The Daily Edit – Douglas Marshall: Marshall Gallery

Artist Talk with Krista Svalbonas

Artist Consultation with photographer Michael James Hillman

Founder and Curator: Douglas Marshall
Marshall Gallery
Current Exhibition

Heidi: How long have you been doing portfolio reviews?
Douglas: Well, I’ve been doing reviews overall close to a decade now I guess. I’ve done many of the review festivals around the country as well as looking at countless portfolios in the galleries over the years. But for the last 2 or 3 years I have been doing the private portfolio reviews, meeting with artists one-on-one either online or at my Santa Monica gallery. These started in response to the ubiquity of the standard 20m-minute tabletop review format. Many people on both sides of the table relate to a form of speed dating. I found many artists felt unsatisfied, understandably, never getting to any depth in such a short meeting. So these longer private meetings allow us to go there. And that many artists had nuts and bolts questions about the gallery world which can often be murky and gate kept. Like commission percentages, production costs related to exhibitions, pricing, etc.

What form do you like to review photography work? Formed or unformed – one is open to possibilities, the other you build together as the discussion unfolds.
As far as the state of work we review… The work can be at any stage really, I just put myself in a position to help in whatever way is useful. It can sometimes be like a therapy session haha!  Sometimes the work is raw and unformed and it’s editing people want to go through and general framework development… what’s working, what’s not. Other times they are finished portfolios with which people want to discuss things like pricing, editions, printing, and gallery relationships. The former, for me, is more my background as a once-upon-a-time artist myself and the latter from my 15 years in the gallery field having worked for four galleries before starting my own. But I always try to be honest and direct with the artists. No one just wants a pat on the back, they are there for the fair criticism. There is so much BS in the art world, people appreciate honesty.

I do prefer to look at prints, when possible, but of course virtual meetings open the reviews to many more artists around the world. In person always allows for deeper connections and when artists ask about doing festival reviews, I always encourage to do in-person only. This business is all about relationships, and you can’t accomplish quite the same thing online.

Your gallery has a specific focus, was that in response to seeing beyond the medium – looking towards the hybrid of where photography and art intersect? Reframe photography?
Yes, the gallery focuses primarily on what I often refer to as process-based photography. That is to say, that for me and my curatorial focus the physical or conceptual act of how the photograph is made is of equal weight as what it visually records. So many of the artists whom I present use experimental analog processes, unique printing techniques, mixed media with painting, embroidery, etc.

The focus of which is probably three-fold in origin. My background in school and early in my career was all black and white humanist photography. Street, documentary, etc. But as I got exposed to the wider photo world primarily through visiting international art fairs, I began to see a growing prevalence of these experimental practices from contemporary artists and their origins in art history. I also have a love for the “traditional” fine arts, like painting and sculpture, so it sparked my interest to see the boundaries between them and photography blurred in contemporary work.

Sunburned GSP#1076 (Dietrich River, Arctic Circle, Alaska), 2015. two 12″x 41″ unique gelatin silver paper negatives

For the artists, my thinking is that it’s somewhat of a reaction, conscious or otherwise, to the mass consumption and ubiquity of digital images. Mass even seems an understatement with some billions of images produced daily. To see the work of an artist like say Chris McCaw, our current exhibition, who is creating real objects with his method of photography is so refreshing in a world drowning in pixels. We are just tired of staring at screens and want to get our hands dirty like painters, there is something quintessentially human about working with material while still loving the documentary / story-telling potential of the camera. And then for me, realizing there were few if any galleries focused on this intersection, I decided that my gallery would do so, but it’s always evolving.

We met when your studio was on Abbot Kinney, fast forward to today – what has changed, and how has your gallery evolved beyond showing work?
I’m not sure too much has changed. Even in the 500 sq ft shoebox in Venice where we met I was trying to produce exciting and ambitious shows. Now I just have 3x the space to do so. But certainly, Bergamot Station has a certain legacy of galleries and especially with focus on photography. So being here allowed me more access to collectors, curators and foot traffic by proximity with my gallery neighbors, many of whom I have worked with over the years.

But I am happy to say with certainty the gallery’s capabilities and awareness has grown exponentially since then, having recently exhibited in the most important international photography fairs and making regular acquisitions with major museums, both important signifiers that something we’re doing here is working.

Beyond the exhibitions, we of course host the private consulting appointments as well as quarterly critique nights that we call “Static Fire” where we invite four photo-artists to show work in progress with about two dozen guests and just have a fun night looking at work. We sell tickets for these events to cover costs and afford a small donation to various local art non-profits like Las Fotos Project and Venice Arts, both of whom are doing great work for LA youth. These have been fun and for me less pressure than the requisite salesmanship that is required for the exhibitions.

Robert Adams, House Construction, Colorado. 1975 Vintage silver gelatin print 6 x 7 1/2 in.

Rodrigo Valenzuela, New Land, 2024. Toner ink on canvas with acrylic. 36 x 48 in.

How you are defining the two sets of artists you are showing?
Well, most of my career pre-Marshall Gallery was in showing 19th and 20th Century work which has a strong market and thus many legacy galleries focus there. So, while the main exhibitions at Marshall focus on contemporary work, I really enjoy putting their work in conversation with vintage works which I source from a network of collaborative collectors in LA. For example, a recent show juxtaposed UCLA Photo Professor Rodrigo Valenzuela’s mixed-media works from his “New Land” series with vintage prints from the 1970s New Topographics movement such as Robert Adams and Henry Wessel. Both had conceptual angles of thinking about land use in the American West. It also helps to bridge the gap to contemporary work for collectors who may typically only be interested in vintage works. Many collectors are wary of the edition systems of contemporary photography, so I think it helps when works are one-of-a-kind due to the physical process of the artist.

Ultimately, I love the history of the medium and revere so many of our bygone photo-heroes, so I do love to show them when it makes sense with the contemporary show on view. But certainly, most of my energy goes to the artists working today. I keep close relationships with my artists, it’s like a sort of creative marriage.

