Liz on Madonna & McDean

From the New York Post:

Rumour swirled this week about a conflict between Madonna and Craig McDean, the cutting-edge fashion photographer she hired to shoot the cover of her latest album “American Life.”
Previous stories focused on the allegedly astronomical expense of the shoot, but the new scuttlebutt says McDean had paid all his own expenses for the privilege of working with the pop diva only to have her turn up her nose at the finished product; she supposedly ended up cobbling something together from the few passable images on her own.

However, both McDean’s and Madonna’s reps insist everything is A-OK.

“For some reason a number of things are being said about the shoot, but it’s absolutely not true,” says Anne Kennedy, McDean’s powerhouse agent at Art + Commerce. “We’ve worked with them a lot and never really had any major dramas.”

Madonna’s rep, Liz Rosenberg, was more vocal: “This smells of an evil queen trying to trash Craig McDean and Madonna,” she told Fashion Buzz.
“For one thing, the record company always pays the photographer’s expenses,” she insists. “And Madonna loved the artwork. She had many meetings with Craig and he was her first choice. They worked together before on a Vanity Fair shoot and everything was completely harmonious and fine.”

For the “American Life” session, Rosenberg notes, “There was kind of Patty Hearst/Che Guevara thing going on, reflecting Madonna’s philosophy of being a rebel.”

Now, however, the pop chameleon is about to switch gears and go glam for the release of her new video, “Hollywood,” shot by another fashion snapper, Jean-Baptiste Mondino. “She’s in an ultra-glamour phase for ‘Hollywood, “ Rosenberg says, noting with a laugh: “The transformations are coming very fast now.”
Meanwhile, Rosenberg tells us reports that Madonna has signed a lucrative deal to be the new face of The Gap are a bit premature.

“The deal’s not done,” she insists. “They’re in discussions, there are major negotiations going on and it’s looking good, but it’s not done yet.”
If it does go down, Rosenberg has a tip on what Madonna’s next phase will be for the Gap ads: “Back to the street, Avenue B, where she started,” she says.
Jared Paul Stern, New York Post.