©Olaf Heine

James Woods, Los Angeles, 2005

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Living the Dream

By Michael Foldes

There’s a lot to love about photography, but few photographers who make it relatively easy to understand why. How they do it is another thing. It’s not just in the equipment they shoot with, the finish of the paper they print on, or their subjects, but the connection the photographer makes to a moment that will be forever fixed in time. Hang forty or fifty of those moments in a gallery, or in a long hallway, and you have what truly can be called suspended animation. Crisp. Clearly visible to the unpracticed, as well as the practiced eye. Past perfect.

The following interview, with portfolios including images from his books “I Love You but I’ve Chosen Rock,” and “Leaving the Comfort Zone” (both from Hatje Cantz Publishing, 2010 and 2008, respectively), provide ample evidence of Heine’s interpretive visual skill, dedication to craft, and long-term love of music. Born in Hannover and schooled in Berlin, Heine moved to Los Angeles in 1998 where he added to his portfolio of celebrities, musicians and West Coast life. The recipient of numerous awards, his work has appeared on album covers, in magazines, advertisements and in music videos. From the following interview and images, we think you’ll know better why. 

Ragazine: Where do you call home, these days, and where is your studio?

Olaf Heine: That’s a difficult question. What’s home? On a physical level I’d have to say that my base is in Berlin these days and that is also where my studio is. I love the city. Berlin for sure is my home. But I have spent quite some time in other places the past fifteen years. I’ve split my time between Los Angeles and Berlin for eleven years. LA is kind of a home too. Berlin and Los Angeles are twin cities and although they are quite different, there are a lot of similarities in a deeper kind of aspect. I am still travelling there every few months spending time with friends and colleagues and also shooting there a lot. Taking the best of both worlds if you’d like. On a deeper, metaphysical or spiritual level I also must say that Ibiza/Spain became kind of a home for me. I am spending my summers there since the mid-nineties, did quite a lot of shoots there and got married there a few years ago. The small island in the Mediterranean is a very calm and inspiring place for me. 

Q: When and how did you get involved with photography? Did you start out working for an agency, or another photographer?

A: Ever since I can remember, ever since I was a little child I was taking pictures. In the first place it was just for fun, for the sake of playing around with this little technical gadget. But then I started recording my past time. I documented my family, my friends and my life. Later, in my teenage years I started going to concerts a lot and that’s how I became involved with music photography. I grew up in a little village and besides photography I loved rock music. So the camera became the door opener to this fascinating world, gave me the chance to get out and travel the world. I am self taught and happened to know a few musicians in my hometown who trusted me when they needed an album cover.

Q: Who or what would you say has been your principal motivator to take pictures?

Leaving the Comfort Zone | Hatje Cantz Publishing | August 2008

A: If it wasn’t for my affinity for music I’d probably be an architect. My motivation was really to become a part of the music world and to record my life. I didn’t play an instrument but I loved that whole scene, the friendship, the bonding, the travelling circus atmosphere. So the camera gave me the key to that world.

Q: Do you have a formal education in art, design or photography that you bring to a session?

A: I am self taught and learned by jumping in at the deep end. I studied a lot of books and bugged a lot of people who knew about photography. I made tons of mistakes and learned from them. After I worked as a photographer for a few years I finally moved to Berlin in the early nineties and attended a photography school (Lette-Verein).

Q: What kind of camera(s) do you favor, and why?

A: Without sounding arrogant or comparing myself, but would you ask Picasso about his favorite brush? I find discussions about technical aspects or favorite cameras, lenses, etc. boring and dull. I work with a whole lot of cameras. Whether I use a small or medium format, whether I use digital or analog, whether I use Photoshop or Polaroid, that really depends on my idea or vision for a certain image. I sometimes even use snapshot or video cameras to produce images.

Q: When you’re still shooting film, how much do you manipulate in the darkroom? Do you scan and work digitally after the fact? What papers do you like to print on?

I Love You but I've Chosen Rock | Hatje Cantz Publishing | September 2010

A: I do manipulate sometimes. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Again it depends on the subject. I just finished an advertising campaign with Germany’s national football team which I didn’t Photoshop at all. But then again I like to freedom of being able to do so if I wanted to. Same in the darkroom (even though I have to admit that I didn’t enter any darkroom since the late nineties). But my printer has the possiblities and I like to sometimes take advantage of it. As for printing, I still like a good old silver gelatine print.

Q: What kind of shoots do you enjoy most? Fashion? Musicians? Products?

A: In general I enjoy the shoots that give me most creative freedom and productive collaborations. In the past this has been the case a lot in the music industry. But ever since they lost a good deal of money through the digital age and the downloading of music files, they have also lost their courage, which makes it harder for a photographer. There is more pressure to succeed and therefore less and less creative leeway. I am also a big football (soccer) fan, so working with a lot of talented players, especially with the ones from my favorite team give me a lot of joy and happiness. I’m living my childhood dream, right?

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Q: What photographers do you admire, and who would you most like to work with (living or dead)?

A: When I started out I admired documentary street photographers like Cartier Bresson or Robert Frank. Especially the latter’s dark and moody visuality had an impact on my earlier work.  I am also a kid of the eighties and grew up admiring some of the most talented black and white photographers. I like the diversity of Albert Watson for example. Bruce Weber is another one. His ‘Let’s get lost’ documentary about Chet Baker had a big influence on my work.

Q: Did you have a mentor? Who?

A: This would be German photographer Jim Rakete who was doing great b/w portraits of the German music scene in the eighties. I met him in the early nineties and even assisted for him on one or two occasions. He supported me quite a bit and gave me a lot of advice.

Q: What’s the most remarkable aspect for you in being a photographer?

A: The most important aspect in photography for me is that I get to see so much of the world and meet so many talented people. It really is about the moment itself, the process and collaboration. The journey is the destination, isn’t it?

©Olaf Heine

Stroke, Berlin, 2008

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Q: If you had your choice of subjects/projects to shoot, what would it be?

A: I do have my choice of projects sometimes. Besides my commissions Ialways work on personal projects. Throughout the year I try to take some weeks and months off  to develop and pursue certain ideas. There are portraiture portfolios of different people as well as landscape and architectural projects.

Q:  Obviously you’re not intimidated by fame. Have you always found it easy to work around ‘personalities’?   

A: I try to look at my subjects in their entirety and not just in relation to fame and stardom, if you know what I mean. To me it’s more important that I work with creative minds and that makes the collaboration challenging and thrilling. Their fame is irrelevant to me.

Q: Who or what was the most difficult subject you’ve had to photograph? Why?

A: Of course there are shootings that are more difficult than others but I would’t tell you who those were with. I try to be as loyal as I can to my subjects.

Q: Do you have any favorite photographs, or one in particular you wish you’d had a chance to shoot over?

A: No. I don’t. I try to not look back too much and/or regret… Everything happens for a reason and if I mess up, I mess up. I try to learn from mistakes and move on.

Q: Any advice for young people starting out in the business?

A: That’s a tricky one. What would I say? Forget about sleep the first couple of years? Be grateful and humble? Try to not be too satisfied with your work? No seriously. I would say that one should not concentrate on photography alone. There is so much medial interplay between the different creative forms nowadays. My job needs some fundamental knowledge in graphic design, advertising, architecture, fashion, film, marketing and so many other aspects. Take your time and look around is what I’d probably say.

Q: Thank you, Olaf.

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Related Sites:

http://www.olafheine.com/
http://www.hatjecantz.de

All work copyright Olaf Heine; used with permission. 

Anja Wiroth Agency | Alexander Str. 9 | 10178 Berlin | Deutschland
Fon: +49-(0)30-509-161-41 | Mail: anja@anjawiroth.com

Weiss Artists Inc. | 6311 Romaine St. #7234 | Los Angeles | Ca. 90038 | USA
Fon: +1-323-461-1084 | Mail: caryn@wreps.com

Note:

This edited interview was conducted via e-mail from October through December, 2011.  

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Steve Bromberg

 ©2011 Steve Bromberg

40 Hours

We were in the second day of a two-and-a-half day train trip to Urumqi in Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu  from Wuxi Jiangsu Province.  This was my very first travel experience in China. My student invited me to spend the holidays with him and his family in Yining, on the far western edge of Xinjiang. This was spring holiday season and all the students everywhere in China were finished with exams and traveling home to be with their families for Chinese New Year.  Every train everywhere was sold out. I was late buying my ticket so I ended up with a standing ticket. This meant I would have to stand in the isle of the train for the two-plus days to Urumqi. As luck would have it though, when we boarded, we were given a sleeper car because they had run out of seats on this train. The only caveat to this was we had to sit four to a lower bunk that fit three people. The bunks were stacked three high but we were not allowed to sleep in the upper bunks. Rules are rules in China. So everyone for two plus days sat and slept sitting up. The train was packed. Having a seat was good fortune. I was lucky, my student talked the conductor into letting the weiguoren (foreigner) sit with him. On this trip, Colin (my student’s English name) discovered a girl from his hometown in the same car we were traveling in. Wu Yuan Yuan, Colin’s middle school classmate. Tired and bored, I wandered through the train taking pictures and caught Wu Yuan Yuan deep in thought. It ended up being a very long trip for all of  us.

http://www.stevebromberg.com/

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Larry Hamill

©2011 Larry Hamill

Fluid Dress

I photographed the woman wearing the dress at The Highball event in Columbus, Ohio, around Halloween. I combined that image with an HDR shot of a waterfall I took a couple of weeks earlier near Lake Tahoe. The background clouds were shot during a sunrise at Mt. Shasta, CA. I used Photoshop CS5 to merge the images.

I was fortunate 23 years ago that a friend gave me a Beta copy of Photoshop. It was a challenge to figure out how it worked without a manual. Playing with the software seemed the best way to learn and it was and is a fun process.

 http://larryhamill.com

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David Aschkenas

©2011David Aschkenas

 The Floating Dress

As for the photo of the floating dress, this piece was part of a large show in Prague, Czech Republic, in November.  The exhibit was housed in 3 large buildings called NEW ART.  It was made up mostly of university art professors and work by their graduate students.  All of the work in the show had to be no older than 20 years and seemed to be made up mostly of Czech and central European artists.  A good bit of the show was installation art rather than two-dimensional work.  This piece was obviously an homage to the photograph of Marilyn Monroe standing over the New York subway grate, with her dress catching the breeze and flying up in the air.  The photo was originally done by George Zimbell during the filming of Billy Wilder’s film “The Seven Year Itch”.

It was interesting to see such an iconic image recreated as an installation piece of art.  The structure of the box fan on the ground echoed the structure of the subway grate and the dress kept billowing in different directions as if floating.  The placement of the window behind the piece served to back light the dress, causing it become a bit transparent adding to the drama.

