250 years. That undeniable greatness was driven by personality, character and capacity but largely by circumstance. And the circumstance was nation crumbling crises. Which is why i argue in the book quite provocatively is you dont want another great president because if you have one rose you have another great crises. Exactly. Rose we conclude this evening with Russell James, a photographer. Beauty has changed, ive developed it, i lived life spending time in haiti and taking portraits of people down there. I say it with complete honesty but when im photographing a person albeit an elder member of the tribe theres a beauty about the photograph. Its the strangest thing but its so careful and engaging when youre in it. I get lost in that money. Rose Michael Lewis, Aaron David Miller and Russell James when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose is provided by the following rose additional funding made possible by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Michael Lewis is here, he rose to fame 25 years ago with the publication of his first book liars poker, the book captures the frenzied years on wall street in the 19 8s 0. He was a bonds salesman. Tom wolf wroart liars pokerring the funniest book on wall street. The new edition. I am pleased to have Michael Lewis back at this table. Good you see you. Thank you. Six months ago. Rose lets first talk about whats the difference in wall street. This is the obvious question. You did this because. Okay, ill answer because i can. Rose thats a great answer. One of my ideas but i couldnt see a reason to say no. Its never lost, they sell lots of books every year. I think what has and hasnt changed. What that changed the story of young people rolling into wall street and making a lot of money not knowing anything. So thats sort of, that seems to be an eternal story right now. I mean what has changed is wall streets gotten a lot better at disguising with us because its gotten more complicated so its hard for the outsider to see, even if it seems transparent, its so complicated its not. So subprime collateralized debt obligations and the structure of the stock market. Rose all of those kinds of secures done away with after the collapse in 2008 or back in full force. Theyre not back in full force theyre back. They havent been band or anything like that. The other change has changed. There wasnt the idea, even i left wall street in 1988. There was no such thing as too big to fail. If a firm screwed up it was going to go down, a trading firm. Thats very different. Whats happened, the other thing thats happened is like a stash of trend that begins with liars poker around that area. Free agency. People not wedded to their firms but wedded to their markets and they bounce around from firm to firm to firm. It creates a climate of more of a short term view thing that people much more interested in the short term than long term. They dont have the long term interests, the shore term interests. Rose how about the prominence of hedge funds and private equity. Thats a great deal. The question i have is this whole sector being disrupted by technology. I think it is because basically what it is its intermediaries. Especially the intermediary side of the business. And the internet has been really harsh on intermediaries everywhere. But wall street rose eliminates the middleman. Right, eliminates the middleman. This is an industry thats premise on the need for the middleman. You wonder how it moved forward with the innovation that happened. Es not the hedge fun but the big banks if theyre scrambling around to preserve their lifestyle without having the same social and economic function to perform. Rose we still need big banks because corporation need a place to borrow moneyy and do things. You can make the argument we dont, but if we do rose acquisition. Im sure there are useful things, right, whatever they are. But you back away from it a lot of things had he historically done you dont need to do. So that creates a problem. In addition you got now math in regulation to the response to the crises which i think is harder to do. Less leverage in some cases. Its changed and how its not changed. It has become broadly, i mean at the same time theres all this like interest in transparency like were going to be clear about what were doing and why. It is basically indecipherable from the outside these firmment much harder to understand than 20 years ago. And there is a much greater interest or obsession with their public image. So the kind of, the self consciousness with which they present themselves to the outside world is unlike anything i could have written this book. Theres no way. In fact after i left they started to make people find things saying you wont write a book if you come work here. Rose it ruined his career and made yours. And left politely. Thats right. Its just theres the relationship between paul street and the rest of society is even less healthy than it was. The society across wall street left which is saying something because it wasnt like there was a lot of trust in the area. But wall street trusts the society less in a funny way. They dont trust the society to understand it. Rose its an old question but are you surprised more people havent been prosecuted for thing that happened during 2008. Youre seeing them go after the banks. Banks are paying huge fines but its not an individual. No the individuals are untouched, right. I dont know because