The Daily Edit – Marshall McKinney: Garden & Gun


Creative Director: Marshall McKinney

Heidi: In our last interview in 2008 you had just taken the helm at Garden & Gun, a national magazine about a regional lifestyle – fast forward to 2024, tell us about this magnificent, long run as Creative Director.

Marshall: It all began in April of 2008 for me at G&G. What a run. Sixteen years! That’s like ten plus six years. That’s like 5,843.88 days according to Siri. This means I’ve lumbered through 192 weeks of closings (that’s 3.68 years of deadlines for those still doing the math). Can you believe it? Nope, neither can I. So many long days and nights sussing out and sorting through big ideas, prose, pictures and sketches to build a print brand unlike any other. Then, we were a small scrappy crew of misfits. Seriously, like eight of us. Some with no magazine experience at all. Didn’t matter. Within us burned the intangibles: heart, drive, determination, spirit, resourcefulness and f@#ing energy to burn, baby! Today, the foot is still hard on the gas and without a doubt, the brand, driven by the passions and minds of its people, is hurtling headlong into a bold new future. Unfortunately, this is where I get off. August, 2024. Adios.

T’was a thrill ride. In my professional career, I never thought I’d be so blessed as to work with the finest, sharpest minds in all of “Magazine-dom,” both internally and externally. I’ve watched interns come up through the ranks to become some of the best writers, editors, and photo editors in the business. I’ve seen editors and art directors go on to become VPs. Watched publishing prophets hail the coming of the iPad only to see it snuffed out like some ole Camel Light. To be sure, I’ve seen it all. Done it all. Er, won it all, #athankyouverymuchg&g. And, I wouldn’t change or trade a damn thing.

G&G’s success is, and always will be, directly connected to the creativity, fire and gusto that resonates in the youthful souls of the folks who bring it to life. Each person I interacted with there, young or old, was a remarkable teacher and I am grateful for the experiences shared and learned.

So, now that I’m slowly gliding into this next phase of my professional life, and can take a breath, if only for a minute, I have the luxury of hindsight. Thus, I’ve agreed to tackle a few questions from APE. An exit interview if you will. Buckle up. Here goes

What are your three favorite covers and why?
I not picking these covers on technical acumen or whiz-bang execution but rather on the “feels and vibes” and times associated with the experiences shared while nabbing them. I thrive in that space where ideas are manifested and sketched over morning coffee—together—before jumping in the car or on a plane to get them in the can. I adore all my photographers and I’m 100% sure I dig 98% of my covers. There are outliers but like red-headed children we tolerate them all the same—even when they do look a little kooky and act funny.

I only partner up on covers with people I trust.  I know them on a personal level and usually we have a deep rapport. Heck, all my lensmen are brilliant, empathic, whip-smart artists, technicians and masters at their craft. So again, I’m only picking these three covers through gauzy reflection, and like children, I don’t really have a “favorite” or three favs but here goes:

1. Dec 2019 – Jan 2020 Photographed by Gately Ben Williams

Keep it stripped down when you can.
This cover shoot was quite simply a fun trip with one of my best friends, Gately Ben Williams and his new, lovely and talented bride (and one-time co-worker of mine), Hunter. The idea was to take a road trip down to the Santa Fe river in Florida and get something that felt warm for a winter issue.

My mind, where covers are concerned, always leans toward the graphic and composed. If that happens to come off “arty” occasionally, well, so be it. My intention is not to be “arty” which I associate with fey, contrite or, worse yet, cute. Finally, my experience with newsstand covers is simple: don’t fuck around trying to be something you’re not. Be definitive. Be uniquely yourself and true to brand. Always and in all ways.

I want my G&G covers to be two things: direct and filled with as much subtext as possible. Meaning, the image has to hit on the reader’s senses (taste, smell, sound, etc). Get them to feel the coolness of the water for example or stop for a moment to reflect on the sounds they might have heard the last time they went tubing. I want to trigger a memory of, say, spending time with their spouse in their younger years at some watering hole of their own. Maybe it gets them to reflect on their own daughters growing up? The point is, subtext to me is leveraging the power of the form.

We are busy people living busy lives. As a creative director a big part of my job is to choreograph moments that give pause in the service of sparking fantasy or aspirations. So, back to Florida. After a long day of trying a number of ideas, which rendered shots that were great but perhaps too sexy or pinup-ish, at dusk I went back to the original sketch, the first big idea. You don’t ever have the luxury of time on a cover shoot. Making the manufactured feel authentic is an art unto itself. In order to pull that off, I highly recommend sketching out your ideas long beforehand.

On this day there were a bunch of kids in the springs splashing and playing along a dock, not the best situation for what I wanted the image to communicate, solitude and stillness. But, as the day waned, they slowly—mercifully—left the area. That’s when Ben and I were able to move to the end of the dock and shoot down on Hunter.

I love this image for a lot of reasons. One, Ben and Hunter gave me so much of their energy throughout the day. They gave me so many variations that could be used in the interior of the magazine, and that’s something I value. Two, everything we do as creatives, at its best, is a partnership predicated on balance and trust. I trusted Ben to give me a number of stellar solutions and, in turn, he trusted me and gave his all to my sketched idea. Three, the image is graphic. It plays with repetition of form. It’s tranquil and calm which lends to the narrative I wanted to achieve. The water is clear. The image has essence and to my eye it’s a catalyst for subtextual think. That being: I could use some stillness. I could use a vacation in warm waters. I’d love to be somewhere fun with my wife and daughter. Finally, this image reminds me of all the cocktails and conversation that flowed with these two lovebirds after we wrapped the shoot. Truly, it was a wonderful couple days work all around.

I’ve taken on many a cover mission like this with shooters including: Rob (and Lisa) Howard, Michael Turek, Brie Williams, David McClister, Robby Klein and others. All mega talented, affable, easy spirits that are a joy to behold and work alongside especially when it’s a stripped down scenario like this and not some big ass production.

