Explore Fadil Berisha's journey in the Photography Industry

Thank you for coming.

My roots are from Albania. My family escaped Albania during communism in 1953. They left, not willingly, but they had no other choice. They went into Kosovo and I was born there in transition. I believe we were immigrants in Kosovo until 1968 or 67, when Tito that year decided to get rid of all the Albanians. He saw the situation in Kosovo being more Albanians and Serbs so he gave us a one way ticket anywhere in the world and not to come back. So my dad took the ticket to the US and luckily for me and for all of us, we moved here in 1968. We lived in Italy for one year because we had to go through health exams and other stuff and we came here. So we’ve stayed here since then.

I guess I was five or six years old in Kosovo, and I remember watching all the airplanes take off at the time hoping to to be in one of them. I wanted to go somewhere as far as I could possibly go and that was my dream. It’s such a funny story because I always wanted to fly. Then we end up coming here. I guess at that age, coming to the States and growing up there made me want to travel and see the world. I tried to be a flight attendant, just so I could travel. Luckily, that didn’t happen but with my job, I fly more than flight attendants. Now I hate traveling on top of that, but that was my dream. In the states we lived in the Bronx for about six months. My dad saw the situation there and I felt he couldn’t raise our family there. We were not used to that kind of life that was so crowded compared to the way we lived. So, he moved us to New Jersey and we were the only foreigners in Jersey at that time. In my school, there were just three foreigners. There was a Chinese, a Polish and an Albanian, and they had no special classes for us. So we were like deaf-mutes there until we learned the hard way, which was very hard actually as it included being bullied and going through all that until we learned the language. We went through hard times.

