Glen Luchford on his legendary 1994 love letter to New York

“Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough,” Kate Moss beckons to the camera, outstretching her fists and punching the air in an iconic shoot from a 1994 edition of Harper’s Bazaar. Captured by rising star and close friend Glen Luchford on the streets of New York, the photos have gone down in fashion history as one of the most iconic editorials of the era, littering archive Instagram accounts, Pinterest boards and tumblr pages to this day – which is not bad when you find out that Harper’s actually hated the images. “They ran them, but they didn’t like them,” Luchford laughs down the phone from his home in LA. “And then, they kind of fired me for it.”

A huge fan of Taxi Driver, which he watched as a kid with his dad not long after it was released on video tape, Luchford felt the pull of New York from a young age. When he finally landed in the city, he became obsessed by its raw, gritty energy and the fascinating melting pot of people who lived there, so when his friend Mario Sorrenti decided to move back, he followed. Having lived with Mario and Kate in London, the three were great mates, which unsurprisingly made for great chemistry between the blossoming supermodel and the young photographer. “It was the last period before everyone’s careers got really serious,” remembers Luchford. “It was like going to work with your mates and getting paid for it, which seemed really bizarre. How can we have this much fun and get paid?” Happening just after Moss starred in her breakout Calvin Klein campaign, all three were on the precipice before their profiles went completely stellar.

On the day of the shoot, and with a hench school friend of Sorrenti’s accompanying them as a bodyguard on account of how sketchy NY still was at the time, Moss posed in a series of micro minis, minimalist tank tops, and tiny dresses, all finished with a big, wide-brimmed cowboy hat and a temporary Elvis tattoo to her upper arm. In the background, New York’s eclectic characters went about their business. School kids, elderly women, suited civil servants, construction workers and more drifted in and out of shot, either craning their necks to try and get a better look at what was going on, or – in true nonplussed New Yorker fashion – barely batting an eyelid, rushing past and completely ignoring Luchford, Moss, and co. The photos might be static, but are so full of movement and life they almost feel like film clips.

In the end, Luchford went through around 235 rolls of film, amounting to not far off 10,000 photographs, which post-shoot were hastily shoved into boxes and left to gather dust for the last 30 years. Now, however, fashion fans are getting a look at the images beyond the ones reluctantly run by Harper’s via a new IDEA book which lands this week. Those 10,000 pictures were narrowed down to the cream of the crop, the majority of which have never been seen before. Among them are dynamic images which immortalise the crew – including Ian the bodyguard, the hair stylist, and the fashion assistant – as Luchford whipped his camera around before they’d had chance to get out of shot, as well as a handful of candid snaps of Moss dissolving into fits of laughter immediately after she’d come at the camera with her fists. Needless to say, it’s a very special book, and as much a love letter to the New York of the 80s and early 90s as it was a fashion editorial. 

As the almost-sold-out publication gets its release, here we catch up with Luchford as he remembers events from the day and the energy that bubbled under New York back then.

How did the shoot come about? 

Glen Luchford: So I was living with Mario Sorrenti and Kate in a big house on Kensal Road with Mark Lebon, who’s Tyrone and Frank’s dad, and Mario decided to move back to New York so I kind of followed him there. I wasn’t working for any American magazine or anything, and I was moaning that I was bored. 

Mario was like: ‘Why don’t you go see Fabien Baron at Harper’s Bazaar?’ So I called up and made an appointment, I think, and went over, and Fabien was just playing darts in his office. I showed him a story I’d done for The Face and he was like: ‘Great, love this, let’s book a story in, you can shoot it next week’. That’s kind of how it worked in those days, one minute you were unemployed, the next you were shooting a big story. 

What was the actual shoot like? 

Glen Luchford: I’d always really been in love with the New York that I’d seen in Taxi Driver when I was a kid. I saw it when I was about 11 or 12 and it really blew me away, so I kind of wanted to go and live in that New York. There were still remnants of it left in the early 90s – you know, it was still a pretty dangerous place before it got cleaned up a few years later.

Mario’s school buddy had to come along as our bodyguard because for some of it we were shooting at night and it was really rough. We kind of threw it together, and I shot a ton of rolls of film because I wanted to fish with a wide net – there was thousands of photos in the end, and I was hopeful there would be maybe 20 good ones. I really wanted to capture all the people that were out on the streets – they end up being like these amazing props, walking in and out of the frame. It was really fun. 

I remember at one point the fashion editor said to me ‘You’re very neurotic’ because I was shooting so much film. I guess she was used to shooting with photographers like Patrick Demarchelier who’d shoot one roll of film and be like ‘Okay, we have it, done’. But I wanted to get it all. There was something about the city in that moment – it was really the last moments before the city got sanitised and kind of died. The end of the party. 

“I used to go to the movies [in New York] a lot and you’d be sat in the cinema next to someone smoking crack or getting a blow job – you were really in it” – Glen Luchford

What did Harper’s make of the shoot? They weren’t into it right? 

Glen Luchford: I didn’t really take a look at the magazine, which was my mistake, I didn’t really study it. When Fabien commissioned me, I just wanted to go out into the street and take some pictures, which is what I would have done for The Face, which would have been perfectly appropriate, but of course this is Harper’s Bazaar. So shooting, shooting, shooting, handed the pictures in, the magazine didn’t like them – they ran them, but they didn’t like them, and then they kind of fired me for it.

Then the photos just went in a box and sat there for 30 years gathering dust. A couple of them got scanned along the way or were in museums – like the picture of Kate punching the air. But the rest were unseen and just sitting there. At some point I was like ‘I’ve got to get these pictures out and have a look through them’. It’s really a kind of love letter to New York as much as Kate. 

