"Before I even arrived in L.A. there were pictures of my naked ass on guys´ refrigerator doors all across the country."
Tony Ward, one of the most prolific and recognisable male models of, well, ever, is standing outside the lobby of the Culver Hotel in Los Angeles, talking about being pigeonhold. Over his career, Tony has been the subject of some iconic male erotic imagery, shot by the haute vanguard of fashion photographers, from Herb ritts to Steven Meisel, Greg Gorman to Jack Pierson. "So that´s who people expect me to be," Tony says. "I meet people and they go, "He Tony, are you gay, Tony? Are you straight, Tony?" And I say, " Hey, I´m Tony, nice to meet you." I don´t define myself , I don´t de-fine myself at all. I do what the fuck I want when I want and it upsets people some of the time!" He pauses before adding, "A lot of the time." For a guy who carries so many titles - model, gay icon, photographer, painter, actor, producer, director, husband, father - he certainly dislikes labels. For a guy who, for more tham 25 years, and most notably in the early ´90s when he was dating Madonna, had his personal parts on public display, he surely doesn´t like to be, ahem, tied down. "I don´t give a fuck about that. The nudity, the sexuality out there, look, it´s like an appendage, it´s like a finger. I don´t see how people can stomach the torture of prisoners or the slaughter of innocent people all over the world and even raise an eyebrow over some sex."
During his relationship with Miss Ciccone, Tony was featured in several of the singer´s videos including Erotica nad Justify My Love, as well as in the titanic, rare and thus exorbitantly prices SEX book. Featuring seeming candids of the couple and others simulating all manners of congress, photographed by Meisel, the book caused quite a stir at the time of its release. "It´s funny," Tony says, "at that time we did the book it was shocking, now it´s like something you´d see in any European magazine." So how did it come about? "When I was with Madonna we were exploring, she was exploring, we were exploring things together and we felt like people were ready for a punch in the face. Youz realise when Madonna does something it explodes, all over the world. It was really nice to be a small boy on the Tsunami that is Madonna. really, I honor her." I wonder aloud if he minded his supplicant role in the videos and book, the submissive image. He smirks, then, referring to one of the most notorious photos in the collection, laughs, "she had her face in my ass, man!"
A veritable symbol of masculinity himself shirks the description. He doesn´t like the negative connotations, the social expectations, the arbitrary criteria. "I prefer to be a man," he says, "That means providing for my kids, teaching them about life, you know, stepping up to whatever comes your way." Having recently lost several family members, including his father, within the spam of a few months Tony was forced to seriously consider manhood. "I thought I was man before, but when you lose the people who tought what that means it´ll wake you up. But wehen I was out in the forrest, spreading my father´s ashes, I felt this really tribal, primitive thing, being a part of the cycle of life. I felt connected. to my teachers and to those I teach. I knew that someday, if I´m lucky, my children can do that for me and I jst felt ´ahhh,´you know? Peace."
