Gary Gross, the man behind the image of Brooke Shields that was removed from a London museum show, died last month at the age of 73. Though Gross won the right to sell the image after Shields brought suit to stop him–her mother had signed the contract–the image ruined Gross’s career and sent him on a path to become a dog trainer, according to the New York Times:
A lifelong animal lover, Mr. Gross had worked as a teenager at the stables in Van Cortland Park, near his home in the Bronx. With photo assignments fading after the Brooke Shields controversy, he decided to become a dog trainer. And in 2001, with Victoria Stilwell, who is now host of the television show “It’s Me or the Dog” on Animal Planet, he opened a dog training school in Manhattan.
He soon combined his passions, creating large-format studio portraits of dogs, lighting them the way he would fashion models and usually focusing on their eyes.
Richard Prince’s appropriation of the image similarly provoked strong reactions when the Tate Modern was pressured to remove his version of the work, Spiritual America, from the Pop Life show in 2009
Garry Gross Is Dead at 73; Photographer of Clothes and Their Absence (New York Times)