It was really strange because at that time they still had a sort of segregation, the colored people would stay in one area separate from the white people. Our family looked normal, white looking. So someone sold us their home in a nice white section in Jersey, not seeing my mom come with a scarf and my father with a hat later on. Once they saw my parents, they stopped talking to us and I remember being really hurt like wondering why they stopped talking to us. Apparently, they just didn’t see us close to our parents. We looked very different. We looked normal as kids and all that but then our parents came and people felt like they could not relate to them. So, I was always a bit hurt and angry about the discrimination and people making fun and saying things. I was a young kid then and I was angry. I looked at my mother and she was beautiful. She had a scarf and she had green eyes, light hair. My sisters were beautiful, my brothers as well and I didn’t get why we were discriminated against. That’s it. I thought that someday I was going to grow up and I wanted to make all the Albanians beautiful. I always said that as a child. I had this vision in my mind all those years. I guess you just say it, but don’t you realize you’re saying it. I went through all the hard times and then started working at age 13, 14, washing dishes and working in the kitchen and working, being promoted from the kitchen to the front as a busboy and a waiter and then a bartender and just working to make a living. Of course, I started making some money, dressing better, looking better, and I started gaining more respect and speaking the language. As time went by, I wanted to go to art school and my father was very religious. Parents don’t want you to go into the arts because it’s suffering for them. They see artists always suffering until they make it. They told me not to do it but to get married and have children instead. However, I wanted something more so why couldn’t I do something more? I was watching all these other people in this country making it. Why couldn’t I try to do something? My father insisted for me to get married, have children while I was just always craving that art and wanting to do something different. I finally told my dad that I was sorry, I respected him, I loved you, but I had to go to art school. So, I went to FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) and there I didn’t know what I wanted. I just wanted art. I started Fashion Merchandising but I kept changing my courses every other day and every other month. One day I met a photographer in school that told me I looked cute one time. He met me in the hallway and asked me to model for him. I told him I wasn’t a model but he insisted and told me that my body was perfect. Well, for us to graduate, we need student models so they can spend the whole year with us to make all the clothes for their bodies. And then we have this big show, the end of the year, where we present the collection to designers, Calvin Klein, big names, and we get hired that way. I refused at first but he convinced me to come try the clothes on because they were perfect. I had to go in, audition in an auditorium, because I had to belong to the modeling workshop. I was so nervous. I remember going to that stage. My friend told me that all t I had to do was to walk and the judges would then let me know. I was very nervous. I walked in and I went back hoping I hadn’t made a fool of myself. The guy told me that I would get it for sure. I remember the whole room in detail. So, if my name was on a list that meant that I had made it and I would be the school model for the whole year. I was afraid to go because I feared rejection. I didn’t go for like a week and a half until I finally snuck up and saw my name was third in the list. It gave me this boost of confidence. I started working for this designer at the end of the year. It was a big show called the Coty Awards in 1982, and some photographer took some pictures of me on stage and asked me whether I wanted to test for free. I liked photographs so she took some photos of me and when I got the pictures I thought they weren’t so bad, there was something there. It wasn’t about me becoming a model, it was about giving me confidence to think highly of myself, to think of my values. I started feeling like I really belong with these people.It gave me that energy to go and design. So, I became friends with the photographer. I loved being around her everyday. We became very good friends. There was a reason I just became friends with her. I liked watching her work and I couldn’t wait to get there. One day she told me that Italy was the place to get discovered as a model, as a photographer, as a designer, etc. She suggested we go together and share a room. She was older than me and told me we could get discovered there. I was designing menswear clothing and thought I could make some kind of a connection there while she could do her photography. So we went there but after a few months I was working, but not that much. She was working a lot. So she became more famous. I started realizing that the job as a model was tough for me. I needed consistency. I needed something in my life. So, I was getting frustrated. So she owed me a photo shoot of my portfolio, and I styled these two twin brothers. I spent time on this great styling shoot but she went out with someone and fell in love with this young man and her mind was there and not on the photo shoot. I was behind her on the photo shoot and every time the model turned to one angle, she clicked too late. She missed so many shots and told me she was done. She wasted my whole day. I sat with this guy and told him I wished I had taken the pictures myself. The light went on at that moment and I asked myself; could I be a photographer? Is this what I was searching for? I honestly didn’t have the answer to that but I knew I loved making people happy, I loved making people beautiful. I loved beauty, I loved portraits. Also, I get bored so easily and this job is never boring, every day there is a different person. However, I didn’t know if I had the eye because I never looked at the camera because I respected her as a photographer and I kept my space. IHowever, when the light went on, I went back to her and asked if I could borrow the camera and she said yes. I learned a lot of things from her. I directed that guy in the photoshoot and realized I could make that guy look good, I could make money for this person. This is what I wanted to do, It’s photography. It was meant for me to go away from my family, not get distracted by them and have my own peace, to find myself and to find out what I want to do in life and I found it. So once I knew that, I had to get it and nobody was going to stop me. I currently have so many students, so many interns. I bring them all here and during the majority of the shootings in our country and around the world, even with Miss Universe, I train every photographer because I was that kid and I want them to experience the same liberation I found. I let them come in here, spend time with us, and let them look at the makeup, the hair, the style of design, where they find themselves, where they feel the power. So I do that all the time.

No, he didn’t approve anything. He told me that I was doing something against our religion, something against him. He wanted me to know that from that day on, we would never talk about this again.So he put that guilt into my soul. I told him that I loved and respected him but I wanted to do something different and that I was sorry but I was going to go and follow this career and we never talked about it. I went through really hard times because then they would not help me because they figured if they helped me, It would be bad because they wanted to talk me out of it. My father was such a great person, religious in his own right but eventually he got sick. Luckily, Albania opened up. We took him back to Albania to see Albania one more time. He had a brain tumor and we took him in a wheelchair and he got there, reunited with his sister and saw the country. We brought him back for the surgery. He lived three more years and we took him back to Albania when he was clear to bring his sister and his family here to reconnect with everything he missed for 55 years. In the meanwhile, I went through a really bad time where I lost my apartment because I was paying for film. The expenses were so high. Back then, you had to buy the film, process it and print it. It’s three expenses. Nowadays, the digital is easy as you shoot, can erase and don’t lose anything. The clients will not pay right away and I would wait six months to get paid. I was paying for the film, not my rent and I got evicted. I had a child and I must have been at least 28 then. It was the lowest point of my life as I had to move back home, my wife and the kid in that same room I grew up in and I went into depression. I had to go back and every moment I felt like crying.

