Grunge: The blow by blow

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.

And here is my moment in the sun. The “Brothers” photo shoot for Fox. Too bad they cut out the scene where they dumped the bowl of cereal on my head!

Well, he was sort of on time. Mike Delfin from XXL called me at the end of July and asked if I could shoot Jay-Z for their cover the week of August 12th. So we held the 12th and waited. Closer and closer and Mike could not secure a day. On Monday the 10th we still didnt know. They were holding weds. They were trying to push it to Thurs. On Tues, I called mike and said “Are we shooting this tomorrow or not?” By Tues evening we called off the shoot and cancelled all our holds. 10:39pm my cellphone rings. They want to shoot tomorrow. 2:00. “Can you still do it?” I had to think about it. I mean really, come on. In the end, I just couldn’t turn it down. The next morning, the shoot got pushed to 3:00. Then 4:00, then 5:00. Then 6:00. At 3:00 we were told that Jay-Z was coming at 7:00 and that we would get 10 minutes with him. Believe it or not, Jay-Z actually showed up “on time” at 7:00pm. And fortunately for us he loved all the setups we had ready and he stayed with us for a whole hour. Jay-Z is a very nice guy!

Thank god for facebook, otherwise I might not of heard about Dave Markeys movie The “Reinactors”. Even though I’ve only met Dave a few times over the years I feel like we are brothers of the same rock and roll family. He certainly made is “mark” with Teenage Love Dolls and 1991: The Year Punk Broke. On another note, I fortunately had the privilege of getting a sneak peak to many of his amazing early photographs of the LA punk scene for a new book that he is doing with Abrams on Thurston’s Iphone. Congratulations Dave Markey!!

FINALLY! We have lift off. My book is coming out next month and things are starting to roll. I did a couple of interviews for the British mags so keep your eyes peeled for big spreads in MOJO and I-D. (England is so much cooler than the US) Here is the official press release.

 Found this on my old friend Everett True’s Blog – Music that I like and I’ve decided to give up photography, move to the Ukraine and try tp pick up an internship at the first sand animation studio I can find.

I recently watched a biography about Henri Cartier-Bresson that I bought from amazon. It wasn’t very well made and kind of boring but I love his work and it was fun to see his images put into the context of his life. Something about his editing process inspired me to go back and look through some of my old contact sheets just to see what was there. I am fascinated by the notion of how ones perspective changes over time and I was curious if there were any visual storylines that existed within my own work that I had overlooked or never even noticed. Digging through a few boxes I immediately found a thread of distant and lonely images that had been untouched, hidden among other past “favorites”. I wonder if these photographs represent my state of mind more now or then?

We got up early and zipped up to the Met on sunday morning. After dodging the Puerto Rican Day parade we slipped into the museum and made our way up to the second floor where we navigated through the byzantine complexity of galleries until we came upon our goal, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective. And for the next couple of hours we witnessed a powerfully fascinating and disturbing collection of dismembered carcasses, faceless and nightmarish visions of the Pope and abstract renditions of men in underwear. Bacon was initially inspired by a Picasso show he saw in Paris and once described painting as ” a snail leaving a trail of the human presence”. He was a horrible alcoholic and a homosexual that had several tumultuos relashionships, mostly famously with George Dyer, the subject of many of Bacons paintings from the 60′s who overdosed and died the day before Bacon’s retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris opened in 1971.  One of the facts about Bacon that I learned at the show was his inventive use of photography. Bacon never painted from life but instead worked from photographs that he collected over the years. He was heavily influenced by Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential photographs of human and animal movement and based many of his later painting’s on the photographs of his lover John Edwards.

After spending a rip-roaring day photographing the wonderfully charming actor Thomas Haden Church, we quickly hopped in the car and drove up to Aperture to catch the latest attraction. We arrived just in the nick of time to a packed house and the legendary Dan Winters at the podium. Considering that Mr. Winters is hands down the best in the business, I figured it was going to be a quality event, and sure enough, he blew everyone away. His tone was gracious and inviting, his stories were touching and powerful and each image was more beautiful than the next. His fascination with insects and his images of bees were extraordinary. Not to be content with just being a photographer, Mr Winters is also uncanny with a pencil, his precision drawings evoking a classic timeless style, yet so distinctively all his own. But for me the most inspiring images of the night were the B&W Rolliflex “personal work” that he somehow manages to do during his free time. There is something simply magical about what he does with light and composition that is hard to describe. Considering the mess that is going on today with the snapshot esthetic and VICE ruling the roost, its refreshing to know that there still are still thoughtful people like Dan Winters around to keep the tradition of excellence alive.

I know, I know. While your own animal snaps can bring a tear to your eye, everyone else is fake smiling and yawning. But I still cant resist showing off my beautiful boy Sunny and his love for chasing balls and chewing sticks. Very little in this world compares to the loyalty and unconditional love of a mans best friend, and even though Sunny is a bit of a wuss (He’s a lover not a fighter!) I still love him to death. Acting in his first full length music video was a bit confusing at times (he certainly didn’t like running up and down the stairs for multiple takes) but in the end Sunny’s golden mane and stylish moves shine like a ray of light.

With all of the hype surrounding the NYPH09 and the emphasis on contemporary photography I must seem like a real dinosaur. My book of portraits from the 80′s was OLD SCHOOL in the 80′s. Oh well, they say classic never goes out of style. So its May and we are getting down to the wire. Abrams is sending the book to press at the end of this month and every detail is being finalized. A noisy wrenching hiccup burst out last week when I received some proofs that were on an uncoated paper stock and looked worse than my high school newspaper. The package arrived on a friday night and I had a bit of a meltdown over the weekend. We had already choosen a paper stock and even though I knew that it was a mistake, just seeing my photographs like that made me realize how complicated and out of my control the whole process is. Of course, all was resolved after a phone call with Jackie the production head put my fears to rest. I spent a day up at the office looking at paper selections, quadtone choices and tweaking the design with my designer Liam. This book is looking really good!