Art Producers Speak: Holly Andres

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 Holly Andres

From a personal body of work that was based on my unique experience growing up in rural Montana, the youngest of ten children. By creating a fictitious group of siblings loosely based on archetypes of my own family, each image is constructed to enact a specific moment and depict a psychological portrait.
From a personal body of work that was based on my unique experience growing up in rural Montana, the youngest of ten children. By creating a fictitious group of siblings loosely based on archetypes of my own family, each image is constructed to enact a specific moment and depict a psychological portrait.
This image is from my series, Sparrow Lane, which comprised of 14 photographs presenting an elliptical narrative of young women on the verge of adulthood. Drawing on the formal and thematic conventions of Nancy Drew books, the series depicts girls in search of forbidden knowledge. By employing suggestive and symbolic iconography, literal narratives are suspended to suggest psycho-sexual metaphors.
I had an opportunity to do a fashion shoot in a Victorian mansion in Salem Oregon that was presumed to be haunted.
Often times the narratives presented in my work are abstractions of real-life events that were relayed to me by the actual participants in the photos. From Anna’s Birthday Party, I was recreating specific memories from their childhoods in which their mothers performed heroic acts in an attempt to protect them.
Often times the narratives presented in my work are abstractions of real-life events that were relayed to me by the actual participants in the photos. From Anna’s Birthday Party, I was recreating specific memories from their childhoods in which their mothers performed heroic acts in an attempt to protect them.
I made this photograph after an experience where I was riding my bike and happened upon a group of young boys huddled around something in the grass. As I got closer I discovered that they were inspecting a dead squirrel. I was moved by how this rather gross and tragic, though common, occurrence created a moment of tenderness and closeness between these boys, which inspired me enough to recreate it.
From The Fall of Spring Hill I continued to examine the complexity of childhood and fleeting nature of memory. Through a suite of 13 photographs the series illustrates an incident from a summer church camp in which a child injures himself by falling from a dilapidated wooden play structure and the mothers’ fierce reaction to deconstruct it in retribution.
From The Fall of Spring Hill I continued to examine the complexity of childhood and fleeting nature of memory. Through a suite of 13 photographs the series illustrates an incident from a summer church camp in which a child injures himself by falling from a dilapidated wooden play structure and the mothers’ fierce reaction to deconstruct it in retribution. Serving as a proxy for the boy’s wound is the stillness of a blood red punchbowl.
I was shooting a portrait of animal trainer/photographer, Carli Davidson, and I had heard that the Wildlife Safari in Oregon had a cheetah program. I called them up and asked if we could stage a portrait there. Clearly a composite, I locked my camera off on its tripod to photograph the daily training session, which consisted of rewarding the cheetahs with hunks of raw meat for commands such as sitting, crouching and following. I then shot Carli in the same location and later pieced several files together in post-production.
In this portrait of Executive Director of the Columbia River Maritime Museum, Samuel E. Johnson Ph.D., I wanted to simultaneously reveal his traits as an academic historian as well as his interests in restoring and sailing wooden boats.
A self-portrait made with the help of my assistants (and beautiful Siamese felines) to subvert the notion of a “cat lady” as a spinster animal hoarder for more glamorous and alluring existence.

How many years have you been in business?

While I have only been shooting commercially for a few years, I have a strong foundation in the fine art photography realm with representation from prominent galleries in NYC, Atlanta, San Francisco and Portland Oregon where I live and work. I’ve also taught photography at the college level for several years.

Are you self-taught or photography school taught?

My educational background is in painting and drawing, and it wasn’t until after graduate school when I was studying cinema and I became curious about the potential of freezing a narrative as a single frame, that I discovered how photography could best aestheticize my concepts. While I primarily consider myself a photographer, my foundation in painting and cinema continues to inform my photographic practice and aesthetic.

Who was your greatest influence that inspired you to get into this business?

