Joni Mitchell, Los Angeles 1976, “Joni Hejira” by Norman Seeff

Over the years, I shot Joni more than 10 times. She was always astounding. One minute, she is lying on the street using chalk to draw the outline of her body, the next moment I'm in her studio looking at her emotion-ally evocative paintings. After that, she's playing piano and introducing me to some new work. Later, we end up shooting her in her swimming pool. Joni always came with ideas and we would joust a bit until we agreed on what we wanted to do. Some were straight up photo sessions but once she drove up with a bunch of wolves and we had to set up an electrified fence.