It was the biggest failure of my life. I didn’t know how I could do that to my family, to my wife? How could I? Why did I pay for that film and not the rent? At that point I even thought that maybe they were right. They told me I was never going to make it. My father always said that we’re Albanian and nobody’s going to give it to us and I shouldn’t even kid myself. However, I refused to accept that and thank God that I did. I felt like a stranger in my own home because my brother was living there with my mom and my dad and his family. So, I was quiet. I surrendered to what they wanted me to be. I was quiet and I guess I was waiting for them to tell me “we told you so”. They would never tell me that but they felt bad for my pain. My mother reassured me that this is what our family’s for, to support each other during these moments. I was just angry at myself. Then one, I changed the channel on TV and my nephew yelled at me to not change the channel as I was in their home and I slapped him. Then my brother came and told me to not ever touch my son again and I just burst into tears and cried and cried. It had nothing to do with my nephew, it had to do with myself. My mother said that he didn’t mean it. but I actually needed someone to tell me that so I could cry and let it out. I cried and cried for a long time. Then, my sister took me for a walk and said that it was nothing. But it was really just a need to let it out and about two or three months later I decided to get a job. The Albanians were laughing at me, calling me “L’artiste”. They were all making fun of me and I decided to block them.

Well, I love them so much, but we were a primitive family as well, very primitive. I worked in a pizza restaurant, I washed dishes and did all those things. I never looked down at that but I kept hearing comments about the way I dressed or them mocking me about becoming an artist whenever they saw me. Meanwhile, I went to the American people, they called me a genius and they paid me. I went to Albanians and I felt bad, so I put my head down. I always loved them, but they didn’t accept me, including my own family, my brothers. It was constant but I kept going. They were always in my heart but when I blocked them, I knew I needed to do that. I took a job so nobody could see me to work at the Waldorf Astoria, serve all the tourists at this hotel, leave my house at four in the morning, take the bus to go into the city, serve breakfast, and get back home by three. So, I didn’t see any of my people but was just so angry with myself. The failure made me focus to take care of my family, to get a bigger apartment. Sure enough, I made money and then I got a three bedroom apartment and I got comfortable financially and I realized that I suffered so much to let it go and I had to pick up the camera again. When I picked it up, everything opened up.

Well, I think it was ‘95, before my dad passed away. I started getting billboards. First of all, I started shooting our kids and our family, and friends and then the first real job was a shoot for Rod Stewart. I had an agent friend once I got one job, I started shooting. I got MTV, my first show was ‘Making of a supermodel’, and that became a huge success. They would take models and teach them how to become supermodels. They would find a model in the college and they would bring her to me. I photograph her and give her a portfolio and she gets signed. That went worldwide for so many years. Then I got to work with Halle Berry and also some other ones. I actually shot Bradley Cooper when he was a waiter, Denise Richards,etc. There were a lot of names that were just beginning to rise up. Halle Berry’s makeup artist was working with me at that time and Halle kept asking who this photographer that loves women so much was, she thought I made women look so beautiful and she said to my friend that she would love to work with me someday. She was famous, but not as much as she would be later on. My friend told me that Halle loved my pictures and she wanted to shoot with me. I said I would love to shoot her. They called me one day and said they were coming to New York to do Revlon with Halle Berry. She wants to give me 4 hours. I got so excited the Friday night I went home, didn’t go out to get nice and rested and I got to work with her the other day. As I’m shooting her, she had short hair, that long neck and wanted to shoot something different, from a unique angle and I told look at the light like the old movie stars. I was having a moment, knowing something was going to happen. I looked and I took this angle. She was looking like this at the light with this long neck from a long angle and she told me she loved working with me. I asked why. She told me that she loved it when I got excited. Then about three weeks later they said that Halle wanted to see all the pictures. I couldn’t believe it. She chose 16 pictures, she approved everything and told me that I was allowed to use the 16 pictures. However, I got a phone call a week later saying I shouldn’t use the pictures, because if that month went well for her, she would help me sell all the pictures. While she was filming Catwoman or James Bond in London, she was nominated for an Oscar and she won the Oscar. That’s when you get those lucky moments in your life. She had no time to do any press pictures when she won the Oscar as she had to fly back to London the next morning. So she helped me sell all the pictures. I got the People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” cover with her face on it and the shot was mine. That was an incredible moment as she was the most beautiful woman in the world and the Oscar winner. That opened so many other doors. Then, I starred in the Tyra Banks Show, I started doing Miss Universe and became the official photographer for 96 countries. In the meantime, at that time, my father was nearing the end of his life. I was in the studio and was told that he was probably dying in a week so I should spend time with him. We would always fight. We loved each other, but I was the youngest, I was the rebel and in an Albanian family, you have to respect the elderly and you are the last to speak. I was the changer. I always pushed them to change and so I was not the favorite in the sense that I didn’t obey him because I wanted to change. He never looked at me because I was sort of a disappointment to him. So he always looked straight at the wall but he didn’t want to die without giving me the freedom. He asked me about my business and I told him that I was all over the billboards. I was the only Albanian photographer in the world who had a 5,000 square feet studio in New York City. I was really successful and happy. He looked at me and told me I had a very interesting business. The whole family, instead of helping me, tried to stop me, but I never let go. He said that God would help me. I always cry when I share this story. At that moment ,I think he gave me that freedom. So, right after that the Albanians discovered me. It was a journalist named Amilda Dymi who contacted me. We are still very good friends. There was a Kosovar TV station, TV Victoria. She was Albanian and her co-host was Kosovar. They did the news, they discovered me and wanted to do an interview. I didn’t speak Albanian that well, so I couldn’t communicate in Albanian and I started sweating from being ashamed by that as I wanted to make my family proud but she translated for me. I never knew what Albanians really looked like aside from my own family and friends because we didn’t have many Albanians around us. I just remember I couldn’t wait to do this and to help Albanians, because now I fulfilled myself, I had nothing to give them. Now I could give them something to inspire them. So I remember being so proud and doing these interviews. Of course, then they started finding me and Albania opened up. I had seen my parents cry for Albania every single day, for their homeland. So that pain went into my soul and made me be more curious about Albanians. I went in 1996 with my staff when Vera Grabocka was hosting Miss Europa for the first time. I wanted to go help them so they could look good because I had the staff too and they didn’t have any products, didn’t have anything. I went there and I went for the first time and I remember seeing “Mire se vini” (Welcome in Albanian) and I started crying because I felt like I belonged and I couldn’t wait. I was hugging everybody like everyone. It was really the most amazing time.