2. Feb/March 2019

Throw the kitchen sink at it whenever you gotta and just build the damn thing.
What you see here is a bar we built in The Voorhes studio by some of the most baller, open, gracious, energetic and creative people in the business. Adam and wife Robin, assisted by the incomparable, Nicki Longoria took a sketch I made and ran with it a hundred times farther than I could have ever hoped. We had a custom neon sign made. We had working beer taps. We had a stuffed squirrel drunk on Miller Lite. This was devised at a time in publishing when covers needed that extra wink in order move the needle on digital newsstands—talking to you Apple. So of course I wanted everything to be analog and made of hand whenever and wherever possible.

Could we have shot this in some cool bar somewhere? Mmmmm, maybe? With that comes a whole host of other problems which I won’t go into now. Trust me, they are many. This to me felt like the only solution and it all started with a sign maker and the energy and can-do spirit Adam and team brought to solving the conundrum.

I’m not sure what’s in the water down there in Texas but if you head that way knock on The Voorhees or Darren Braun or Fredrick Broden’s door. No telling what you might find going on behind it.


3. Dec 2008 / Jan 2009.

This cover by Andy Anderson was a revelatory moment for me. Affably nicknamed, “Turtle Junk,” after the New York Times wrote a review—a positive one!—of our brand, it was the impetus that got my head screwed on tight as to how best to feature and approach subjects on G&G’s coves. It’s so singular and unique. It’s composed. It’s direct. It’s awash in story, cultural richness and wonder. It’s simple and in that way it’s elegant and timeless. Mostly though, it wasn’t until I put eyes on the image that I knew how we were going to visually stand apart.

Up until that moment G&G was kind of wobbly, like a newborn giraffe, the way a lot of new launches are in the beginning. It took seeing that image for me to begin to understand what the brand was telling me it wanted to be. For better or worse I’m not one to immediately suggest what I think any brand should be. I have instincts but I ain’t no Mussolini. I like to listen to the market and the material, then I like to react to what I think they’re suggesting to me. I can’t stand it when people march in on their high-horse talking so much shit about what they think this or that is. I’d rather saunter in on a turtle’s back—that way they never see you coming—and build something beautiful and solidly stable, together.

Further, where covers are concerned, were it not for the talents and eye of photographers Peter Frank Edwards, Squire Fox, David McClister, Andrew Kornylack, Johnny Autry, Brie Williams, Brent Humphreys, Amy Dickerson, Jim Herrington and Dan Winters G&G wouldn’t be here today. Truly, it’s all about the company you keep and they are the finest.


Do you have a favorite spread?
That’s impossible for me to answer. Not because I like so many but rather I have so few. Still, I’ll give you one I like a lot. It’s pretty simple but I just dig it.

Here’s the backstory: We asked Dan Winters to shoot musician, James McMurtry for us down in Texas. I spoke with Dan on the phone about how much I liked James’ music and about what he meant to me as a blue-collar genre-bender out there pounding stages night after night after night. I told him I felt a kinship with him. Perhaps Dan felt the same way because almost an hour had passed and we still hadn’t spoken about the shoot. Of course that didn’t matter to me because, well, Dan’s the man as they say. And I tend to agree.

Couple weeks later the images arrive in classic Winter’s style. Stoic. Iconic. Proud. Singular. Then, it occurred to me, oh shit, I gotta figure out what the fuck to do for the design. It was late in the cycle. I needed to turn this one around fast. Yet, I couldn’t. I felt helpless. I just wasn’t locking in on something worthy or original. It was torture.

I’m thinking to myself, this guy Winters is best buddies with all the great art directors and editors across the land. What the hell can I do that he’s never seen before? Am I even capable of hitting a high-taste level that honors a hardworking man like, James McMurtry? Oh, shit.

After an excruciating battle with self-doubt and worry, while sipping a couple of bourbons, it’s 1 a.m. and I’m still sitting at my desk in the office twiddling my thumbs. Part of the problem might have rested with the edit team. Maybe they were feeling the same way about the headline as I did about the design? They didn’t seem to have much cooking yet or, maybe they did and it just felt flat? Dunno, can’t remember. The one recollection I do have was that I put on McMurtry’s version of a tune called, Choctaw Bingo. I cranked that motherfucker up as loud as my i-mac would go and I stood up and danced. Right there in the middle of my office, which I shared with Maggie Kennedy, my photo editor, I shook my ass. Then, thoroughly awash in spirit, I cranked out a giant “J” with a guitar’s sound hole in the middle along with some filigree that felt a bit like McMurtry’s hair blowing in the breeze. With that I yee-hawed and went home to bed.

The next day I showed it to Sid Evans, my editor at the time, thinking he’d blow it apart because there was no definitive headline. Instead, he looked at it and nodded. Print it. We did. Not that we had a lot of other options because we were out of time and my hangover was setting in pretty good.

What would you tell anyone getting into the magazine business today?
To would be publishers:The sweet spot is somewhere between a mass newsstand magazine and a coffee table book. Do something deliberate and focused and beautiful. Do it on the best stock you can afford, no more than four times a year. Believe in your dream. Never give up. Don’t let obstacles stop you. Then, I’d advise them to buy a lottery ticket every couple weeks.

To journalists and editors: Tell the truth. Your currency and value is in your candor. Be your authentic self and find your own voice. Also, learn to think like an art director.

To photographers whom I fucking adore!: My best advice is to study a few masters, really lock in on them. Learn how to compose images that are graphic and expressive. Play. Write. Sketch. Work to become a natural born salesman, philosopher, psychologist and light-hound. Become proficient in the language of the trade. And, when you sense a trust building with an art director or fellow creative lean in and partner up. It’s amazing how far you can go, together. Lastly, pay close attention to all the others on the periphery of your craft. Explore the subtleties of make-up, watch what the stylists are doing and why, educate yourself on food propping and styling and acquire skill in interiors, exteriors, portraiture, reportage and more. Give yourself a wide base of knowledge then slowly tighten the focus on what you find the most interesting. NEVER STOP. NEVER GIVE UP.

