If you haven’t had the chance to see The September Issue and you have anything to do with the magazine business you really should put it on the top of your Netflix cue. The documentary illuminates the fascinating process of compiling one issue of Vogue Magazine, specifically the September 2007 issue. The filmmakers had unparalleled access to editor Anna Wintour and her staff, which revealed marvelous insights into the concepting and execution of all the fashion stories needed to complete the issue. What lifted the film above the typical behind the scenes piece was the conflict between the overwhelmingly powerful Anna Wintour and the only person willing to stand up to her, the extraordinarily talented stylist Grace Coddington. Wow! What an amazing and wonderful person she is! The two of them go head to head over every photograph, every set, and every piece of clothing and it is fascinating to watch. At one point, without even blinking an eye, Anna kills one of the most expensive and elaborate images from a story that Grace had poured her heart into. A $50,000 production, cut out on a whim, in one of the more egregious displays of the Conde Naste culture of extravagance that I’ve ever seen. Not that I don’t understand the underlining logic of why shots get killed and why sometimes money gets wasted. For a more down to earth example, consider our America Ferrera shoot. We decided to rent a chaise lounge for the simple reason that we wanted to provide a comfortable and elegant space for America to be in, with the hopes that we could also create some beautiful horizontal images for our opening spread. So I went and did the whole prop scouting tour of Eclectic Encore and Props for Today, renting a gorgeous couch for $400 and then ended up killing the shot because it just didn’t work. Go figure. Maybe Anna was right?
You know how sometimes you meet someone and they are so cool and so down to earth that you just want to be their friend forever? Thats what happened to me when I met Justin Kirk. I have to admit that I didn’t really know who he was before our shoot. I had never really watched much of Weeds but a couple (unnamed) members of my family loved the show and thought he was cute so I took the assignment. The shoot was pretty lo-key, we just walked around the block a few times, mostly gabbing about music and acting and art. It’s so pleasant to work with creative people that understand the process and are not only willing to collaborate but to bring something extra to the table. Anyway, I was finally able to make it to see the off broadway production of “The Understudy” a hilarious new play written by the stellar Teresa Rebeck, starring Julie White, Mark-Paul Gosselar, and our hero, Justin Kirk. The play is set on the stage of a play with 2 performers and a stage manager running a rehearsal for an unnamed play involving a sort of medley of Kafka plays. It brilliantly deconstructs the actors role in theatre and comments on how Hollywood moviestars are effecting Broadway in todays culture. All the actors performances were powerful but, and I will try not to gush too much, but JK was fantastic and crazy and dynamic and amazingly WEIRD, WILD and WONDERFUL!!
I shot these four images using an old overhead projector and instead of drawing a diagram on acetate I used a glass pie plate filled with water, oil and food coloring. Its actually the oldest trick in the book but seeing this image makes me feel like I’m listening to an old velvet underground record and tripping out on purple microdot.
Lost In The Air: The Jason Reitman Press Tour Simulator. The Director Jason Reitman uses his iphone to document his press tour for his movie “Up in the Air” which by the way I thought was wonderful. Great acting, great story telling, and I guess I am just a sucker for a good midlife crisis tale.
Call it whatever you want. The ethereal snapshot. A technological revolution. The death of print. But one thing is for sure. The devaluation of photography is upon us. The act of making photographs has been simplified to the point of having the secretary shooting the annual report.
I remember back in the stone age, way back in the eightie’s, when we used to have to shoot chrome. If you were off by 1/10 of a stop your image was ruined. Now, you dont even need a light meter. I feel bad for the lightmeter companies. So many of the challenges that photographers used to face are gone. The good news is that there’s so much great photography being made right now. Everywhere I look I see powerful imagery dominating the web. The challenge now is to fend off the competition. The challenge now is it to do something the other guy can’t.
The challenge now is to adapt or die. Personally, I am interested in enhancing my photographic vision with the wonders of motion and sound.
To me that’s a challenge I am excited about.
This is a little test I made for Ernie at Time inc. I will be rolling out quite a bit of video so keep your hand off the dial!
I went to see the off broadway production of “This” last night. I haven’t seen a play in ages so it was great to get back to the theatre and see some real actors acting. The play was very well done with great performances by Glenn Fitzgerald and Julianne Nicholson and incredibly sharp and witty writing by Melissa James Gibson. The play runs 1 hour and 45 mins without an intermission but the story is so moving and emotionally engaging that I didnt even notice time going by. There is an interesting story on the times site of behind the scenes photographs taken by the actor Glenn Fitzgerald here.
Wow. What can I say? I just got the list of publicity items from my Abrams publicist and it looks impressive. If you are wondering why I havent posted on my blog for the last month you can guess it was pretty hectic around here. I did interviews for a lot of these publications and and there are even some that aren’t listed. I am really pleased with the response to my work and excited that GRUNGE did so well. It was interesting to publish a body of work that I made over 20 years ago. I was able to redefine my roots and reestablish my position in the photography world. Now the the hoopla seems to be dying down I can get back to my day to day existence and start looking forward again.
