They have resolutely camped out in no man’s land, bring prose that is more than a caption but less than an essay into direct conversation with individual images, allowing each photograph to open up further. And they have rejected the notion that such a product need thump down on your coffee table, and have instead offered us a physical form that can be enjoyed with unassuming pleasure. All in, Soth and Zellar have taken a bunch of obvious risks and delivered something of unpretentious grace and genius, a product that elegantly fits both who they are and the way they see the world.
The fire alarm went off in the middle of the night. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. I heard it first from the other end of the house, where the children sleep. It’s loud like a jet engine is loud: in a painful manner that will damage your hearing.
I was doped up on two Benadryl, as my allergies kicked up the other day. I never had them before last summer, but now I suffer like so many others. (From allergies, not fire alarms.)
Aggravated, I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but my muddled mind was afraid the BEEEEEEEEEPING might return.
I knew there was no fear of fire; only that the tired batteries were giving way, having been changed this time last year. My anxiety crested, and then it BEEEEEEEEEEEEEPED again. Before I knew it, a door creaked in the distance, and a crying child soon crept into bed. A good night sleep was not to be had.
So I sit here, now, trying to force my brain to think properly. Deadlines wait for no man, and books need to be reviewed. After three double-espressos, I felt now was as good a time to try as any other. Forgive me if I’m less-than-profound.
Fortunately, I picked a great book up off the stack this week. It should help alleviate your concern for my lack of witty banter. “she dances on Jackson” is a lovely publication, by Vanessa Winship, recently put out my MACK. (I have a love-hate relationship with those guys. Some books are poetic and perfect, like this one, while others stretch my credulity. At least they don’t play it safe.)
The book cover depicts an image of birds and trees. The color is as close to a “Burnt Sienna” crayola crayon as I’ve seen since I was eight. It’s a beautiful color, and yet the only one we’ll see. The rest of the book is in black and white.
I must have mentioned before that I came to photography on a cross-country road trip in 1996. Does that make me a sucker for this type of work? You bet it does. But given that we all still talk about “The Americans” as if it came out last week, I’m surely not alone in this preference.
So many artists are out there at a given time, pointing cameras at anything that moves. Or doesn’t. And yet, how often do we feel that someone has actually added to our overall body of knowledge? How often do we look at a photograph and think, I’d like to meet that person and visit for a while? Surely, I’d learn more about the human condition if only we could chat for a few minutes.
These are such pictures. I loved that all specific references to place were erased. It made me curious where she’d been. At first, it seemed like a Southern-based project, with drippy trees and lots of overgrowth. But, as I turned the pages, I saw mountains, and then desert that looked like here in New Mexico. Soon, Northern cities appeared, and industry followed.
The people within are mostly young, and don’t seem to be on top of the world at present. The landscape photos, devoid of people, share that sense of worn, warm comfort. The bank-type-office built into a dirt berm was a favorite, as was the tree stump adorned with shoes, and the abandoned subway cars sitting still on overhead tracks. Your favorites, invariably, will be different.
At the end, we get a taut, brief story, in French and English, that alludes directly to the otherwise opaque title. A list of locations is also provided, ending the confusion: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. (A pretty solid sample of the US of A, IMHO.)
I’ve been to all, save Montana, hence the sense of familiarity. One photo of some cotton growing along a dirt stretch took me right back to my own big adventure, in the previous century. I remembered a day in Mississippi, and how free it felt to be so unencumbered.
Bottom Line: Excellent, poignant B&W photos across contemporary America
We emailed Art Buyers and Art Producers around the world asking them to submit names of established photographers who were keeping it fresh and up-and-comers who they are keeping their eye on. If you are an Art Buyer/Producer or an Art Director at an agency and want to submit a photographer anonymously for this column email: Suzanne.sease@verizon.net
Anonymous Art Producer: I nominate: Nick Ruechel. “I love his work, it has a lot of soul, his lighting is beautiful. He is a perfectionist and the connection he gets with subjects shows lovely in his portraits.”