Never give up. Believe in yourself when you find something that you love. I always had a feel that gave me hope that I should keep going. I said this when I was invited for a lecture at my school. I told the students that sometimes I didn’t have money for the bus, there were times I didn’t have money for lunch. Talking about this and talking as I have today, sharing something so personal to me, still brings me tears. I keep thinking I’m over it, but when I talk about it, it stills comes back. I remember when Amilda asked me after the interview about what was the most success I had. I answered that it was actually at that moment. I was creating before anyway, but I didn’t have the full love of your father. So once he gave me his blessing to go ahead and do it, I did it foolhardy. So never give up. If you believe in it, you have to be realistic. I may want to be a supermodel, but I am by no means a supermodel. Even before photography, I just knew it, I knew I was going to get this and I was going to do what I had to do. So people have to be realistic about what they want. It has to make some sense, but never give up. It’s not how many times you fall, It’s how many times you get up. I myself gave up at one point but then when I felt that comfort, I picked it up again. It feels like a drug addiction, either you go down, you die or you come up. That was my story. I asked God: Where was this before? Why didn’t that come to me earlier? I now know that it wasn’t my time. My father’s blessing was important to me because we all love our families and we live for their love and we live for their acceptance. To me, Albania has been my family, the whole Albania. Maybe all the pain that I saw my family in when crying for Albania affected me and I channeled it as love for the Albanians. My studio has been this place for all these years for every Albanian to showcase their work. I’ve shared everything with them, and I still do. This summer, my friend Nevila invited me to a place by the water to stay when I went to Durres. For the first time I fought so hard to show the greatness in Albania. I felt such pain and happiness at the same time, because once I saw the airport full of foreigners, I felt like I was not needed anymore. It was done. We achieved something that I had tried so hard for so many years. I have tried to bring celebrities to Albania so they can show the world that we’re okay, our country is okay, our people are okay. I had to bring Eliza Dushku. I did a documentary about Albanians. I remember going and just bringing different people so they can share the story because maybe they don’t believe me, because I’m too close to the Albanians, but let Americans themselves see and let them tell their story. However, Albania had record breaking tourism this summer. So, I felt sad and happy at the same time.

