I first met Michael Stipe in 2008.

It was at an art show for my daughter Chloe’s dad. A dear friend, Emma Reeves, had brought him along with Thomas, his boyfriend at the time, now husband. I was slightly starstruck. We do not need to dwell on that, but it is the truth, and the truth matters here because everything that follows is built on it.

At the time, Chloe was in that toddler phase where she wanted only me. No one else. She would cry with her father, with everyone. I was holding her and chatting with Michael when he suddenly took Chloe out of my arms. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, what is going to happen?’ This is going to be terrible.

Instead, it was the most incredible thing. Michael was like a baby whisperer. Chloe was instantly calm, completely relaxed, totally at ease with him. He held her for ages. It was a really special moment, one I have never forgotten. It told me everything I needed to know about the man before I knew anything about the friendship that would follow.

For anyone coming to this cold, Michael Stipe is the lead singer and lyricist of R.E.M., the band that more or less invented alternative rock as we know it. They formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980, sold somewhere around 90 million records worldwide, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Kurt Cobain called them his favourite band. Thom Yorke has said Michael is his favourite lyricist. Bono has called his voice extraordinary. Songs such as Everybody Hurts, Losing My Religion and Man on the Moon are not just songs. They are part of the musical architecture of the late 20th century.

Michael is also a visual artist, a photographer, a film producer whose company made Being John Malkovich, and a lifelong activist. He has always been many things at once. The music is the door most people walk through, but it is not the whole house.

I had been a massive R.E.M. fan since I was a young teenager, crying in my room in New Zealand while listening to Everybody Hurts and watching that video. The song was genuinely life-changing for me. But the person holding my daughter that day was not a rock star. He was simply calm. Sincere. Thoughtful. Curious. And that first impression has never once changed.

I should say something about myself here too, because I am asking you to trust me with someone else’s story, and you deserve to know who is doing the telling. I am a fashion stylist and director. I grew up in New Zealand and moved to London in the 1990s, where I styled for Dazed & Confused and i-D before becoming fashion director at The Face. I moved to New York in 2001 and have spent the years since working with magazines including Teen Vogue, Purple, Vogue Italia, Arena Homme Plus, Puss Puss and now this, my forever home, Brownstone Cowboys.  

I have always believed in mixing high fashion with the real, the thrifted, the worn-in. I believe in styling people, not mannequins. That philosophy is the foundation of Brownstone Cowboys. This is our first issue, and that it opens with Michael means everything to me.

A few years after that initial meeting, when Chloe was in fourth grade, I was going through a breakup and needed to get out of New York. A close friend who had moved to Athens, Georgia, invited Chloe and me to spend part of the summer there. While we were there, I was invited to dinner at the home of a mutual friend named Jeremy, an incredible artist from Athens who had lived in New York for many years. He has since passed away, but he was one of those rare, generous, luminous people. He was the kind of person whose warmth fills a room long after they have left it.

That dinner was just five of us: Cooper, Jeremy, Michael, Thomas and me. We laughed endlessly, the way you do when the right people are in the same room at the same time and no one is performing. A real friendship with Michael began that night. I am deeply thankful for it. It has lasted a very long time now, and Michael is one of the most loyal and supportive friends I have ever known.

This has been especially true through my own journey, and most certainly through Chloe’s journey of coming out as a transgender woman. Michael's support has been unwavering. Through him, I have met some of the most special people in my life. The community in Athens means so much to me. We moved there during Covid, stayed for five years, and still return every summer, staying at Michael’s cabin.

Athens is not a random town. It is where R.E.M. began, where Michael met Peter Buck in a record shop called Wuxtry Records in 1980, and where they built one of the most important bands of their era without ever leaving for Los Angeles or New York. It has always had a community of artists, musicians, hippies, queers and political thinkers. A small southern college town with an outsized creative soul.

Michael has lived between Georgia, New York and Berlin for years now, but Athens is where his roots are. His mother still lives there. It is the place he always comes back to. It became that for me too. 

Christy Bush photographed the archival images you see across these pages, and she also shot our Michael Shannon story (page 46). Her eye is extraordinary. Fast, instinctive, unafraid of mistakes. She's an Athens-based photographer whose work spans decades of intimate portraiture and documentary image-making within the town’s creative community. She is not a celebrity photographer. She is something rarer. Someone whose subjects trust her completely, because the relationship always comes first, the camera second.

I met Christy in a funny way, at Michael’s pool one summer when he was away. We were both there swimming with our kids.

Christy has known Michael for ever, and they share a very special bond. Meeting her that day began another deeply meaningful friendship, one that continues to this day.

The images here are the product of that trust. They were never made for publication. They were made between friends, over years, and they carry that weight. When I look at them, they feel familiar to me. I find myself imagining the conversations that were happening that day. Because I know Michael and Christy so well, I can almost picture being there. Maybe it's a little bit of Fomo, I don't know. I just wish I had known him then.

These images are intimate and generous. I love them. I feel genuinely happy that they are on our first cover and inside our first issue.

What follows is a conversation between myself and Michael about the images, about memory, and about what it means to release something private into collected history. These photographs come from his relationship with Christy, from decades of trust, and a bond between artist and subject that no amount of editorial direction could replicate. 

