Press---MetroSourceLA

	07.14.2009 METRO SOURCE LA Face Book written by Steve Young

PHOTOGRAPHER John Russo’s studio is spotless and white, like a cloud hovering above Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile. Adding to the effect is his panoramic view of the hills and the Hollywood sign off in the distance, covered in a gauzy layer of smog. Today, Russo is photographing model (and star of MTV’s Newport Harbor and ABC Family's Make It or Break It) Clay Adler for About Face, Russo’s forthcoming book featuring black-and-white portraits of some outrageously attractive men, among them Sex and the City’s Jason Lewis, Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford, Dancing with the Stars’ Gilles Marini, and The Passion of the Christ’s Jim Caviezel. Mixed in with the recognizable faces are some equally striking but less familiar models, as well as “some average Joes” Russo encountered “at the mall” and asked to photograph. (By “average” Russo seems to mean “incredibly hot.” And also, why do I never meet these people at the mall?)

The book is a labor of love for Russo, who typically shoots celebrities for publications including GQ, Elle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Glamour. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1995, Russo has amassed an impressive portfolio. He has captured many household names, including Patrick Dempsey, Eva Longoria, Cindy Crawford, Will Smith and Jon Hamm. But Russo has been capturing the images of About Face for himself. “It was really fun just to do whatever I wanted to do,” Russo says.

In contrast to most celebrity photo shoots, the shoots for About Face have been low-key, low-maintenance, lo-fi affairs. Russo photographed his subjects in natural light by the window in his studio (with zero professional grooming in all but a handful of his photos). “I love it because it’s raw,” Russo explains. “Like two percent of the guys had grooming done — meaning makeup. But I was kind of not for it. Taylor Kitsch just came in after the gym. He pushed his hair back, took off his shirt. I took his picture and then he left. Jason Lewis, same thing. Totally raw.” Russo also avoided retouching. “What you see is what you get.”

While his subjects are shirtless, they’re only photographed from the shoulders up. The effect is stark and sexy without being beefcake. “There are so many naked boy books out there,” Russo understates. “I wanted it to be about their faces. For me there’s nothing better than looking at a beautiful face. And I’m obsessed with people’s eyes.”
Russo made an effort to incorporate a wide range of physical types. “It’s not just about beauty or what I like,” he says. “It’s about so many different kinds of beauty. I wanted to include different ethnicities, the bad boy, the good-looking boy, the pretty boy, the rugged guy…”

"Like Ingo!" I interject with (a possibly embarrassing amount of) enthusiasm, referring to General Hospital’s Ingo Rademacher, who will also appear in Face.
“He’s one of my dear friends,” Russo says of Rademacher. “One of the coolest, nicest, sweetest people. There’s so many pricks in this town. If I don’t like the person, they’re not in my book. I don’t give a shit if they’re a big name.” Rather than aim to secure the biggest names he possibly could, Russo called upon his friends (some of whom do happen to be big names).

Perhaps the biggest surprise among them is Jim Caviezel, who famously portrayed Jesus in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. “I like Jim a lot,” Russo says. “I photographed him for another publication and he’s just a wonderful, beautiful person. He’s really nice and very spiritual. His face is very angelic and he has these amazing eyes. When he heard about this project, he wanted to help me. He was all about it.”
Russo is emphatic about making his shoots fun and drama-free. “In your twenties and thirties when you’re climbing the ladder, you have to take the bullsh*t. But at this point,” says Russo, who turns 40 this year, “I can’t put a monetary price on my happiness. Because, at the end of the day, we’re not curing cancer. We’re just taking photographs. In the past couple years I have taken on the persona of: I am not getting nervous; I am not letting people bother me; and I am not working with people who are drama.”

That attitude makes it easy for the people he photographs. “I love him,” says Clay Adler. “I wish every photographer were like him. He’s really easy to work with; he shoots everything really fast and he has such an artistic eye.”

About Face began as an idea that Russo formed for a gallery show almost five years ago. The first men he shot were Jason Lewis and Chace Crawford, and all photos were shot using a kind of film Polaroid stopped manufacturing in 2008; so the book will act as a sort of exclamation point at the end of this era of Polaroid. “There will never be another book like this,” says Russo with a glint of pride.

In the finished manuscript, Russo has placed, alongside these photos, quotes about beauty, masculinity and strength from a variety of sources, including Confucius, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk. “The really fun thing for me was going through and finding quotes that I thought were fitting, because I had all these quotes and I tried to match them up with the guy,” says Russo. “I had to see that the quote fit the person. Even though the quote may not necessarily reflect who they are, for me, that’s what I saw."

The quotes don’t form a “big message” about beauty, but over the course of the book a conversation between the words and images emerges; the result is a book about aesthetics that is surprisingly thought-provoking. Some standout quotes include “A man finds room in the few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants,” and “A man is a God in ruins” by Emerson, and Keats’ famous “A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”
But Russo kept his own personal philosophizing to a minimum. “I wanted it to be about the image and about the words. I didn’t want to write about all this crap that no one cares about,” he says.

Clockwise from top-left: Jason Lewis, Jesse Metcalfe, Jason Muirbrook and Marco Dapper as they appear in About Face. Visit aboutfacebookproject.com to see more.

Russo plans to remain busy well after the release of About Face. He is releasing his own line of beauty products called “Hollywood Finish” and continues to teach a portraiture class at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA, where he resides part time. He is also passionate about tennis, competing in singles and doubles on the USTA Southern California tour.

And then there’s his next book: One Hundred Making a Difference, a collection of celebrities and everyday people who are committed to improving the lives of others. “I wanted it to be about people who actually do stuff, not just show up for red carpet events and get the gift bag,” offers Russo. So far, Russo has snapped Steven Spielberg and Sophia Loren for the opus, among others. “It’s been a painstaking process because I get pitched so-and-so person who puts their name on a cause but doesn’t really do anything. I’m not interested in that. I want the mother who’s taking in 20 kids from an orphanage. Those people to me are making a difference.” Russo continues to seek deserving people to photograph for the project.

About Face is published by Pixie Press Worldwide, LLC. To order advanced copies, go to pixieltd.com or pixiepressworldwide.com.