Earlier, I talked to you about Carmen. in this lifetime, you meet certain people that you connect with. Carmen is 92 years old now. At age 60, I saw her in a Ford Supermodels book. It was all young models and then I saw this older silver haired woman. She looked like a tornado, transmitting this energy. So what happened was that I got to shoot her and she was very special. As a photographer in those days, in the beginning of your career, you did a lot of test work to build your portfolios. I got her and I was shocked. She was famous, but then she wasn’t working as much. When we finished shooting with her, I said that this woman was so special. I wished that one day I had a respectful job so that some day I could respect this woman with an important job. Long story short, I landed the Rolex lifetime contract. I did a shoot for the owners. They called me and told me they had a new baby and asked how I would sell this $85,000 watch. I thought that very few young girls have the money to buy that watch so I must find a beautiful older woman, someone that’s well kept, looks young, is chic, looks expensive and like she can afford it. Carmen came to mind and I went to the owner and told him I had an idea. I told them about an amazing older model. He said that they adored and respected me but didn’t want her. However, I was not going to shoot her like an old lady, she would have loose hair, wearing Jean Paul Gaultier, she would have the chicness about her and her name was Carmen Dell’Orefice. They didn’t know that. So I put up my computer and Ford Supermodels Book and the owner’s wife recognized her, she said she loved her and I said to do a $10,000 a test shoot with her. I talked with Carmen and told her to do the really nice tests and If they liked it, they would buy it. I also invited Eralda Hitaj, this beautiful Albanian girl who is not very tall but has an Angelina Jolie type of face. I said my dream was to empower the Albanians, to make them feel beautiful and to get the contract for Rolex you have to be the highest model in the world. I did a test with Eralda and I gave all my love to her in the pictures. However, she was a bit worried thinking I would lose this whole contract because she thought no one would want to see an old lady and didn’t ruin this opportunity to be ruined for her because she felt so special. However, in my opinion that old lady was really unique and I had the young girl too. So my daughter was 17 years old with her friends having dinner in a restaurant and I told Violet that I have a problem, I was nervous because of the campaign. I really trust her vision. I showed her the campaign and she said the Albanian girl was really beautiful but the other one was really cool looking and suggested I go with her. If a young kid accepts an older woman, that was my success right there because if she’s accepted, the whole world’s going to accept it. I went to see the owners and they were amazed. They took the pictures, and his wife went and opened Vogue magazine and showed us a picture of Gisele Bundchen , the famous Brazilian model. She said she was putting Carmen’s picture next to her, was going to close and open the magazine and wanted us to tell her where the eye dominates when she opens it. Where did the eye go? Carmen dominated. You never saw Gisele because she was very unique. She said she was buying both campaigns with the young girl and the older model. They release the campaigns that hit the world and three months later, he calls me and says I was right on the money. The older woman sold the watch, 2008 was the highest year of Rolex and with that, they would give me a lifetime contract with Rolex. So, I am not a money person. I’m like a kid till this day. I went with passion and I didn’t understand what that meant and didn’t know you could actually make millions of dollars. They gave me over 200 campaigns and I shot with all the number ones in the world from Roger Federer, Michael Bublé, Diana Krall. I was shooting, I was on a plane every other day to Argentina, to Dubai, to China, shooting all the number one sports people in the world, number one artists in the world from the opera world, golf and tennis. Around this time Albania was developing. So I took everything I made and booked a flight to go to Albania and Kosovo. I took 20 experts from the US, hair and makeup stylists, designers, photographers, brought them all to Albania, to inspire the Albanians in design, clothing and makeup and all that. So, I was using this money for what I was there for. I’m so happy to see today that Kosovo is leading the way in the world of design, in music, in arts and it has to do with inspiration, inspiring people. I’m doing a book, by the way. So the book should be done, fingers crossed, by mid February for Fashion Week. The book is a labor of Love, 33 years together with one model, one muse, every campaign and she’s the most loved and she’s in the Guinness Book of Records the oldest model living and we are still working together. We’ve done just about three covers of Bazar and this book means a lot. I love to respect people when they’re living. I want to enjoy that. Once we die, we don’t know where we go. I think it’s about enjoying the moment. Right after that there will be an Albanian book, which I’m working on with Emina Cunmulaj and It’s so beautifully shot.