What do you like about working with Kate? 

Glen Luchford: I mean, I don’t think I can say anything about Kate that hasn’t been said a million times before. We were really good friends and we lived together. It was just always fun – like going to work with your mates and getting paid for it, which seemed really bizarre, it was like: ‘How can we have this much fun and get paid?’ It was also the last period before everyone’s careers got really serious. In those days you could get by on just doing a couple of jobs a year and covering your rent and no one really gave a shit. Then fashion hit its industrial period after that and you were expected to work all the time. You had to be really ambitious and go after campaigns, and I was never really good at that. I just wanted to have fun with my friends.

I love Kate’s Elvis tattoo and the big cowboy hat she wears in the shoot. Was she playing a role that day? Who was her character?

Glen Luchford: I honestly can’t remember you know. I guess the editor had been watching Midnight Cowboy maybe – she was like ‘You’ve got to have a cowboy hat in the middle of New York if you’re going out onto the street’. It’s interesting because it does make her stand out – she kind of lifts off the page from the other people. 

Do you have a favourite photo?

Glen Luchford: Well ironically the one that I really love didn’t end up in the book, and I only realised it yesterday. I was looking through some pictures in a box and I was like ‘Oh fuck!’ It has this really fabulous woman in it who looks like she’s in a Woody Allen movie. She just went wandering through the shot. 

Otherwise I’ve always loved that photo of Kate punching the air, because it’s such a dynamic picture and that street meant a lot to me. I watched Taxi Driver in like 1981 or something, when video players first came to England, and my dad rented it. I was really mesmerised by it, because New York in other films that I’d seen was very sanitised – like Breakfast at Tiffany’s looked like it was done in a studio and made New York feel like this very high end city, which definitely wasn’t the case. 

When I arrived there for the first time in around 1986, it still looked like it did in Taxi Driver – it was only eight or nine years after the movie came out. So when you wandered around 42nd Street and round Times Square it was full of pimps and drug dealers and prostitutes, and all these very fascinating characters. I used to go to the movies a lot and you’d be sat in the cinema next to someone smoking crack or getting a blow job – you were really in it. 

Then one day they literally shut the whole street down – they closed the cinemas, the sex shops, and suddenly it was all over. That picture of Kate punching, if you look up on the board behind her there’s nothing written on it, they’d just closed all the theatres a few months before. And then I guess they came in and Disneyfied it. They cleaned it all up and now it’s like a shiny cartoon street. So that picture is kind of my homage to it. The end of an era. 

“In those days you could get by on just doing a couple of jobs a year and covering your rent and no one really gave a shit. Then fashion hit its industrial period after that and you were expected to work all the time. You had to be really ambitious and go after campaigns, and I was never really good at that. I just wanted to have fun with my friends” – Glen Luchford

I’ve seen that photo of Kate so many times, but I love that in the book you’ve included the ones immediately after that show her dissolving into laughter. 

Glen Luchford: I mean yeah, we really had a laugh. The editor was really fun, and Kate was friends with my assistant. Actually a lot of the team ended up being in the photos, because I’d whip the camera round and they’d still be in the frame. Ian, who was Mario’s friend from school, is this big tough guy who was there as our bodyguard, and he’s in a bunch of the photos too because he just got caught at the wrong moment. The hairdresser’s in some of them too. We had a lot of fun shooting the story.

Why did you choose to shoot it all in black and white? 

Glen Luchford: I actually shot a few rolls of colour along the way just in case, and then somehow they got separated and put into another box. A few years ago when I was scanning all my archives someone found them – I didn’t even remember them existing to be honest. I scanned one and put it on Instagram, so that’s out there floating about. 

Do you still enjoy going out into the street and shooting? Can you still do it now that people have smartphones and there’s such a huge interest in fashion?

Glen Luchford: Oh yeah, I still do it. I was doing a job in Paris not so long ago and I just said to the editor: ‘I’m going to go out to the Pride march and shoot it in the middle of that’. I grabbed the model and put her in the centre of this 20,000 people march.

What do you think of New York now? Do you still like going?

Glen Luchford: I haven’t been in such a long time. I guess if I was an older person I could happily retire and live by Central Park and go to the museums there every day. But in terms of its energy, it’s not really there for me any more. We used to go on some wild nights on the Lower East Side. Where we used to go to score drugs was so sketchy. 

You’d walk down First Avenue and turn right down 3rd Street, and you’d see two guys queuing up at the side of the street, and you’d line up behind them. There were lookouts up on the roof and the queue would build and build and build. Then they’d start whistling from the roof, which meant the coast was clear, and the dealer would suddenly come out of the door and start serving people. Then the guy would whistle again, which meant the coast was not clear and the dealer would disappear inside and the line would break up. Sometimes this was in the middle of winter when it’s like minus ten at two o’clock in the morning, and you’d have to wait for another half an hour for the line to start forming and the dealer to appear again. 

There were amazing clubs and bars and the city had such raw energy. There was an incredible music scene in that period and rent was really cheap, so you had fascinating people living there. It was all artists and musicians – a real mix. And then rents went crazy and we all had to move out. I don’t have a lot of love for New York as it is now. 

What advice would you go back and give yourself at the start of your career, and what advice would you give a young photographer starting out now? 

Glen Luchford: I would go back and do it all again exactly the same. Everything’s just got progressively worse since then. When you’re that age you don’t know what you don’t know – you’re pretty stupid. You get up in the morning and you’re like ‘Fuck it, I’m just going to do what I want’. Then as you get older you get more political, more conscious, you start toeing the line. I’d do anything to get that mindset back again. 

If it has not yet sold out, the book is available to buy here. If it has sold out, there are a lot more very nice books to buy too.