Regrettably, I didn’t make note of the artist who created the piece.

http://www.daschkenasphoto.com/index.html

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For  submissions, query first to: chaupt@me.com or editor@ragazine.cc.

Sean considers himself  a storyteller, critic, dabbling haiku poet and a photographer. Shooting with the Diana F+, a medium format film camera with a plastic lens. The manual focus camera has “cult” following dating back to the 60′s.

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Sundialing

drifting off the map,
latitudinally lost…
sunset is your clock

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The Poseur, the Poet

wanna-be bashos
will try to caption beauty
blowing zen moments

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The Places You’ll Go…

journey long enough
and your life fades to a dream
dreamt by ten-year-olds

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A Good Freestyle…

living life as if
she were one breath from drowning
she learned to swim well

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Valued Stuff

rocks: the poor man’s gold
it all depends on the light
and your perspective

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Made in the USA

he’d seen all the ads
re: the good life and he knew
he’d come out all right

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In White Noise

the hush now past, gone,
not defeatist, just accepting,
he drifts through the din

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Unanswered Letters to God

weighting dreams with time–
withstanding their whittling,
wondering, why me?

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Like human beings, the Diana F+ is an unreliable machine. It will let you down half the time, blurring an image or misusing light among its more egregious flaws. But when the elements do come together the effect is magical and the resulting image can be uniquely special. I have composed haiku and senryu poems to companion my favorite images wrought from the Diana F+. Photography is a challenge to the ephemeral inevitability of life, a frozen millisecond framed in a certain tableau by a certain machine. Similarly, haiku poetry celebrates the impermanence of things, designing a poem out of the transitory nature of being. It’s been an ongoing pleasure of mine to pair these art forms together so that an altogether novel experience is rendered and perhaps, out of the chaos of modern life, some basic truth about existence may be empathetically enjoyed by strangers.

-Sean 

Sean Lotman is a native of Los Angeles. He lived in Tokyo for eight years and has recently relocated to Kyoto, Japan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in LPV Magazine and Grey Sparrow, among others.

His ongoing photo-haiku project can be viewed at http://idohaikuyou.blogspot.com/ and his photography site is http://seanlotman.com.

© Adrian Davis

Across the Golden Gate

Shooting Outside the Box

Image Capture is just the first step …

Davis on Davis

I like to think of myself as a photographer and printmaker, with the latter being where most of my creative energy lies. Capturing a moment in time with the camera is simply the first step in making a photograph for me. I’d say this takes me out of the “documentary” class of photographers, and places me in the “art” category. From the very moment I begin to compose an image, I am already thinking about how the print will look on paper, and what post processing steps I might take to reach the image in my mind.

My preference has always been monochrome and I give all my work a slight sepia/warm tone. The first warm-toned silver gelatin print I made, back in 1989, instantly caught my eye and left me feeling content. I always felt something was missing from my neutral toned B&W prints. Now working with a digital process, for capture and print output, I tone my monochrome images using Channel Mixer and the Colorize mode in Photoshop CS3. The printing paper of choice is Hahnemuhle Torchon, which is a highly textured surface that I love for my work. I often refer to my photographs as “Neo-Vintage”, as they can appear dated/antique but are prepared using a modern, digital process. I’ve been asked several times by viewers if my images are Platinum, which I get a big kick out of!

Over 23 years of pursuing photographic processes has led me to the style I have now, and I don’t plan on any changes, anytime soon. Photographs are presented in a square format as pigment inkjet on textured watercolor papers in warm tone. Sizes offered are 12×12″, 16×16″ and a few images at 30×30″ with a maximum edition of 40, all sizes inclusive.

In terms of image capture and style, I favor the minimalist statement and often use long exposures to render clouds and moving water with a more “painterly” effect. The contrast of tones and soft/sharp areas are what I seek to present in the final print.

— Adrian Davis

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View larger photos from the gallery please enter the FS button.

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The Gift That Kept on Giving

Adrian was given a Nikkormat 35mm for his 16th birthday and began hand developing his own film at 17 in the family’s darkroom. Today, his work can be found in both private and professional collections. A passion for photography, instilled in him from an early age by his parents, both amateur black and white photographers who printed their own work, led him to take college courses in large format photography and advanced printing. A scholarship soon followed which allowed him to continue his dedicated coursework.

A series of apprenticeships, most notably as a Staff Photographer at the world famous Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite, CA, enabled him to further explore the craft of landscape photography and printing techniques. Throughout the 1990s, Adrian experimented with different film formats and printing techniques mainly shooting 4×5 negative films. It was during his tenure at the Ansel Adam’s gallery that he was introduced to newly developed methods of printing and shooting digitally.

From 2000 to 2006 he shot medium format with transparency films and scanned his films for digital chromogenic printing. In 2007, he began shooting exclusively with digital cameras in the 35mm format. It was at that time he fell in love with, and adopted the inkjet process for his work. Adrian prints his own work exclusively on Hahnemuhle Torchon watercolor paper, a highly textured print surface that enables him to create the warm vintage look he has become so well known for.

He is currently based in Colorado where, in addition to his personal photography, he offers digital printing and book publishing services to other artists.

To see more of Adrian’s work, visit his website at: www.adriandavisphotography.com

Gallery representatives: Susan Spiritus Gallery, Newport Beach, CA
www.susanspiritusgallery.com/htmls/gallery.htm

Open Shutter Gallery, Durango, CO
www.openshuttergallery.com

Focus Gallery – Chatham, MA
www.thefocusgallery.com/

Energy for Sale

You have so much inertia,
father said, my first thought

would be to save some – don’t
waste all of it on yourself –

then find a way to bottle it,
and finally sell it. But then

I realized, who would want it?
Only a lazy person – and he

wouldn’t be around but hiding
in his room, like you. Now, if

you had enough energy left over
to sell, that would be a different story =

people would knock on your door
to buy it wholesale. You could

charge whatever you wanted.
And I bet I couldn’t walk down

this street without someone asking,
“Where could I buy a little energy?”

“From my son,” I’d proudly answer.
“But don’t buy all of it. He needs some

in reserve to battle his old case of inertia.”

The Snake’s Neck Is for Holding

It’s easy to immobilize
a snake, father said – just

grab it by the neck
and hold on for dear life.

Just because a snake doesn’t
have a distinguishable face,

like you and me, doesn’t
mean it doesn’t have a neck.

If a glass of wine has a neck –
wouldn’t a snake have one?

Let me put it another way –
if it has a mouth, it should

contain a neck. The hard part
is differentiating one end

of the snake from the other.
Don’t grab the tail, because

The snake is flexible enough
to whip around and bite you. It

ingests from one end – eliminates
from the other. If you’re

still confused about which end
is which, then poke the snake

away with a stick. It may not have
as  dramatic a presentation for

a woman – she won’t be quite
as impressed – but it will do.

About the poet:

Hal Sirowitz has had poems published in Ragazine. He’s the author of four books of poetry, with a fifth one forthcoming from Backwaters Press in Nebraska.

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thePHOTOGRAPHYspot

Perspective of One Tree

©2011 chuckhauptphoto

Off the coast of Maine, there is a series of three small islands simply called Brothers, with only one tree among them. That tree, a spruce, never seems to get any bigger, I assume due to the weather conditions. It has been photographed and painted by artists for decades. Every year, upon returning to the coast, I scan the horizon to hopefully find that the tree survived another year.

Chuck Haupt is photo editor of Ragazine. You can visit his blog at www.chuckhaupt.com/blog.

For thePHOTOGRAPHYspot submissions, please see guidelines at ragazine.cc/submissions/

©Jéanpaul Ferro

6:00 a.m. Miami, Florida

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Ravensbrück Clothes

Within the Greek Revival columns
of the Providence Athenaeum,
under the brick reds of the Rare Book room,
I began to hallucinate in front of the books
of wars and wars and wars;

I dream backwards to German soldiers
picking through all these brand new Ravensbrück
clothes, like ghosts perched up without bodies,
shirt, skirt, dress, these ghostly empty coats floating
through blue air,

picking up watches from piles of watches,
combing through wedding rings in pile after pile
of wedding rings,

over there a pile of bracelets,

things belonging to the Jewish blond girls
of Magdeburg, Koblenz, Hamburg;

sometimes you can still hear all those soldiers
echoes:

oh, it feels better to take the things of the most
pretty ones, feels best to kill them the slowest—

young, fresh-faced, faces minted anew like
bags of bank coins, this kind of beautiful face
that stares out into forever,

the watchmen slowly letting them burn
into this warmth for their hands, their young
cosmic bodies floating up right out into the furnace
of the wintry sun.

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©Jéanpaul Ferro

Island of Murano, Venice; Murano Vase

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The Nine Billion Names For One God

If a man understands a poem,
he shall have troubles.

—Mark Strand

She enters my head like ten quarter stars, all through
my corporal body, downward, a liquid warm, soothing,
wet like ancient amber, all these sinuous roots bursting
forth from my heart, spinning ‘round, a glowing Ferris
wheel at night, joyful as fireworks, shooting up like
coastal redwoods, Hyperion, Helios, and Icarus;

something I could have never dreamt before,
but now I know it’s true.

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©Jéanpaul Ferro

Twilight rooftop, The Elms Mansion; Newport, Rhode Island

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After a Day of Skiing at Loon Mountain

Your drunken muscles are Paris after all night, tight
after twenty-six runs down Upper Rumrunner and
Seven Brothers.

Face hot, sweat in the small of your back, ears ringing
and half clogged, you wonder why you do this to yourself,

the steam from the shower feeling like little liquid bites,
the rushing water hitting your stomach all buckshot and
time-worn,

later on, the food at the Italian restaurant tastes like it
came straight out of Liguria, the look, smell, and taste of the
wine leaving you translating Akhmatova all night,

outside, each twinkling incision cut into the sky makes you
give praise to God to thank him for how lucky you are,

lying in your warm bed with the heat turned on as high
as it can go, you try to dream of cliff draped islands and
the women of sonnets who may live there,

but you’re asleep faster than you can think of the cliffs,

and in the morning hunger is stronger than any other feeling,
the thought of your days after that like the thought of twilight
right before the setting of the most beautiful, liquid sun

About the poet:

An 8-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jéanpaul Ferro’s work has appeared on National Public Radio, Contemporary American Voices, Columbia Review, Emerson Review, Connecticut Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and others. He is the author of All The Good Promises (Plowman Press, 1994), Becoming X (BlazeVox Books, 2008), You Know Too Much About Flying Saucers (Thumbscrew Press, 2009), Hemispheres (Maverick Duck Press, 2009) Essendo Morti – Being Dead (Goldfish Press, 2009), nominated for the 2010 Griffin Prize in Poetry; and the recently released Jazz (Honest Publishing, 2011).  He is represented by the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency.  Website: www.jeanpaulferro.com * E-mail: jeanpaulferro@netzero.net

© Janez Vlachy

ooo

“There is always some idiot

smarter than you.”

