Shania Twain, Lake Placid NY, 1997. I’ve worked with Shania a number of times—so there was this trust between us. I was hired to shoot her album cover, and they sent me up to her place in the Adirondacks. It was up in the mountains, along a big lake. We did a bunch of pictures in and around the grounds, even strung a big black backdrop between two trees deep in the woods. It was summer—hot, buggy, wilderness.I had this idea of shooting her nude in the water, so the next morning we went out to the lake before sunrise, when the lake was still, this amazing fog still lingering. She was all done up—makeup, hair styled, the whole thing—but she disrobed and got right in the water. I stood at the end of the dock, lens ready. A few moments later she says, “Hmm...there are leeches in here.” And I’m like, “What?!” And she says, with far too little urgency, “Just send someone to the garage. There’s a big bag of rock salt—if you pour it around me it will keep them from biting.” It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.My assistant ran to get the rock salt, and as we sprinkled it in the water around her, she just stood there and posed for these beautiful images—surrounded by fog and leeches and salt. I’ll never, ever forget it—I would have been nowhere near that fucking lake. That shoot built our relationship. Later, when I directed one of her music videos, the comfort was already there. She’d been through a lot—had this dark patch, rough marriage. But she came back strong, with that same spirit. Just ballsy and kind and all-in.