i mean the truth about the financial crises is that what was scandalous and what was legal. I think a large amount of the behavior was legal and thats the problem. So i always been cherry of like calling for people scouts because what tends to happen is someone gets lynched and everybody feels like they got it but they usually get the wrong guide or they do it the wrong way. Its like the public appetite for vengeance in an unhealthy way. I dont know if i will go to jail or not but it is outrageous. Its too big to fail. Its a huge problem. We need to establish if you were in this supposedly competitive marketplace and you fail you fall. Rose when you left princeton, what did you think you wanted to do. Well very briefly i thought i wanted to be an art historian. My thesis told me not only were there no jobs and it was insane but also that i wasnt probably cut out for it. Rose that would have been great. Think of the books you would have written if you became an artist. The greatest novel. We never would have met. Rose you would have written something that made a big huge movie and you more famous than you are now. Very quickly i figured i wanted to write. Rose you knew that before wall street. Yes. Rose wall street was a stopping point. I had a funny conversation. A few weeks ago i bumped into a friend of mine who was in my solomon brothers training class and he went into the mortgage market. I was at a Mortgage Bankers day and we sat and i said do you know do you remember when we first met. No. He came into the training class, you sat down next to me and introduced yourself and said what are you hear fore. I said im here because i want to back a mortgage banker person. And said what are you for and i said im here to write a book. He swears its true. I knew that i was chiefly interested in having experiences in life i could then write about. Rose so you were in search for a story. I was in search for life experience. I didnt know what i wanted to write about but this cant be sad in the middle of the action. See how this world work. Rose im saying this, but i was reading, you were really good. You have this wonderful ability to describe themes too. Its, plicit. You had that talent early, yes . Well, it took a long time to be identified. So if i had it early, i mean i didnt write for newspapers or anything like that and i got a lot of cs on the english paper, i dont know. I liked the feel that came over me when i sat down with a bank sheet of paper. I liked having to tell a story. And but there was no particular reason why i thought, nobody told me i was going to make a living doing this, i just started do it, very naively, i didnt know anybody who wrote books. It took a while to digest the idea. Rose do your parents read books. Yes, my parents did but im from new orleans. It was a storytelling culture but it wasnt a literary culture. So it didnt, it took a while to get here. Rose im interviewing someone later who is a filmmaker and he says theres three things he looks for. First of all he looks for a charismatic character to be the center of his action. B, he looks for narrative and c he looks for subject that interests him. That almost fits you doesnt it. Its all very good. I would add one other. I would add emotion. I need to feel something about the story getting me out of bed in the morning. Thats a sustaining thin. Rose a question. Not just a question like a feeling, something that really gets my juices flowing. Its a different thing with each book but i just like the emotional, its an emotional experience. Rose now you go in search of that or does it come to you. It more comes to me. I graze. I talk to a lot of people i think about writing magazine pieces, i pick up and drop things. When i hit something i think wow this is rich material. I hang around until i think wow i feel something about this. Rose do you have an instinct this is it and it never got to be it. I never got far along where i thought i had a book where i didnt have a book, no. I have a few that are still on the back burner but i think im going to do them. Rose whats the hardest thing for you. Structure. No question. Figuring out how to tell the story. Where i begins, where it ends. What are the beats of the story like how it happens. Rose chapter to chapter. Yes, how do you get from here to there and where do you want to go. Once i get the reporting like the gathering of the material and the structuring of the thing goes hand in hand. Im in agony about how the story, the best way to tell a story. When you tell a story the important thing is you leave out. So what can i leave out and get this story. How do i tear it down, what it should be. Once i got that, the words are easiest. The words come very easy. I wrote flash board in four or five months worked on it a year andahalf before that. I did this thing in probably four months. Rose where are you in finding your next subject . I have several. I know the next few probably. Rose the next few books. I think. Something might walk in the door. Rose can you work on them i fiddle with them until one comes to a boil. Im writing a tv show now thats a little different. When im done with that i have a book i want to do. Rose whats the setting. Wall street in the 40s; is that right big characters. Based on real people. Inspired by life. But its a way, wall street today is hard to dramatize. Its very complicated. Its so abstract. I think there may be a trick in going back in time to speak