An Interview with Janez Vlachy

By Mike Foldes

Janez Vlachy was born in 1954, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as he says, “A small country, two million inhabitants. Two hours from Venice, Italy, the best cappuccino in the world.” His parents both were economists and his grandparents “were something extra. One came a long way from being a shepherd to studying law in Wien, Austria. That happened a lot at that time in

Vlachy has no siblings, but says he “always wanted a brother, or at least a sister….” He studied economics at university, but felt “misplaced”. “Those guys are so without humor!” He quit everything and started taking photographs. When he won some awards in juried shows in Europe, he also quit his  day job (as an economist) and devoted full time to photography.
Vlachy likes to tell jokes. His best, he says, is this:  When my wife came home, she said: “You know what I saw when walking through the woods? Five lizards – those black and yellow colored ones.
I answered: “Can you imagine what they said they saw when they came home?”

The following interview was conducted via an e-mail exchange in March and April 2011.

Q: When did you start taking pictures?
JV: About 25 years ago. I started with my family. I never read a book on photography in my life (it shows, ha). I’m too lazy for that. It must come intuitively. I look and learn. Mistakes and strong will, that’s the best teacher you can wish for.
My work was published in Graphis Magazine NY photography books several times, along with some famous names, and I’ve had exhibits in Tokyo, Prague, Montreal…. For me this was a great recognition of my work. I am most grateful for that; it gave me self-respect, some confirmation that you are doing okay. My Nudes 4 photographs in Graphis (in print now) appeared alongside images by Sheila Metzner, Herb Ritts, Albert Watson, Mark Seliger, Joyce Tenneson, Lisa Spindler, and portraits of Johnny Cash, Mick Jagger, Bruce Willis, Elton John. It is also great inspiration, which you need for your future work, as well as the feeling of contributing as an artist to the hectic world around us.

Q. What kind of camera(s) do you like/use? In what situations?
JV: I use a Bronica middle format for my model shots. For City Scapes I use a wooden 4×5 Wista field camera.

Q: The cameras you use are not digital, so, where do you do your printing? Do you have a preferred paper, processing technique?
JV: I do transparency film, used to get it developed in two hours, now I must wait two days. I scan my work then jet print. I want the scans to be same as my work, color, contrast.
Was just trying Hahnemuhle paper. Very close must say.

Q. What do you think of the state of commercial photography today?
JV: It’s as good as it gets. (There are) so many good professional photographers out there. I think that sometimes it is hard for a photographer to make better work because of the limitations of  the taste of the customer.
I especially like the modern photography of food. I think there is no more leeway there, some images are really art. Also in fashion I enjoy good images. I like Vogue, especially Italian and German editions, those guys are the best in the world. They really pushed the limits. Of course there is no limitation in creativity or budget. But then you see a simple image, maybe some erotic fashion shot, and your eyes take a rest. I say to myself: This guy is good. So simple and strong.

Q: What do you see as the direction of photography as art?
JV: It changed incredibly a lot over the last 20 years. From side A (on an LP) it went to side B or even C. By side A and changing to B or C on an LP, I mean that photography changed its subject, stepping down from angels to mankind, going to places it has never been before… Searching and searching for new approaches.
It is hard to think it will slow down, nothing has. Look at the music, the modern styles like Acid, Lounge…  they evolved into something even more update. But I cry at some old traditional melody like “Danny Boy”.
The same is happening with photography. Everybody is a photographer. More now than ever. But the quality is well defined.  Old masters are still going strong, still fresh, unique, original.  All that takes time and sensibility.  I’m talking about sustainability, intelligence and ability to observe and see things.
That has never changed. The profession should be more professional — the modern curator has too much voice, or (is on an) ego trip. Always something new, searching for new rational tricks for the cost of quality. That is the way of modern photography.   Too much energy lost on a wish to be original, too much tautology.
And with a digital post production we have new possibilities, new combinations. There should be no fight between New and Old, there also should be no win (? Do you mean Victory?) of the New. Sadly today I observe that the Good-old-feeling must fight for its own right to exist. Show me  your guts and I will tell you who you are: that should be the only criteria for the quality of work. Added value, that’s the name of the game. This world needs more sensibility, humanism and understanding.
That’s where art kicks in, photography also.

Q: Who have been your greatest influences and how did he/she/they influence you to see the world as you see it?
JV: Maybe the greatest influence was that girl some years ago: she changed from walking to running. With that also her face changed, the expression. It started me thinking, something so unimportant and yet so beautiful.
When I discovered photography, it was Ralph Gibson. We actually met once in his New York studio. I called him, told him I’m a photographer from Europe. He said, “Come over if you have time.” I mean, that was really something. I was calling my hero and he said to (come) visit him. Ha. We spent two hours talking. I told all my friends, you can imagine. I still call him every so often; he doesn’t remember me anymore, I’m sure. But today a nice thing happened: I got mail from a Beijing student painter. She wants to use my images for her paintings. That’s funny,  a photographer being an inspiration to a painter. Ha, that’s a good one.

Q: How has politics shaped your approach to photography?
JV: There is no connection to my work.

Q: What effect did the conflicts in Slovenia have on you?
JV: Only bad for my creative happiness, otherwise no influence on what I photograph. Just bad feeling, like now with the Japan disaster and Libya war … makes me sad.

Q: What are you plans for new projects, commercial or personal?
JV: Working on exhibits for Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Houston, Texas. We shall see. There are also some prospects in Miami, Florida, but it’s the galleries’ turn now.
Also my Boston rep gallery, Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, is very active and making me some good PR coverage, especially since the book on NASA astronaut Sunita Williams (mother Slovenian, father from India) is coming out with my portrait of her on the cover.

Q: How long have you been able to support yourself with photography and what did you do before that “to survive”?
JV: Actually I have some hard times right now. I am working on a new subject,  a new exhibition that is almost finished.  It’s my 45″ work, “Night City Scapes and Jet Engines”. I want to give it some modern name like: “Stop for Coffee”, or something like that, not connected to the subject of the work. That’s very modern in Europe now.
I was doing a project for world known Akrapovic Exhaust Systems, one of the best pipes high-tech manufacturers for motorcycles and F1. A friend of mine was traveling America with their exhaust pipes, with people asking him where is he from, how come he has Akrapovic exhaust, does he know him … that kind of thing.
The images made it to Graphis NY Annual (2009) advertising book. I was lucky, a guy trusted what I was doing. Actually it was his wife. Some day they will make an exhibition of the works in Tokyo, ha.  What more can you wish for? It was done on my almost 100 years old 8×10, the lens same age. The light source was a spot light a friend of mine made from a can of beans, ha.

Q: Anything you care to add?
JV: I would only like to add the two wisdoms I sent you already, if they fit the profile. You can skip the joke of the lizards if you want to.
“For someone who doesn’t know much, he knows a lot.”
And, “There is always some idiot smarter than you.”

Photographer’s Note:
Graphis Advertising Annual 2009. The original transparency is 4×5″, done with an almost 100 years- old lens. That was quite a project. The tubes looked photogenic when I first saw them.
But when laid down on a surface, it was hard to do anything, to change from what they were to something sophisticated, as they are. Considering that the guy (Akrapovic) is a genius and started in his garage, dreaming the shapes of tubes, thus making them better than  the whole Japan Motorcycle industry. When a delegation from Japan came, they couldn’t believe their eyes. After three weeks of throwing away all the film, I came to this final solution. The background is a shirt wrap paper, doing a perfect job in this situation. My wife goes crazy by all the stuff I salvage. It’s hard for her to understand the pre-vision of my thinking process. But that is the old age fight between the sexes. When I contacted the Graphis, they gave me a two-page spread at my disposal to arrange at my will. As mentioned, the light I used was done from a can of beans and a cut paper in front of it making the shadows.

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To see more of Vlachy’s photography visit his website at:

©Michael Eastman

“There is no substitute for working.

None.”

An Interview with Michael Eastman

by Mike Foldes

Eastman

Michael Eastman’s photography captures the imagination in much the way it captures the essence of it subjects, merging the two in a surreal admixture of self and other. The current exhibition of meticulously produced images at Barry Friedman Ltd. Gallery, taken on Eastman’s fourth (and most recent) trip to Cuba in 2010, gives evidence: Rooms, facades, streets, all fade against memory when viewing the saturated color and play of light in monumental prints, as if to say, “This is what was, as well as what is.”

Los Angeles Times Art Critic, Leah Ollman, writes, “Walker Evans’ legacy is evident throughout Eastman’s work: a love of the vernacular, a consistent, frontal approach, and a fondness for … time and neglect.”

Michael Eastman is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin. He has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. His photographs are in the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, St. Louis Museum of Art, and the International Center for Photography, New York, among others.

The following interview was conducted via an e-mail exchange in March of 2011.

Q: How did you happen to gravitate to photography?

ME: Photography’s immediacy.

Q: What was your first camera?

ME: Nikon

Q: And what do you use today?

ME: I still use film, my camera for architecture is a Cambi from Denmark. It’s a 4×5 view camera, and also, I use old 500C Hasselblads. I still love a square.

Q: How much lighting equipment do you carry around with you? Your photographs have a remarkable intensity and  revealing of detail that seems hard to capture with natural light alone.

ME: I do not use lighting equipment.  All my photographs are made with natural light. By scanning my negatives myself and using Photoshop as my digital darkroom,  I am able to make prints that I never could have made with traditional methods. The amount of control is unmatched.

Q: In your Havana series, what time of day were most of the photographs taken? Everything appears to be very well lit.  Are these ‘long’ exposures?

ME: Photographs were made all during the day.  No particular time of day. Yes, fairly long exposures.

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Q: You say “Fairly long.” Can you give an example using, say, the following staircase image:

ME: 30 to 60 seconds at F22. Very low light …

Q: Of the hundreds of photographs on your own and other websites, and in your books, humans are conspicuous by their absence. Some of the settings give the flavor of life as we think we’ll know it after everyone else is gone but us – take that in the imperial singular. Did you ever photograph people, and if so, when did you stop?

ME: When I photographed commercially, I only photographed people. Real people doing real things. Very documentary.

In my fine art work, I am more interested in finding places to photograph that are full of evidence of human activity but without the specific people that inhabit the places.  These photographs are portraits of the people without the people in it.  Through inference, we tend to “create” the portrait from what is in the room and from our own personal experiences.  I feel successful when my interiors feel like someone has just left the space or is about to enter.   Almost like a stage set.

Q: Do you work with assistants, or is all the setup and digital darkroom work and printing handled by you?

