Adrian Leon LeBlanc, my dad and my namesake, his keen joy in observing people and the world is the reason I became a journalist.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My father was a journalist.
We had all these famous writers in Sweden and from all over the world home at dinner. I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be a highbrow writer as my father. He never, ever read anything like crime novels. He wrote biographies of Dante, James Joyce, August Strindberg and Joseph Conrad.
I think people of my generation became journalists - you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers - because we wanted to report the big stories.
My father was an inspiration to me; I made a few movies with him and I loved working with him. Everything about him - his whole approach to work, as well as his love, enthusiasm and respect for it and other people in the business - was inspiring. I was very lucky to have him as a role model.
My father was this huge, influential intellectual in the '60s and '70s. He was one of the main players in the cultural discussion in Sweden, the editor of papers.
There have been so many photographers and editors who mentored me over the years. At the very beginning, the person who taught me the most was Arthur Elgort. I always loved working with him. We traveled a lot together.
The idea of being a foreign correspondent and wandering the world and witnessing great events, having adventures and covering the activities of world leaders, appealed to me greatly. It was a very glamorous life in those days.
Everybody I knew, practically, was a journalist when I was a kid - my father, all of his friends. I never wanted to be like those people.
My father was a newspaper editor, so I was surrounded by journalists my entire life. I think the fact that he was so well known may be why I chose to go into magazines and move to the States at a young age.
My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers.