frank gehry, photographed at his office in july, 2014. this was for an article about gehry being awarded the prince of asturias award in spain, an award that he did not seem very much interested in. he seemed even less interested in being photographed, for that matter. this was brief, and i remember it mostly for being a couple of weeks before my son was born, and my mind was on other things. frank gehry died today at the age of 96.
taking my son, clark, to see a #superman movie in the theater - and especially watching him clap at the end - definitely crosses off a bucket list item. (to be clear, NOT my photo of david corenswet, i’m just happy to be an audience member)
way back in 2003 i was sent to photograph barry hansen, better known as dr. demento. i’m not usually star struck at all, but when you show up at dr. demento’s house and he answers his front door in a top hat and tails, it’s hard not to be. as a geeky kid i would listen to his weekly radio shows religiously. i’d tape them on to cassettes directly from the radio and bring the tapes in to school to listen to with my friends. the first album i ever bought for myself was weird al in 3-D, on vinyl. dr. demento was everything.
this week dr. demento announced that his weekly radio show would air its last episode this fall. truly the end of a (hilarious) era. thanks, doc.
(not my photos, obviously) but in honor of my father’s fifth (?) tony win - this time as a producer for sunset blvd - here is a picture of him with a lion. he’s allergic to cats. @burntumberprod love you, dad.
in the summer of 1995, as an intern for mary ellen mark, i got paid for my first photo. $50, for the interior of a nameless bar in soho (manhattan), for use in a magazine whose name i cannot remember. smaller than a postage stamp. it was a terrible picture, by any measure, but someone asked me to do it, and in the end it must have checked whatever box was needed. the picture ran, and i was paid.
since then, it has been thirty years of taking pictures for a living. on good days, pictures that are meaningful to me, or the subjects, or the clients. on the best days, of which there have been many, the results are things i can be proud of and grateful for.
i have been quiet on instagram for a long while now. for years i used it to do one thing (scroll down and this becomes evident), and really enjoyed it as being that one thing, separate and distinct from any other part of my photography life. it felt valuable because it was not what i was hired to do. it was a way to keep a tally of the people i met, and democratize the bunch. after becoming a father almost 11 years ago i seemed to meet fewer people at a slower rate, middle age and life caught up and this feed naturally slowed down.
i’ve never been comfortable with self-promotion. i tend to recoil from what photographers are “supposed” to do to promote themselves. i’ve done some of it, always with hesitancy, never with much relish. i like meeting people where they are and taking pictures. convincing them to let me do it always feels beside the point.
instagram is full of photographers waving their arms, trying to cut through the noise. keeping this feed separate may have been a defense mechanism. a way of buffering myself from the self-promotion i knew i “should” be doing but never found satisfying.
still. i’m lucky to know a number of exceptionally talented people. one of them ( @axeldupeux ) has been pushing me to post more “real work” here. and — begrudgingly — he might be right. still. this reeks of self-promotion. (Cont'd in captions)