I decided to get into the business, after frequently being told that my fine art photography may have commercial application. The realm of constructed narrative photography has greatly influenced me, where artists such as Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson and Cindy Sherman are the pioneers. I also feel a strong connection to Edward Hoppers paintings and the work of many mid-century female surrealists, such as Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Maya Deren, particularly because of their interests in psychoanalysis and their metaphoric depictions of fears, desires and impulses.

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?

Being a photographer has transformed the way that I experience life. When I’m in a prolific period of shooting and am feeling exceptionally perceptive, I tend to see the world with more wonder, beauty and appreciation. This resulting impact, in and of itself, is actually the most fulfilling and powerful aspect of photography for me. When I made the transition into the commercial sphere, I decided that I had to find a way to make it as fulfilling and meaningful as making art.  I entered the commercial world with a relatively strong and varied portfolio of personal work, work that was not made under the influence of commercial application, and this is the work that has garnered the most attention of photo editors, art directors and art buyers.

Do you find that some creatives love your work but the client holds you back?

Fortunately I haven’t come up against this much.  I think because my work is so specific in its aesthetic, commercial clients know early in the process if I am an appropriate for their brand.

What are you doing to get your vision out to the buying audience?

I’m repped by the photo agency Hello Artists, and in the company of a roster of great talent, my work is constantly being exposed to potential commercial collaborators. I also continue to invest in my own fine art endeavors. For example, I will be having a mid-career retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum in Salem Oregon this summer, followed by the premiere of a new body of photographic work at my Portland-based gallery, Hartman Fine Art, in the fall. I find that when these arenas intercept it results in the most exciting commercial opportunities. Additionally, I accept many speaking invitations and try to have an active and current online presence, by maintaining my website, blog and other social media threads.

What is your advice for those who are showing what they think the buyers want to see?

Andy Warhol famously said, “ Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” It seems artist’s creativity is often stunted by an internal voice that tries to predict what the external world wants to see. If you can engage in the joy and practice of consistently making art, inevitably you will develop an individual voice, a unique way of seeing – both in content and style. I think that this is what art buyers are most interested in.

Are you shooting for yourself and creating new work to keep your artistic talent true to you?

Yes. As I mentioned earlier, I am consistently developing new work and fortunately through the representation of my galleries am always preparing work for future exhibitions. I find that there is a strong symbiotic relationship, one that is constantly evolving, between my commercial and personal work.

How often are you shooting new work?

All the time.

Holly Andres is a fine art and commercial photographer. She has had solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Istanbul, Turkey and Portland Oregon where she lives and works. Her work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Time, Runner’s World, W, Art in America, Artforum, Exit Magazine, Art News, Modern Painters, Oprah Magazine, Elle Magazine, The LA Times, Glamour, Blink and Art Ltd. – which profiled her as one of 15 emerging West Coast artists under the age of 35.

Andres’s work was also selected for Go West! Cutting-Edge Creatives in the United States, a book surveying the best creative minds in architecture, design, art, fashion, photography and advertising – published by German-based, DAAB Books, 2011.

She has commercial representation through Hello Artists, and gallery representation through Robert Mann Gallery (New York City), Charles A. Hartman Fine Art (Portland), Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta), Robert Koch Gallery (San Francisco).

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.

Forging Relationships Was The Key

That’s what would hurt me now if I still wanted to do this work. Today the young art directors want to have the control – they don’t want a photographer who has a relationship with the talent. That’s the last thing they want. For me, the relationships with the talent that I developed were far more important than the relationships with the clients because clients come and go – but the talent are going to be around for a while.

I realized that I was bidding jobs that I wasn’t getting, and I said to myself – this is getting old! I really didn’t enjoy it anymore and there’s people out there that are a lot hungrier than I was by that time.

via A rambling conversation with Greg Gorman | Le Journal de la Photographie.

The Daily Edit
GQ: Eric Ray Davidson

Thursday: 4.25.13

Design Director: Fred Woodward
Creative Director: Jim Moore
Director of Photography: Dora Somosi
Senior Photo Editor: Krista Prestek
Photo Editor: Justin O’Neil
Art Director: Chelsea Cardinal

Photographer: Eric Ray Davidson

“Light from the Middle East: New Photography” at the V&A

by Jonathan Blaustein

Syria is a wreckage, its people bombarded by a psychotic former ophthalmologist. Egypt’s economy is in free-fall. The Arab Spring’s optimism has faded faster than a photograph bathed in the sunshine of a portrait studio’s front window.

Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, and other countries in the Middle East live with the constant threat of violence and terror. When stories flood media outlets, dead bodies boost ratings. (I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.) Given that language barriers exist, even in an age of Google Translate, it’s not so easy to just throw out a couple of friend requests to get the real story from Tehran. Or Tel Aviv.

Fortunately, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has come to our collective rescue. “Light from the Middle East: New Photography” displayed photographs from North Africa through Central Asia, until it closed on April 7. It was the most dynamic photo exhibition I saw on my recent visit to Europe.

The show was broken down into three component parts: Recording, Reframing, and Resisting. The first referred to documentary work, the second to images that attempted to subvert existing photo traditions, and the latter section dealt with more original or innovative art practice. Surprisingly, given my predilections, I mostly preferred the initial grouping. But there were strong projects throughout; a fantastic exhibition, really.

Walking through the entryway, I was confronted with a group of photos by Abbas, from the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. He managed to capture anger and passion pulsing through the frame, as in the grouping of women in abayas, toting machine guns. Another image featured a heap of dead old men on morgue beds, slid out of the cooler. (While some revolutionaries looked on, gloating.) The message from the curators was clear: We mean business.

Just down the way, Tal Shochat, an Israeli, exhibited a triptych of contemporary images that seemed to emanate from a different planet, as well as century, than those of Abbas. Three trees: persimmon, pomegranate, and grapefruit. Each had been meticulously cleaned and buffed, then shot in the landscape with strobes, against a black backdrop. They looked artificial, like corporatized nature. Smart and odd-looking, they referenced the intersection of agriculture and genetic engineering in the 21st C.

Cruising the room, I saw pictures from Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kurdistan.

“Bodiless 1,” by Mehraneh Atashi, another Iranian, was an absolute favorite. A burly wrestler, in a mens’ only gym, throws around a chain of weights. (Old school equipment, for sure.) He had a serious head of hair, resembled Erik Estrada, and rocked a sexy-time mustache as well. The text tells us women are always excluded from such establishments, but the artist was, in fact, female. She received special permission, and included her own image as a little subversive shout to rule-breaking, reflected within a mirror.

A Mitra Tabrizian photo, again from Iran, was also amazing. (I’m just now realizing I like Iranian photography.) A long, horizontal panel depicted an obviously-staged scene filled with a host of “regular” people. Old and young, men and women, all stood, moved, talked, gesticulated, in a field outside of a generic apartment building. Up above, a pair of grumpy-looking clerics stared down, disapprovingly, from a billboard. (I wonder what they would approve of? Disemboweling Barack Obama?) Though I assumed it to be a digital composite, given how much was going on, the wall text assured that it was actually one exposure. Righteous people-wrangling.

In general, the Reframing section, which featured artists who appropriate or imitate images from the past, was the least successful. Most of the artists’ symbol choices were heavy-handed, so things were just off. (Close, but not quite right.)

Shadi Ghadirian’s project, yet again from Iran, typified this. Her series, “Qujar,” from 1998, featured women in portraits, shot in the historical style from the Qajar period, 1786-1925. The verisimilitude was spot on, but then the women held modern symbols, like a Pepsi can, a boom box, or a mountain bike. I wanted to love them, but kept getting stuck in the clunky juxtaposition. The one exception was the image of shrouded women holding a mirror that reflected blankly back to the photographer, and by extension, the viewer.

Youssef Nabil, an Egyptian, exhibited work from his project “The Yemeni Sailors of South Shields,” a series of hand-colored black and white portraits. The style aped mid-20th Century Egyptian studio portraits, and focused on the large ex-pat population in North England. I loved the hand-colored effect, and the guys were funny, but also poignant, like Gene Hackman’s sidekick in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” (Yes, I’m aware Pagoda was Indian.)

