William Coupon may be the only photographer most famous for his backdrops – Belgian linen. He started using it when he was shooting punks at the Mudd Club in the ‘70s, and the linen was so successful he wound up schlepping it to the Oval Office to photograph Nixon. As the writer Glenn O’Brien described it, William is interested in people. He wants the face. He wants the expression. He doesn’t want the wallpaper or the linoleum or the South Lawn or the entourage or the rain forest. He’s a face artist and he’s there to get the most out of it. He’s there, as any true primitive will tell you, to steal the soul. Well, borrow it anyway. So this requires focus. Isolation. The backdrop that blocks out everything but the person. Not seamless paper but something he painted to achieve maximum “backgroundiness.”
