Beyoncé‘s seminal debut solo album Dangerously in Love turns 20 this month, and to celebrate the milestone anniversary, photographer Markus Klinko opened up about shooting the cover.
Klinko told Insider that he first met Bey when shooting Destiny’s Child for Vibe back in 2000. “I had no idea who they were until I got the call from Vibe,” he recalled. “Her mom was styling it. And I remember pointing at Beyoncé and saying, ‘This one in the middle here, she’s going to be huge. She has a lot of charisma.’ Her mom just said, ‘Yeah, we know.’”
For the Dangerously in Love cover, Bey was inspired by a photo Klinko took of Laetitia Casta for a diamond advertisement, in which the model in tangled up across a glimmering spiderweb. “She said she really loved that image and if we could do something like that, just smaller, on her. And I didn’t really know how to interpret that,” he said. “That image is very blue, mainly blue, dark blue. When she said it, I didn’t really immediately know what to do about it.”
Beyoncé’s mom Tina Knowles-Lawson ended up bringing the now-iconic diamond top on the cover with her to the shoot, though the “Break My Soul” singer wasn’t immediately on board. “She said she didn’t like it,” he said. “She didn’t think it worked because her mom wanted to pair it with these long skirts. Beyoncé said, ‘This is going to look very prom or red carpet and I don’t want to do that.’”
Klinko then suggested a pair of jeans. “Beyoncé said, ‘Well, we don’t have any denim. We didn’t bring any.’ I said, ‘You might fit my own jeans that I’m wearing,’” he explained. “She said, ‘OK, let’s try.’ So we did.”
And the Dangerously in Love album cover was born. “Beyoncé contributed a lot because she worked it,” Klinko said. “She worked a piece — that’s not easy to do. She found the exact right movement. That wasn’t my idea to put the arms up. That was her idea, and I don’t even know if it was an idea. It was her instinct. And I knew: ‘That’s the cover.’”
Musically, her debut solo effort not only debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, but it spawned multiple classic hits including “Crazy in Love,” “Baby Boy,” “Naughty Girl” and “Me, Myself & I.”