ME: I do not work with assistants.  I photograph alone and print alone.  When I first began to photograph, there seemed to be many voices in my head. Imaginary critics telling me what to do, What not to do. Voices of parents wondering what I was doing with my life and why was I wasting my time with a camera, etcetera. Over the years, the only voice in my head is mine. The only one I am trying to please is me. I think this is what people mean when they say finding one’s voice. I try to find places that speak to me and one needs silence to hear it. That’s why I photograph alone. No interferences. No noise. No distractions. In the beginning my voice was very weak and very hard to hear. Now, it’s the only one up there.

Q: Your images are “huge”. What kind of printer do you use? Any special inks?

ME: The prints are six feet by eight feet. No ink. They’re not ink jet. They are conventional chromogenic prints (C Prints) exposed with a light jet.

Q: How do you happen to live in St. Louis? Are you originally from the Midwest?

ME: Saint Louis is where I am from. Where one is based has very little effect on what one accomplishes. It has been an advantage to be an outsider.  It is easy to get lost by being overexposed. And it easy to get lost in trying too much to advance one’s career.  The best thing one can do for one’s career is to continue to make better photographs. If your work gets better, you will get opportunities.  That is all you have control over.

Q: Do you still take commissions?

ME: Not really, although I still am open to collaborating.  Art is very singular activity. Whenever I have an opportunity to collaborate with others I respect, I am interested in exploring that opportunity.

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Q: What or where would you like to shoot that you haven’t, yet?

ME: Nothing specific.  I just want to continue to look, make better photographs and grow both as an artist and as a person. Those two things have much more in common than one might think.

Q: Do you enjoy teaching? And even if you don’t, what advice – other than find your own voice – would you offer the aspiring artist/photographer?

ME: I do not teach, although someday I would like the opportunity.  Currently I keep busy with my own work. I like to stay busy. I am a bit compulsive that way; if I was growing up today, I probably would be on a Ritalin™ drip. I believe an artist grows through working. I have learned mostly from my own photographs, both the ones that work and probably even more from the ones that do not work.  Editing is so important. Essential. And I have learned so much from just looking at prints. One has to be driven. There is no substitute for working. None.

Q: If you were to ask yourself a question, as an interviewer, what would it be, and what would be the answer?

ME: How did you succeed?

I think one needs to be a bit in denial, especially in the beginning. You have to believe you are better than you are. And still be ready to respond positively when you face rejection. Which I have to do all the time.  Still do. You have to keep making photographs even when you doubt, especially when you doubt. And you want your photographs to have more and more levels of ideas.  More is more. The only thing I have ever had control of was my work. The better it gets, the more I have achieved.

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For more images and information about Michael Eastman, visit:
http://www.eastmanimages.com/

The Michael Eastman show at Barry Friedman Ltd. runs through April 30, 2011. The gallery is located at 515 West 26th Street, New York, New York 10001.
http://www.barryfriedman.com/

©Guenter Knop

“Artworks That Represent Women

As They See Themselves”

Introduction:
Photographer Guenter Knop was born in Germany in 1954. He began his commercial career working as first assistant to photographer Charlotte March, in Hamburg, from 1979-1981. After a year of travel around the world, he came to the United States to work as first assistant to Henry Wolf, Henry Wolf Productions, where he continued to build a commercial portfolio doing television commercials, still lifes, catalogues, portraits and advertising.  Since 1989, he has conducted his own business as a commercial photographer for advertising, cosmetics and editorial. His resume includes dozens of exhibitions and scores of publications. His photographic and artistic love is the female nude. The following interview was conducted in an e-mail exchange in February and March 2011.

— Mike Foldes

Knop on Knop:

Twenty-five years ago I was asked by the world famous art director Henry Wolf to come to New York and work for him.  I left Germany and built a new life in New York City which includes two daughters, Camille and Caroline. Today, Kristin and Maximilian.

After assisting Henry Wolf for eight years I went on my own. Commercial work of different kinds paid the bills, but my focus has always been on the female nude. The concept stayed the same. I wanted my subjects to be real women — not models.

Nudity can be a touchy subject and at first it was hard to find volunteers. Soon I had a selection of photographs to show, which made it easier for women to understand my intentions. When I meet or see a women that I think would be a good subject, I hand out my card and briefly explain the concept. They can visit me or my gallery’s website and see for themselves.

The response has always been favorable.

I compiled all the pictures that are with collectors in one book. “Guenter Knop on Women”. This is a book about women for women!!! Sixteen people of different backgrounds volunteered to write comments about what they see in my  book.

My goal is and will always be to photograph real women for their own display and to convert ideas into artworks that represent women as they see themselves.

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Q: The work in your Art portfolio comes across strong and focused on taking the human form, primarily female, and creating vexing images. When and how did you discover the power of photography to capture your erotic imaginings?

GK: My father instilled the love of photography in me. Like many parents’ fate, the children will follow the path that the parents would love to have taken.

I am what my father wanted to be.

My mother wanted to be a vet. My sister is. My other sister travels all over the world and leads people to amazing places — a joy that my parents shared.

As a child I saw “photomagazin”, a German photography monthly. Mesmerized by the beauty of my aunt Hella, who was very, very pretty and running around me naked when she got ready for a date, I started enjoying the female body. Looking at my work, my father only criticized once for showing too much. This stayed with me until today. The privacy has nothing to do with a nude. The architectural elements I added later and got encouragement from Achim Moeller, an art dealer in New York.  With every woman that volunteered, I got more excited to pursue this way of portraying women. My wife and muse is a good example of a good combination between the photographer and his model.

Kristin, Maximilian and Guenter Knop

Q: Guenter, you have a beautiful family. Thanks for sharing this photo. When did you come to the states, and did you meet your wife here?

GK: I have two lives. My first one is in the past and won’t be discussed.

I came in 1982 to be hired by my mentor and friend Henry Wolf  (art director and photographer). I worked for him for about 10 years.

In that time I started a bad relationship which created two very smart young girls and ended in a disaster out of which my wife Kristin saved me. I don’t think I could have survived without her. We have Maximilian, our beautiful son, and building our lives together.  I met Kristin, like all my models, on the streets of Manhattan (53rd Street and Lexington Ave) . She was born in upstate New York to a black mom and a white father. Part of her family is in San Francisco and the other still in upstate New York.

Not only was I excited about Kristin as a model but also as a rep for my art. She understands me and my work. From the moment we met she worked hard to update my website and expose me to the internet. Getting to know my circumstances she left me just to decide later to continue to work with and for me. Out of this developed a relationship where we both realized that we had what the other was longing.

That is what made us decide to stay together and have Maximilian.

Q: Do you have an academic background in the arts or photography?

GK: No, I am an autodidact. When I quit studying Agriculture I went to the best fashion photographer at that time and asked her to assist. She agreed and from then on it was learning the trade.

Q: I notice you say you will shoot digital or film. A lot of photographers these days say film is too expensive to reproduce for digital imaging (scanning cost, etc.), and too slow (hours for results vs. immediate), especially when clients want to see their product “on the spot”. How much demand do you see in the commercial world for film? What do you shoot ‘for fun’?

GK: Digital or Analog is not a choice. My art is done on film. I like the grain and what you can do with film for example double exposures.

I tried to get the grain of the images of Drtikol (ed. note: FrantišekDrtikol, Czech photographer, March 3, 1883 January 13, 1961), but could not get it as sharp as he did. So with every period there is something gained and something lost.

Q: Do you have a preference for printers when you’re doing digital reproduction?

GK: When I saw my printers first try to print one of my Art Deco pieces I was amazed!!!! It had all the detail in the black and all in the light parts of the picture. I promised myself I will never ever suffer through a day of bad fumes in a darkroom. I gave up a $12,000 machine and I am happy. I shoot film (35 mm) and scan it on my Imacon scanner. Then my printer prints it digital on Hahnemuhle paper on an Epson 43-inch huge printer. For my taste that is perfect.

For clients I shoot only digital. They have different expectations and time concerns.

Besides, digital has advantages. It is very sharp and instant. Connected to your camera via computer the client can see the result instantly. Soon there will be cameras that run consistently so you just stop the camera and pick your  picture. The postproduction is tedious.

Film is not expensive if you know what you are doing. If you shoot 10 rolls of film on one position you should not photograph. If you don’t have it in 36 frames you don’t get it in 360. Yes, it take time to develop the film and scan it, but for that you get a different look. You can’t rush a good thing.

I hope I answered your question.

©Guenter Knop

Q: What kind of camera(s) do you use? Which do you prefer? Any preference for lighting?

GK: I always liked and used Canon cameras. I love Elinchrome and Norman lighting.

What I like is when the composition and the lighting leads your eyes to the point of focus. I like contrast in pictures so you feel the three dimensions .  In most cases I don’t like flat lit pictures. The master of light in my eyes is Horst P. Horst . His work lives through his lighting. But also Herb Ritts , Frantisek Drtikol, Mappelthorpe, Man Ray and a man that very few people know, Aubrey Bodine.

Q: Do you have other creative outlets, besides photography and family? For example, painting, music, etc.?

GK: Inspiration I get from going to galleries and museums . For example, the W. Turner show at the Metropolitan Museum inspired me to do two pictures with my muse and wife.

I myself  don’t paint or play an instrument but I enjoy a lot of different styles. I listen to Classical music, Jazz, Reggae, Bues, French music, Mexican music, Cuban music and Rock and Roll.

Q: Do you have any advice for younger people who want to pursue careers in photography?

GK: My advice for younger people is: If you like photography learn Graphic Design. Photography is only a tool and the tool does not need very many skills today.

Digital made photography easy and instant. For what it is used and what is expected you can’t make a living with it.  The combination of graphic design and photography has a future. Even better when you learn film direction. In the future you won’t have single shot cameras but movie cameras that will take a sequence of movements that you can freeze and you select the picture out of it. Graphic design gives you the opportunity  to present your photography in a way that is right in your eyes. If you are good, you will be successful.

Going back to pinhole cameras or even glass plates is a gimmick to sell (most of the time) images that are not even worth shooting with a Polaroid camera. That is the same as if you walk from Boston to New York on your hands. Hard work for what? Nobody cares.

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For more of  Guenter Knop’s works, and information about the photographer, please visit:

http://www.Guenterknop.com

http://532gallery.com/

Domestic Ops

On another swollen summer night,

stricken by the shadows of agents

strumming sullen adagio banjos

on the street outside our avocado

split-level ranch, she sets traps

for the maturing apocalypse. I must

study Mandarin and speed chess

down at the local community center,

tonal syllables and ivory gambits.

His job is to roll out a nylon mat

five times per day and comb the dog

for bugs and fingerprints. Our sister

learns to dazzle with sinuous displays

of flaming nunchaku and cymbals.

All of us have to hunt for and gather

nutritious wild plants from vacant

residential lots in the neighborhood.

We ask her why again, leery of specters.

