Return to Doonesbury
Having photograph Garry Trudeau 25 years previously felt weirdly like a secret weapon; like I had the inside track.
The initial shoot was for Wired Magazine and was related to a TV show he was pitching with the story’s writer. My main memory of it is that the shoot was a disappointment.
Garry Trudeau was a legend and I grew up on his Doonesbury strip, so I had larger than life expectations. Garry is incredibly imaginative and bold, but ultimately more of a behind-the-scenes creative.
This time, armed with experience, I went in with an attitude of approaching this from multiple different angles, all to ensure success.
In reading the Yale Alumni Magazine manuscript about his long time connection with American military veterans, my assistant Sophia and I brainstormed prop ideas. We landed on a dog tag imprinted with the strip’s name on it. It's associated with the front lines, but is neither violent nor heroic: an ordinary soldier’s identification tag.
When we arrived a cold Tuesday morning for the shoot, we stepped into a elegant east midtown building with gorgeous warm sunrise light streaming across to the entrance. It was truly magnificent. The first thing Trudeau said, as he pointed to the sunlight, was, “I promised you great morning light, and there it is!“ I laughed self-consciously, and we continued to load in the gear bags. Of course, by the time we were fully in the space, it had clouded over and remain so for the rest of the day.
Nevertheless, he was a fantastic host, and gave me a full tour of his multi-story townhouse. You he regaled me with just the right anecdotes and advice: Andy Warhol making his portrait in the mid-seventies, the delicate balance of collecting ironic communist artifacts, how to collaborate successfully with director Robert Altman, and the time that Hunter S. Thompson threatened to sue him.
We were in danger of spend the whole time talking but luckily, he also had a great face, and was filling the room as his personality in a way that I did not pick up on our previous shoot. I was excited to get him in front of the camera, and he delivered once there.
Top Image: One of my favorite portraits from the session with Garry Trudeau, shot in the last ten minutes (of course). New York, February 3, 2026.
Second Images: A BTS photo by Ariel Pacheco; the unused dog tag (given his long running work with American veterans Trudeau was careful to avoid any confusion that he himself has serviced)
Third Image: A couple of contact frames from our 2000 sitting for Wired.