WHAT is the best way to welcome a Contributing Editor to the Deenathe1st.com team? Why, put them under a microscopic character test of a questionnaire - that’s how! This is precisely what we did with the prolific polymath photographer, artist, and publisher, Michel Haddi, who has taken our seemingly light but laser-intense Take Ten Qs. Haddi has been a force of nature in fashion photography for over thirty years and so he continues to be. Having lensed shoots for The Face, Rolling Stone, Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Interview, Details, The Sunday Times, and The Washington Post, he has an archive that is a honeypot of ready-to-wear meets supermodels vibing under a lighting rig, or shot on Haddi’s candid camera. 

His latest creative adventures see him training AI scripts to be more like him in image-making terms, crafting music, and binding beautiful books on subjects close to his heart, such as Tahiti Surf, a book in collaboration with the House of Robert WAN, which is Haddi's ode to Tahiti, offering a visual immersion into the paradise. Read on to get to know the dinner-party personality of Michel Haddi before he begins his regular column for D1st.

#1 If you could have any famous writer (past or present) pen your biography, who would you most love to commission?

Interesting question as I am working on my autobiography right now. I wish to have Tennessee Williams write it. Somehow a poet like Tennessee, who did spend time in Tangiers, would know what to write about my background from the Berber tribe. 

#2 There is one song that defines your energy when you enter a room, what is it?

The KLF, What Time Is Love?

#3 You don't collect this item but you could so easily have indulged in building a museum of...?

I could build a museum of mementos of my favorite superheroes, from Silver Surfer to Batman.

#4 It's 11am on a Sunday morning, what are you most often doing at that time?

In the gym boxing, then a coffee and a cigarette. I know the cigarette is naughty, but it is a rollup.   

#5 You've decided to have a dinner party with friends, and the first thing you organize is:

To begin celebrating all the friends that are coming to that dinner and praising their talents.