to this moment but sorry, i, the story kind of walks in, i get interested in them i kind of know what the next few are i think. But you never know whats going to show up. Rose would i have been good if you stayed at wall street. Terrible. Rose didnt they give you 225,000 bonus when you left. Its all true. Rose then you won at liars poker. They were deceived into thinking i had a future in that business. By the end of it i could hardly get myself out of bed and drag myself to work i was so bored witness. Once you stop learning it ceases to be interesting. Once i saw what it was it wasnt that interesting and i knew how bad i would get. I would have been terrible, i dont know if i lasted another year but i left at my peak which is two andahalf years into it. It was perplexing to them. I really liked my bosses and they sat me down dont do this young man you have a future in the firm and i said i want to go write books. They said we cant do anything about that. Rose did you tell them you would write about them. It wasnt hostile but it was very clear because i went back and actually went back to the firm and interviewed people afterwards. Rose they easily wanted to talk to you. Not good forty three but everybody else. I was friend with a lot of them but the mortgage people who invented the mortgage bond market which eventually leads to the financial crises. Rose louis coy. After i got out, he was very helpful. Rose was he cynical about it. Upset the he was emotional about it. He felt a bond rose was it something of value that was important. I felt it was a wet bomb when him and the firm he worked for. Its so different from now. There was a real love of the place and he could be run out. He just couldnt believe it. He was shocked. Rose the other thing that interests me is that people like paul volcker and others have complained about the best and bright going into Financial Engineering and thats really bad because they should be going into government and other places. Do you think a thats happening and b is it possible those are people now because of the power of Silicon Valley and the amount of money being made in Silicon Valley. I dont know many people who have been ten years on a business and all of a sudden sell it for 20 billion. Youre not doing that on wall street. So is that more attractive to the smartest. I think there are a couple answers. First, wall street tracks people who are very ambitious but dont know what theyre ambitious about. Silicon valley is attractive if they have an idea, something specific they want to do. If you want to know about computers. They tend to come with clear set of skills in sell cone valley with a slightly different crowd i think drifts that way. Wall street4]still does provis the use of the bjv]st colleges n the country with a place to go when they dont know what they want to the. Rose are they coming out of primary Harvard Business school or columbia business school. Under graduates. Rose having studied as you did romans languageswhatever you studied. Wall street is so affected the educational people dont study art history because they dont think theyll get a job on wall street. Rose isnt that terrible. No sense of the value of humanity. Theres no sense of the purpose of life. People sacrifice so much for things they actually probably shouldnt want. And i think what wall street does because theres so much money and its sort of exciting unlike most business jobs, it gives young people a sense that it is a calling or feels like a calling instead of a job. And it just completely eliminates the need to agonize about what youre going to do with your life. Rose what does it have to do with status . Well if you think about it rose be part of the establishment, they want status. They want to have an answer to the question, what are you doing. And it used to be, it goes from im going to harvard and they get a certain response to that so i work at goldman and you get the same response to that and it solves the problem. If you need that response as you move through the world wall street gives you that response. Rose what do you think of the secret bowman tapes. Terrific. Rose ill bet you did. Oh my god. So carmen rose you called it the ray rice video of wall street. Shes the Erin Bronkovich to help regulate goalman sacks was frustrated by her ability to do anything and also the kind of revisionist history. Something would happen at a meeting and she would be scandalized. Goldman sachs person said she turned to her fellow employees and say can you believe she said that. Oh she never said that. These tapes, the toner incredible. Its the regulators have no spine, they are just scared. They tonight want to get in a fight. They want to keep everything sweet. I think this is the problem and i think that its captured doesnt even begin to describe the problem. Its sort of like if you are a regulator, you just dont want to antagonize the system because you may quite likely one way or another rose if you work for the sec youre talking about post sec world rather than regulating wall street. Thats probably why you like senator warren so much. She seems, i dont say this lightly but she seems uncorruptable. She figured on you that happiness is rose and its core is corrupt. Not everybody on wall streets crement. Rose im not saying everybody. Its like every occupy has its hazards and the sums of money you can get on wall street to do things you shouldnt do and live a life you shouldnt live are