Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston.Photo:George Lange / AUGUST
George Lange / AUGUST
Lange’s memories of thatEWshoot come following the announcement ofPerry’s death at the age of 54 on Saturday.It was his 16-year-old son, Jackson, who broke the news to him.
“He was looking at the TikTok and the news came over on TikTok,” Lange says. “He came down and he said, ‘Did you ever photograph Matthew Perry?’ I had done this bigFriendsshoot back in 1995, and I pulled it up and there was this one shot, which is the shot I ran.”
A photograph that Lange recently unearthed from that shoot is a previously unpublished picture of a stylish Perry andJennifer Anistonposing together inside a circle attached to the wall.
“They climb up in the boxes and hold each other. And it’s like five minutes later, I’m done. I have my picture. The one thing that I did is I did some pictures of them individually or in a group. There’s the one shot that I posted of Jennifer and Matthew together. That’s very sweet.”
“But the thing, as a photographer, is you’re looking to photograph who they are, not who I am," Lange adds. “So when they climb in the box, I’m not telling them what to do because they’re already doing it. They already have that relationship. So I’m just letting them control the situation in a way. I mean, I’m making sure the light’s good and all that stuff, but the thrill for me is to see how they interact naturally, not how I tell them to interact.”
Although Lange had never seenFriends, he acknowledges that the connection between the cast members that viewers saw on screen mirrored in real life.
“Totally,” he says. “And what you saw in that picture was not me telling them how to smile, how to hold their bodies, how to… She’s kind of right behind him. It’s all great. He looks very handsome.”
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Lange, whose book,Picturing Joy: Stories of Connection, comes out Nov. 7, vividly recalls how the special bond that theFriendsactors had radiated during the shoot.
“The thing that’s so beautiful about that picture of that cast is there’s not only a soulful connection and a spiritual connection, there’s a physical connection,” he says. “I don’t photograph groups that well. And that’s one of the few really successful group pictures I’ve ever taken.”
The night before Perry’s death became news, Lange attended a birthday party of a friend who turned 50 years old. In anInstagram postfrom Saturday featuring the photo of Perry and Aniston, Lange wrote about telling his friend at the party how being on the other side of 50 is an opportunity to embrace new possibilities while also noting that Perry only got to be 54.
“We don’t know how long we’re going to be here,” Lange tells PEOPLE. “I’m sure Matthew Perry didn’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Well, this is my last day.’ So none of us, most of us don’t know that. We need to appreciate all the goodness around us.”
source: people.com