What would you tell your younger self?
To my younger self I’d just say this: Stay resilient, hombre. Trust the process. Stay true to yourself and to those who are offering you their hard-earned knowledge. Make those folks an ally. While acumen can get you to the doorstep it’s experienceresolve and connection that’s going to define you and carry you across the threshold. Hold on tight Bubba! It’s gonna be a weird and bumpy ride.

The Daily Edit – Roe v Wade: Kate Fanning


Roe v Wade: Denver Protest: Patagonia

Photographer: Kate Fanning

Heidi: How would you define your photography style?
Kate: I would describe my style as honest. I’m not interested in perfect or highly manipulated images. There’s no grit there, no story. I want my work to represent and feel like the moment I was in. While I want viewers to see the way I see things, more importantly, I want them to decide how my images make them think or feel.

What moments appealed to your eye?
Opposites. Moments of juxtaposition. Messages written on the backs of signs, while the sign-holders moved forward. Fluorescent flashes of cardboard against heavy, black clouds. Mighty impactful phrases with so few words. A bright, rainbow pride flag, draped across the gloomy, gray facade of our Capitol building – a beacon of hope for equality, while standing in the trenches of inequality.

What moved you the most about this story? 
The American flag flying upside down. It was a gut-punch that I wasn’t expecting. I’m a Daughter of the American Revolution, and I come from a long line of veterans. Respect for our flag and country was instilled in me from a young age. When I wanted to buy Chuck Taylors in the eighth grade with an American flag print, my Mom said, “I won’t let you wear something on your feet that we fought so hard to defend.” I stood at my Father’s and Grandfather’s gravesites, listened 21-gun salutes that dropped me to my knees, and watched as their flags were lifted off their coffins, folded with such meticulous care and finally, handed over. My siblings and I grew up as flag code defenders, and I know what it means to fly it upside down. When I saw those stars waving in the wrong spot, I felt it – we’re in trouble.

What surprised you the most about this project?
Most surprisingly, were the intimate details that women so courageously shared. Stories of their lives scribbled with Sharpies on posters that lined a stormy sky. Skystories, I thought. Stories of loss, stories of rape, stories of religion, politics, grief, and anger. Stories that had nowhere else to go, except for up. I found myself wanting to tell everyone ‘thank you’. Thank you for sharing your trauma, thank you for showing up, thank you for fighting for the least of us, thank you for not quitting…please…don’t quit.

What do you hope for, for those who can become pregnant?
I hope it’s their choice. I hope their family is supported. I hope they get to raise children in a country that values babies AND parents. I hope their kids don’t grow up to fight this same damn fight.

The Daily Edit – Cliford Mervil: Outside Magazine


Outside Magazine

 

Design & Photography Director: Hannah McCaughey
Photo Editor: Kyra Kennedy
Photographer: Cliford Mervil

 

Heidi: How did this cover idea come about? 
Kyra: When we got the list of places for our travel section I was excited to see North Carolina on the list. I had worked with Clif last summer on a project based in NC, and had really wanted to find another to work with him on. The entire cover idea mostly came from working with Clif and getting to priorize a part of the country we dont often cover. We end up doing a lot of shoots in CA because the weather is so consistent, but I really like when we are able to highlight other parts of the country that have fantastic adventure opportunities!

Was this cover image a first for Outside magazine? 
Clif had sent us a list of local models that he had worked with before, and we instantly gravitated towards Ron Griswell’s amazing energy and smile! We thought it would be great to have two people on the cover and when Ron suggested his wife Linea we thought it would be so much more natural to have them pose together instead of putting Ron with another model. It was Outside’s first cover with a Black couple, and I’m really happy that we were able to have Ron and Linea because their relationship is truly something for all of us to aspire to. They have such an intuitive relationship and such strong love for each other which really comes across in Clif’s images. Since the three of them are friends in real life, we ended up with such authentic and fun images.

Outside Magazine, in my opinion, has not always been the most inclusive space, and I wish a cover like this one had been a first a long time ago. We’ve made good strides in the past few years, and I am working towards making covers (and interior content) like this one a constant. Everyone should feel represented, because everyone should be able to feel safe and comfortable in the outdoors. I hope that by having more covers like this one, we can help chip away at the idea that BIPOC people aren’t active in the outdoors. They are, they just haven’t been represented in the outdoor media and I want to help change that mentality as much as I can.

What type of direction did you give Clif? 
Clif is a dream to work with because there isnt too much direction needed! I tend to hire photographers who have a strong voice already present in their images, but it’s also great to be able to collaborate! I had a few ideas coming in, which Clif and I discussed before set up, and then he would just roll with it. Over direction can sometimes stop a spontaneous and perfect moment and I never want to get in the way of that! It’s a balance, but working with someone like Clif helps because the energy he is bringing to the images is always undeniable!
What agency did you use to cast the models and what were you looking for? We were pretty grassroots for this one! Clif sent us a list of models he has worked with since we wanted the images to feel natural. We dont usually work with agencies mostly because we want the models we work with to be people who love being outside and feel comfortable with outdoor activities. It’s nice to work with models who havent done a lot of traditional modeling as well, sometimes with agency models they know their angles so well the images lose a bit of unplanned magic.

When you are hiring BIPOC photographers, what are your resources?
I use the Diversify Photo database pretty often, as well as the databases for Indigenous Photo and Women Photograph. Ive also fully embraced that being a photo editor is a lot of detective work, so I’m constantly trying to see who other magazines/newspapers are working with, and finding new people on instagram. (Is this what you mean or do you mean resources in another way?)

