You’ve got to shoot this girl, she’s going to be a star

Richard Corman is the gifted and well-known shooter who had access to Madonna in the earliest part of her career because his mother Cis is Barbra Streisand’s producing partner. She told him, “You’ve got to shoot this girl – she’s going to be a star,” so he did. And, soon after, she was.

Richard shot Madonna in her apartment and on the roof, he shot her on the streets of the Lower East Side and he would go on to do rarely seen studio shoots of her for Per Lei Magazine and of her and the cast of Desperately Seeking Susan. He also shot Madonna with her best friend and roommate, the late Martin Burgoyne.

With Richard’s cooperation, Matthew Rettenmund from BoyCulture is making available four digital, archival prints he owns in limited editions of 25, all signed and numbered by Richard Corman. The photographs were originally shot square and the original format will be preserved by keeping the sizes 12″X12″ images on 13″X19″ paper. The four images are:

• #1 – Showing Madonna posing as a modern-day Cinderella as part of a test shoot for an updated movie version of the story that Cis Corman hoped to get Barbra Streisand interested in. Imagine Madonna as an Alphabet City Cinderella with Streisand calling the shots? “This image is special to me”, Matt says “I own a unique, oversized print that watches me do all my work. I sincerely think it’s more beautiful than most of Madonna’s most iconic early-years images, and had Richard commercialized it, it would be as familiar to us as the True Blue cover.”

• #2 – One of Matt’s favorites of all of Richard’s work for its textures and Madonna’s completely unique mood in the photo.

• #3 – A uniquely vulnerable image of Madonna in her first New York apartment. When Richard arrived to shoot her, she was looking down at him as he made his way up the stairs and he syas he was immediately transfixed by her cat eyes.

• #4 – Showing Madonna in her apartment looking like an Italian statue. “Again, I really feel Richard captured so many expressions that were not stock expressions that Madonna would repeat throughout her career. When he was done shooting her that first time, she gave him a tape to listen to. He popped it in when he got home and was blown away by the unreleased tracks. He called her right up and said, “Hey, you’re really good,” and she said, “I know.”

The price is $750 per print or $2,500 if you buy all four, plus shipping. Matt will not be extending this edition, nor will come back to these images once they’re sold out, making them – he reckons – a sound investment as well as absolutely lovely pieces of art.

Since the prints will be sold sequentially, if you’re interested, and you want a lower-numbered print, now is the time to let him know – please check the BoyCulture blog for details and contact information.

Thanks to Matt.