She opens the back of the record player,

spinning the turntable at 78 rpm

with a bloody-cuticled index finger.

Out pops four dull sapphire capsules,

one for each secret molar compartment.

About the Poet:

Born in Flint, MI, raised in the Detroit area, and ripening in California since the fall of 1992, John F. Buckley lives and works in Orange County with his wife, teaching at local colleges and chasing the poetic dragon. His work has been published in a few places, one of which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize.

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IDA MUSEMIC, Photographer

Ida Musemic’s eye sees what’s common, while her mind and emotions realize what makes the common special.  Her photographic gift is in capturing sequences of events that echo the staccato of time passing: a clip here, an instant there, the space between a blank the viewer fills in as ‘obvious’.  Musemic’s work is on display at the 12×12 International Art Show through January 9, 2011, Jeanne D’Arc Studio · 253 West 24th Street · New York. For gallery hours, schedule a viewing with the curator, Stella Lilling · 212.924.3605.

More of Musemic’s work appears on her website: http://www.idamusemic.com.

For thePHOTOGRAPHYspot submissions, please see guidelines at ragazine.cc/submissions/

Micah Tower has his MFA from Hunter College. He teaches at Trinity Western University, has written film and music reviews for Slant and Patrol, and his poetry has appeared in publications such as Paterson Literary Review, Gulf Stream and, previously, in Ragazine. He enjoys making his own yogurt and blogging on http://www.thethepoetry.com.

©2011 chuckhauptphoto

Chuck Haupt is photo editor of Ragazine. You can visit his blog at www.chuckhaupt.com/blog.

For thePHOTOGRAPHYspot submissions, please see guidelines at ragazine.cc/submissions/

©2011 Ellen Jantzen

Credulity, from the series, “Losing Reality; Reality of Loss”

Embracing reality

—

The web is filled with a wealth of photographic material, some charming, some ‘anyone could do’, some that takes you by the shoulders and shakes you awake, some that puts you to sleep. Ellen Jantzen’s photographs call you back, like the memory of an event you can’t shake — images that cling, bringing to mind past events, and casting light on an unknown and mysterious future. Some reviewers speak of her work as an artistic exploration of quantum mechanics; one-hundred years ago her work would have been proof enough that spirits exist. Whatever your experience of Jantzen’s parallel universe, we trust you’ll take it with you.

Jantzen on Jantzen:

“Losing Reality; Reality of Loss – 2011″

I have always been interested in alternate states of reality, but looking over my last few series, those initiated and completed since moving to the Midwest from California, I see that I am also dealing with “loss” in some form; loss of friends, home, youth, and the ultimate loss, loss of life. Death transforms us; reality shifts, but to what?

Ellen Jantzen

I am intrigued with how a person adapts to losses in their lives — how they are absorbed by events and changed. How does one experience loss? Catastrophic losses usually have a face; think war photos, photos from the World Trade Center, crashes of various sorts; but I am interested in personal loss. What does loss look like?

I set about to address these issues through a photographic photosynthesis in this body of work — choosing photography as the medium to help me reveal, and at the same time enshroud, truths.

In this work, I have placed my husband (Michael) in various environments where a loss of some sort has recently occurred. One of these locations is the interior of a house designed by Michael and built by both of us for his mother about 30 years ago. The structure has gone through a radical evolution from its contemporary inception to being filled with antiques. Recently this home was sold, as mother was moved to an assisted living home. Clearing 30 years of accumulation to reveal the naked interior was transformative. To ultimately see a new family inhabiting the space has left Michael with contradictory feelings of loss and resurrection.

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©2010  Ellen Jantzen

Back to Nature, Missouri-1

Back to Nature – 2010/2011

At first, I began this series by placing my husband (Michael) in various landscapes and in various poses to both highlight and obscure his presence. More recently I have been photographing headstones in cemeteries and using these as stand ins for the human form. Since headstones represent a person who has passed, my obscuring and blending with the natural environment supports my intrigue with the vagaries of reality.

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©2010 ellen jantzen

Fragmentary Evidence

Reality of Place – 2010

Having recently moved to the Midwest after living in Southern California for 20 years, I was, at first, unimpressed with my new surroundings. But this move has changed me and impacted my work by forcing me to deal with the reality of a given place. It has helped me pay attention to and appreciate the details of diverse environments.

I have always been intrigued with various aspects of reality, and chose photography as the medium to help me reveal/obscure truths. Traditionally, photography was viewed as an honest replication of the real world. But, as we all know, even from its inception, photographers used their medium to alter, accentuate and eliminate aspects of the “authentic”. As I deal with these issues, I’ve come to realize it is all about the landscape, the environment…. fitting-in, disappearing, blending-in, and perhaps, ultimately embracing.

In this work, I have placed my husband (Michael) in various landscapes and in various poses to both highlight and obscure his presence while celebrating the reality of place.

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About the photographer:

Ellen Jantzen was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She has degrees in graphic arts and fashion design from The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, has worked in the corporate world as a designer, and taught product design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. She and her husband Michael recently moved back to the Midwest from the Los Angeles area. For the past three years she has concentrated on the craft of digital photography, the results of which are represented here.

See more of Jantzen’s work: http://www.ellenjantzen.com

Jantzen is now represented by the Susan Spiritus Gallery and has added to the ”Loosing Reality; Reality of Loss” series.

Fragile Trifles

Don’t disturb the dream’s last fragment
or blame the morning’s entrance.

If you’re humming or you’re hungry,
don’t rush to conclusions.

Don’t assume the bird sitting in sand
is wounded.

We’re all misguided at dawn,
not sure we’re still alive;

the flowers that bloomed in the spring, tra la,
dead without a half-life,

are more certain to return than you are.
And even if you’ve only seen

the whale’s arc or the pelican’s dive,
it’s enough to scissor your fingers like Spock

giving the Kabbalists’ blessing.
Really.  It’s enough.

About the Poet

Florence Weinberger is the author of four published collections of poetry, The Invisible Telling Its Shape, Breathing Like a Jew, Carnal Fragrance, and Sacred Graffiti (Tebot Bach, 2010).  Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Another Chicago Magazine, Antietam Review and Spillway.

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thePHOTOGRAPHYspot

©2010 chuckhauptphoto

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got as a young photographer was perspective. Shoot high, shoot low. How about shooting deep into the clusters of tiny white flowers of Queen Anne’s Lace?

Chuck Haupt is photo editor of Ragazine. You can visit his blog at www.chuckhaupt.com/blog.

For thePHOTOGRAPHYspot submissions, please see guidelines at ragazine.cc/submissions/

When wedding vows were cast in stone ... it was hard to sue.

Answers for the Commercial Photographer

by Mark Levy

With well over two million wedding ceremonies taking place annually in the United States alone, it is not surprising that the wedding industry is still healthy, in spite of the state of our dismal economy. From wedding planners to gown designers to caterers to florists, most parts of wedding productions seem to be surviving, if not thriving. That is also the case for photographers, both still and video.

Along with the opportunity to be part of this profitable business come responsibilities and potential liabilities. This article outlines some of the legal pitfalls you should know when embarking on or continuing to pursue a wedding photo career, a part-time job, or an avocation.

As with many areas of the law, the chances of running afoul of rules and regulations and of having to make reparations are generally small. Nevertheless, knowing where the mines are in the minefield is always a good idea and helps minimize your exposure.

Agreements

Write in plain English, not legalese. Short sentences are best. Once you have drafted an agreement, consider making it a form that you can use for future events with different parties. You can modify or revise your form agreement for future use, as different situations arise. This, by the way, is how lawyers work: they often start with a previous document written by themselves or others, and customize it for the present parties and situations.

The agreement with your client, known as an “event agreement,” should cover standard terms and conditions　found in　any contract, such as: names and addresses of the parties (your client and you); time and location of the event; work to be performed; and materials to be delivered to your client, including as many specifics as you can recite. These specific terms can include:

a) the time and place of the event and the duration of your participation in the event, with an extra fee for time you spend above and beyond the agreed-upon length of time at the event;

b) the number of photos for the album(s) or the length of the final, edited video;

c) whether you will record the wedding ceremony, the reception, or both;

d) how many copies of the albums or final video will be delivered and in what medium;

e) when and where you will deliver the album or video;

f) music, still photos, or other materials to be provided by your client, by you,　or by both of you;

g) the fee you are charging, including the amount of　down payment and any applicable taxes, and when the fee is to be paid as a lump sum or in installments;

h) excuses for your non-performance due to acts of God (e.g., natural disasters) or other unforeseen events, such as illness, labor strikes, etc., called “force majuere”;

i) your cancellation and refund or partial refund policy if the wedding does not occur;

j) penalties for non-performance, if any;

k) the jurisdiction in which litigation or arbitration will be conducted if a dispute arises　that cannot be resolved solely　by you and your client;

l) warranties by your client and by you;

m) an indemnification by your client to release and agree to protect, save harmless, and defend you from law suits of any nature;

n) copyright ownership;

o) your storage policy for original tapes or cards or negatives or files for archival purposes; and,

p) the amount of wedding cake you and your staff will be entitled to. (Seriously, if you require food and drink for your staff or you, which is not normally included in this type of agreement, be sure to specify that requirement with your client in writing, too.)

If you are shooting a video, you will want to use another agreement with the live band or DJ. This agreement should include a warranty clause stating that the performers have the right to play the music they will be performing. An indemnification clause protecting you from lawsuits for copyright infringement would also be a good idea. The agreement should also grant you a sub-license — technically, a synchronization license, so you can include the music you record with the video images you take. This sub-license should expressly allow you to video the performance and event, edit it, and display it in limited distribution video copies and/or on Internet sites.

A permit for shooting at the church, hotel, city hall, or park will not be necessary, as long as your client has arranged with those places to hold the wedding event there. Allowing photographers and videographers to work during the event is either explicitly included or implicit in the agreement between your client and the owner of the venue. You may want to ask for a copy of that agreement to see if any special restrictions are recited that can affect you.

Finally, you will want to enter into a separate agreement with each of　your outside contractors or employees, if any. This agreement should be used for all of your projects, so you will not have to re-create it for every occasion. To be complete, this agreement should also include the rate of pay for each participant, the work to be performed by your assistant, taxes to be withheld, a code of conduct before, during, and after the project, and copyright assignment to you of the work your assistant creates.

For samples of any of these agreements or to get ideas of other terms and conditions in agreements, search them on the Internet.

Privacy Issues

As a matter of decorum, protocol, courtesy, civility, and common sense, rather than strictly legal considerations, be as unobtrusive and non-disruptive as possible during the event. That means not imposing your equipment or yourself in places or at times that are inappropriate. For example, even though, as a photographer or videographer, you may want to include a scene of the bride getting dressed before the ceremony, you may have to forego those shots if the bride would prefer privacy. Similarly, if a particular camera-shy guest prefers not be in the album or video, respect his or her wishes.