quite high so that there are incentives to behave in a certain way. And its not all a simple evil. Rose its what . Well, its pretending to ask for what you dont have. Rose is it greed. Its not exactly greed. The greed from this is desire for status. Its desire to be a big fish. Rose do you think of yourself as a financial writer or sometimes a writer. Its an accident i ended up here. And i had access because of liars poker to post financial crises stories that were great. So ive written those. But its quite possible. Rose all about baseball obviously. The blind side. My kids. Rose the one about kids going to the baseball game or whatever it was. Yes. Rose being a father. Ive written about president ial campaign i wrote about Silicon Valley. Rose speaking of the president ial campaign what do you think of the fact the principal issue in this campaign is a man you profiled for vanity fair, president obama. What do i think about, hes become such a liability to his party. Rose yes. It happens. I think rose did he bring it on himself do you think. I think, yes, it does. I think its mainly unfair but people when theyre unhappy they blame the president. And i think so you ask what book i want to write. Ill tell you, i want to move into his life the last year of his presidency and write about president ial decisionmaking that will come out after hes president , after hes done. I have a feeling, one of the reason i think that the book would work i think it will work as a literary project. Its a wonderful way to get it to him and also the office. But i bet, i predict the year after hes out people are going to miss it. Thats what i think. Rose because. Because i think people are not sitting where hes sitting seeing what hes seeing. They dont see the complexity of the destionz hes got to make. And i think that a lot of whats wrong in the world is not actually his fault. Rose but its his responsibility to respond to it. And i think his mistakes, to the extent hes made mistakes i understand. I feel it because im not a political person really. I dont spend a lot of time thinking about it, but i feel like im happy the country is in his hands. I hi his hearts in the right placey really smart. Hes got disadvantages and one of them is his temperment. Hes really not that interested in you. Hes interested in justice rose one of the places people said in the first six years said to me just that. Said shes he back doing. I think shes going to write. I really think hes a writer. Even as hes in office. Most people politicians when you sit down with them, you sense riot away their political type of person and one way or another theyre seeking to flaherty rose he said bill clintons a writer. Obamas watching. And hes completely neglecting his responsibility to flatter you. He says thats not part of me. He doesnt want to go, thats not what he wants. He likes relationships between equals. Hes not manipulative and that all hurts him. There are things about him that makes him ill suited for the job but im glad hes in the job. Writers should have their shot. Every hundred years you put a writer in there. Rose you too could be president. Ill never be. Hes ruined it. Rose has he agreed to the project . He was interested in it. Rose im sure he is. He may say no. Rose its you or david remnick, people like you and rep anything. If he says no he says no and ill write about something else. Rose its irresistible to him. Irresistible. I dont see the down side. And i think that the world benefits from an inside view of that office. Like we dont really have good ways of judging or evaluating. Rose i cant wait to read the damn book. Its a bit like judging baseball managers. Baseball managers have very little control or games. What happened in the field happened in the general Managers Office when they decide who to put on the field. The manager has a dial he can turn and maybe affect the. He takes all the plame and all the credit for the game. Its crazy. I feel its a bit like that. Rose the book is called liars poker rise is through the wreckage of wall street. Theres a new afterword here. A pleasure. Rose good to see you. Back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose Aaron David Miller here is between 1988 and 2003 he advised six secretary of states on the Israeli Palestinian negotiations. Hes currently a Vice President and distinguished scholar to Woodrow Wilson international for scholars. His book is called the end of greatness, why america cant have and doesnt want another great president. Im pleased to have Aaron David Miller back at this table. Welcome. A pleasure charlie. Rose is it a pleasure for you to get away talking about the mid east for a moment. It is, actually. I felt a certain sense of liberation in applying myself to this. I started with a civil war story actually. I noticed toking 20 years of negotiations when things happened, it was because we were dealing with leaders who were masters of their political houses and not prisoners of their constituencies. Then i began to understand the importance of leadership. Rose they dont make the history its the interaction of the individual human agency and circumstance that usually determines why things happen. What i began to understand about the presidency, greatness three undeniably great president s in 250 years that undeniable greatness is driven sure by personality, character and capacity. But largely by circumstance. And the circumstance was nation crises thats