My icon as a teen and still today, Joe Dallesandro will receive a Teddy award at the Berlinale for his 40 years in the film industry, this Friday, 13 February. Joe was a muse, an icon who changed male sexuality on the screen forever. I remember first reading about Joe in Rolling Stone magazine, April 15, 1971, Joe was on the cover. I was just a kid from an Italian-American lower middle class section of Philly, a bit of an outcast, a good boy who wanted to go bad, I had ideas different then my peers. I wanted to run away to NYC, hang out at the Factory and at Max’s Kansas City … I wanted to be like Little Joe. I remember going alone into the dangerously forbidden Center City to an Art Cinema to see Joe in TRASH, when my mother found out, she wanted me to have a talk with the rector of our parish. You can see a bit of Joe in much of my styling, and many choices of models in my photographic shoots. One of my first editorials was titled ‘Just like Little Joe’, a tribute to him. In the end, I stayed in Philly and then, instead of New York, I headed for Europe, but that’s another story.

Thanks Joe, you still inspire…..