As you know, using photo releases for people who appear in your photos or video are a good idea for a certain type of movies, but this is not one of them. For starters, it would be a logistical nightmare to have every one of hundreds or even dozens of guests read and sign releases. But legally, most everyone is expected to know that photographers are likely to roam freely around the ceremony and reception venue. They also can be confident that your album or video will have very limited distribution, online video sites like YouTube.com being the exception nowadays. Impliedly, therefore, in court you can argue that all of the guests and the wedding party (the principals) have consented to being photographed or videoed merely by attending the event.

Nevertheless, refrain from shooting subjects who are performing private activities. (Scratching and picking come to mind, as does erratic behavior or unconsciousness due to intoxication.) Those occasions that subject the guests or principals to ridicule may give rise to lawsuits against you based on invasion of privacy, however unlikely that may be.

One way to ensure that your video or images are “clean,” is to send a copy to your client before finalizing it or making copies. The risk, of course, is that the client may demand significant revisions to your work, requiring much more time than you budgeted. You might want to cover this contingency in your agreement with your client.

In the credits or end of the album, be sure to display your copyright notice:

© Your Name 2011. This notice grants you certain rights, while providing free advertising.

Your Website

As you may have heard, businesses routinely use the Internet to show credibility and to publicize the services they render. If you hire a web designer to develop your site, you may find that you do not own what you think you do. Often, companies learn this lesson the hard way, when the web designer refuses to allow the website to be copied or used as a template for another site. Or worse, sometimes the web designer attempts to extort the very party who has paid him or her.

How can his happen? After all, you paid cash for the development. You may have entered into an agreement, prepared by the web designer, that spelled out your designer’s duties and obligations. It does not seem logical or fair that you would not have complete ownership and the right to use the website materials any way you wish. It may not be fair, but unfortunately, it is legal.

The U.S. Constitution that went into effect in 1789 states that Congress has the power to secure for authors for limited times the exclusive right to their writings. This provision was to protect the individual artist from unfair copying of his or her creative work. The original Copyright Act, pursuant to the U.S. Constitution, was enacted in 1790.

The Copyright Act lists an ever-growing number of “writings,” now called “works of authorship,” that are protectable under our copyright law. Under the original Act, and surviving to this day, is the clause, “the owner of copyright… has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize” a number of activities, including reproduction of the work and preparation of works that are derived from the original.

This statement cuts two ways for you: as the creator of an album or video, you automatically own the copyright to your photos or video of the wedding; but as the owner of a website, you do not automatically own the copyright to the work that your website designer creates. In the first case, your client pays you for your work, but since you performed the work, it is you, not your client, who automatically owns the copyright to it, unless you have a written agreement to the contrary. In the second case, although you pay your website designer, you do not automatically own the copyright to the work that appears on the site.

Case law has settled the question (for now), holding that as mentioned, absent a written agreement to the contrary, the individual who creates the work is the owner of the copyright.

You may provide all of the text and images for your website, and even give the web designer detailed directions to arrange those images and text on the computer screen. Even though you agree to pay the designer for his or her services, it is still the web designer who owns the copyright to the work.

A written agreement signed by your designer and you can take care of the situation. If both parties agree that the work is a “work made for hire,” courts will generally decide that the designer has created a work whose copyright rights are transferred to the entity that commissions him. These four magic words —— work made for hire —— when included in a written agreement, allows you, as the entity that commissions the work, to own the copyright rights. A well-drafted copyright assignment agreement should include a clause that expressly assigns the work to you, regardless of whether the court rules that the work was one made for hire.

Needless to say, it makes sense to reduce your agreement for website design to writing before you make a payment and the work begins.

Insurance

You may want to investigate three types of insurance. In the order of importance and least cost first, a general liability insurance policy protects you against any mishaps by people who attend the ceremony and/or reception. The common sorts of mishaps include injury to visitors due to your or their negligence. For example, lights can come crashing down or cables can be tripped over, injuring the guests and, of course, damaging your equipment. Accordingly, you may wish to obtain a business owner’s policy (BOP) to cover those events.

Along with the BOP often comes a workers compensation policy to cover your employees, if any. Depending on the state in which you do business, you may also be required to have a disability policy, which protects your employees and is a requirement at this time in California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Hawaii.

Another policy that is more expensive and less popular is a professional liability policy that covers errors and omissions. This policy protects you against any legal action that can be brought against you by dissatisfied clients (“Oh, you didn’t mention that you wanted the video with sound!”) or by others who appear in your final work.

Finally, much more rarely, you may wish to investigate an insurance policy that protects you against infringement of intellectual property, such as copyright infringement and trademark infringement. There may be no need for the infringement policy if you include an indemnification clause for such legal actions in your agreement with your customer (see above). The last two types of insurance may be combinable; talk to your friendly　insurance agent for details and costs.

Incorporation or Limited Liability Company

Insurance companies are sometimes reluctant to issue policies to individuals, so forming a corporation or limited liability company (LLC) may be advisable. If you decide not to purchase insurance policies, consider forming a　corporation or LLC to help insulate you from liability. Another benefit to establishing your own company may be for immediate deduction of some expenses and reduction of taxes that you would otherwise have to pay. See your accountant or financial adviser for more details.

Accounting

Speaking of accountants, you should engage the services of an accountant or tax preparer to help you register your company, report income, and pay taxes on such income to appropriate local, state, and federal agencies, as required.

©2010 Josephine Close

In the shadows:

Photography of Josephine Close

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Artist Statement:

When Iwas 6 years old, my father gave me my first camera, a hand-me-down, I fell in love and have been taking pictures ever since. Growing up in the woods of New Hampshire has greatly affected my photography, nature being a common theme throughout my work.  After moving to Los Angeles, I developed an obsession with old movies which has greatly influenced my photographs as well, experimenting with old lighting techniques and trying to capture the moodiness and nostalgia of another time and another place.  Always fascinated with what lies in the shadows, what you can’t see, things that are implied, that trigger the imagination, a dream, a memory, another source of inspiration. I am always seeking to illuminate the magic in my life.  -Josie Close

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JOSEPHINE CLOSE Los Angeles, California

josieclose@gmail.com

www.josephineclose.com

Education

university of maine, orono, maine, liberal arts

lacc, los angeles, ca, photography

otis, venice, ca, illustration

art center, pasadena, ca advanced photography

Exhibitions

2010 lacda, los angeles, snap to grid, group show

2010 sf camerawork, san francisco, roll call exhibit

2010 the journal project, brooklyn, ny

2006 faran gallery, new york, ny, solo exhibit, into the wild

2006 dublin lake club, group show

2006 the boathouse, solo exhibit

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© 2010 Josephine Close • All Rights Reserved

©Gabrielle Revere

Lindsey Wixson photographed back stage at the Donna Karan Spring 2011 Runway Show.

The Handwriting’s On Her Wall

by Mike Foldes

September 24, 2010

It’s a beautiful warm day in New York when photographer Gabrielle Revere and I meet for lunch at the Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District in New York to discuss her career and work. Her photos have appeared in numerous magazines, from Spin to Seventeen, and her celebrity subjects include Justin Beiber, Avril Lavigne, and Carrie Underwood, to name a few.  Along the way to a certain level of success, she combined her time and money with a stipend from the Dove Foundation to create a series titled, “I only have eyes for you.”

The passing traffic – taxis and trucks – make me wary of sidewalk dining; the atmosphere inside is deceptively better, and besides, it’s air conditioned. Deceptive, because the background clatter turns out to be a killer for any but a very high-end, noise-canceling, audio recording device, which I do not have.

The reception  for Revere’s exhibit at Sotheby’s, “I Remain, You Desire,” hosted by Milk Studios founder Mazdack Rassi, and stylist Mary Alice Stephenson, took place a few nights before, and she was still high on the turnout which included among others Anna Sui and Duncan Hanna. The series features 16-year-old model Lindsey Wixson, who Revere met during New York Fashion Week in 2009, and subsequently helped bring to the fashion modeling forefront.

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Revere lives in Brooklyn, which, she says, is living in the city with a bit of country quiet at the same time. It reminds her of San Francisco, or Paris, she says later in our conversation. She does not have a studio, and most often works at Milk.

“For the past six years, their brand has exploded. So, in a way, I’ve grown up with that.  I was one of the first photographers to shoot there, and with that they took me on as one of the family. They have the entire second floor and the entire eighth floor. The way they have it set up is that you don’t really have to do anything but show up and set up in the studio, and your clients show up, and they treat you like royalty. And everything is at your fingertips. It’s fully digital right now. You can rent about any kind of photo equipment you can possibly imagine. They are there for you. Everybody shoots there. I mean like top notch — Vogue, Vanity Fair, TV commercials.

“It’s such a huge organization, yet it’s still very personal. And they’ve branched out into video and film as well. One-stop shopping. They had a video nominated for video awards. They’ve really just come to life.”

“There’s so much celebrity content that goes on at Milk Studios — like the covers for Glamour, covers for Rolling Stone, covers for Spin… They’ll have their video companies come in and shoot videos of “behind the scenes”, and everything goes viral so fast with the internet. The viewer can go on spin.com, look at the cover shoot – look at it as it’s being shot, and it’s all very current and now.

With the advent of digital, a photographer can shoot all day long and not have to worry about the cost of developing film and printing contacts sheets, let alone the time it takes. How much of her own editing does she do?

GR: “Usually what I do either the day of, or the day after, depending on how long the shoot goes for and I might need a little time to digest, I go through all of the images and edit out what I think isn’t acceptable for me to publish. And, you might say depending on what the client needs, I pretty much have to give them every single thing.”

R: You don’t shoot film at all?

GR: Not at all. I would if somebody would let me.

R: What do you mean, “Let me.”?

GR: The industry has become a digital industry…. I grew up shooting an 8×10, a 4×5. I’ve shot Polaroid 24×24. The Mamiya RZ Pro II was my camera for years. I still have it. I love that camera. I took that camera all around the world, but now there’s a (digital) back for the Mamiya, so now I can shoot the Mamiya digital… Digital has inched itself into the world where I support myself. Two or three years ago I had a job and I said, “I want to shoot film, I want to use my Mamiya.” It’s a different quality, it’s a different camera. It will help me make my work beautiful. And now they make (digital) backs that are compatible with these cameras, so it’s hard for the photographers to sell film. And obviously, when you’re shooting with your clients there, you’re tethered to a computer screen. The clients are so used to seeing images come up immediately it’s pretty impossible to compete with that. For even a day. They don’t even want to wait a day.

R: Some people still shoot film and transfer to digital.