why i argue in the book you dont want another great president because if you have one nieflt you have a wrait crises. Exactly. Rose that bemoans and Teddy Roosevelt in a very famous line. No one would have known his name had there been no civil war. They lamented the fact hes a consequential president. He belongs in, i put he and four colleagues in what i call close but not cigar category. Jefferson, jackson, testifiedy roosevelt, wilson thats arguable and then harry truman. Their crises were not as great. Their flaws larger. Each identified and shepherded the nation through a very consequential period. Rose if you had to live one of those, who would be closest to the top three, who would it be. Truman. I think i would pick Teddy Roosevelt. In large part because he was a republican president in many respects a paradox. Hunter and yet a conservationist a believer in rugged individuals yet someone who saw government as an agent of reform. And remedy. The internationalists talking very pragmatic. Actually a remarkable man. Rose ambition for the quality of greatness. Ambition and i mean real ambition. Look at the three undenyables. 23 washington was the best known military figure in the state of virginia. Lincoln was terribly ambitious and driven and of course frankly roosevelt who i believed the presidency was not his due but it was his destiny. These were men driven by individual passion and ambition attached to a broader enterprise which was the american experiment. And thats why in a sense they had their own party and began to be appreciated by republican and democrats and independentents alike. Rose they know how to work people together. And what they had were they were emotionally intelligent. They were not haunted by demons. They were men of great discipline and i think they were at ease with who they were. Thats so important to projecting the sense ask a bond with the public. And in the end, the publics affirmation and validation of president incredibly important. Inner had a great long term president. And likely never will because its critically important that the president establish that second term bond. It is the peoples office and people ask me the other day, you know, why should i listen on the principles. Its a tear to go prospect. Yes im an american historian but why should they listen. My response was its a national conversation. This is our office. The conclusion of the book is get real about what we should expect out of these. Rose is that part of some kind analogy to dont let perfect be any good. It is. You could even argue charlie that the greatest obstacle the greatness of the president see is the office itself. Because the founders willfully designed an office that was energetic but accountable. And because they feared the royal governors and the king they didnt want powers aggregated. Hamilton may have but they didnt want power aggregated and misused so they created a system of accountability, checks and balances which present an enormous challenge to any president. And what im trying to argue in the book is, president s, even the greatest president s didnt create the circumstances. The intuitive exploited and took advantages of the moments they had and they had the character and the capacity three cs of president ial greatness. Christ opens the door, cherish and capacity enables. Rose competent. Competent, management of a cabinet finding the right people to add vie you. Washingtons all star team of rivals. Rose obama had pretty good cabinet. He did. Very smart people but the situation has changed since our last great president. Rose who in your mind, would it be Teddy Roosevelt most likely to enter the top level. Minus the big nation encumbering crises. I argue three and five greats. Close but no cigar president s. I identified three post fdr who i consider to have what i called traces of greatness real or imagined. They are jack kennedy frozen forever, and cuba. Lyndon johnson who without vietnam would have been the most transformative legislative president for three civil rights bills. Rose it was because of the demons he couldnt get his arms around. Even fdr in that 64 election did i beat fdr he wanted to you in a. And reagan is the third. Rose reagan. Because. Its funny not a great president in my judgment but a guy who was great at being president. A guy who changed the nature of the debate over the role of government. A guy who we can argue all day long was a key factor, not the key, in bringing about it into the cold war and a guy who restored a measure of prestige to an office over the perverbial fall. Rose the by who knew or to have you been someone like jim bakker around. Firing people for reagan became a real problem in his administration. So you get a sense these larger than life figures somehow are gone. And you know, i mean obama will be an historic president. Rose because. But lee be a great rose because what he inherited. Well i think at first because he owed a debt to lip conthat none of our other president s had. And that is the fact that hes the first African American president is extraordinary. The fact that he inherited the two longest wars of the American History and greatest recession since the Great Depression and it was so bad but the question is he set such a high bar. Do you know that the inaugural lunch during the first inauguration because a replica of mary todd lincolns china. He recreated literally the exact meal that lincoln rose whose idea was