‘Maximo & Agustin, Brooklyn, 2012’‘India, Chinatown,NYC, 2011’‘Rooz, Brooklyn, 2007’‘Reggie Watts, Comedian, NYC, 2009’‘Sahr Ngaujah, (FELA!), NYC, 2009’‘Chico Hamilton, Musician, NYC, 2008’‘Philip Glass, NYC, 2008’‘Children in a rickshaw on their way to school, Mysore, India, 2012’‘Visitors, Coney Island, Memorial Day, 2012’‘Satmar Hasidim, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2012’
How many years have you been in business?
11 Years
Are you self-taught or photography school taught?
My first encounter with cameras was in high school in Germany as a member of the photography club. We’d get access to Nikon F’s and B/W film and would be sent out on little photojournalistic assignments. I remember once covering the demolition of an historic building which had caused great upheaval in the local community. I had no idea what I was doing apart from rotating shutter and f-stop dials in such as way as to keep the light meter in a viable range of exposure. I felt accomplished because the resulting negatives were actually printable. The club dissolved a couple of semesters later which turned into a 10-year hiatus from taking pictures.
After moving to New York City and graduating from NYU in the late 90’s, I took a job as a freelance talent scout for a record company but I soon realized that I loved music too much to become involved with selling it: I was bored out of my mind. During that time, I purchased an old Nikon F3 with a 50mm lens and a couple of books on basic photographic technique. I began to experiment again: trial and error, roll-by-roll. I would get one or two contact sheets made per week and reviewed my mistakes. Luckily, I soon came across a couple of working photographers who were either sympathetic to my autodidactic plight or plain crazy to give someone a job who had no practical experience at all. I started as a 3rd assistant on German fashion catalogue shoots and worked part-time in the equipment room of a major rental studio in Manhattan. I didn’t do much else; it was a full-immersion crash course.
After freelancing for a number of renowned portrait and fashion photographers for about 18 months, I wound up becoming Annie Leibovitz’s full-time first assistant for two years which seemed like transitioning from weekend outings in the National Guard to full-out warfare in the Marine Corps. It was the best finishing school I could have hoped for. After my tenure, I quit assisting and to went out on my own. It was time.
Who was your greatest influence that inspired you to get into this business?
As cliché as it may sound, Irving Penn probably is a central figure in my photographic development. The discipline and integrity of his photographs have always fascinated me. He was a true innovator across so many genres of photography. Penn’s approach to taking portraits still seems to be the basic blueprint from which so many of us operate, knowingly or unknowingly. Arnold Newman, Jeff Wall and William Eggleston are others who subsequently informed and influenced my ideas about the color environmental portrait. The list is long and always evolving.
Not surprisingly, I have always loved film and cinematography ever since I was old enough to be admitted to a Sunday matinée. But it isn’t photography or visual art per sé which motivated me to choose this profession: it’s more the idea that you can bring something fresh and new into existence every day, meet complete strangers through an “instrument” and learn something about their condition, even if it’s just within the span of a brief moment. It enables you to develop a point of view about the constant sensory impingement that is life. That’s my inspiration. I think that’s what aesthetics are, ultimately.
How do you find your inspiration to be so fresh, push the envelope, stay true to yourself so that creative folks are noticing you and hiring you?
In my opinion, staying true to yourself implies that you trust and follow your creative instinct. That is ultimately what clients hire you for. Contemplating too much what ‘others’ may like, can be dangerous to one’s process. This is not to say that you shouldn’t follow direction in the commercial realm: that is what you are getting compensated for. In the ideal case, a client will trust/expect you to bring your personal vision and ideas to the project so it becomes synergetic: a collaboration.
There are lots of good “technicians” in this business. Executing decent lighting and any other part of photographic technique is a function of practice; even a part of the so-called “eye” is part of that. A way of looking at the world in photographic terms (such as composition) can be learned but it doesn’t replace raw talent: it merely supports it. Once you master technique, you should ‘forget’ it and pay attention to what is really going on around you. Creatives want to see a tangible point of view; images which reflect a sense of identity – a thread of sorts that permeates your work. Some people call that ‘style’, although I think that term is a bit limiting (Maybe it’s necessary to be categorizable in order to be successful in this new environment). In the end, it’s externalizing some of what’s inside of you.
By contrast, it’s also very important to be content to do absolutely nothing sometimes. Putting all your emphasis on being prolific can often come at the expense of producing mediocre work. There is a new theory in the field of Quantum Physics which examines how the creative process really works in humans. The first stage is information gathering, the second stage, a state of inertia or ‘incubation’, as it were, where we permit ideas and concepts to proliferate within our mind. It all sounds pretty haughty and theoretical but it does make sense to me. Then again, everyone’s different. If you can produce 20 good pictures each day, good for you. Charles Bukowski most likely wasn’t too involved with physics and he once said: “This is very important — to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you’re gonna lose everything…just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That’s why they’re all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.” Ironically, he was a very “prolific” writer so go figure.
Do you find that some creatives love your work but the client holds you back?
It depends what shop you are working with: some agencies represent more traditional clients and have to be a bit more conservative in their creative approach. If time permits and it’s feasible, I try to shoot things in a number of different ways from ‘safe’ to a bit more towards the proverbial ‘edge’. Every situation is different and you generally get a good idea at the outset as to how flexible the client is when it comes to creative concepts and their execution. There is a time and place for everything.
What are you doing to get your vision out to the buying audience?
Websites and iPads have replaced much of the physical portfolios photographers were circulating in large numbers only a few years ago. Not having to constantly update ten or more books with prints and sleeves is a bit of a blessing in disguise. Creatives can now pre-screen your work on the web to determine whether your work is consistent and appropriate for their purposes. It’s more productive and time-saving for everyone involved.
Nonetheless, I feel that a face-to-face meeting with a client and showing physical prints is more important than ever before. Nowadays, personal meetings are also an examination of your personality: we live in a world with far fewer jobs and a lot more photographers than ever before. There are thousands of talented artists out there who can execute any given project well. An individual in a position to award you a job will want to make sure you are a nice person and a team player. Nobody wants to work with a Diva/Ego-tripper.
I email images to art buyers and photo editors on a regular basis but I personalize every message rather than ‘mass-blasting’ 5000 potential clients. I think that invites immediate deletion. It seems better to develop a relationship with a select number of people than carpet-bombing the entire industry. Keep it short and sweet. If an art buyer or creative director takes time out of their crazed schedule to click on your message, they most likely want to see one image and a brief message, rather than your life story and half your website. If you have the time, check out the agencies you’re targeting and what accounts they are servicing. Is your work applicable to any of their accounts?
What is your advice for those who are showing what they think the buyers want to see?
As mentioned before, I think in quite a few cases, this approach can put you on the road to confusion and failure: you’ll never truly know what creatives are looking for and things are always changing. You’ll pose that question to 15 people and you will most likely get 15 different answers. Portfolio reviews are a good indicator of this: some people will respond to certain images, others will react differently. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be open to criticism and input: some people might be better editors of your work than you are. I have good friends in the industry who have pointed out things to me that were of great value.
One’s relationship with art is quite personal and subjective. I follow my intuition but regularly get feedback from my agent, peers, and other individuals whose judgment and experience I trust. One can sometimes be too close to one’s own work: others have more distance and that can be conducive to a better edit. No one book is right for all occasions; every possible job you bid on might require a modification of your portfolio, i.e., the addition or subtraction of images which might or might not be relevant to the project at hand.
Are you shooting for yourself and creating new work to keep your artistic talent true to you?
Always. Personal work is essential to my mental health. I always feel compelled to self-assign to pursue ideas that I find exciting and relevant. Coincidentally, that is the work that creatives seem to respond to most enthusiastically. To me, it’s the most accurate reflection of who you are as a photographer. I constantly write down new ideas for new images in a small journal I carry. I refer back to it, re-edit, modify and delete things until I select something to work on.