The cycle describes by his carrer as one of the sexiest men alive began when, as he was failing out of college, he was discovered by a scout on campus. The man suggested that Tony´s figure, toned from his hobbyist body-building practices, along with his striking Romanesque face, would make for success as a model. "I was like, ´ah, whatever, man.´I thought I was the uggliest dude in the world, you know?" Not surprisingly a host of others - including a model manager - disagreed, protested even. "They said, ´No, we´re gonna make you a star,´ and I said, ´Really?´ And they said,´Yeah!´, so I said, ´all right.´" They set to work straight away, sending pictures of Tony, both clothed and nude, around the country. That led to his meeting legendary photographer Bruce Weber who, immediately entranced with his subject, created a series of arresting images. Surely you remember the black-and-white shot of Tony, statuesque in a pair of tighty-whiteys, with the Empire State Building behind him - portentous of a massive carrer to come. Among Tony´s earliest supporters, his first friend in L.A. in fact was photographer Rick Castro who persuaded Herb Ritts to cast Tony in a shoot that would later appear in Ritt´s first book. "Herb´s saying,´I don´t know, his nose is all funky,´ and Ricky is saying,´nah, man, you´ll see, he´s got something.´" Well that ´soemthing´proved to be so intoxicating and inspiring for the greatest eyes of the time, it became a wellspring for some of the most famous images of the epoch. It would again be Castro who would give Tony his first film role, in the now gay cult´s movie, Hustler White. "It´s a color, like fire-engine red," says Castro. "Hustler-white [The hustlers] wear these white jeans and as the cars drive down the street with their headlights the white illuminates and shows their basket really nicely." Of the experience Tony says, "It was fantastic, a gift," but of Hollywood´s reaction to his performance as a hustler, "Well, there is a lack of imagination. Same story, once you do one thing that must be who you are, to them." For Castro, who remains one of Ward´s most frequent collaborators as well as representing him as a painter and photographer at his gallery in Hollywood, it´s like this: "Tony´s the best example of the model as an artist. I´m not the only photographer who has become obsessed with him. A lot of very famous photographers have become fixated on him, obsessed with him, and created some really strong and famous images. Because of his energy."
That energy is brimming over right now. Now at age 45 Tony still shifts and flits around like a pre-teen. Even as he talks st length about his regime for detoxifying the organs (Jordan Rubin´s book Patient Heal Thyself is his functioning gospel) he´s full of bile and vitriol for puritanism, politicians (save Obama) and the passage of Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriages in California. He´s combustible and passionate. By turns he expounds on Buddhism, Deepak Chopra, Osho, anarchy, death, power, control, sex, love and art. He has a million plans, projects, and irons in the fire. A short film, insired by La Jetée, which he is producing for Bailey Hat Company; then a feature film he´s producing and acting in; also another film, The Story of Jen, in which he plays the lead, presently on the festival circuits; oh, an internet forum for filmmakers; a fashion line he´d like to do with Alexander McQueen... "I don´t want to just be a picture in a magazine. I have some things to say,. In fact, I have too much to say1 I´m doing a photo-autobiography with [art director] Sam Shahid. I have a ton of material and I love the idea of a pictorial biography to tell the story." He shakes his head, marvelling at it all for the moment. "Man," he says, "I´m just trying to work so hard I can´t see straight." He´s been out in the sun all day, working on paintings for an upcoming show, and apologises for being dead tired but the way he talks with such vigour I wonder if his mint tea isn´t spiked with something just a little more.... substantial. Not likely. Tony´s been sober going on four years now. "I was an alcoholic, or, rather, I am an alcoholic - I´m a twelve stepper and all that." He readily cops to a hard diet of hard drugs once upon a time. But rock bottom come in the form of "trying to paint, trying to be this painter, jacked on heroin, listening to Janes Addiction and just nodding out in the middle of the painting. When I woke up I was just like, ´This is a joke. You´re stuck, stuck in this ridiculous idea of yourself.´ I was trying to be this thing instead of just being me, you know?"
That´s when he decided to open it up. Keep changing, trying, exploring. Stop defining himself as one thing instead of another. He calls himself the antimodel, if anything, an artist. "Yeah, just an artist," he agrees. And he´s much kinder to his body now too. Aside from the raw diet and naturopathic cleanses he just joined a gym, but doesn´t do anything too strenuous. "I walk like those dorks, high stepping on the treadmill and I don´t use the weights like you´re supposed to. I just kinda swing´em around like this." He leaps up and twists his body around, whipping his arms this way and that, "like I´m swinging a battle axe."
For Tony Ward "Life is this crauy groovy canvas," and he´s looking for every way to continue filling it up with his boundless energy. "Plenty of models, plenty of guys who have done this thing," he says, "they´re still around, old dinosaurs like me... I keep working, it´s kinda mind-blowing to me. It´s not about loving it anymore. It´s almost like a duty. To me, my last photograph is going to be a self portrait as I drop dead, you know," affecting a death rattle and slumbing over in his chair, "click!"
http://www.tony-ward.com/