One last project here deserves a mention, but not in a good way. Taysir Batniji, a Palestinian, had pictures included from his “Watch Towers: West Bank/Palestine” project. The structures were blatantly shot in the insanely-famous Becher style. Basically, they were knock-offs, meant to create controversy. When the first sentence in the wall text admits that the work is derivative, I wonder if it actually belongs in the show?

Moving on, my brain slowly wearing down, I entered the last room: Resisting. The collected photos were meant to examine the manipulation of truth in photography. The quality ranged, here, but there were some memorable projects.

Atiq Rahimi’s work, from Afghanistan, featured plastic box camera pictures, called “The Imaginary Return,” from 2001. The artist played with scale and temporal dislocation, so my eye wondered if the pictures were from the 19th Century. A tree branch looked like it was about to topple a building, little men at the base of a wall look like toy soldiers, and a lonely clothesline suspended above the chaos seems like it might be holding up the world.

Amirali Ghasemi’s series “Tehran Remixed: Party Series” was also terrific. We’ve all heard stories of what goes on behind the closed, locked doors of Tehran’s youth. (I’m guessing they love Ecstasy, but what do I know?) Here, we see the good times rolling, but big white sections have been cut out of the subjects, censoring their identities. It was a perfect use of digital technique, and reminded me why I was less enthralled with the exhibition’s mid-section, which placed less emphasis on stylistic innovation.

There was a bit more hand-coloring in the last room, but nothing that really impressed. Nermine Hammam, an Egyptian, had a project where she photographed soldiers who were ubiquitous during the aforementioned Arab Spring. Rather than keep them in their natural surroundings, however, she digitally removed them, and dropped them against the technicolor backdrops of the Swiss Alps. (I’m guessing the soldiers would have preferred to frolic in the mountains, rather than tote guns around Tahrir Square.)

As I said at the outset, this was a really stellar exhibition. We often struggle, here in the West, to remind ourselves why art matters. A few rooms such as these, packed with photographs that attempt to codify uncertainty, document upheaval, and share stories with the World outside, are an excellent reminder.

Robert Capa Gold Medal Awarded To Fabio Bucciarelli

The Robert Capa Gold Medal is awarded to a photographer producing “photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise.” This year, Italian photojournalist Fabio Bucciarelli was recognized for Battle to Death, his project recording the harrowing battles in Aleppo in late 2012. “The battle for the conquest of Aleppo is a real massacre,” he told TIME.

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/04/24/2013-overseas-press-club-winners-announced

Reporter Beats Out Lumberjack For Worst Job Of 2013

CareerCast.com has an annual ranking of 200 best and worst jobs for 2013 (here) and Reporter takes the bottom spot over last years Lumberjack. Ouch. Maybe we will see Discovery and History channels making a new reality series around reporter like the other worst job staples of Lumberjack, Commercial Fisherman and Mining. Of course rounding out the bottom 20 below Dishwasher but above Corrections Officer is Photojournalist at number 188, so I guess photographers are the best in the newsroom. In the catch-all category of Photographer, which usually includes heavy weighting on positions like cruise ship and theme park photographer, the ranking is 172 just below construction worker but with a positive job growth outlook. Strangely, their description of photographer reads: “Uses shutter-operated cameras and photographic emulsions to visually portray a variety of subjects.”

We Had Amazingly Open Expense Accounts

I’ve had a love interest in wine since the early seventies. It’s actually a great story and few people know it. It dates back to photography, obviously. In the early days, studios had a lot of money and working on all those assignments and movies, we got paid a reasonable fee in the day for what we were doing – but we also had really amazingly open, no-questions-asked-expense-accounts. This included everything being first class; the airfares, the hotels and… of course, most importantly, the dining!

via A rambling conversation with Greg Gorman | Le Journal de la Photographie.

Nearly Naked Women + Tumblr + Excellent Photography = Success

I’m always on the lookout for photographers who use social media to build an audience and then leverage that audience to success by selling them something or attracting commercial and editorial clients who are interested in the audience. There are lots of examples where photographers attract other photographers by talking about the business or their process for making pictures, but the real potential lies in attracting consumers outside this industry.

