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PIX – April 1996self promotion| Doug Menuez | Gold Photographer: Doug Menuez, Creative Director: Steve Strauss, Strauss Public Arts After 20 years of a successful career in editorial and corporate photography, Doug Menuez decided to pursue a new path: fashion. "To stay fresh," says Menuez, "it’s good to get a challenge, to test yourself with something new." Once ready to do that, he had to alert the world-namely, potential clients-of his decision. He did this by creating a 20-page booklet titled Beauty/Truth-Potraits& Very Short Stories. The piece was created with Steve Strauss, a partner in a local advertising agency. "Steve and I really hit it off," Menuez recalls, "and he was very sympathetic to this whole transitional period I was going through. So we started off with me gathering up 15 years if pictures-newspaper work, magazine work and celebrity portraits, on up through the most recent fashion assignments. I wanted him to tell me, like a therapist, how to put it all together. In the end, Steve wove this disparate group of pictures together beautifully, seamlessly and what we wound up with was a very personal piece." Seven images were created specifically for the promo and Menuez supplied the "very short stories" to accompany the photographs. "One day I was in bed with a 103-degree fever and I just started writing," he says. "The stories weren’t exactly meant to be serious, but they’re true." Fir example, the text accompanying the photograph of Tereza Machado, Menuez’s Brazilian-born wife, is the story of how she came to America, took the name "Columbia" from a character in the film Black Orpheus, and worked in a sweatshop, making handbags. Menuez printed 2,500 booklets. So far, he’s sent out 300 pieces to art directors and designers in New York and Los Angeles. "The response has been strong," he says. "It’s paid for itself already. This has been the price of admission to get started in a new market." Quote from opposite page: " …it’s good to get a challenge, to test your self with something new."
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