GR: When I first made the digital transition a lot of my archives, the quintessential parts of my work, had to be transferred to digital. I had to scan, color correct…. I did it, but it’s $100 to $200 a scan for drum scans, and then you have to take the time to have someone color correct that negative, and adjust it, to make it look like the print that you have.

R: So technically, when you first started shooting, you probably didn’t have the technical facility that you’ve picked up in the past couple of years?

GR: Yes, exactly. I’ve been shooting professionally for 12 years. For my work, and the original work, I was obviously buying my film, buying my Polaroids. I’d take it back to the lab, they develop a contact sheet, the contact sheet goes to the client, they do the edit, prints would be made, the client looks at the prints, and it’s out of my hands. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of contact sheets, all in order, but tons of negs. Oh my god — envelopes, even prior to shooting professionally, living off it, I’ve been shooting since 1990, so I have everything.

R: Twenty years ….

GR: Yes, it’s been most of my life. … I started shooting when I was 17. I still have negs from when I was in college. I first went to FIT, and then to the School for the Visual Arts. One of them was more of a commercial school, and the other more fine arts….

R: How’d you like FIT?

GR: It was great. I was young. I was 17 turning 18. It’s a two-year college. It went by very quickly. At the time they didn’t have a bachelor of fine arts degree program. But I think now they do. I graduated when I was 22. So that’s when SFA took over. They’re both great schools, but different. I will say now that both the colleges have a better combination of what students need to get by. When I was there, FIT was strictly commercial, and SFA was strictly fine arts, and you need both.

R: So FIT has changed?

GR: Yes, I think it has. I haven’t been back in years. I just go past it. But I’m grateful for the education, because the education showed me discipline. I think that is a lot of what education is about, discipline. Completing from start to finish. Having deadlines. Having an idea and bringing it to fruition. Being graded on that idea. In the real world, in the business world, in the real world you’re constantly graded. And there’s no room in the real world for error. In school, obviously, not that there’s room for failure … It’s the training wheels of life.

R: When did you go to California?

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Selections from Portfolios / Gabrielle Revere

[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-mon-ex-1.jpg"]Forever Summer #1, 2002
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-mon-ex-3.jpg"]Forever Summer #3, 2002
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-bc-2.jpg"]Beautiful Chaos #8, 2009
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-bc-3.jpg"]Beautiful Chaos #13, 2009
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-bieber.jpg"]Justin Bieber
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-lavigne.jpg"]Avril Lavigne
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-sv_-2.jpg"]Sweet and Vicious #8, 1998
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-untamed-1.jpg"]Love Me, 2004
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-sv_-4.jpg"]Sweet and Vicious #6, 1999
[img alt="" src="http://ragazine.cc/wp-content/flagallery/selections-from-portfolios-gabrielle-revere/thumbs/thumbs_revere-untamed-3.jpg"]Come Play With Me, 2001

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GR: I worked out there after SFVA. I had never traveled out of New York, and I wanted to explore. I wanted to be on my own. I wanted to be away from my family. I wanted to grow up out from under the umbrella of my family. I moved out there with no job and no friends, nothing, just a lot of wishes and hope. Basically, I went out there, went through the phone book. There was a computer place down the street. I typed up a resume… there were days and days of putting resumes in the mail. That was before the days of the internet, and finally I got a call back. I took on a freelance job as, basically, a photo editor’s assistant at Time Inc.

R: A great way to start.

GR: A great way to start, and I had that background. Back in New York, two of the jobs I had at both colleges …

R: Internships?

GR: No, I never interned. I could never intern. I had to pay for my rent. There was no time for interning. I was working two jobs for five years at (photo) stock houses, where I had this kind of background, where a photo editor would call me for a photo request. So I had an idea of what was going on, and I did that for two years. I was shooting my own work outside. Then I moved back to New York and got in touch with everybody I knew.

R: What kinds of things do you shoot on your own time? If you had a weekend off, to hang out and take pictures, what would you shoot?

GR: The thing that’s interesting about the way that I shoot, or the way I progress is that, my intentions were that I’m an artist. Even in school, I’m the girl who dropped the Photoshop™ classes, who dropped the color printing classes. I’m the girl who didn’t think she needed that. Of course, I want to kick myself years later, but that’s beside the point. I always looked at it as I wanted my art to be seen, to show in galleries, and come out with books, to be a spokeswoman for the little girls out there who are struggling.

Photography was always a means of expression for me, expressing my feelings, and in that, in the commercial end of things, I became a working photographer. Meaning, I was paying my way taking pictures. … Because of the commercial work, my name has been able to get out there. It gives me access to people in my everyday life who I would never have access to. I’m constantly shooting my first photo book. It’s never something that’s planned. It’s not like, “OK, this weekend I’m going to go to my parents’ house … and bring my camera and take pictures of XYZ.” It never happens like that. It’s always very organic. Sometimes I feel like taking pictures and sometimes I don’t. You can’t force it. I can’t. I have to be inspired.

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R: “I only have eyes for you?

GR: A personal project.

R: Personally financed?

GR: Credit card, and the Dove stipend. That was fun, but at that point in my commercial career – I was seen as the face of young Hollywood. All the young celebrities and young musicians and magazine covers – it was all fantastic. I wouldn’t trade it in for anything in the world. I’m so grateful for all that time of my life, but I felt like at that time I needed to do something I wanted and no one was going to give me any funding to go overseas and photograph what I wanted (such as “I only have eyes for you”). They wouldn’t think of me to do that. The industry is very compartmentalized, you know, this person shoots beauty, this person shoots celebrities, this person shoots still live. There isn’t a lot of crossover. There are some people in powerful positions that can see the crossover, but for the most part you make your own destiny in this way. So that was me basically giving myself the project; I had the production experience behind me. When I jumped into it, not that it was easy,  not that it happened to me. I made it happen.

R: Would you do it again?

GR: There’s something to be said for your own experiences. It’s like riding a bike. I grew up on that experience. It was the next chapter in my heart. In my mind. You get on it and you just go with it. I grew up with that experience, to be on a boat in Bangladesh, or traveling down the Ganges River.

R: I don’t mean do it again in the same way you did it before. But in terms of your philanthropic projects, what kind of philanthropy project would you embark on if you were to do it today?

GR: I still do philanthropic work. I recently did a Make-A-Wish with Mary Alice Stephenson. I was asked to be part of a big photo exhibition for fundraising for kids with cleft palates… I was one of 20 photographers. Out of the goodness of my heart, I would do it again in a second, go overseas, go back to South Africa, Go to Brazil, go to Outer Mongolia, work with kids who feel they’ve been forgotten. Photography is a means of expression, of connection.

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R: Do you have other kinds of projects you work on, hobbies?

GR: I write. I must have a hundred journals up in my closet. I do a handwriting thing, you’ve probably seen it. Handwriting is becoming a important part of my work and photography. I only have eyes for you. I remain you desire. So the handwriting has become another means of expression. But people are buying the handwriting, which has been interesting. Thankfully, they’re buying it, the signatures. I do a lot of shoots for book publishers, and they see the handwriting, “We’d love you to write something out, you should sell your font ….”

R: How many books have you done?

GR: You mean like coffee table books? I haven’t done any yet. It’s on the agenda.

R: When you’re in a studio, how much direction do you give, for a fashion shoot, for example. Is a lot of it yours? Do you work with a fashion editor or director? Do you work as you go along?

GR: I do a little bit of everything. Usually in a commercial job, where you’re hired by a company you have a feel for the work. It’s usually the people who hire you, obviously they know you. Everybody has their job. If I shoot, I direct the models, but it’s not demanding in a directorial way. But if I have a vision of what it is we’re trying to show or showcase, I’ll give direction.

R: Is it the same if you’re doing an album cover or ads?

GR: Yes, with something like an album cover it’s about the artist, it’s about that personality, it’s a little different, it’s about who they are. If it’s a commercial assignment or an advertising assignment, you’re creating an illusion of that idea, so it’s more like acting, the model is acting and I’m directing a movie. And, like a signature artist, I’m drawing things out of that.

R: What do you shoot with?

GR: A 35 mm Canon 5D Mark II. What’s amazing about the camera is you can shoot hi-def video. A lot of videographers are shooting with that camera now.

R: I read an interview with you that you did just after fashion week in which you commented that you were surprised to find so much sexism and ageism in the business. With youth and beauty being so prevalent in the business, why was that a surprise?

GR: That’s not who I am, not how I operate. But you have to remember that how you operate is not how others operate. In this world, there are a lot of personalities, egos, a lot of money on the line. There are powers that be that set the rules before I was alive. And maybe it’s taken me a little longer, I know it’s taken me a little longer, but I can’t question the path that I’m on. Honestly,  I feel good about what’s happening now, rather than when I was 22. Twenty-two is pretty young.

R: Who are your favorite photographers? Do you have any?

GR: Yes, Sally Mann, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman.

R: What do you like about their work

GR: They went with their hearts. They didn’t have an agenda. They were shooting subject matter that they were compelled by, like an unseen force. Obviously Sally Mann for her children, was photographing children. Nan Goldin was photographing her friends. Cindy Sherman was photographing herself in relation to other people. It doesn’t get more intimate for putting your heart on the line than that.

R: And if you were collaborating?

GR: I’d be honored.

R: What’s next for you? What are you working on now?

GR: The Sotheby show comes down Monday. … The show will travel. We’re working out the details.

R: Where might it be going ?

GR: I can’t tell you that.

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See Revere’s other portfolios at www.gabriellerevere.com

© 2010 Gabrille Revere • All Rights Reserved

©Aline Smithson

Arrangement #5

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Arrangement in Green and Black:

Portrait of the Photographer’s Mother Series

This series had serendipitous beginnings.  I found a small print of Whistler’s painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother, at a neighborhood garage sale.  The same weekend, I found a leopard coat and hat, a 1950s’ cat painting, and what looked like the exact chair from Whistler’s painting.  That started me thinking about the idea of portraiture, the strong compositional relationships going on within Whistler’s painting, and the evocative nature of unassuming details.

The series incorporates traditional photography techniques, yet becomes richer with the treatment of hand painting.  It is my intent to have the viewer see the work in a historical context with the addition of color, and at the same time, experience Whistler’s simple, yet brilliant formula for the composition.

My patient 85-year-old mother posed in over 20 ensembles, but unfortunately passed away before seeing the finished series.  I am grateful for her sense of humor and the time this series allowed us to be together.

The images were taken with a Hasselblad and printed on Ilford warm tone matt paper in two sizes, 11×14 and 16×20.  It is an edition of 25 with 4 Artist’s Proofs.

– Aline Smithson

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Aline Smithson

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Smithson on Smithson

I came to photography through the back door.  My father and uncle were photographers and my career was centered around it, but it was not until I found my uncle’s twin lens Rolleiflex that I embraced photography fully as my own.  Seeing the world with my own photographic vision has become a wonderful obsession.