this. That was the inaugural committees but obama actually had in essence a real admiration of lincoln coy. Rose you have people stepping forward like leon panetta and bob gates questioning whether he has the passion of leadership. More than one observer, including fdrs most recent biographers, gene edward smith made this point. At the fire the partisanship foo drive national change was missing from this president. Rose smith said that about obama. Exactly. That detachment reserve the caution of the professor is appropriate for decisionmaking but not for politics. Rose when you think about secretaries of the state, you served for six. Yes. I dont want to make anybody unhappy. Ill be clear and honest with you. Rose whose number one. I dont, well in the last 50 years weve had in my july two undeniably consequential secretaries of state. Rose kissinger and. And james baker. And i worked, i didnt work toward kissinger but i did work for baker. The three ingredients you need to be a consequential effective secretary of state number one the support of the president. And i dont mean the rhetorical support i mean the bond with the president. Baker had it. Number two, the opportunity. The were has to at least be in some measure of stress that makes it amenable to some kind of american fix. And negotiating skills. The world got to be an unassembled jigsaw puzzle on your living room floor and intuitiveliment i dont know how these guys do it. Kissinger was act democratic, how do you truly understand how to negotiate. Both of these guys. Rose if you look at where the president is today, its a huge threat today, was there opportunity or is there opportunity that he has some of these qualities he can carve out for himself, a legacy that is much better than it is going into this crises. I would argue charlie that the world has become such a cruel and unforgiving place. Much more complex than the cold war which presented a world of semi order. If you ask people what was the most dissecret important act of Foreign Policy that obama undertook, the most heroic act Foreign Policy in his presence he probably would say he killed osama bin laden. But other than that youve got a world on fire. Youve got Vladimir Putin having his way in the yew crepe, youve got decentralization in the middle east in syria and iraq. You have the emergence of isis. The new boogie Man Threatening the united states. These are generational problems. Rose i would assume with respect to president obama. He inherited an Economic Crises that needed his full attention. Yes. Rose there was not time for him to go off around the world and try to solve all the crises or to find some central principle that needed to be applied. That had to stop. A collapse of the economic system. Right. And managing this became given the fact that the politics were hostile. Rose exactly. Became not an opportunity at all but a burden. And i think that has, he has much less than a thousand days in his presidency. Its hard to see now even though the final judgment on obamas record will take time, its hard to see now how he navigates through. Rose where do we put the ever present bill clinton . Fascinating question. He and reagan are undeniably in my judgment the two most effective american politicians president s of the 20th century after fdr. Rose political operators. Yes, yes. Relative piece and great prosperity during. But the law scandal keeping those hidden demons under control, critically important for president s, critically important. But i think you know the African American even now who do you want back. Clinton and reagans name along with jack kennedy. Rose of course they now say reagan couldnt get the nominations of his own party. Thats probably right. Rose some say that. And bush 41. A guy works had a great deal of admire asian. These are transactional president s, eisenhower, bush 41. Men who i think understood their times. Didnt inspire to grandiose dreams and ambitions, were competent and effective. The conclusion is dont think great, think good but think good not in the banal ordinary sense. Rose people think of jimmy carter where he didnt use a word with malaise and they identify him as one term, and they identify him with all kinds of things. But it seems to me and you would know this specifically, it took uncommon ability to achieve camp david. A hundred percent. Extraordinary testament and every egyptian and israeli, the one that remain will tell you, this would not even with the great saddam and begin, it took carter to put this together. No question about it. Rose the most difficult of odds. Really hard. Think about it. I interviewed carter for this book and i asked him with all due respect mr. President how come we have not had a great president since fdr. And his response was extraordinary and he said because we havent had a good war. Even carter. And the truth is the last good war was fdr. Truly fdrs war. Rose what if jimmy carter had rescued the hostages . Thats equivalent to osama bin laden. It would have been altered. Rose given him second term for sure. I would think. Rose why america cant have and dont want another great president. The argument why they dont want of course is because great president s obviously come on the top of a crises that is threatening to the country at large. Thank you. A pleasure. Thank you. Rose Aaron David Miller. Back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose Russell James is here. Hes an australian born fashion