I’ve been lecturing about social media marketing for artists for several years and my go to examples of this are: The Sartorialist, The Cobra Snake and The Selby, all three of whom built their careers (in varying degrees) using social media. A few years back I was happy to add to this list an established photographer (Michael Edwards) who took a tried and true formula (nearly naked wormen plus tumblr), but added in his skills as a pro picture maker, and watched the whole thing go viral: http://meinmyplace.com. But, the success in the whole endeavor lies not in his ability to attract hundreds of thousands or horny college kids to his site, but to leverage the whole thing into a monthly column at Esquire, which he did for a year and a half and has since moved it to Playboy.

PDN has an interview with Michael (here) where you can get the full story.

If you want to study success in social media with photography these 4 are excellent case studies and pioneers in the industry.

Who would you recommend because we don’t want to use the same person

the producers here are very open to using new talent. I can honestly say that, because every day, I’m approached with the question “Who would you recommend because we don’t want to use the same person.” I think it’s important to present many creative options to get those firewalls torn down, or the work becomes predictable and stagnant, and makes for an unhappy Client.

— Michael Bilbrey, senior production consultant at Leo Burnett USA

via ASMP: American Society of Media Photographers – National Page.

The Daily Edit
New York Times Magazine: Erik Madigan Heck

 

Monday: 4.22.13

Design Director: Arem Duplessis
Director of Photography: Kathy Ryan
Art Director: Gail Bichler
Deputy Art Director: Caleb Bennett
Deputy Photo Editor: Joanna Milter
Photo Editors: Stacey Baker, Clinton Cargill, Amy Kellner
Designers: Sara Cwynar, Raul Aquila, Drea Zlanabitni

Photographer: Erik Madigan Heck

This Week In Photography Books – Torbjørn Rødland

by Jonathan Blaustein

I was a wee bit angsty last week, I must admit. Trapped in an existential crisis of my own making, I freely rhapsodized about the meaning of it all. Quelle surprise.

I don’t want to imply, though, that everything in life is or should be earnest. We’re all doing the best we can, using our creative outlets to bring attention to deserving stories, release our pent-up mental tension, or allow joy into our lives. Art is process more than product.

Just yesterday, though, I realized that the string of books I chose to highlight recently was misery-laden. This space is well-utilized, I believe, if you come to read each week, and learn something about the world through the visions of talented image makers. But the human experience is not limited to death, chaos and violence.

Frankly, when we focus exclusively on the negative, we do ourselves a disservice. In a week like this, when terror again shook the United States, and an even bigger explosion battles for headlines, it would be easy to stick to the program; talk about what’s wrong out there. But since when have I opted for easy?

Humor is often misunderstood, seen as a less-than-intellectual response to external stimuli. Fart jokes are great, don’t get me wrong, but they give the impression that laughing is an LCD response. (If I were flatulent right now, and you were here to see it, would you laugh? Honestly?)

Many a great mind has come to realize that embracing the absurdity of our little dance with existence is the way to go. (As my Aussie friend Pappy used to say, “If you don’t laugh, you cry, JB.”) And I don’t feel like crying anymore. (Especially about my own lack of value to the human race. One week of whining is enough.)

So I was happy to pick up “Vanilla Partner,” by Torbjørn Rødland, published last year by MACK. I hated this book the first two times I flipped through the pages. I was in my austere, goatee-stroking mode, and just didn’t get it. Had I actually owned the copy, I might have hurled it against the wall, crunching its spine, while I shrieked like a coyote with its foot in a trap. But, as we’ve learned previously, sometimes you have to give art a little breathing space, and keep an open mind.

Today, desperate to leave my leaden spirit in an ash pile, I opened the book again, and nearly giggled in faux horror at the audacity. (It’s not LOL funny. More the “Oh no you didn’t” type of vibe.) The series of images within only makes sense if you lighten up. Octopi and sausages wrap around appendages. Bodies are contorted in uncomfortable positions. People are covered in paint, or writing, or plastic wrap.