For me, it’s what I was supposed to do. I use it to help humanity. It was never for me. I’ll tell you about the first campaigns for the war in Kosovo with Vanessa Redgrave, the actress. I remember five students coming into my studio right after this situation. They walked in my studio as NYU students from Kosovo. They had just received underground pictures of massacres of Kosovo. To this day, I get emotional about it. They had killed hundreds and buried the children, women with cut off stomachs. It was the most horrific thing that I had ever seen. They came to me and said that I was the only famous name they knew and I was Albanian. They wanted my help to bring this image to the media. I looked at that and I looked at the pictures and I told them that they were in the wrong place. I was a fashion photographer which is a superficial business, nothing to do with humanity, it’s luxurious and I didn’t know how to help them. They said that they had no other place to go. I told them to take the photographs back. They refused and left them to me. I went home and I talked to my mom because I didn’t know the history as much. I told her about these young students who came to my studio to show me how kosovars were being killed and how the oppressors were blocking this from coming out. They had been doing this for so long. They started killing intellectuals first who disappeared at night, all the doctors, school teachers, lawyers. She said that If I could do anything, I should do it. I called the students and told them that they had ruined my life since I was not the same person anymore. I was born there; I’m from Albania but I was born in Kosovo and that could have been us. I didn’t know what to do but I saw the Chinese, the Iranians in France in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, demonstrating the photographs of the massacres. I was willing to pay for all these photographs to blow them up and they would come and write on the photographs and we would hit the streets of New York. I would go with my children and we would all beg for the American people to help us save Kosovo. We started a movement and it got bigger and bigger. Then, we formed the Kosovo Relief Fund. I got Vanessa Redgrave to do a huge concert at Saint John Divine and bring all the media from the world and show it on a larger scale. I will never forget that woman, that amazing actress that helped us. She was involved in Bosnia and wanted us to have a concert, we got the media and took the photographs. For one month, we did the program together. She came to me saying she felt terrible but had to ask me something. When she was inviting American people, artists to perform for Kosovo, they asked her what they looked like, whether they were dark Arab Muslims. She thought there was nothing wrong with being Muslim or being Arab. As a photographer, I had to take a picture of a young girl, a young teenage boy and girl, a middle aged couple, and an older couple and blow them up. I knew how to deliver a message to the world. I would hold every photograph one by one without words until the last photograph. However, Albanians are gorgeous people. My daughter has blond hair, blue eyes, she looks German. At one point, they had invited 25 influential Albanians. I found out the person who did the “I love New York ” campaign was Albanian. I invited him because I was in fashion and his wife was a supermodel. He came for me and the next day he called me and said that was the most amazing thing any Albanian had ever done. We had Mandy Patinkin, Audra McDonald, all the big names performing for our Kosovo. He asked to send him this photograph the students gave me. I sent the pictures to him and he freaked out, he called them butchers. He said he would create the biggest campaign for me against genocide but I must raise the money to run these campaigns. I said that I would. He did the strongest campaign and we raised money with the mosques, with the churches to Boston, to Chicago, Michigan, New York, with the Albanians. We went every weekend and we raised money and we ran those campaigns in The New York Times, Washington Post, everywhere until they got to the hand of Bill Clinton. Then we worked in the camps for six months, I was there until we stopped the war. So now if I can say one thing about photography, the question it took a very long way to answer for you, is that for me it was about using it for the right reasons in those moments and that’s what I’ve done. I have shown Albanian faces to the world so that we can be accepted and we have reached that point now. I have photographed every politician of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia. Once I knew the image was important, especially to this country I needed to polish it. God gives people gifts and their talent but I always say with Albanians, I just shine the gold. The gold exists, I’m just there to shine it.

I chose the most difficult type of photography, portrait. It’s most difficult because for me, you have to bring emotion out of people and for you to allow me inside you to get those emotions is very hard. So, without an emotion, there’s no picture. If you look at the war in Vietnam, that picture of one little girl naked running, how much that image meant, that one image to save Vietnam. I see images of Kosovo, one old man with William Walker hugging. Those images are so powerful. I’m known for portraits. I do fashion but it’s all about the face. Carmen says: “Fadil sees something in us we don’t see in ourselves.” My job is to really scan you up and down and watch you every move you make and where your lips are, eyes, the movement and snap that one second where you look really confident in whatever you’re doing, whether it’s sexy, whether it’s classic, whether it’s smiling, it has to look real. It’s about the trust that allows you to do that, to look inside to get that photograph.

