Back in the day, one of the guys I assisted quite a bit was Tony Costa, an L.A.-based celebrity photographer who was always coming to New York to shoot for People Magazine. He called me up and said we were gonna be shooting Cissy Houston’s daughter who was getting a lot of notices because she had been recording with Jermaine Jackson. It wasn’t a big deal shoot…just a quick couple of rolls of B&W on seamless in a cheapie midtown rental studio for a one-paragraph mention in the magazine…and then Whitney showed up with a couple of dresses she borrowed for the shoot. No entourage, not even a hair and makeup artist…just a shy 21 year-old girl who was terrified cuz she was gonna be in People magazine. Tony and I were floored! Then she tells us she’s got an album coming out soon and she was signed by Wilhelmina to model and suddenly our quickie shoot had me running out to buy more film cuz we ran out after ten minutes!

And today it’s all so damned sad.