying not to act blown away but we were,” Hansen says.

By 1990, Guzman had opened a 3,000 square foot studio on 31st Street in Manhattan. They also secured a Los Angeles photo agent, who get them gigs in the music industry, bringing in an extraordinary line up of artists including Sting, the Neville Brothers, Digable Planets, Luther Vandross, and Dru Hill.

“It was a golden era,” Hansen says. “Someone would call us up to do whatever we wanted.”

And so they did, creating an archive of attitude that captures the spirit of the 90s. Liberated from the hyper manufactured images of glamour that defined the 1980s, Guzman introduced a daring style that drew notice among a new generation of women artists. Bold, fearless, and free, women of the 90s like Janet Jackson, Total, SWV, En Vogue, and Hole defined their identity, sexuality, and gender of their own terms.

“Looking back, album covers are so iconic, but in that era you were so used to it,” Peacock says. “You don’t think about the importance of that large image on everyone’s shelves. I don’t know id we fully appreciate being that part of the zeitgeist.”

Hansen agrees. “We were so in the moment. Everything we did is an accumulation. While we were doing it, it was just in bits and pieces, our experiences. It was just coming at us and we were playing.” Here, Guzman looks back at its extraordinary archive of work that expanded, subverted, and transcended traditional images of the femininity and womanhood.

01 / 08

Courtesy of Guzman

JANET JACKSON’S RHYTHM NATION 1814 (1989)

“In the mid-1980s, New Romanticisim in fashion and a lot of it was done on 8x10 Polaroids. By the end of the decade, we were one of the only ones doing large format photography. We had the still life equipment and repurposed it for portraiture. We made a mistake of mixing colour negatives with a black and white positive and getting this weird hybrid Polaroid. It was really expensive to make, so we didn’t have many pictures. It was very methodical. There was no retouching, so everything had to perfect.”

“We flew out to Los Angeles and met Janet and René Elizondo Jr. They wanted these dramatic, iconic images so that’s what we gave them. Janet knew exactly what she wanted for the shoot. She was really a little girl, so cute, fresh faced, no makeup, soft, very sweet, tiniest lovely voice, really delicate. She went into hair and make up and when she came out hours later, she was a soldier. This was a big political statement on her part.”

“It was really simple but tedious because she had to sit still. This was a longer exposure. With 8x10 camera, you are under a dark cloth, look in the ground glass, and say, ‘Don’t move.’ Then you put the Polaroid film in, and click it. It’s a slow exposure, 15-30 seconds so you have to be still. It’s an old fashioned way of working. It’s more considered and it’s intimate. You’re really fixated on detail.”

“We were recently contacted by her record company. They put us up to shoot her because of this album cover. They said that she really likes it so we might as well come to the source. Of course, we didn’t get it. But It lasted, that picture.”

02 / 08

Courtesy of Guzman

JODY WATLEY, AFFAIRS OF THE HEART (1991)

“Jody Watley recently said on Instagram that this was one of her favorite shoots. Her music is great so we were really excited. She came in, no entourage. I think she styled herself. There was no art director telling you a concept. We just did it.”

“She her own hair and makeup: Peter Saville – we used to call him ‘The Pirate’ because he had a swagger – and Paul Starr. They were the top hair and make up in LA. Back then hair and make up artists were big stars, full of attitude, like ‘fuck you.’ They were intimidating. If you asked a question like, ‘You think you could not put so much dark in the corner of her eye?’ they would give you a dirty look.”

“Jody had great energy. She’s sweet and humble, that’s what I liked about her. She was really good in front of the camera, great lines, fun to work with, super easy, and very confident. Most of the people we work with were confident. There’s nothing worse than people worried about how they are going to look. It shows that they have confidence if they don’t have an entourage.”

03 / 08

Courtesy of Guzman

TOTAL, TOTAL (1996)

“Somehow we knew Sean Combs and he picked us for this job. It might have been a Janet connection. He showed up with his mom and his baby. It was like family. That’s where I met Bernadette Phillips, the amazing nail artist. She started working with Irving Penn after us – and now her nails are in the Museum of Modern Art. Bern was there with her kids because they were all friends. She grew up in Yonkers with Mary J. Blige and DMX. They played together when they were little.

“The girls – Kima Raynor, Keisha Spivey, and Pamela Long – were all lovely. I didn’t get the memo where it was cool to have the hat over your eyes. I was like can you raise your hat. She would raise it and it would go back down. By the end of the shoot, I got it. Every shot was amazing. It just kept going. Total made a lot of other ones happen, like En Vogue and SWV. Our work appealed to a lot of the young Black artists of the era.”

