BY KENDALL MORGAN — Thomas Schenk is a study in contradictions. A long-term follower of fashion, he nonetheless fell into the world of fashion photography by accident. A self-taught natural at the art, he nonetheless delayed committing himself to his career until a chance encounter led him to his first work for Dutch. His almost cinematic shots of well known faces such as Karen Elson, Guinevere, Angela Lindvall, and Gisele seem like stills from movies the models have not (yet) made. Yet Schenk says he's not "the kind of person who loves everything he does." Which is fine, since a long list of clients and magazines do happen to love it.

On a chilly fall day shortly before he flew to Paris for the last leg of the spring 2002 collections, the photographer met me at Pastis for breakfast and discussed how he'd gone from summer courses at FIT and Parsons all the way to shooting for the likes of ID, Numero, Arena, Vogue (Italian, French, British, and Japanese), and L'Uomo Vogue.

Born in Illinois and raised in New Jersey, Schenk says, "I was fascinated by fashion, but I never read Vogue." He created outfits for his sister and ultimately attended art school as a ceramics major. A friendship with a makeup artist led to doing "little things together," but photography wasn't a career that he originally considered pursuing. Instead, he loved riding show horses, a passion he still pursues.

A fan of ground-breaking '80s designers Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier, photographer Mark LeBon, and stylist Judy Blame, Schenk was ultimately convinced to follow a friend to Amsterdam in the late '80s, where he found his first agent. That was just the beginning of the story.

Inspired more by the women he shoots and the clothes they wear than by photographic styles that follow the whims of fashion, his work has a timeless quality that becomes clearer the more you look at it. Here's a short conversation with an artist moving into his prime.

KM: How did you go from working in Amsterdam to shooting for all the magazines you work with now?

TS: I didn't even do that much in the beginning. I rode my horses like crazy. I just slacked off and didn't pay any attention to [photography]. Then one day my same friend said, "There's a new magazine starting called Dutch. Come to Paris and we'll meet this guy and do a story for it." And that was when it really started.

KM: Was that the first moment of thinking, Oh my God, this is going to be my career?

TS: It hasn't happened yet! More importantly is you make eight or ten pictures and you love every one of them and you really know that you've done something good. That's more important than where [the shot] ran or money.

KM: Are you most proud of any particular work for a magazine or any campaigns you've done?

TS: I see them and I like them but I never jump up and down over anything. I went to art school at Philadelphia College of Art and my uncle and my mom are really into art so it's kind of in my blood

stream. I really know art when I see it, so that's why I'm going to be hard on myself, because I know what's good. I know what good composition is and good hair, good makeup, good styling—I know when the whole thing is good so I'm very hard on myself.

KM: How would you describe the look of the pictures?

TS: I'm really into fashion so I think that my pictures are always going to be about fashion.

KM: Does it come from the model or the clothes?

TS: It comes from both. Casting is so important. I go back to girls who have been around for a really long time because they develop such personalities. Like Guinevere, I shoot with her a lot. A girl like

Guinevere can be do anything and be doing nothing and it's just everything—do you know what I mean? Anything, everything, nothing!

KM: But fashion is still your inspiration.

TS: I'm not really big on concept on the photography end of it. I'm more into the concept from the fashion point of view. I rarely do a motorcycle story or a Chinese story. I work with Joanne Blades a lot. She's a stylist who will take an idea and blow up with it. She just did a story based on Louise Bourgeois, the artist who had great personal style. We used some reference photos from that and every outfit that came out I was so excited to shoot. It was genius, just so fun and that was a story that was based on a real serious concept. So many stories are just about the short skirt.

KM: Is fine art a reference point you turn to a lot?

TS: Rarely. I rarely pull a picture out of a magazine that isn't a fashion reference and say, "Let's do this." There was a book out recently by a Swiss photographer (Karlheinz Weinberger) who did all of

these bikers and motorcycle guys and it was heavily referenced. So many stories came out that were similar to it and every editor had that book under their arm. I don't do that. I don't see a book and get excited and say, ‘I want to do this.'

KM: Which is probably why your work is very consistent; it doesn't look like anyone else.

TS: What I'm trying to do is keep it really simple, see who the girl is, see what the clothes are, and create a look that will maybe be a little more interesting. I don't feel like having a big scenario to hide things. What you're seeing is the girl and the clothes—that's it. I don't like seeing a background. I keep things very flat.

KM: That makes you different from a lot of photographers. Are there any goals you have?

TS: I just want to develop and get better. You can think that you're the greatest and maybe you can make a million dollars thinking you're the greatest, but how are you going to get better?

KM: So you're more into what you're going to do than what you've done?

TS: For sure. Anybody who doesn't want to be better, I don't know what they're doing.