The first photo I saw of Clif’s was of a model boarding down a dune at Great Sand Dunes, and it just made me smile, the whole image had so much fun energy. I had just started at Outside, and was trying to build up a roster of photographers that I thought fit the brand well and that I wanted to work with eventually. It took me a while to get on my feet at Outside, especially since a lot of stories had already been assigned when I started, but Clif has been a photographer I had wanted to work with from the beginning!

The Daily Edit – Hans Johnson

Photographer: Hans Johnson

Heidi: How did this project align with your personal objectives as a photographer?
Hans: I have been shooting as an action/adventure photographer for a long time.  For the most part my work has been pretty much the same as a lot of photographers in that world (only from a Midwest perspective).  Action adventure, generally backcountry based, generally young white males etc.

14 years ago, my wife and I became parents of Tae, a Korean adoptee.  Being a part of an inter-racial family just blew apart all that I knew in my world.  I have literally been a part of or working in the Outdoor Industry since I was 12.  Yet, the idea that the industry was literally doing nothing to portray people of color in any way shape or form became starkly evident to me as I was trying to inspire my own kid to love being outside like my wife and I do.  Where his role models? I wrote about this in this piece for The Adventure Journal.  Yet as a White Male I felt my voice was irrelevant, mainly because I was the very image of the problem people of color were dealing with in the industry, I didn’t know how to be an ally. Then I realized as a photographer I could use the space I was being given to make change by taking images of BIPOC folks who were out getting after it.  I had a choice on where I focused my lens, and I had the contacts within the industry to make those images public.  Mind you this was all well before the murder of George Floyd which has since spurred more change and more energy in this realm.

 

The Outdoor Industry and the cycling industry at the time kept saying (and still is saying) why are there not more BIPOC folks in Outdoor Recreation. The fact is that they are out there in force and always have been, the industry just wasn’t committing to telling the real narrative. Again, as a straight White Male I also realized I was what BIPOC and LGBTQ folks feared and that I must build long term, trusting and lasting relationships with my subjects long before I even got to the idea of creating images of them in their play spaces outdoors.

So, I did and am doing, just that, and I have made it a point to get out of my own insular space in white society and started reaching out to folks and building relationships and building friends with people who I now consider to be family, both to me and to my son. I am extremely thankful to my friends who took the time and energy to work with me and educate me and to just be my friends.That’s a long answer to a short question, but when I was asked to take Alexandera’s portrait, I was honored, I was humbled, and I was also nervous because it’s a lot of responsibility to help tell a story as important as hers is and I also knew the length I had traveled to try and do this work in way that honored her.

Tell us about this portrait.
I had exactly an hour or so to take Alexandera’s portrait.  Originally, we had more time to do it, but weather kept shutting us down.  Finally, we had a day with decent light, and we went for it.  The only issue was that it was also the first day of the Wild Rice Season and Alexandera had to be ricing later that morning.  Wild Rice is the foundation of the Anishinaabe world view, its importance to their culture can’t be overstated. So, I was under pressure to find some locations and fast.

We were talking a lot about Wild Rice and its importance to her and to her tribe. We were also talking a lot about her challenges with making a living at cycling and her need to find brands that supported her but that also met her need to be true to her identity and her values as a Native person.  

How much time did you ride with Alexandera before you pulled out the camera?
We rode up a pretty good climb, maybe the biggest climb in Duluth, which may sound funny to say, but we have some decent vertical here due to Lake Superior.  Alexandera rides a singlespeed, and her main bike was down for repairs and the bike she rode had a pretty big gear, but she hammered it all the same!  We were warmed up ha! Her with her big gear and me with my big camera pack!

Did you scout the location prior to the shoot?
I did scout the location before we shot it.   I am lucky in the fact that the trail system we shot on was my own personal baby as trails advocate in town.  One of the trails is even named after me. I was intimate with the setting.  That said, I did go in the week before to look at my locations, sun angles and foliage to make sure I could get a decent set of frames when we met.  Shooting in deep canopy is an issue photographers must grapple with here in the Midwest and over time I have come to grips with how to use it in my favor and being intentional is rule number one.

What do you hope your photography does to remind folks that this area as an outdoor mecca and not a flyover country and flat as a board?
This is essentially my main goal as a photographer.  I have lived all over the world.  Europe, Rocky Mountains, East coast.  Yet I have always come home to where I am from. That’s because my extended family is here, its because I love Midwesterners and Minnesotans in general because of their soft-spoken attitudes and because I find it visually to be a really amazing place.  I always say that there is discrimination and stereotyping of people, but there is also discrimination and stereotyping of place.

The Midwest has been beaten down and ignored forever and especially when it comes to adventure sport.  My goal is to dispel that and to engage my viewer to the point where they can’t ignore the visual fascination they have with an image I have produced.  That’s not easy to do.  As all photographers know, your eye sees one thing and the lens another and sometimes even the most insanely cool spot comes out boring as hell in an image.

I must work doubly hard to collect images that can play on a national stage. The reality is that there are some amazing zones here, many that are threatened by development, mining and all the other outside forces that could destroy these places and experiences forever.  They need to be highlighted.  Both to build a national constituency, but also amazingly to prove to local Midwesterners that they live somewhere special, and they need to protect it.  Sounds crazy right?  But again, the marketing out there has so built this idea that to be adventurous you need to be in the mountains, right? Nope.


