Landmark Portrait

I've worked with New York Magazine photo editor Isabela Quintro before, and she's awesome, so I wanted to impress her. We talk about doing a “power lunch“ portrait of Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel in an upscale New York restaurant.

We land on The Grill, a turnkey from the landmark Four Seasons Restaurant designed by Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, with Kahn & Jacobs in the Seagram Building in midtown Manhattan. Amazingly, I shot here 30 years before for a similar story for the same magazine, on literary super agent Lynn Nesbit. I don’t mention this coincidence to my client as I want to keep her focused on this immediate production.

The folks at the restaurant are super nice, but they have strict rules. For example, we’re trying to shoot him in one of the iconic booths, but they will not allow access until all of the lunch guests have exited the dining room. I’m stressed about shooting, given all the variables, so I lean into the “let go of the things that you cannot control“ mindset.

We receive word that the subject is coming early, very early. I tour the dining room floor, and it’s still half full — we are not shooting as planned. Luckily, this is an occasion where I knew to expect the unexpected, and I have a rough plan for shooting in the adjacent bar, with a mix of available light and LED panels.

Emanuel swoops in, all smiles and friendliness. From the get-go, he’s engaging me with lots of questions. How long have you been doing this? What was your first assignment?

I tell him that my first job was photographing an empty swimming pool for my school newspaper, and he’s unsatisfied. “What was the first job that paid!?”

We also talked about the benefits of drinking water — we’re both for it. About still wanting to impress our parents (“I can’t call my mother until my book is on the NY Times Bestseller List.”). How Nick Cave's anger fuels his staying power. And Frank Sinatra. He puts forth that Paul Anka wrote his best song, “My Way." Yeah, this aligns.

As much as bonding with a sitter is an important part in making the portrait, I understand this conversation as part cope, part controlling for him. And he keeps trying to leave. I managed to squeeze one extra setup out of him, but our promised 30 minutes became 20.

This is one of the circumstances where having the client on site is a benefit. She saw what we were dealing with and had appropriate expectations with the pictures. Once Ari left, I loaded the datacard into my laptop, and we reviewed the session. Isabela found a few that she thought could work, and left satisfied.

Additional note:
As we never shot in the booth, the food that New York Magazine ordered was given to the photo crew to have in our sub-basement holding area. It included a turkey club sandwich, a chopped salad, and a New York strip steak. Initially, we were just going to sample a bite of each dish, but the three of us ended up scarfing the entire meal before exiting. A delicious end to an adventurous session.

Top Image: Ari Emanuel, shot for New York Magazine. The Grill, NYC, September 16, 2026.

Second Images: It was a flurry of poses and expressions. A moving target.

Bottom Image: BTS at The Grill bar. Photo by Caeden Conley.