chrisanthony2112: To commemorate the 20th anniversary of My Chemical Romance’s landmark album, The Black Parade and the photographs we made, pre-orders are open for a special collection of signed fine art prints from the shoot. Pre-order through the link in my bio.
Pre-production - Post 1/2
In my last post, I wrote about my first meeting with Gerard. Now we arrive at the moment when I had officially been given the assignment to photograph My Chemical Romance for their upcoming album, The Black Parade.
Gerard had given me a very solid blueprint to work from and so I began by just taking things one step at a time. I knew we needed a dark backdrop covered in stars—or rather, two enormous backdrops. I found a brilliant Los Angeles scenic artist named Michael Maddox, explained the world we were trying to create, and he set to work painting them.
Those backdrops would eventually be used as bookends for the large panoramic parade image and for the group photograph that appeared on the back of the original CD. The record label gave me copies of the band’s previous albums and links to their videos so that I could immerse myself in all things My Chem.
I was relieved—and genuinely excited—to discover how much I liked all of it.
What struck me was not only the band’s talent, but also the sincerity behind everything they did. At the time, I was becoming exhausted by how ironic so much of popular culture seemed to be. My Chemical Romance was not afraid of emotion, ambition, theatricality, or complete commitment.
The breadth of their vision was undeniable, and it was already clear that The Black Parade was going to take everything much further than they had before.
I needed a very large space for the shoot, but I wasn’t convinced that one of the many commercial photography or film studios around Los Angeles would be right.
First, I wanted real, old wooden floors. We needed extremely high ceilings, and, more than anything, we needed atmosphere. A clean commercial studio would have felt too clinical and ordinary for the world we were building.
I'll post part two in just a bit!
[Aug 11, 2026]