What are you up to these days?
Surviving ha!  While I would love to say that photography is my one gig, that is not true.  I work a full-time job as the Engagement Director for The Minnesota Land Trust (which involves a lot of photography!) plus being a husband and the dad of a 14-year-old kid during a pandemic and during one of the most politically divisive eras of our country.  Plus trying to shoot at a level that keeps my skills honed and my name in the photo game. This summer my focus is on shooting in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.  I am on the board of a nonprofit that is fighting the proposed mine near the Wilderness, and I am collecting as much content as I can for them to utilize it for social media and other campaigns.  I leave next week on a 7-day solo canoe trip into the wilderness.  Its super minimalist which is a great challenge.  I am going to try and shoot the whole thing with a Canon G5X MKII point and shoot to save weight.  It’s not the camera but the person who aims it right??  Right??  This is a continuation of some work I did with the brand Hyperlite and the Provo Brothers (Ian and Neil) last summer.
I also just finished with a week of shooting with poet/writer Riverhorse Nakadate, a Patagonia Ambassador for Flyfishing, the gig was for the Flyfish Journal.  We had a gas and quite an adventure which included bikes, rafts (swimming -unintentionally) and flyfishing in SE Minnesota’s driftless area.  While MTB and cycling have been my jam for decades, flyfishing has taken on a big focus in my work as it’s something I feel is supremely underrepresented in Minnesota and yet is unique and world class.  I have been grinding away at this work for such a long time and achieving my goals slowly but surely.  The success has been glacial but to date I have been in most of the big outdoor publications and building a solid brand, but to me the biggest success is that noted outdoor personalities like the Provo Brothers or Riverhorse are starting to come to Minnesota to work with me and that is the biggest indicator or success that I can imagine and the one I am most proud of.

The Daily Edit – Riteshuttam Uttamchandani: A Lease on Life

 

A Lease on Life

Photographer: Riteshuttam Chandani

Heidi: What inspired this series of images?
Riteshuttam: The inspiration from this series came from a certain sense of visual fatigue. We often engage with politicians pre elections, tag along and make kiss kiss handshake photos that function as extended PR and very rarey as critique. There is a very performative element to it all. So I looked around for something that would bring the politician to a neutral ground that is beyond his or her control and orchestrations. Although the posters are made for them but their final destiny is what really brought out the above.

Did your early career in newspapers influence this body of work?
Absolutely. In fact one particular evening in 2004, I was walking to work and I noticed this under construction idol that was left to dry wrapped in a poster. She looked like an actress that has stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around. I took one, just one quick foto as I had to rush to office dump my card and run to another gig. Also, I was always rushing and add to that, dumb and naive to realize the full scope of such a sight and it didnt register that I could build this as a body of work. It is only when I was looking at my archive in 2009, searching for some photos that I stumbled on the photo again and I was like  whoa, I had a great idea staring right at me all these years!

Has this always been an ongoing body of work?
es, and since it is not really tied to elections I can start and stop as and when I want. Its been on since 2009, lets see where it goes.

Which image was the genesis of this body of work?
The durga idol, which some guy came to my show and insisted was Lakshmi. It only proved how little he knew about it.

Will you continue to take images for this series?
Yes I will, I hope to make it into a book or a zine or give it some physical shape. Am yet to figure all that out. A lot of the visual work about politics in India revolves around personas. This one clearly doesn’t and in fact it looks at the afterlife of it, if any.

The Daily Edit – Pit Magazine: Holly Cratford


Pit Magazine

Founder and Art Director: Holly Catford
Founder: Helen Graves
Founder Rob Billington

Heidi: How did Pit and Cheese magazine come about?
Holly: I started Pit with Helen Graves and Robert Billington in 2017, it was an idea I’d been thinking about for a long time and was a huge fan of Helen’s blog (foodstories) and so emailed her to go for a beer and basically we just never stopped drinking beers and having a lovely time together! Rob I’d met commissioning him for a story in Noble Rot (that I art directed with Jeremy Leslie from Magculture a million years ago) and we got on like a house on fire too so he seemed like a perfect third partner. Five years later we’re on our 12th issue and attempting to work out how we can get our little side project to start paying us. As a team we worked on Helen’s first book, Live Fire.

Cheese was started in lockdown, I’d worked with Anna Sulan Masing on another little digital magazine/event. She tweeted late one night (not sure if there was any wine involved) about wanting a cheese magazine, so I replied saying we should do it. It turns out Apoorva Siripathi had done the same thing, so we just thought we should give it a shot. We’re working on the third issue now.

How did you get your start in magazines?
When I graduated in 2012 I got a weeks work experience at Esterson Associates with Simon Esterson. I just never left. As a studio we specialise in editorial design, Simon’s been running the studio for several years. I’m very, very lucky to have been able to come along and work on such amazing projects together, I’ve learn everything I know from him. He also owns and runs Eye magazine with John L. Walters, so I also get to work on that which is every graphic designers dream. Looking back on my student work, I can see my love for editorial in everything I do. I was constantly putting together books and publications asking friends to do illustrations and take photographs, interviewing people, while everyone else did posters and logos.

You work on a variety of other titles, are you art directing and designing them all?
I’m the art director of History Today, Pit and Cheese. The art editor of Eye, Pulp and Museums Journal.

What kind of circulation do you have for cheese and Pit?
Both are 2000 copies.

How did this potato cover idea unfold?
We wanted to put the British classic the potato smiley on the cover, and then me and Rob started talking about ‘iconic potatos’ and thought of Mr Potato Head. The idea sort of spiraled from there, I bought a few potato head sets from ebay and then tried to find potatoes which would look like ourselves. Each one is a member of the team Polly (Holly), Bob (Rob) and Melon (Helen).

Do you have a regular stable of photographers you work with?
Yes and no. I have a few people I work with really closely (Rob and Caitlin Isola) on Pit. But we work with loads of people on wider projects. Philip Sayer, David Levene, Francesco Brembati, Julian Anderson, Orlando Gili,
Suki Dhanda, Ed Park, Maria Spann… the list goes on and on. I also work really closely with Millie Simpson on History Today who is an amazing picture editor. I’m very very lucky to work with all of them.

 

The Daily Edit – Andrew Hetherington: Wired Magazine


Wired Magazine

Photo Director: Anna Goldwater Alexander
Photo Editor: Samantha Cooper and Beth Holzer

Photographer: Andrew Hetherington

Heidi: Tell us how this assignment hit home for you.
Andrew: Who would have thought as a teenager in Dublin watching the telly and seeing cyclist Greg LeMond win his first World Road Race Championship back in 1983 or his first Tour De France victory in 1986 that I would one day meet the legend, let alone take his photograph and do so in Knoxville, Tennessee of all places. Well, that 13 year old had no idea where Knoxville was and could never have dreamed any of that could or would happen.

