Photographer to the celebs, Jeremy Cowart, is well use to snapping well-known faces. However, during what seemed to be just another photo shoot with a Hollywood actor, it quickly became something entirely different. Something much more powerful that he decided to share with the rest of us.
This next series of images were taken when a photo shoot took a unexpected and extremely emotional turn. The result is one incredibly powerful and raw photo collection.
John Schneider, of Smallville and Dukes of Hazard fame, was in the studio with the rest of his The Haves and Have Nots cast, and was described by Cowart as, “killing his portraits.”
“I was very impressed by his talent and good-natured humour,” the photographer writes on a blogpost to his website.
The photograph explained that Schneider was, “extremely professional, humble and a lot of fun to work with.”
The actor gave impressions of a few famous actors and presidents, impressing Cowart with his ability to, “light up the camera and have a good time.”
Cowart was wrapping up his session when John approached him and whispered, “hey can you sneak a few more portraits of me?”
“There’s something going on and I just need a photo,” he added.
The photographer immediately obliged, picked back up his camera, and began shooting.
We’ll let Cowart’s own words finish the story.
“He immediately began weeping. Legitimately crying. He was so good at impressions that I thought this was another impression and I thought ‘wow, what an acting talent.’”
“But then after a couple of frames, I could tell that this wasn’t an act. He was really somewhere else.”
“Finally, I put my camera down. This was too real. It didn’t feel right to keep shooting.”
“So I walked up to him and hugged him.
He whispered in my ear ‘My Dad died about an hour ago. I found out during our lunch break. And I wanted you to capture that for me.’
Then he walked up to my screen, looked at the portraits and pointed to the last one (seen above, last) and said ‘That’s it. That’s my Dad.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ I said. I was stunned. Shocked. And deeply moved, obviously.
I didn’t want to ask any further questions out of respect.
John took off shortly thereafter to go back home to plan the next steps with his family.
I’ve since received official permission from John to share this story and these portraits with you. I will never forget this moment. And I want to thank John for inviting me into his story, even just for a moment and for allowing me to capture this for him.
As a father myself, I wept for him. We all did that day.”
Cowart’s original blog post can be read here.
The touching story and moving images, uploaded last week, has garnered 54,000 likes on Facebook and over 4,000 tweets.
