Study for Joe

"Joe Zucker is one of the most atypical people I've ever met. And typically his solution was atypical. When I went to pick him up to photograph him, I didn't recognize him. He has curly, blond, bushy hair-but he had bought a jar of vaseline, greased his hair down, borrowed someone else's white shirt and tie, someone else's glasses and he looked like a used-car salesman. He understood that all he had to do was provide me with the evidence that someone like that existed for one-hundredth of a second. It didn't necessarily have to be him, he didn't have to identify with it. After the photo session he went home and washed the grease out of his hair and went back to life as usual." (Chuck Close quoted in L. Lyons, "Expanding the Limits of Portraiture", Chuck Close, New York, 1987, p. 25)