How often are you shooting new work?
Apart from using my iPhone and Instagram, I try to shoot something once or twice a week, depending on how busy I get with editorial and commercial assignments. It’s not a compulsive thing; I try to relax as much as possible which paves the way for being inspired to go out and putting a good idea into a better photograph.
Nick Ruechel was born in Berlin, Germany and moved to New York City in the mid-1990’s.His photographs have appeared in many editorial publications such as: Vogue, Vanity Fair, Esquire, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Newsweek, Men’s Journal, VIBE, Interview, Wired, Fast Company and others.Notable commercial clients include: NBC/Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Television, CNN, Bravo and Showtime Networks, AVAYA, Sun America Banking, Hyperion Books, Discovery Channel and othersSome of Ruechel’s recent work has been selected to appear in AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY’s AP29 annual, to be published in May of 2013.Besides editorial and commercial assignments, Ruechel has been working on a large portrait retrospective of Jazz musicians since 2004, entitled, ‘I can’t get started’ , a new series of close-up video portraits, entitled ‘Padartha’ and a documentary short film, entitiled “Las Piezas Que Faltan (“Missing Pieces”)He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies. She has a new Twitter fed with helpful marketing information. Follow her@SuzanneSease.
The New York photographer who provoked controversy by photographing his neighbors through their apartment windows and exhibiting the images in a show has fended off lawsuit for invasion of privacy. New York State court judge Judge Eileen A. Rakower dismissed the claim against photographer Arne Svenson, ruling that the photos in question were protected by the First Amendment. She also ruled that the images did not violate New York State civil rights laws, as the plaintiffs had claimed.”An artist may create and sell a work of art that resembles an individual without his or her written consent,” Judge Rakower wrote in her decision, underscoring a central principle of the case.
By their own estimation, the cost of a four year education at RISD is $245,816. As way of comparison, the cost of a diploma from Harvard Law School is a mere $236,100. This is embarrassing. It’s downright shameful. That any art school should deceive its students into believing that this is a smart decision is cruel and unusual. Artists are neither doctors nor lawyers. We do not, on average, make huge six-figure salaries. We can make livable salaries, certainly. Even comfortable salaries. But we ain’t usually making a quarter mil a year. Hate to break it to you.
Tourists just love Times Square. They flock, as if someone was giving out free, all-you-can-eat ice cream. Hordes of people drive, train or fly across the country, just so they can eat in a Fridays. (Or Sbarro) Depending on your personality type, you either find that ironic and hysterical, or poetic and sad.
The reality is, most people prefer to know those things that reenforce what they already believe. It’s easier to fit new information into the tidy, empty folders of a well-organized mind. Juggling juxtaposition and hypocrisy is best left to professional bloviators like me. Most folks from the heartland, therefore, are happy to hit Times Square, take in a Broadway show, and then hop a cab back to Newark Airport.
I mention this, because I recently had occasion to view several versions of Ansel Adams’ “Moonrise over Hernandez,” which is meant to be the world’s most famous photograph. It reads differently here in New Mexico, as we locals always giggle that Mr. Adams hornswoggled everyone so thoroughly. Majestic and magical as the photo might be, it depicts the massively edgy Española Valley.
Española, or Espa, as we call it here, is among the most hardcore places in the New Mexico. It sits along an important drug trafficking route, so heroin is always a massive concern. (Probably an epidemic, but who am I to say.) Mostly, Espa is a rough, tough, La Raza-style place, filled with bumpin’ low-riders and tinted down, jacked up trucks. It’s like a mini-East LA, surrounded by mountains and desert cliffs.
As I was approaching Espa from the South last week, I noticed a billboard that almost made me laugh milk through my nose. (Which is tricky, if you’re not actually drinking milk.) Some poor sap was advertising cremation services, right next to the local movie theater. Honestly. Cremation billboards? $1200 to pre-plan the vaporization of your bodily remains?