photographer. Say he has the best job in the world. For the past 15 years hes been the main photographer of victoria secrets. His work appeared in vogue, Sports Illustrated and w magazine. His new look focuses of the female for it is called angels. Im pleased to have Russell James on this program. How did you come to photography . Im probably an accidental photographer. My curiosity was my single answer. I had a great diverse background i left school early i i was making trash cans, i trained dogs, i was a Police Officer for five years. I did many different things. What that all amounted to i had a fascination for the world. I started traveling. Eventually back in the year 1999, i was in the dark room with a photographer. I was assisting him. Just as a means of income and i just became fascinated with the process. I saw an minute lift image lift out of the pain. Were talking about a time when digital film was a myth. It was a singular moment that grabbed me and said this is what i want. Rose regardless what the camera said whether its digital or analogue or whatever it might be separates good from best. Subjective. Its who you ask. I stood before a picture with 20 different people you may get 20 different opinions. Rose one is not better than the other. I would argue one is not necessarily better than the other. Its in the eye of the beholder but certainly for me there are very specific aspects. I was inspired greatly by irving penn, thats me lighting the connection if theres a person involved or a model, the connection to the camera isnt real. And a balance. And perspective to the photograph. What digital has done is equalize the playing field. Anybody could get into an entry level with a camera. Rose how did you come to us. These are beautiful women photographed in a beautiful way. Its just the cover there. Did you finally decide look this is what, i mean why. I came to it delicately. It was the i planned to do a book on nude genre. When i was indeducted into the finite gallery in berlin represented the archive of people like irvington. Rose right, right. And my passion was divided. I had as i said a landscape to a portrait of someone that i seen significantly but never known. They all compelled me in the same way. And nude photography has a, theres a very special thing about it. Its an empty canvas. If youre shooting photographs for lets say a vow of a certain kind you can pretty much take a photo like. This a photograph of a woman, have a partner in the photograph and have her come back. To me the most important credittic is the subject itself. Rose whats the essence of shooting the nude body . You start with an appreciation i guess that would be one thing. A great appreciation, which we go back to early art and say its compelled from the very beginning. From any time being not recorded. I go out to some of the most ancient rock art known to man kind and it contains the nude. Rose what are sculptures. Whatever it may be. So what compels. I mean its the purist form but there are so many different ways you can take it. You can take it to the most vulgar and offensive to the most beautiful and delicate and in the and theres all those things in between. Rose or the most liberating and the most subjugating. Absolutely. For me what drives me the most is that what i do isnt offensive but rather parship. Rose how do you agree with that. There comes a moment where the subject and ive got a catch raw and i take a photograph and i think the worst thing you do at that moment is take this full body picture. So i start shooting very close directly into the eye. Theres something amazing about doing that because theyre saying that the eyes being windows of the soul. Absolutely true. Once i find the calmness of the person and they start to look at the camera and they understand im interested rose theyre communicating with the camera they get to communicate with you. Rose they go through the lens to you. Yes. Its about a technical object but the conversation has to be the level or the tone has to be at a level. So the opposite of helpful are things like sexy. Thats the opposite of helpful. I think in that environment what is helpful is talking before i start shooting obviously we can talk anything about lunch, food, kids, life. Politic. Things. But then when i feel the tension trop i just Start Talking the photograph and everybody understands the shoe shoot has started at that point. Rose does beauty means Something Different to you now because you thought about it ask photographed it and tried to reflect it. It means, yes. Beauty has changed as ive matured and ive doled and lived life spent a lot of times like in haiti and taking portrait of people down there. I certainly dont, i say it with complete honesty but when im traveling a person, albeit an aboriginal elder or member of the tribe in florida or a tribal girl theres a beauty about the photograph. When youre on the other side, its the strangest thing but its so careful and im gauging when youre in it, i get lost in that moment. Rose the other thing that comes up, what you do is youre objectfying. From an artist perspective working with thing that are very sacred the good thing is im shooting women for woman. So value can be measured on how women receive it. Ive got daughters, so im very conscious of the objectiveification of women. And its a balancing and at the end of the day for one part of my career im taking photographs of nude people. And at the same