Ivan Shaw: From Intern to Photography Director of Vogue

After a distinguished twenty-year tenure as Photography Director at US Vogue, Ivan has transitioned to The World of Interiors, taking on the role of Acting Visuals Editor while also managing the US Condé Nast Archive. Ivan's career has been marked by his deep involvement in the history of fashion photography, where he has shared his expertise through numerous lectures across the United States and England. His influence extends into prestigious institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Anna Wintour Costume Institute, the Getty Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, where he has served as a panel moderator. Ivan's literary contributions are notable, having co-authored works like "Around That Time: Horst at Home in Vogue" with Hamish Bowles, "Patti Hansen: A Portrait," and contributing to publications for Tonne Goodman's "Point of View" (April 2019), "Hunks & Heroes: Four Decades of Fashion at GQ" by Jim Moore (September 2019), and "Pulp Power: The Shadow, Doc Savage and the Street and Smith Universe" (2022).

HM: How did you become interested in photography?

IS: I became obsessed with photography as a very young boy. My brother was given a camera as a gift but he didn't use it so I started taking pictures. Many years later, my father was buying a newspaper in central Massachusetts where Clark University is located. A college that was recommended to me. So he drove me up there to finish the deal and we pulled into Clark. I walked around the campus and I thought it looked great! I was accepted and decided to go there.

I had worked all the way through high school so I went to the newspaper business my dad had bought called Business Worcester and I met with the publisher. When he asked what I was interested in I said, “Well, I love photography”.

They put me to work in the darkroom and there was a young 24 year old photographer Christopher Navin who was brilliant. I cleaned and helped him process film and he taught me photography, how to develop and how to roll film. He taught me everything about photography, the basics of black and white photography and color transparency until I started doing assignments for the magazine.

I got myself a Nikon with a 50 millimeter lens and ended up buying some lights. I was literally working and going to school full time. I would get up in the morning, I'd go to class, I'd go to work, I'd work all day, I'd come back to the class, go back to work. And I did that for the next four years.

"Around That Time, Horst P. Horst in Vogue" Photograph by Horst P. Horst.

HM: What was your career path to where you are today?

IS: I really loved Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone Magazines. In one of those weird coincidences that life offers, a friend of mine from Clark was in New York and invited me to dinner. One of the other people at dinner was the assistant to a features editor at Vanity Fair and he sat right next to the assistant to the Photography Director, Elizabeth Biondi. When I told him how much I would love to work there, he passed along my resume to her assistant. I had to sell myself as they didn’t really have interns but she accepted me.

That was just the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life! I was getting to work at Vanity Fair.

I had imagined it would take me 30 years to get to that point! Annie Leibovitz, Herb Ritts, Helmut Newton and Michel Comte were all working there, doing some of the best work of their careers. And I just thought it was the greatest place. I realized I didn’t want to leave Vanity Fair. I would aim to be a picture editor rather than a photographer. I sold my lights and my cameras.

There was a job opening for the assistant of Charles Churchward, the design director of Vanity Fair, that I was offered. Six months later, as Charlie was the best design director in the business at the time, they brought him up to Vogue and he asked me if I wanted to join him.

So I went to Vogue and I loved it! I was working for Anna Wintour and around two years later I was promoted to photo editor. I was 26 years old. I ended up holding that position for 20 years until 2016. It was incredible. We worked on Teen Vogue. Men's Vogue. Vogue Living, all during a golden era of magazine publishing. We did some of the biggest issues ever in the history of Vogue and I think ever in the history of consumer magazines.

By 2016 it was becoming more and more about online, and I was ready for something new.

I loved the idea of working on books. I had found a book called “Vogue's Book of Houses, Gardens and People” that had been done in 1968 by Horst P. Horst, where he had photographed some of the great homes and residents of the world. Horst had studied at the Bauhaus and he had apprenticed with Le Corbusier when he first came to Paris, so he had an understanding of interior design.

I realized we had all of his originals and the reproduction rights to all of his work. I asked Anna Wintour and told her I would love to bring this book back to life for a new generation and she agreed. I realized I couldn't do the book without Hamish Bowles because although I understood the photography. I didn't understand the furniture design. Thankfully, he also knew and loved the original book and wanted to work on it with me.

It took me about two years to get it together and Hamish edited it and it was called “Around That Time, Horst at Home in Vogue”. It was my first book and it was super successful. In fact, it just made a list in the New York Times recently with people saying it had inspired them to change their careers into design, which is the most heartening thing.

Two years ago in December, Hamish Bowles asked me to help out with the World of Interiors where I am currently the acting visuals editor. This was always one of my favorite magazines.

"Tonne Goodman, Point of View" Photograph by David Sims.