Their faces are stoic through the silliness, like Thomas Ruff subjects who’ve been caught in a clown’s bad dream. (Though the picture of the smiling, breast-feeding mother is a keeper. Breastfeeding women don’t smile. Trust me.) The juxtaposition of levity and melancholy is fantastic; a solid metaphor for the dualistic nature of nature.

There are boobs, for sure, (Boobs Sell Books℠), but the nudity fits the overall mood. One guy has his penis hanging out while being body painted, and by the time I got to the girl’s butt with a rectal thermometer sticking out, my appreciation for the irreverence was complete. (This is certainly the kind of book that won’t make sense to everyone.)

Have you ever vomited on yourself, and blamed someone else? Or been drawn on while passed-out-wasted? (Some grown-up-frat-boys marked up my brother during his bachelor party, for heaven’s sake.) It’s the perfect symbol for the ridiculous-but-necessary side of our psyche. If that’s not enough for you, how about a child’s head covered with spaghetti sauce, or a girl with a woolen condom sticking out of her mouth?

I expect this book might offend many, if not most people. It’s ironic in such a dry way that you can miss it, as I did the first few times I leafed through. But really, when people die every day, severed limbs leaking blood on the sidewalk, and there’s no sense to the killing, sometimes, it’s a natural response to just say f-ck it, and spray someone with chocolate sauce.

Bottom Line: Edgy use of irony and humor, not for everyone

To Purchase “Vanilla Partner” Visit Photo-Eye

Full Disclosure: Books are provided by Photo-Eye in exchange for links back for purchase.

Books are found in the bookstore and submissions are not accepted.

 

This Confirms The Need For Professional Photojournalists

Think about this for a moment. At the finish line, there must have been hundreds of cameras. You would think everyone was taking pictures and recording videos. Twitter as a publishing platform is primed and ready for stills and video. It’s a world where everyone has a camera. But I saw very few images from the general public.

Why is that?  As you look through the photo galleries and videos, you can reach your own conclusions. But as I watched the behavior of photojournalists, it confirmed for me the need for professionals in this age of de-professionalization of the news industry.

via Tragedy and the Role of Professional Photojournalists – Assignment Chicago.

My end goal was not to just attract eyeballs, but to attract the right eyeballs

I had decided that I needed to get back to the essence of what I wanted my website to do for my business and that was to generate quality work or sales. I began focusing on those goals, instead of the sole goal of coming up number one in a Google search for New Jersey photographers. While coming up number one in a Google search for NJ photographers’ was attainable by following the tips of the SEO gurus, it wasn’t how I wanted to be found. I didn’t want to be the “local” photographer because that meant I would probably be competing with other local shooters on price and that’s a quick way to the poor house.

via Keeping Up with SEO – or Not at Strictly Business.

Art Producers Speak: Adam Amengual

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 Adam Amengual

How many years have you been in business?

I started assisting in late 2003, so between assisting and shooting, almost 10 years.

Are you self-taught or photography school taught?

I started off taking basic black and white classes in high school then later I received my BFA from The Massachusetts College of Art in 2003. Mass Art was a very fine art based program, which gave me a love for fine art and documentary photography. I also studied at Parson for the second semester of my junior year where amongst other classes I was taught basic lighting techniques.

Who was your greatest influence that inspired you to get into this business?

If I could attribute garnering my interest in commercial photography to one person it had to be Neil Selkirk who taught my lighting class while I was at Parsons. Neil was a professor but also a commercial photographer. Although Neil has had many gallery shows and books published he also shot advertising and editorial work. All my professors previously were solely fine art photographers. Through Neil I learned about shooting assignments, assisting and later I assisted him as well. Of course I knew that commercial photography existed before studying at Parsons but I had not given it any thought in terms of my own path before that time.

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?