I think artists die working. It’s a cliche but they say to find what you love to do and you’ll never work a day in your life. It’s about having that passion, that energy. Of course, for me, it’s about the human soul. I was told something years ago from the president of Miss Universe. It reminds me of my trip to Morocco. One time I was photographing different people there and they took my camera, they broke it because they said I was taking their soul away. I only wanted to see the good parts in the person. I don’t want to see the sadness. I want to see the best inside them and put the best out of them. That’s what’s in my soul and that’s what I want to pull out. A lot of this time this year, as you know, the ‘heroin chic’ was in fashion. I had to do it because it was part of fashion. I hated doing it because even when I did it, it didn’t work. I don’t want to see life sad. I don’t want to see life miserable.

I think really, again, that finding their passion, finding their love and believing in themselves. I thank God for this country even though I was discriminated against at first. I never changed my name and thank God I didn’t because so many doors have opened for me just for being myself. Be yourself. Don’t change for anybody like that. I remember I was shooting this black model who asked me where I was from and I said I was Albanian. She told me about a young man working at Sephora, a 16 year old who’s Albanian. She told me he was really talented ask asked if I could help him. It was Mario Dedivanovic and I took Mario for four years, trained him and he became a superstar. I discovered Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner and also did the first photographs for Justin Bieber’s wife. I love finding people, I love building. So they should never give up. When they find that thing that they love, they have to stick to it no matter what it takes, stick to it. It’s suffering and all that on, but it’s all worth it when it comes in the end.

I have one regret I didn’t do. I was supposed to shoot Mother Theresa, and I remember that she was in New York with Princess Diana. I was young and stupid. I said I dIdn’t want to shoot her there, I wanted to go to Calcutta and shoot her in that environment and she died later. I think every shot, every model is unique. They have their own. There’s the difficult ones that you find very challenging to shoot. Snoop Dogg was one of them. I had just photographed the president, United States, Bill Clinton when he was president. It was such a great honor because I don’t know how to shoot the presidents. It’s a different mentality but I was asked to do it and I said I was going to do it. I thanked him on behalf of all the Albanians and it was the most rewarding time. Two weeks ago I got to shoot Snoop Dogg in his house. It was one of the most difficult things because you go from one level to another level. He was completely high, smoking joints. He got very wary for a minute where we got into an argument because he was not allowing me to even introduce myself to him. So my client told me it was a really bad day and didn’t care what picture I took but I had to take a picture. He was out of it and he came out of this house with a big joint and the boombox. There was no connection. At one point, I was by his garage and I just talked to him. He told me his shoots normally last 20 minutes and hours had already passed. There was a really bad picture of him on the wall while eating Cheerios and hashish and I pointed at it and told him that’s why I looked like that. The bouncer, the bodyguards told me to not piss him off because he was going to throw me out and I just didn’t care. I came from New York. I was there from 8 o’clock in the morning until it was 12 o’clock and he came down smoking a joint and I wasn’t even supposed to talk to him. So, I was right. He looked at me and told me to shoot. I was so angry, I was shooting the feet. All of a sudden the wife had to go with the kids and I just knew I had to make this work. We both turned quiet and I knew this was my chance to get him to trust me. He had cars everywhere, all the empty cars. I asked him to talk about cars. I asked him about an old old mafia car. He said he had just gotten it. I told him it would be amazing to shoot with that car like a gangster. He liked the idea. I told him to wear whatever he wanted. He came out like a gangster with the hat and the chains. He set one foot in his crotch, and had a joint. I said he looked so beautiful and I got the most amazing pictures. So in these moments, you just have to make them work. I always say it was difficult, but it ended up being a great success. Also, he’s a great person. The image he had, he had to portray that image to his followers. On the other hand, he’s married to his high school sweetheart, and has worked with Martha Stewart the past 2-3 years. So, it shows he’s a smart business person.