Article Find: The full story behind the ‘MJ GOLDEN CAPE PHOTO’ by French photographer Arno Bani

Remember when we blogged about the unreleased portraits of Michael Jackson by Arno Bani, well one of our readers tipped us off and now we get to see some more of these portraits along with an amazing article of Arno’s memories.

She wrote us a lovely message that we just have to share…

Thank you for a fantastically consistent positive website on MJ! I found your site over a year ago and have to check in daily. Great photos, great news, great stories, great memories. Keep up the L.O.V.E.!

Here’s a link to an interesting article I found from ArtInfo.com regarding the upcoming December auction of photographs taken by Arno Bani. The photos were commissioned by Jackson as artwork for the Invincible album, which were later nixed by Epic. The photos look stunning, and Bani’s dialogue from the sessions is bittersweet.

Cheers from SoCal USA!

A few experts from Arno Bani…

The project came about by chance. Michael Jackson had spotted a fashion shot by Bani on the cover of the Sunday Times style section and immediately decided that he wanted to work with the young photographer. At first, Bani thought someone was prank calling him, before his lawyer friend confirmed that the King of Pop was inviting him for an audience. Bani would make six return trips to New York ahead of the three-day shoot.

One image, “The Golden Cape,” was originally intended for the cover of Michael Jackson’s final studio album “Invincible,” but it was nixed by Jackson’s label Epic Records. “It was a great disappointment,” said Bani, sitting between his eight-month-old son and a stack of Michael Jackson prints, discarded among the more than 8000 he has signed and dated during the past three months for the collector’s box that will accompany the sale.

Bani and Jackson had developed an intimate but simple collaboration, where the photographer was given carte blanche to assemble his team and create his vision of the singer. Bani brought along star hairstylist Seb Bascle, makeup innovatorTopolino, and fashion trendsetters Frédérique Lorca and Maïda. It was summertime in Paris and everyone was in T-shirts and Bermuda shorts.

Topolino became the eccentric troublemaker of the bunch, Bani said. In an almost “diplomatic incident,” the makeup artist and his assistants spread vaseline around Jackson’s eye and softly blew the shiny blue glitter onto the singer’s face. “Jackson’s staff was shocked,” Bani remembered. “‘You can’t blow on Michael Jackson’s face,’ they protested.”

The makeup artist also snuck into Jackson’s purpose-built shower that was always carefully sanitized and supplied with ultra-clean, plastic-wrapped towels. In the end, Jackson “didn’t care about any of that,” Bani remembered. There were no eccentric celebrity demands, no complaints about the food or the room temperature.

Click here to read the full article

Tagged as: photographer Arno Bani