I graduated from the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara with a BA in Art and moved to NYC to make my living as a painter, and although I continued to paint, my career moved into the fashion world.  I worked as the Fashion Editor for Vogue Patterns and Vogue Knitting Magazines in New York City for a decade, and then continued on in Los Angeles as a freelance photo stylist.  As a Fashion Editor, I had the privilege of working with many exceptional fashion photographers including Horst, Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier, Arthur Elgort and Burt Stern.  I did not realize it at the time, but I was working with the most amazing teachers.

After standing next to the camera for many years, I have discovered that it is behind the camera that I find my joy and passion. My work has been featured in numerous publications including the PDN Photo Annual, Communication Arts Photo Annual, Eyemazing, Artworks, Lenswork Extended, Shots, Pozytyw, and Silvershotz magazines. I have exhibited widely including solo shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, Galerie Tagomago in Barcelona, and Wallspace Gallery in Seattle. In addition, my work has been included in many group exhibitions and has garnered numerous awards. I continue to shoot film and use cameras that are decades old.

Along with creating my own photographs, I work hard to promote the work of other photographers. I have been the Gallery Editor for Light Leaks Magazine; I founded and write daily for the well-read photography blog, Lenscratch, which has been noted as one of the 10 Best Photography blogs by Source Review.  I am also a contributing writer for Diffusion, F Stop, Light Leaks, and Lucida magazines and write book reviews for photoeye. In addition I have curated exhibitions for a number of galleries and on-line magazines, including Fraction and Too Much Chocolate. For the past decade, I have been teaching workshops and hosting lecture series at the Julia Dean Photo Workshops in Los Angeles. I was nominated for The Excellence in Photographic Teaching Award in 2008 and 2009 and for The Santa Fe Prize in Photography in 2009 by Center. In 2009 and 2010, I was selected to be a juror for Critical Mass through Photolucida, and a reviewer at Review LA in 2010 and 2011.

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See Simthson other portfolios at  http://www.alinesmithson.com/

©Albert Waston

Omahyra, New York, 2004

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Albert Watson in his New York City studio reflects on his 40-year career.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

A Life On Film

By Mike Foldes
with photographs by Chuck Haupt

Albert Watson’s iconic photographs have touched  the lives of millions of men and women over the past forty years. With more than 250 Vogue covers, 40 covers for Rolling Stone, movie posters, movie star portraits, and more, it’s unlikely anyone who’s ever browsed a magazine rack in a bookstore, bus station or airport hasn’t at one time or another seen an Albert Watson cover.

The following interview was conducted in mid-July at Watson’s  ground floor loft-office-studio in Tribeca. We’re let into the building lobby by security and met at the studio door by a young lady who disappears into the back room to announce our arrival – and, I gather, to see if we are even expected. We stand at the door for a moment and then move inside to a foyer with a big-as-life photograph of a NASA space suit on the wall.

Albert Watson comes into the room looking as he does in many of his published interviews and photos, dressed in a black shirt buttoned to the neck, black pants, black beret more or less tilted backwards as if the wind were forever blowing in his face, and a pretty cool pair of sneakers.We introduce ourselves to one another, exchange some pleasantries, then face off across a stainless steel table from deep seats on black leather sofas for what is expected to be about a 45-minute Q&A leaving little time for warm-up.

The interview has been arranged by Watson’s son, Aaron, who manages the photographer’s demanding schedule of museum exhibitions, interviews, commissions and gallery shows that have taken him most recently to Scotland (his native land) and Spain. Aaron is a former Associated Press sports editor, and spent many years traveling from one main event to another, including the Athens Olympics, the World Cup in Japan, the British Open, and more. He is not at the studio when we arrive, but comes in later looking very comfortable in jeans and T-Shirt, and carrying a motorcycle helmet.

Photography historian Gail Buckland, who wrote the introduction for UFO, one of Watson’s forthcoming books, was present for the interview.

The following is an edited version of that session.

Chuck Haupt/Ragazine

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Regarding Strip Search:

 AW: The pictures go way back. The Vegas book was shot the year 2000, 2004 about 16 weeks of shooting off and on for two years, a six-month break and then another year. But basically those weeks were dropped in, in like one and two week periods over that period of time. Several things held up the production of that book, just projects I was doing, museum shows, gallery shows I was doing, then it really came down to the wire because we were able with the publisher to really package two books together, UFO and Strip Search. So basically it meant that, basically I sat before a computer for four-and-a-half to six months pulling material for UFO.

The Vegas material was all together because that was one project. But pulling stuff, material for UFO that went back a long period of time, required a massive amount of research. Sometimes we’d be spending four or five days just looking for specific genre, or a specific thing. Basically, from ‘84 … ’83, the archives are very, very, ridiculously well organized… and previous to that, previous to that, things between ‘78 and ’84, things were quite well organized, and before ‘78  things were in boxes. And that’s pretty much how it went…. so it enabled some of the old stuff to come through …

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• STRIP SEARCH:
  Hardcover, two volumes • 14″ x 11″ (portrait)  11″ x 14″  (landscape)
  180 pages each  • 400 images approx.
  Hardcover with rubber silk-screened case.
  Boxed Edition: Two books presented in a clamshell cloth box with foil debossing
  Publication date: Fall 2010
  Introduction an essay by Tom Wolfe
  Published by PQ Blackwell, www.pqblackwell.com

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A project with a plan?

 AW: Vegas was always very specific. And I had done a book on Morocco (Maroc), and I had shot in a classic style, classic photographic style, because of the nature of the country. I mean you can shoot anything. Just because a country has an ancient tradition doesn’t mean you have to shoot it in an ancient way.  You can shoot it in different ways, and like it’s an old country you can shoot it in an old style.  I was comfortable with that and after shooting Morocco I wanted something completely, absolutely different, and I found that in Vegas. I was fairly familiar with Vegas, and therefore it was easy for me to start that project. … I’ve been going to Vegas for years and years. A lot of times, sometimes for photographing people for jobs, for advertising jobs, and I’ve directed quite a lot of TV commercials based out of Vegas. You’d use the desert around Vegas, but Vegas would be the base for shooting.

About the Web, and a video of Henry Rollins shot in the old Folger’s building in New Jersey:

AW: We don’t place any of that stuff. Aaron does things on the website. So he controls the web site. But beyond the website, all the interviews just get posted. Sometimes Rolling Stone will posts things, because they do music videos that get posted.

What about Hat Blocks?

AW: For quite a few years I collected hat blocks. When I say for quite a few years it sounds like I have a lot of hat blocks. I don’t. I maybe have about 24 of them but I collected the 24 of them over a period of about 10 years. So they’re interesting objects and very sculptural. And interestingly enough you can collect them in England, you can collect them in France, Germany and America. Obviously around the turn of the century hats were gigantic business and therefore hat manufacturing was a big thing all over and I just found hat blocks interesting.

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What’s left to shoot, and are you casual about finding ‘it’?

AW: I’m never casual. I’m always pretty determined about finding things, you know. Basically I’m always looking for things. Any good photographer should always be looking for something, you know.

If you’re casual you’re not going to be successful in what you find. If anything’s too relaxed and laid back, and so on. I’m not saying casually… If you sit in your library going through 150 photo books, or books on painters, or reading, you’re right, that can be construed as casual, but you’ll be looking for something. For inspiration. Very often it might be that you would find something in a book, you might look at something in a still life that might inspire you to do something in portraiture. You don’t necessarily find a portrait and suddenly say I’m going to go ahead and do a portrait because that inspires me to do a portrait of somebody.  I’m fairly lucky. When you’re passionate about something it’s the passion that’s the driving force to find things. Looking and working. Of course you go to museums and galleries, and New York is fabulous for that.

I think I can go to an entire museum show and not get any inspiration but I can immensely enjoy the show. Other times you go and see something quite casual, an exhibition of furniture which is not related to painting – I mean it’s a three-dimensional object, and for some reason that can be inspiring, and can help you see something.

How quickly up the ladder?

 R: When you first got into taking pictures of personalities in California, how did that evolve so rapidly? Was it the Hitchcock portrait? Or was it a variety of circumstances?

AW: No, I’m not that lucky. You don’t just happen… It’s pretty unusual in the magazine business for somebody who’s producing, say, Harper’s Bazaar magazine, which Hitchcock was for… it’s not so casual that someone says, “My nephew has a camera. Would you like him to photograph Alfred Hitchcock?”

R: From other interviews it sounds like someone gave you a camera one day, and the next day you’re taking pictures of Alfred  Hitchcock.

(Laughter)

AW: Well someone abbreviated things. I was at university for seven years having a visual education pumped into my brain. So it wasn’t seven years of photography, but it was four years of graphic design and three years of film school. During that period of time, of course, I had a camera as a graphic designer, and photography was viewed as a craft subject towards graphic design. So you’re not really a photographer, but you’re using it. If you want to do a poster and you say, “Well, I need a picture of a flower for the poster,”  they would encourage you to take a picture of the flower and then you lay the typography on your own picture.

And that was my first real contact, as it were, with photography. So I had a lot of training. And then when I went to California I began shooting fairly rapidly for, doing cosmetic advertising for Max Factor — and that was kind of fortuitous. But between 1970 and 1973, I really developed a commercial business. I was working as a professional photographer. You know, a very raw one. But I was working and making — not so much raw as when I was doing cosmetics advertising. But somebody in the advertising agency that handles Max Factor says to me, “I loved those pictures you did of that girl in the ocean. Have you ever thought about photographing cars?” And I said “No.”  “Well, would you be interested? I’ve got a car that needs photographing, and we were talking about doing it at the beach, a truck at the beach…”And I did it, and it was very successful, and then I started doing a lot of cars.

But by that time I was more and more becoming aware of light and using studio lighting. I was getting jobs but I was also learning at the same time and I was always doing a lot of testing on my own. So I might have a job on Tuesday and Wednesday, but Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday I wasn’t shooting, so I would always be shooting.

I would invent something, I would call up a modeling agency and say send me over a girl. I’d call up a designer for clothes and say send me over some clothes. Get hair and makeup people to work with, and so on. And bit by bit, in California, we built up a reputation as being a very productive studio. And from that, somebody from New York called, in ’73, and said, “We need a photographer out there to photograph Alfred Hitchcock. Are you available to do that?” You know… and I said “Yes,” and that was the first celebrity I photographed.

CONTINUED: Albert Watson / Part II

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The opening for Albert Watson’s solo show
at the Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery
in NYC is scheduled for Oct. 21,
with a book party/signing scheduled for Oct. 23.
(http://www.hastedhuntkraeutler.com)

ALL ALBERT WATSON PHOTOS ARE COPYRIGHT
ALBERT WATSON & USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER.

Chuck Haupt Photos © Chuck Haupt & ragazine.cc, 2010