As Michael puts it, “When Christy was shooting me, I was naked and genuine. I did not need to front at all, as I might with an image-maker or photographer I didn't know or trust. I always knew she had my back. In that sense, these are some of the most genuinely personal images of me that have ever been publicly released.”

Heathermary Jackson Give us five words to describe your relationship with the incredible photographer Christy Bush.

Michael Stipe As a lyricist, reducing an entire decades-long arc of experience and relationship and love into five words is work. So I’m not going to work. Instead I’ll just describe her. Christy’s family. She has, for me, one of the most important characteristics of people that I hold near, which is curiosity – a curiosity about the world. As a photographer, she’s able to capture that through a lens that describes her passions without defining or limiting who she is as an artist. She’s forever searching. She has impeccable taste and an encyclopedic knowledge of image-makers from the past, which informs without overwhelming her own vision. She’s fast when she snaps, which, as a subject, I always admire. She’s not afraid of mistakes – in fact, I think she relishes them. She’s a fierce feminist, and I’ve seen her stand up to some very difficult people in very difficult situations and hold her ground. And then walk away unshaken. She’s unflappable and ferociously talented.

HMJ When you look at these images now, what arrives first – recognition or distance? Do you still recognise the person in the frame, or does he feel like a character you once inhabited?

MS I don’t recognise distance at all. I see who I was then and I see how that phase of my life informed who I am now. I really like who I am now, so it all feels like it happened the way it should have and needed to. I do, interestingly, see different periods that I moved through – from self-styling through thrift stores to, in one photograph, the first Rolex watch I ever bought; in another, a Dries Van Noten sweater I was very proud of. From cobbling together a look and style persona through thrift stores to high fashion is quite a leap, but I managed to pull off each of them quite beautifully. Anecdotally, I remember almost every situation in these photographs, from the hotel in Madrid to the street in front of Christy’s former home in Athens, Georgia. I did, over the years, inhabit characters and eras, and I had a lot of fun with them. But when Christy was shooting me, I was naked and genuine. I didn’t need to front at all. I always knew that she had my back.

HMJ There’s a calm here that feels earned, not styled. Were you aware of cultivating stillness then, or was that something you only learned to defend later?

MS I was born hyperactive, with what would now be described as an ADHD monkey mind. I’ve always been flummoxed when people tell me how grounding and Buddha-like I seem, because seem is the pivotal term here. As long as I’ve been conscious, I’ve felt roiling jackrabbit madness below the surface. That people see me as still, wise, not jacked on adrenaline, has always shocked and surprised me.

HMJ Do these photographs feel more like documentation, collaboration or confession? What do these images surface for you that history tends to edit out?

MS Truthfully, these pictures feel like a combination of all three. There’s a trust between myself and Christy that’s always been there – a deep, abiding love and trust, and understanding of one another. It feels collaborative because both myself and Christy understand the persona, but this is the person behind the persona. There’s an attraction to and recognition of fame and celebrity, but that takes a backseat to the real thing: myself, unfiltered and trusting.

HMJ How do you sit with the fact that these previously unseen images will now live in collected memory, and not just your own?
MS I’m thrilled with that.

HMJ Looking back, do you feel tenderness toward who you were then, or a sharper awareness of the armour you needed to survive that era?

MS I feel immense tenderness. There was a beautiful naivety and exploration, but also a clear understanding of what it took to move through the very difficult 1980s – politically selfish and cruel, and of course the massive and devastating impact of the HIV/Aids era. In terms of dealing with my own personal fame and celebrity, by the time I met Christy and these pictures were taken, I was quite well aware of myself, the pitfalls of public life, and how to avoid or negate them. I was in many ways an empowered survivor. I knew my strengths and my weaknesses, and I was able to navigate that pretty well.

HMJ Some of the most iconic images of the 90s were made without the nonsense of large teams of assistants. What would you say to younger photographers assembling large crews in pursuit of something simply iconic?

MS My advice is simple. Be yourself. Be flexible. Move with the moment.

HMJ You’re hot then and you’re hot now. How have you learned to inhabit ageing without apology?

MS Well, thank you very much. I am as insecure now as I’ve ever been in terms of the flaws that I see in myself, but as always, I’m working on them. Truthfully, I’m so grateful and thankful to be alive and to be experiencing every aspect of life. Among other things, I humbly recognise the privilege that I carry, the immense luck that I’ve experienced, the very hard work that I put in to be able to be who I am. I can now see the things that I’m really good at and explore those – to push myself even further. I never anticipated that I would make it to 66 years old, nor that I would be as happy as I am. I can’t honestly say I fully embrace my physical flaws, but at least at 66 I know my angles. God willing. I learned, among other things, how to smile.

But it has. Deeply. Since I was a teenager in New Zealand, and through every iteration of my life since – London in   the 90s, New York, Athens, the breakups, the breakthroughs, Chloe growing up and becoming herself. Michael's music has been there. And then, somehow, so has he.

We share a love of magazines. He genuinely gets excited about them. He loves imagery, art and fashion, and has the most incredible style. He doesn't need a stylist. He just has it instinctively. He has been so supportive of what we are doing with Brownstone Cowboys, and continues to be part of it. I love collaborating with him on photoshoots, fashion stories and really anything.