Of course, I found it ironic and amusing. (That’s the way I roll.) Perhaps someone else would have found it tragic; that the best way to get people to engage with the inevitability of death was with a roadside advertising message. It’s possible, even, that some old lady drove by, dialed the number, and gave up her credit card info on the spot. (Operators are standing by now. Our fires are the hottest around, so you don’t have to worry about any pesky bones rattling around the urn.)
Joke all you like, Blaustein, that still doesn’t change the fact that death is sad. Right? Well, I suppose so. I’d love to say that I’m so enlightened, I’m anxiously awaiting my chance to decompose into the waiting Earth. But it’s not so. I’m hoping to get as many good years on this planet as I can. (Aren’t we all.)
What comes next is not pretty, at least for the shell that houses our soul. We might not know where our spirit is headed after we die, but there is little surprise about where the corpse goes next. Which is why it’s surprising that I’ve never seen a book like the aptly titled “post mortem,” by Patrik Budenz, recently published by Peperoni Books in Germany.
*Spoiler Alert* Don’t look at the photos below if you aren’t prepared for a little gruesomeness. After last week’s Summer Vacation column, I came at you hard this week. Mr. Budenz’s book is literal, and looks at a succession of human remains at a funeral home. (Could be multiple homes, maybe even a morgue, but does it matter?)
Gray skin, suture marks, pursed lips closed forever, toes wrinkled like they’ve been in the bath too long… it’s all here. The open chest cavity was a bit much, but mostly, the book delivers on the title’s promise. The camera even follows the corpses into the cremation chamber, which is interesting, technically, but also provides a glimpse of something we were not meant to see.
It’s a fantastic photography project, embedded in a well-made, spartan book, that basically shows us something we work really hard to avoid. That’s as good a definition of excellent art as I’m likely to muster up today, sitting on my trusty green couch. Forgive me if I’ve upset your appetite, but there is always time to get hungry again. Until there isn’t.
Bottom Line: Powerful, excellent, morbid photos of dead people
A broad study by a group of respected journalists into the disruption that the digital age has brought to print has led them to a surprising conclusion: the decline was unavoidable.
“Dumb favors re—recontextualization, reframing, redoing, remixing, recycling—rather than having to go through the effort of creating something from scratch. Dumb embraces the messiness of contradiction and revels in the beauty of the ridiculously obvious. … Since dumb has nothing to lose, dumb owes nothing to anyone, and in that way it is free.”
We emailed Art Buyers and Art Producers around the world asking them to submit names of established photographers who were keeping it fresh and up-and-comers who they are keeping their eye on. If you are an Art Buyer/Producer or an Art Director at an agency and want to submit a photographer anonymously for this column email: Suzanne.sease@verizon.net
Anonymous Art Director: I nominate: Daeja Fallas. “She is a good egg and talented”
I was working with a lingerie company on their branding and we fell in love with the song “Cosmic Love” by Florence and the Machine, which lead to the creation of this image.Billabong recently licensed some of my images to create a capsule collection line of t-shirts. An illustrator friend of mine and I created the graphics using my images and her illustrations then got together again to shoot the collection we named “Coast to Coast”lucky rainbow!Raymond Meier and I worked together on this – what an experience! I shot 12 people in Hawaii over 4 days and Raymond worked from New York on the still life. I’ll never forget that!Michelle, my friend, my silly sister, my little muse.This was shot on Long Island for a men’s line of surf shorts made from recycled plastic bottles.WingsCreating images for a brand of apparel, I really wanted to capture the heat and energy of New York City in the summer. This was an outtake I shot when part of her ice cream fell but it worked out and became one of the images they used in their advertising.Brooklyn’s Afro Punk FestFall in upstate NYIndia Menuez is such a vibrant, interesting young actress. After meeting her and taking a few photos I didn’t feel like we had captured “her” so I ran down to a bodega in Bushwick where we were shooting and bought several bouquets of neon daisies. We pulled the petals off of all of them and I asked her to blow them into my camera lens. When she did I thought, “now, this feels like India.”Returning home to shoot other female surfers is such a treat. This was made for Free People.
