Thinking of some of the most iconic singers of the 20th century many names come immediately to mind: Luther Vandross and Marvin Gaye, just to name two. The list could go on and on, as do the memories we associate with the music they brought into our lives. I still can’t listen to soul music from the ’70s or ’80s without thinking fondly of the summers I spent as a child in Delaware in the bosom of my mother’s family. That rich R&B music is the soundtrack to a time in my life when I was, among other things, happy. Whenever I hear those voices, I am transported to that summertime place.
Whitney Houston is among these rare legends with the power to transport us. Born in 1963 in Newark, New Jersey, Whitney Elizabeth Houston’s beauty, astonishing talent, and often controversial public image set fire to the music industry, fixing her place in the pantheon of pop culture and the hearts of her fans.
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Like many of the artistic geniuses who have inspired us, Whitney’s life ended tragically, the later chapters of her biography threatening to eclipse what was a brilliant career. It is with this complex and bittersweet understanding of Whitney Houston — as both a profoundly gifted artist and a misunderstood public figure — that one approaches the beautiful, new 191-page photo essay published by Atria Books, Whitney: Tribute To An Icon.
Curated by renowned photographer Randee St. Nicholas, the collection opens with a letter from Clive Davis describing his first encounter with the enigmatic singer as a teenager, performing with her mother at a small club in Manhattan, followed by a tribute penned by St. Nicholas herself.
“I have always been drawn to the idea of capturing iconic people who remain somewhat mysterious to the public, and being let in to reveal what lies beneath their image,” St. Nicholas explained to theGrio as her inspiration behind the book.
What comes after her opener is a rapturous photographic journey that takes the viewer from the video set of “I Want to Dance With Somebody,” with Whitney in a powerful stance resembling a beautiful, black Amazon princess, to harshly lit backstage images from the year 2000. Here we see Whitney in prayer, shoeless in a white dress, surrounded by cigarette butts and a box crate, her strappy heels sadly slumped nearby.
Interestingly, the images do not tell a linear tale. They jump from the 1980s to the 2000s and back seemingly arbitrarily. This affords the viewer the full range of Whitney’s dynamic personality, while capturing her many faces without the distracting associations of time and place. In this way, Whitney: Tribute to an Icon gives us Houston as the coquette, the child, the clown, or the diva without affixing any one version of the singer to specific points in her exhaustively-repeated narrative arc.
“You could not know her [Whitney] and not absolutely adore her,” St. Nicholas said of the singer’s many sides. The tome’s composition suggests that all these voices lived within Whitney at every given moment.
Chatting by phone with the esteemed St. Nicholas (whose career has spanned decades, bringing her in contact with some of the biggest stars of our time), it was very clear that Houston held a special place in her heart, prompting the sincere, heartfelt process that brought the book into reality.
Searching for images that “showed who Whitney really was,” St. Nicholas explained to theGrio that she spent six weeks pouring over thousands of photographs of the late star to give birth to her vision.
“I wanted to not only capture the essence of Whitney, but to take the viewer back in time, to the hair and make up and styling that defined these moments that we all lived through,” the photographer elaborated, stressing that she “wanted people to walk away remembering Whitney at her very best.”
Whitney: Tribute to an Icon underscores the fact that photography as an art form is a key cog in the multifaceted star-making machine. “In many instances, it’s the photographic image of a rising star that you see first, even sometimes before you hear their music,” St. Nicholas explained about the potency of the image in a pop star’s career. Houston’s power before the lens is memorialized in the book.
Further proof of the singer’s long-established love affair with the camera is that fact that Whitney was an in-demand teen fashion model before she was ever a star. She was the first black model to grace the cover of Seventeen magazine before becoming known for her astounding vocals. It is also revealing that this tribute, the only one authorized by the Houston estate, takes the shape of a photo essay alone, speaking to the significance of visual content and image to Houston’s career — making this forms the perfect way to remember her.
St. Nicholas went on to recount how the early 20th century photographer Edwards S. Curtis faced difficulties in persuading many of his Native American subjects to sit for photos. Many were afraid that photographs literally captured the soul. St. Nicholas agreed that photographs, when done right, do just that: offer a glimpse into the subject’s essence.
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It was her goal as curator to capture and reveal through the storytelling power of photography Whitney’s true essence. Houston was “completely effervescent and alive,” St. Nicholas mused about the legend. “There was no way of being in her presence without being completely intoxicated by her. She had a lightness about her, an ethereal quality, yet she was absolutely grounded.”
It was Whitney’s effervescent aspect that inspired St. Nicholas to refer to the singer as a “woman-child” in her text that leads Whitney: Tribute to an Icon. Whitney never lost her wide-eyed wonder and awe for the world around her.
Beautiful and well-crafted, Whitney feels as precious and personal as a family photo album. Fit for a place on the coffee table of any household, this homage to a complex woman and remarkable artist reminds us how Whitney Houston and artists like her forever remain in our memories and lives through their powerful images in addition to their music.
St. Nicholas hopes to empower readers seeking to remember Houston fondly with these photos. “I loved the experience of curating the book. It was really cathartic,” she said. “It’s been sad thinking of her not being here. I wanted people to feel like the book was from Whitney to them. I felt like I was collaborating with Whitney, delving into all of these moments in her life.”
Chase Quinn is a freelance writer, art critic, and budding novelist, who has worked with several leading human rights organizations in the U.S. and the U.K., promoting social and economic justice. Follow Chase on Twitter at @chasebquinn.