Were you always interested and following in cycling?
Yes, I have always been a keen cyclist so in November 2020 I was super excited to see the @lemondbicycles announce on IG the release of two carbon commuter E-Bikes, the Prolog and the Dutch, to be followed in 2022 with road and gravel versions.
Greg has always been a pioneer in cycling technology and design especially when it came to the use and development of carbon fiber. Even in his racing days he was at the front of the peloton when it came to innovation, aero dynamics and geometry and launched his own manufacturing company LeMond Bicycles.Long story short and after a licensing deal with Trek, that created what would become one of the nation’s top road brands, went bad, ended up in lawsuits and was eventually settled in 2010. Greg has since pivoted to the research and development of disruptive carbon fiber technology leading to the creation of his company – LeMond Carbon

Was this assignment was a perfect mix of work and play?
So when I got an email from Beth @wired wondering if I would be up for photographing the new bikes and Greg himself for an upcoming feature in the magazine it was a no brainer yes.

How long have you been in Atlanta?
I have been based in Atlanta the last couple of years and have been road tripping to assignments throughout the south. FL, AL, LA, SC, NC, AR and TN are all well within driving distance so was an easy-ish commute to and from the location in Knoxville.

Did you get a ride in?
The weather was pretty wet that day so that limited the shoot to inside the facility and office space. Although I did get to test ride a Prolog around the assembly floor have to say it’s a winning ride as well as being an absolute looker!!!

Was was the direction from the magazine?
The creative was to shoot as much of the building and assembly process as was allowed and wasn’t top secret. Samantha Cooper who had taken over as the photo editor on the shoot from Beth by the time it became  reality put together a shot list and an image pull from my site for creative. The one must get was a shot of a bike itself dismantled with all its parts showing. This was pre-approved by LeMond and we had help piece it all together from their Creative Director on set which was a huge help. I also got an edit of the story in advance (which is not always the case) and that’s was super helpful to help wrap ones mind around creative and indeed logistics.

Were you star struck?
I heard Greg’s voice down the hall before I met him and have to say I was a little nervous. He is a legend after all. Happy to report he is an absolute class act, a true champ, one of the most engaging, animated, passionate, honest, open and panache filled folk I have ever had the pleasure of photographing. He wanted us to shoot everything, even the secret stuff and had to be reined in a couple time there. Obvs, I was totally star struck fan boy but dug deep and managed to hold it together (I think) like a pro for the shoot.

We shot with Greg first and then wrapped the shoot with the bike parts as that took a little time and finessing…

The Daily Edit – Gdje Su Svi Dobrodošli (Where Everyone Is Welcome) : Andrew Burton


Patagonia Cleanest Line

Photographer: Andrew Burton
Activist: Denis Tuzinovic

Heidi: How much time did you spend with Denis before taking out the camera for this portrait?
Andrew: Denis was very generous with his time with me, for which I am forever grateful. Broadly speaking our time together was split into two portions – the first portion was a traditional reportage / documentary photo shoot while Denis volunteered at SR3 (a marine wildlife response, rehabilitation, and research nonprofit vet clinic just outside Seattle). The second portion was the portrait session at a variety of locations. The first portion, at SR3, was relatively quick and immediate, I probably spent about 15 minutes photographing while he fed a few different groups of seals. We probably had 5-10 minutes to “get to know each other” and build a rapport before he started the volunteer work. The second portion – the portrait shoot – was rather long and organic, lasting a few hours at 5-6 different locations. The vision I had been given by the photo director was to use natural light in a variety of locations around Seattle to show Denis, and specifically a jacket he frequently wears, to show him proud and empowered in an urban environment. During the portrait portion of the shoot we had a lot of down time without cameras, driving between locations and walking the streets of Seattle, getting to know each other and learning more about each other. Even when I was making portraits of him, Denis’ story is so powerful and compelling that I found myself setting down my cameras to talk more and continue the conversation throughout the portrait session.


Do you have any type of process for your portrait work before meeting subjects?

I come from a strict photojournalism and documentary background, which is to say that when I make portraits I usually approach the assignment from a reportage lineage – environmental portraiture using a majority natural light – occasionally one strobe or a reflector to help a bit . Before the assignment I research the subject  as thoroughly as possible so that I know as much about the person as possible and I use online tools (google street view, etc) to research the location as much as possible so as not to be surprised by what the location is offering. Once on the scene I try to let things unfold organically, relying on conversation and collaboration with the subject to achieve a finished photo. This process can be trickier with subjects who don’t have much time to give or aren’t interested in collaboration, but in this specific case, with Denis, the system worked quite well.

Avedon famously said in his book The American West “A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” At Patagonia, we look for, “an honest shot, real people doing real things.”  How are you creating an environment for this moment or emotion to unfold?
I’ve worked as a professional photojournalist and documentary filmmaker for the past 14 years and the deeper I get into my career, the more I think about this line of thought – is the photo or film I create “honest and accurate?” How do you define truth, objectivity, accuracy? Is the photo both factually and emotionally accurate?  Am I manipulating the scene to achieve my own vision but at the cost of what the feeling on the scene really was? Coming from a journalism and documentary background, where “truth” (whatever that is) is paramount, I’m frequently hesitant to use my camera to manipulate a scene or subject to achieve my own goals or vision (whatever they maybe). That said, I’m of the opinion that the deeper into the rabbit hole you go in a search for capital-T “Truth,” the more you realize it’s impossible to achieve and a bit of a fool’s errand- the very nature of a camera being in a room – another person observing something – undeniably shapes and shifts the scene. And yet. I believe intention matters, that as a journalist and photographer you can aim be as unobtrusive as possible and visualize a scene relatively undisturbed – or in the case of a portrait – that you can attempt to document the essence of a person in an honest manner that doesn’t manipulate them or visualize them as something they aren’t. To that end, that’s why I try to be as collaborative, open and communicative with a portrait subject – so that I can get to know them as much as possible in the time given and try to make a portrait that feels relatively “accurate.”