How many years have you been in business?
I finished up my days of assisting and got a studio space in the summer of 2011, so it’s been just under 2 years that I’ve been in business for myself.
Are you self-taught or photography school taught?
I took a few photo classes while in school studying French Lit. When I started to take photos every day one of my teachers noticed and found me an internship at Paris Match, a French news magazine. As an intern, I was given small local assignments. That taught me a lot about working on assignment with edits and deadlines, which was a great education in being a working photographer.
Who was your greatest influence that inspired you to get into this business?
I come from a family of artists so although there have been several photographers whose work has been important to me, my family has been my biggest influence. While in high school my mom bought me a book on photography and showed me the Richard Avedon photo of Dovima with elephants, I’ve been hooked ever since!
How do you find your inspiration to be so fresh, push the envelope, stay true to yourself so that creative folks are noticing you and hiring you?
Growing up my mom would often say, “Mother Nature is the ultimate artist.” My work is, possibly as a result of that, heavily inspired by moods and tone of environment. As nature is always changing, I find my inspiration comes from different places depending on where I am. I love the way the light is constantly changing in New York, throughout the seasons it shifts in position and color, it changes the way my apartment and studio feel with each new season. In Hawaii, where I grew up and spent every day in the ocean, the light is bright and hot and the colors are vibrant and almost glowing sometimes–all of these things affect the way I feel, and therefore how and what I shoot.
Do you find that some creatives love your work but the client holds you back?
I have had the good fortune of working with creatives and clients who have made me a large part of the creative process, giving me freedom to try things and suggest ideas and the ideal environment for me in any working relationship is one where communication is high.
What are you doing to get your vision out to the buying audience?
Although I use social media quite a bit and have had success in using various platforms, I have a weakness for the tangible, so I try to print my work as often as possible. Using different outlets from shooting editorial to printing simple postcards and zines has been a good way to share my work. If someone is drawn to a particular image, I’ll make a print and send it to them.
I remember an art buyer really loving one of my images in particular. She kept returning to it saying “I love this! I can just feel the warmth in this image and I want to live in it!” That was wonderful to hear, so I made her a print.
What is your advice for those who are showing what they think the buyers want to see?
Find your voice and own it! Your perspective is unique to you, so show the images that resonate with you and people will notice.
Are you shooting for yourself and creating new work to keep your artistic talent true to you?
Absolutely. We all start out shooting for ourselves and I think it is important to continue that process and nurture your own creativity.
How often are you shooting new work?
Sometimes I shoot almost every day and other times maybe only once a week–it depends on what I am working on.
Daeja Fallas was born in Hawaii and grew surfing on Maui’s North Shore. At the age of 8, her grandfather put a camera in her hands when they set out to drive from Los Angeles to Hershey, Pennsylvania in a Volkswagen bus. Her mission was to photograph every deer and squirrel along the way. Since that summer Daeja has continued to travel with a camera in her pocket documenting the world around her.
Surfing and photography led Daeja and her best friend from Maui to other coast lines and eventually to the small island of Tavarua Fiji to spend their last summer surfing and taking pictures together. This trip led to Daeja’s first published editorial.
Continuing her travels, Daeja moved to Paris where she lived for 6 years completing her studies in French Literature and Art History at the Sorbonne. Soon after college she began photographing her own projects while assisting photographers in Paris and eventually moved to New York where she now resides.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies. She has a new Twitter fed with helpful marketing information. Follow her@SuzanneSease.
That seems to be the lesson to take from Mr. Metzker’s long career, and perhaps from Modernism as well. Instant gratification might not necessarily be a good thing, and we could all do with a bit more patience. “If people will give it the time, they’ll find things that speak to them,” said Ms. Tucker. “There is meat on these bones. It challenges and engages us. God knows it’s not the social media world. And that’s maybe its biggest handicap. It’s work that takes time.”