time i have to think how do i balance that so that im actually empowering women. I do a lot with young women dont faf them nude but we do a lot of work brg them into the industry and let them see the inside and see its not a bad objectiveification. This is very much about objectfying 20 years and probably the last ten there has been a change. Rose the beginning of this book. This is alexandra in new york city in 2013. A lot of news i do theres no nudity and that is the art. Some of it is the someone like alexandra its just amazing we have the moment, we can calm the room enough to have a look at the camera and not say do anything let her eyes and her body speak. Rose this is Lily Aldridge too. What should i notice about this . That is to me lily. Rose in other words her shares not sort of perfect. Exactly. What i notice about lily is i photograph lily very much for the cosmetic brands but lily is about as rounded a person as you can get. Shes a remarkable mother, shes a remarkable spokesperson. Shes philanthropic in her nature and shes an absolutely gorgeous woman. So all those things i feet like were embodied in that picture. The boot is just about and she walks in a pair of genes. Rose then there is this. This is a picture from your nomad series. Bonnie taken in the northwest of australia with an elder and his name was donny. And its some things are self explanatory. I looked at the eyes of bonnie and i just said i can literally see the 50,000 years of your culture in your eyes. And there wasnt a lot of explanation to it. I shot widely around the area. In fact well go back there in the next week with an an Regional Group in the northwest of australia. Etcetera always compelled me, the eyes of people again whether its a beautiful woman or an ancient elder or whether a person we know very well. Like barbra streisand. Rose whats that. This is a vehicle that started as a foundation, philanthropic own defer where i would subright with indigenous cultures. I did it because there are so many issues with indigenous cultures where theyve been marginalized. The indigenous groups ive met theres extraordinary suffering going on. Rose these are the seminoles. But this tribe is the seminole tribe of florida. They have one of the greatest Success Stories that ive ever experienced. So ive been working on something we call feminal spirit which will launch in 2015 in new york. What i hope to show is a Positive Side to what is often a negative. So this tribe has kept their culture and at the same time has adapted as good at or better as anyone has in one day. Rose the next how this kind of photograph is. What are you looking for. Clearly youre looking into his eyes. For me this is an absolute mentor. I had the great privilege to travel to haiti in particular and to other places but where what i was looking at in that photograph is i drew inspiration and understanding what i was doing with an art project, when people like president clinton and richard brandston said dont be awe shale of socially conscious business. You cant mix philanthropic endeavor with social activities. I said you can because youre climbing up a chimney. Its entirely possible. When i look at president clinton thats what im sag. Im saying my mentor in the space of this social commitment. This is outside of politics and which side of the fence who is a person i believe is really engaged. Rose are you talking to him to create that particular thing youre looking for there. Is there communication between the two of you or is he simply posing and youre waiting for the moment that you want. In that case were talking about the citadel which is the biggest fortress in the western hemisphere up in the north of haiti and ive been doing a documentary to live on the citadel. And it represents the nurse nation formed by free slaves. That was the conversation were having. I just interviewed the president on that subject and i asked if i could take some photographs and i did. And so really i guess the closest thing to me, it was just his personality is what i was looking for like who he actually is. Rose when did you take this . That photograph is very recent, i would say in the last four months. Rose the are a whole range of things here. Where is the biggest passion for you. You could go out today and somebody said just take a month and go whatever you want to do, what would you do . That would be the hardest choice to make. It would be very hard because my passion of photography is broad but surely i would probably go to the roots that have driven me and that is really around indigenous culture. In many ways the wild life culture. Again i want to i about all the elements that are involved in angels and bring them together in one roll. Rose thank you for coming. Thank you very much. Rose this book is called angels. Russell james. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and early episodes visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org report with Tyler Mathisen and susie gharib. Brought to you in part by. The street. Com, featuring stephanie link who shares her investment strategy, stock picks and Market Insights with action alerts plus, the multimillion dollar portfolio she manages with jim cramer. You can learn more at the street. Com nbr. Goodbye and fare wl, the Federal Reserve ends its bond buying program, and assesses the economy and what will chair janet yellin do next . The 1. 6 million question, did the move to restore the econ