PUBLICITY
RADIO
October 7 WNYC “Soundcheck” (New York, NY; NPR affiliate)
October 8 VH1 Radio Network – interview / tour
VH1 Syndicated Radio (National; air-date TK)
KINK (Portland, OR; air-date TK)
WBBB (Raleigh, NC; air-date TK)
KTCL (Denver, CO; air-date TK)
WRXP w/ Matt Pinfield (New York, NY; air-date TK)
XTRA (San Diego, CA; live 10/8 at 10:30AM EST)
PRINT
September Seattle Metropolitan Magazine (Seattle WA)
October 7 Campus Circle (California)
October New York Press (New York, NY)
October CMJ
October NYLON
October Premier Guitar
October Mojo (UK)
October Artrocker (UK)
October Record Collector (UK)
Oct 29 Seattle Weekly
Oct 30 The Santa Fe New Mexican
Oct/Nov Bust
Nov 1 San Antonio Express-News (San Antonio, TX)
Nov 4 Campus Circle
Nov 8 Seattle Times
November City Arts (Seattle, WA)
November SLUG (Salt Lake City, UT)
November Seattle Metropolitan Magazine (Seattle, WA)
Nov 8 Seattle Times Sunday
Nov 13 The Stranger—feature + event coverage
Nov 27 The Boston Globe
Nov 29 New York Post
Dec 7 People Magazine
TK Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA)
TK Rebel Ink
UK PRESS
Soitu (Spanish online journal) www.laut.de (largest German online music website)
TAM Nas Nuvens (Brazilian inflight magazine)
Black & White Photography – review (Oct) www.supanet.com (feature, Oct/Nov)
NME – review on Gear page (Oct)
Front magazine (review, Nov) www.nme.com – picture gallery (Nov)
Classic Rock – review, issue tbc http://lastofthesmalltownplayboys.blogspot.com/
Nov. 13 Orca Books – book signing (Olympia, WA)
Nov. 13 Book party / Mudhoney performance – Neumos (Seattle, WA)
Nov. 14 Easy Street Records – book signing (Seattle, WA)
Nov. 17 Book party – Bowery Hotel (New York, NY)
Well, its official! GRUNGE is finally released. What a relief. It feels nice to have the book in my hands, the smooth hard cover, the smell of the ink, the images so beautifully printed, the years of work wrapped up in such a nice little package. As a photographer, putting out a book is the highest honor and the ultimate goal. I did a book ten years ago and this one fells so much better. Hopefully I wont have to wait another 10 years for the next one!
Ive been doing lots of interviews describing the meaning of grunge and talking about how the indie music scene influenced and was influenced by the street culture. People are actually asking me my opinion. I did an interview with Thurston for Soundcheck-WNYC which you can listen to here and considering that Thurston is one of the premiere voices of the independent music scene I am proud to say that I didnt get my ass kicked and I actually held my own. Here is the player:
Abrams made a cute little YouTube montage for us.
And here is a nice little plug from the absolutely essential Pitchfork
Thurston did an interesting interview for Interview Magazine regarding the book which you can see here. The interviewer Alex Sherman was giving Thurston a hard time about the use of the word Grunge for the title. I think T did a amazing job!
Mojo, the coolest magazine in the world, did this feature!
Presenting the new HEAVY TRASH video for the song GENTLE, off their new album MIDNIGHT SOUL SERENADES. I shot the video on my 5d and edited myself on Final Cut and Motion. I finally finished editing this week, no wait, I didnt finish yet, still got a whole ‘nother round to go. Jon wants to see if we can speed up the choruses. Thats the thing about editing, you can just muck around endlessly, tweeking and adjusting and re-thinking your message. But for now this is how I like it! Make sure to let the video load first. UPDATE!! This is the final edit!!!! You can also view a large hi-rez version on my website.
Well you win some and you lose some, but in the one sheet business you mostly lose. in the year 2000, I went on a series of meetings in Los Angeles. First I went to CREW Creative and I marveled at the wall filled with over 50 different fully fleshed out comps for the movie “A beautiful Mind“, then I went to New Wave Creative and I saw over 50 more comps for “A Beautiful Mind”, then I went a third agency (forgive me but I cant remember the name) and saw over 50 more comps for “A Beautiful Mind” I’d never seen so many pictures of Russell Crow in my whole life. It was explained to me that it was “normal” for a studio to hire 3 different design companies to compete against each other for one movie poster. I was flabbergasted. I have since been involved is several one sheets that have been frankensteined beyond recognition so when I was asked to shoot Ellen Page for the WHIPIT poster I knew what I was getting myself into. Anyway, to make a long story short, our images did not make the final poster which of course is very disappointing, but I am happy to be able to present some of the wonderful comps that were designed by Christian Struzan and XL.
First I went to CREW Creative and I marveled at the wall filled with over 50 different fully fleshed out comps for the movie “