Heidi: How did this story idea come about and what made you choose John?
Nicole: The Boston Marathon Bombing was something that affected all of us here at The Improper Bostonian– it happened just a few blocks away from our offices. We knew right away that we wanted to pay tribute to the event but it took us some time to figure out exactly how we would do it. We chose to honor the first responders from that day and hoped that by doing so, we would be able to recognize all of the people who went above and beyond the call of duty the entire week.
It just seemed to make perfect sense to create this cover story for our Boston’s Best issue. It’s our biggest of the year, and out for four weeks instead of two. Who better to embody “Boston’s Best” than a group that represented how well Bostonians banded together in the face of a massive crisis.
We worked with John for the first time back in December and he’s shot four covers (including this one) for us since then. He shot Wendy Williams for the cover of our May 8th issue the Thursday before the Marathon and we had a scheduled call for Tuesday, April 16th, to discuss the shoot. That quick chat turned into a recap of where we both were on Monday and our days, how he’d photographed the marathon in the past and all the “almosts.” As soon as we had the green light for the project, I reached out to John.
He has this calming energy and astounding professionalism about him that I knew he’d bring to the shoot. By far the most amazing part of the day was getting to watch him shoot the individual portraits. He was able to engage his subjects in the most magical way. Very few of them had ever sat for a formal portrait before, but there was no timidity in any of the photographs- he made each and everyone of them feel completely comfortable sharing their stories and showing their raw emotions.
I am very familiar with John Huet’s work, editing his work is virtually impossible, as you could simply publish any image he turns in. How difficult was this to edit and what tools did you use when editing something so emotionally charged? Was there a process you had that was different from your other shoots?
That is a total fact. We had hundreds of shots to choose from, each of them better than the one before. Our Editorial Designer and I went through four or five rounds of edits on the computer before printing off our favorites (I think around 50) and piecing them together. We wanted to ensure that the pacing felt appropriate and each image complimented the one sitting next to it, while maintaining a consistent mood.
After making our final round of selections we called in the rest of the editorial staff to weigh in. We were so emotionally attached to each of the images, that it was important to gauge outside reaction. And their overwhelming support of those particular photos cemented our final grouping.
What specifically were you looking for in the portraits?
We had to tread a fine line with the mood of these portraits. We certainly didn’t want them to be joyful, but neither did we want them to be too somber. We were going for proud more than anything else.
John was able to get each first responder to share the story of where they were that day- stories that they had politely dodged in our brief interviews with them. I think feeling comfortable with John, and in a way, reliving their actions that day, it would have been impossible to capture anything other than pride.
We had originally intended to run the portraits over six pages, our usual feature length, but these images were so spot on, so moving, that we were able to get an additional four pages. They are the kind of images that need room to breathe and are worth every bit of real estate that they take up.
Are photo essays something the magazine has the luxury of doing on a regular basis?
Unfortunately, they aren’t. But there are occasionally cases, like this one, where everything that needs to be said can be done so with photos. Our vision for this piece was to create a visually driven feature that made readers as proud of Bostonians as we are. John more than delivered.
What’s the best way for photographers to reach out to you?
E-mail and promo cards are the best way to get my attention. I keep all the cards I get sent in a big pile and hang my favorites up. I try to go through every few weeks and write back to all the inquiries, just so they know I’ve received them and they are on my radar. We hire per assignment so sometimes it’s a while before we actually call for a job, but we do know you’re out there!
Photographer Giles Duley worked as a portrait photographer for 10 years before cynicism with celebrity culture took him in the direction of humanitarian issues. He had always hoped to return to portraiture, but while working in Afghanistan in 2011 he stepped on a landmine. It’s a miracle he survived as most soldiers who have an arm and two legs blown off do not make it. During the ensuing 46 days fighting for his life trapped inside his body, Giles imagined all the portraits he wanted to take, aware that now he’d probably never get the chance. He resolved that if by some chance he made it through he’d contact the names on his list and ask them to sit for a portrait.