My favorite photographers are those who have straddled both fine art and commercial photography such as Larry Sultan, Stefan Ruiz, Paul Murphy and Richard Avedon. I also find myself always going back to look at the work of Joel Sternfeld, Rineke Dijkstra, Taryn Simon and Mitch Epstein. All documentary photographers on some level. Like these photographers I strive to make images that are timeless, and that people will want to look at 50 years from now. Images that will be seen in some sort of cultural and social context. Working mostly in a documentary portrait manner allows me to fulfill both of my own curiosities in the world, which is to reach out to people and explore. I think the late Tim Hetherington said it best, “I want to reach people. Can’t it come out of a place of personal curiosity? A desire to locate myself in the world and also have some utility?”

Do you find that some creatives love your work but the client holds you back?

I assume I would get more work if I had more smiles in my pictures or if they were a bit more lit and “illustrated” or lifestyle based. I feel most clients want to have a creative look to their campaign that is on par with the current trends in advertising photography. So to be honest in some upcoming projects I will be trying to find a place where what I do more closely meets those client needs. It will be my aesthetic and subject matter with a small twist.

What are you doing to get your vision out to the buying audience?

I do a lot of cold emailing and then, face to face meetings as they come up. I have also built relationships with some art buyers and art directors through my time assisting. I try to have some sort of new project to show every six months. In this way, I always have something to show to keep my work fresh in their mind.

What is your advice for those who are showing what they think the buyers want to see?

I really believe that you need to stay as true as possible to making work that you love creating. If you love shooting kids or puppies or whatever, then you should be building a book of those kinds of images. But, there always needs to be a thoughtful aesthetic to it.

Are you shooting for yourself and creating new work to keep your artistic talent true to you?

Shooting personal projects keeps me happy and motivated. I get the opportunity to try shooting with a slightly different aesthetic or new subject matter without having to answer to anyone but myself. I am never trying to waste my own time or money, so I do have some sort of vision for how each new project fits into my larger body of work, but at the very least it’s fun to play.

How often are you shooting new work?

Constantly. I am currently working on several projects that are in different phases. I have one project that I am shooting, but haven’t shown…two are in the research phase. I consider the I Survived Skatopia to still be in the “shooting phase” as it’s an on-going project, images from my first trip are on my site now but I plan on making a second trip to Ohio this summer.

I always have some sort of camera with me, either my Canon 5D, Hasselblad, or my 4×5. I recently added a point and shoot camera to my collection to use as a sketchbook. Neil Selkirk told me once that as a photographer you should be making pictures everyday. He didn’t mean you that needed to make images that require a huge production. Every time you compose a picture, even on your iPhone, you are honing your craft.

Adam Amengual was born in Queens, NY and raised on the North Shore of Massachusetts. His father Angelo gave him his first camera at 12 and he started documenting his friends and his surroundings. After studying the basics of photography in high school he continued his photographic education at both Massachusetts College of Art and Parsons School of Design. After art school Adam moved to Brooklyn, NY and began assisting photographers in advertising, fashion, celebrity, and music such as Danielle Levitt, Art Streiber, and Ben Watts, just to name a few.

Adam is currently living in Brooklyn, NY with his wife Kate and dog Shug. His clients include The U.S. State Department via Lipman Hearne, Inc. Magazine, Time Out New York, Men’s Health, New York Magazine, Juxtapoz Magazine, Sony BMG, NDLON, Nobu and Wieden+Kennedy NYC. His work has been shown in galleries at THIS Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts Boston. His recently completed project entitle Homies has been featured in Exit Magazine and blogs such as Time’s Lightbox, Prison Photography, This Is the What, and Conscientious. His portrait of Adrien Caceres from Homies in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Adam has recently received several awards for his work:
-The Sony Emerging Photographer Award 2012
-Honorable mention in En Foco’s New Works Photography Awards #15 Fellowship, 2011-12. 
-Homies was featured in the PDN Photo annual 2012 and the American Photography 28
-Selected as one of Digital Photo Pro Magazine’s 2012 “Emerging Pro”

Website: www.adamamengual.com
Blog: www.adamamengual.tumblr.com and www.wandering-wayfarer.com
Twitter: @aamengual
Email: info@adamamengual.com

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.