04 / 08

Courtesy of Guzman

EN VOGUE, EV3 (1997)

“This was their third studio album recorded after a long break. There was some in-band drama that we weren’t cognizant of: there were now three members instead of four as Dawn Robinson had left the group. Cindy Herron, Maxine Jones, and Terry Ellis were fun. They had a loose concept: Malick Sidibé inspired photographs and African inspired styling. They did African make up and mixing patterns. We had a great set designer, be brought in all this colour and furniture, and the girls styled themselves up with big hair.”

“Musicians had a lot of influence of fashion and lifestyle, a big influence on culture. That had a lot to do with MTV but it filtered own into the culture. There was a lot of free expression and it went in all directions. It was the decade where things got absorbed and reinterpreted. This is the precursor to, people were sampling, using, and being influenced.”

“We didn’t have an image we were trying to capture that we already know about. Most of the time we just played. Then we would build on it. We would say okay, now if we do this we can get better. If they would go with us, if there were something they would do that was different or extreme, then we would have a really special picture.”

05 / 08

Courtesy of Guzman

SWV, RELEASE SOME TENSION (1997)

“We took SWV to the Richard Mandel House in Mount Kisco, New York. It was a modernist house that was being restored but was kind of run down designed by architect Edward Durrell Stone with interiors by Donald Deskey. an American industrial designer had done the interiors for Radio City Music Hall and the Tide bulls eye. We thought the house was the perfect place for the album shoot because it was unconventional, colourful, and fun. SWV had such great style we were in heaven.”

“They were excited for the shoot. They were so young and this was a big deal that they were very open. They projected attitude but they really didn’t have any. They were having fun, laughing, carrying on. We were creating an image. They knew how to perform for the camera. We were lucky – we had a lot of those performances.”

“There was a lot of optimism and you felt empowered with what you were doing because people supported you. You would fly and people would say we love your work, do something for us. It was very free. You weren’t thinking about what was happening. It was blossoming. There was a lot of activity; it felt like it was really moving.”

06 / 08

Courtesy of Guzman

ME’SHELL NDEOEOCELLO, PEACE BEYOND PASSION (1996)

“Me’Shell Ndeoeocello was terrific. She came in by herself and we did the shoot. She was advanced, queer, and confident. We had people that are comfortable with us. We were drawn to people that were unique and had strong identities. They gravitated towards us and they showed us a lot of themselves. You’re taking the whole person, you’re looking at this person and trying to communicate and access them. We allow them to present themselves to us.”

“These artists chose us and we were never really sure why. There’s a thread to it, based on the look, on who you shot previously. By this time, we had shot k.d. Lang and a lot of LGBTQ+ artists. These are the original icons, the ones that everybody said, ‘I’m going to act like her!’ Because every single one of them, they were out there. There were no faded flowers in the corner, no shy ones. Everybody that we photographed, they were all tough.”

07 / 08

Courtesy of Guzman

LUSCIOUS JACKSON, FEVER IN FEVER OUT (1996)

“God, they were funny! We were shooting them for hours and hours. We had them outside, inside and they were totally open. It was crazy. Can you put on nurses outfits? Can you climb a fence? We had an aluminum foil set. They put on waitress uniforms, secretary outfits, and party gowns as a parody of traditional women’s roles in a patriarchal society. There was a lot to play with. We would push the absurdity. We have a lot to say, we feel strongly about certain things so we would present that. That was our life.”

“In the 90s, you had all these misogynist images, and then you have these women being strong with equal star power. They were in control of their situation. What I look for in a woman is this kind of toughness. If they were going to be sexy it was their sexy, not your sexy. They were running the show. These girls didn’t worry. They could be just as badass as the boys. They had attitude.”

08 / 08

Courtesy of Guzman

HOLE, CELEBRITY SKIN (1998)

“Hole wasn’t selling that many records; this was their somewhat commercial project so there wasn’t a big budget for this shoot. Everything was tight but we had two days for a studio shoot and a location shoot. Everyone was working for fun.”

“Courtney wanted to be in the desert and she wanted to have a forest of burning palm trees – but you can’t just light palm trees on fire. You had to buy one and truck it, then pay $7,000 for the fire department to be there. Ours was a dead tree. We had a big set in the desert with giant lights, permits, firemen, the whole bit. Then out of the blue winds came and blew everything flat. We had to make a corral with these mobile homes to block the wind. The art director was running around asking, ‘Who has insurance?’ Not us!”

“In the meantime, Courtney showed up. When she saw the tree, she said, ‘Oh my god it looks like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree!’ We managed to pull it all together in the middle of the light. We used the car lights to light the set. We lit the tree on fire and shot the shit out of it until the whole thing went out. It was crisis mode – it was very rock and roll because we pulled it off!”

00 / 08