HM: What was involved in the day to day as Photography Director at Vogue?

IS: I was responsible for assigning photographers and producing photoshoots. For the major features, we would have meetings with Anna and all the other editors and make the decisions of which photographers would be chosen. I would then go to the agents and liaise with the stylists. So it was more of a logistical role where I would have an impact. I was allowed to hire both the photographers and creatively produce the front-of-book shoots. I had the best of both worlds. I had my own kind of sandbox to work with. On the other side of it, I got to work with Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, David Bailey and the great fashion editors like Grace Coddington, Phyllis Posnick, Tonne Goodman, Camilla Nickerson, Elissa Santisi and Tabitha Simmons. All of the great Vogue Fashion editors.

"Pulp Power, The Shadow, Doc Savage and the Street & Smith Universe".

HM: You’re talking about some of the greatest names in photography!

IS: When Irving Penn sent in a transparency, I would open the package, put it in the planning room, turn the light box on and everybody would just sit in awe of it. It was the same way with Helmut Newton. When he did the famous story with the wheelchairs. I would get the prints from the messenger coming in from Monte Carlo, lay out the prints and wonder, “what is the world going to think when we put this in the magazine?”.

When those iconic photographers left us that never really happened again. There was something about Penn and Newton that was so extraordinary. Not to say that the other photographers are not absolutely brilliant and great photographers too.

If you look back at those pictures, they are still really important, and they still hold up 30 years later, they're still just as good. They don't look dated. They're totally timeless. And that’s amazing. What an honor and a joy to be able to work in an environment where you get to experience that.

"One More Lap, Jimmie Johnson and the #48". Photograph by Pari Dukovic.

HM: Can you recall any particularly interesting events or conversations you had with any of these greats?

IS: I like to tell the story about David Bailey who one day sat in my office and was stopping by. We were talking about him growing up in the East End and I asked him about the Krays. He said, yeah, I grew up with those guys in my neighborhood, I photographed one of their weddings and one of the brothers. After all the things that David Bailey has done and the huge impact he’s made on photography, he repeated, he was just a kid from the East End.

"Chronorama, Photographic Treasure of the Twentieth Century" Photograph by Helmut Newton.

HM: So how has fashion photography changed over this period?

IS: There was a massive reckoning on multiple fronts. We really needed to look at who was taking the pictures and the politics around that and really look at how people are being treated. Systemic racism is real, and it's sometimes unconscious. You don't realize that you're part of a system that has been treating some people so unfairly.

I would like to think that we have made a huge advancement from where we were before and that things are much better but of course, we haven’t eradicated everything. I think people are very aware of these issues now and also unafraid to call someone out if they are acting in an inappropriate way. People have to be held accountable.

There really should be equal opportunity to the world of fashion and fashion photography magazines, whatever your race or your gender or your sexual orientation.

When we changed the title from Paris Vogue to Vogue France it was to ensure that Vogue was not just for the wealthy women of Paris but for everybody in France and to make sure that it engaged and included all of the diverse communities throughout the country. This change was profound and really important. There was push back in the French press, as some people are resistant to change.

Ivan holding the first issue of Vogue, published Dec 17th 1892 (132 years ago)

HM: How has the online world changed the magazine world?

IS: Although the cycle of content distribution has changed as it's a lot faster now, the content hasn’t changed in the way we all expected. Good writing is good writing and good photography is good photography and I just don't think by going online that that's really changed.

I don't write my column any differently for the website or assign photographers differently for online stories as opposed to print.

All we used to do was to make a good magazine. Now you need to do a couple of things in addition. You need to have a good website. You need to have great social content on Instagram, Facebook or Tik Tok, and you might need to do a podcast or a video. So it's more challenging as you can't just do one thing really well. It's a much more varied landscape now, but I think it's really exciting in a way, if you look at it. Like a lot of the things that I cover for worldofinteriors.com We wouldn't have room for the print magazine as you only have so many pages. So I'm able to tell stories online that there wouldn't be room for in print. Ultimately, It's offering more opportunities for people.

HM: How do you measure it and know what people actually read?

IS: I always think it's sort of the blessing and curse of digital media is that you know the metrics and you know how many people are going on the site and how much time they're spending on it. That’s a blessing because you know what works and what doesn't work.

The curse part of it is that there's no magical thinking anymore. In the old days, when you did a magazine, if you knew that a million people are reading a magazine, you would assume that people are looking at all the stories and the advertisers are assuming that the readers were looking at all the pages but we can now see which columns are working and which things are not working. That can be a little harsh!

Ultimately it is good because you will stop investing time and energy in things that people are not reading or paying attention to, even if you think they seem great. It's tough, but it’s the way it is now, and it’s probably for the best.