I’ve had to hire all the equipment and I desperately trying to get it all set up in time with my assistant Noemie. It seems during my ten-year hiatus even the lighting stands have changed. I’m fumbling around trying just to set that up, it’s the most basic piece of kit here, but every time I let go of the stand, it just collapses and keels over. I’m the photographic equivalent of the embarrassing dancing dad at a wedding disco; a head full of fabled disco day memories, a present day of uncoordinated reality.
I decided to make a coffee but even there I’m faced with a NASA style interface and am left bewildered and coffee less.
In my planning I’d always thought the moments leading up to my first portrait would be a time of calm and reflection. A time to consider my subject and to focus on how I was going to record their essence in a single frame. Instead I’m a wreck, sweating like crazy and talking inanely to myself.
I’m also aware that I’ve underestimated the power of the lights. The 2.5k tungsten’s aren’t giving out enough light to make my set-up work as I’d hoped.
And it gets worse; I made a last minute decision to shoot this project on a medium format camera, something I was did all the time when I worked in studios. These larger format cameras are bulkier, but well suited to a studio where the produce much more detail in the finished images.
The last ten years though have seen a revolution. Last time I shot in a studio it was on film. Now I have a digital Hasselblad in my hands and I have no idea how it works. Naively I thought it couldn’t be that complicated, but I can’t even turn it on.
I’m looking forward to following the journey with Giles. Join me.
Silver represents a new breed of journalist who can pick and choose where to work, and who can move at will when someone makes a better offer. This isn’t about being a freelancer. It’s about creating a platform and then connecting that platform to whichever partner you like.
“Your sun? It’s not your sun, mate. It belongs to everyone.”
“Does it now? And will the sun come and save you when I bash
your skull in? Move your arse or you’ll find out.”
That must have happened countless times over the years,
on the endless beaches around the UK. Right? Where I grew up, on the Jersey shore, it might have gone something like this:
“Hey, asshole, you kicked sand on my blanket.”
“Aaaay. Oh.”
“You heard me. You kicked some f-ckin’ sand all over my girlfriend’s towel. Clean it up.”
“Take it easy. It was an accident. Deal with it, meathead, or go back to Staten Island.”
“F-ck you!”
“F-ck me? F-ck you!”
Ah, the beach. Given that we are now smack in the middle of summer, you knew I was going to pull out a beach column. Right? Last year, around this time, I reviewed a book about some blue lakes in the Czech Republic. (Summer-y, yes, but it lacked a certain sex appeal.) So let’s bring back the Summer Vacation column, but do it right this year.
Martin Parr is a photographer who’s made many a book, yet I’ve never managed to review one before. Today, that changes. “Life’s a Beach,” published by Aperture, has a pink cover, dotted with flowers and leaves. It looks like a photo album you might pick up in an overpriced grocery store on Kauai, (along with some $4 flip flops) in anticipation of all the great memories you were planning to record. (When people still did such things.)
The photos within are cheeky. Witty. Fun. Take your pick of positive, light-hearted adjectives. The images were made of and in beach cultures across the world, thereby giving us a look at the similarities and differences. (A saggy tush on the beach in Miami, a cow prowling the sand in Goa, a woman sucking down a crab claw in China, sausages on the barbie in Australia, a tuft of back hair in Spain…you get the picture.)
It wouldn’t be a Summer Vacation column if I didn’t wrap it up quickly. (Thank god, they say, as they chuckle into their Iphone screens.) Too many words and it will seem like work. So, to recap, this is a super-fun book by a photographer renown for his wit and sense of humor. It’s very cool, and if you buy it, Aperture will give you one free beach pass at Spring Lake, Point Pleasant, or some other spot on the Jersey Shore. (I just made that up.)
Bottom Line: Martin Parr at the beach. Need I say more?
“The manager of Pizza Hut shaking hands with a prize college athlete: I did that sort of thing for 10 years” – but she scraped a living from them and nurtured more experimental work on the side. Then came an exhibition, a book called Second Sight, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.