I see an honest, brave moment of self reflection and courage, what do you hope to capture in this portrait?
More than anything I hope the portrait accurately reflects who Denis is and compels the audience to read Denis’ story and get to know more about him – he’s an amazing man who lives by his values, is actionable about his convictions and who has been shaped by harrowing backstory. I won’t attempt to summarize Denis’ story for him but suffice to say I was deeply moved by the time I was able to spend with him and hope readers are moved by his story, as well.

What can you share about working with film and digital for our assignment?
I would simply say, it was a joy mixing the mediums of reportage and environmental portraiture. Denis and I had the opportunity to walk the streets of Seattle for an hour or two, chasing the light and location, chatting and finding unexpected scenes and environments. Ultimately the final photo is a clean, powerful portrait of Denis but there were dozens of other options that leaned into the visuals of Seattle and the mix of urban landscape amidst the beautiful Pacific Northwest. It felt like a rare and special assignment – most portraits don’t have that sort of latitude and flexibility. I”m very grateful to both the photo director and to Denis for the opportunity.

Film is often more intentional, anything that is analog slows us down, tell us about shooting both mediums.
Yes, I shot both digital and film on this assignment. I’ve been working more in film photography for the past few years which has been a total joy. I spent the first eight years of my career in the daily news and wire photography business – on the best days I was on the front lines of history documenting the most incredible moments of the human experience. But the turnover of work is incredibly quick – deadline is always 5 minutes ago and there’s always another assignment. Some days I might have four assignments. Modern digital cameras are made for this work – a photographer can make thousands of photographs with little effort. But the overall effect of that lifestyle, at least on me, was to water down the value of the photos I was making – it increasingly felt like “quantity over quality.” This may be trite and obvious, but working with film cameras slows a photographer down. It makes a photographer more intentional. It demands a photographer to ask themself what they’re trying to say by releasing the shutter. It has made me fall in love with the medium of photography again – the physicality of slower cameras, the limited number of frames – it makes me appreciate the medium. I would say it’s akin to digital music (Spotify etc) versus listening to a record. It forces you to be more present minded and appreciate scarcity.  All that said: I worked in both mediums for this assignment a bit out of fear – I wanted the digital cameras on the scene as a safety net in case anything went wrong with the film cameras. Ultimately it was an unfounded fear and the film photos were the ones I was most proud of.

Thank you to both you and Denis for working with us, I’m so grateful to have crossed paths on this special assignment. Read the full story here.

The Daily Edit – Gathering Growth: Brian Kelly


Lock 26 Maple

Three Sisters Swamp
Ransom Sycamore audio included
Grandma Tree
Millersville Bur Oak
The Big Poplar Tuliptree

Pacific Ponderosa Pine

Gathering Growth
Photographer: Brian Kelly 

Heidi: Why is this project important to you and what got you started?
Brian: After seeing old growth/big trees in the PNW of the US and Vancouver Island I couldn’t stop doing research into why the forests of the east coast US were nothing like the west.  Why weren’t there big trees here in the East? Come to find out, the East coast US has been logged over several times and multiple species that fell to disease and insects. All of this was an initial motivation to document what was left. We lack proper documentation of what the forests and trees once looked like. For me, this is what drives me to dedicate my life to document what is still standing; it’s a reminder for future generations of what it all once was at a specific moment in time.

In a data and asset rich world, this is one of the more refreshing practices of archiving. What assets are you collecting?
Over the last four to five years of documenting these trees and forests I’ve been creating large format images, soundscape recordings, leaf and seed documentation, and the occasional video recording.  Not every tree gets the full suite, but I try to.

What format are you shooting, can you share your process?  How long is each tree session and what are you trying to capture?
When shooting the trees and forests for the archive I use Kodak Portra 160 sheet film with a Toyo Field Camera. I’m a big believer in not only the quality of film but also the physical aspect of the negative for the archive.  Of course I’m also shooting digital because mistakes do happen when shooting film. I’m shooting on a Fuji GFX 100 at the moment, but the digital format has already changed once since I started this archive, so I’m looking to the film to be the constant. The amount of time I spend at a tree can vary.  I’ve had roadside finds that I’ve documented in 45 min and been on my way, then I’ve had other trees where I’ve spent two days knowing the light could be better.  It’s all different, but I like to imagine that when I put in time with a tree I’m paying it respect. That this organism has been living and growing for 800 years in order for it to be something special and recognized by humans. You have to show love and respect when you start thinking like that.

What is the taxonomy of your archive?  
The archive is organized by the year, and then going into either Tree of Significance, Forests, or Champion Tree,  then it gets broken into state, followed by species.

Are you planning on another book similar to Parks?
I would love to do a tree book someday.  I’ve been wanting to do a series that would be broken into the major regions of the U.S.  Highlighting the largest/old trees and old growth or unique forests.  This would be my life work I think….


How many have you photographed thus far? What are your discovery and tracking tools?  

So far the archive has roughly 300 trees and forests documented.  I’m able to find a lot of the trees just through googling key words, and being specific in a state or town. For example: “Big – Tree – New – York”  I’ve also found a lot through Real estate Apps like Zillow.  Finding a big tree in a photo and then looking on google maps street view.  I get the occasional submission from someone too. We have a tree/forest submission page on our website.   At the moment I have roughly 1,300 trees and forests marked on google earth.  A lot of work ahead of me still!

How can folks support you or get involved?  
There are many ways that people can support Gathering Growth. You can check the website www.gathergrowth.org to learn more about what we’re doing, how to get involved and make a donation. We have a bi weekly newsletter you can sign up for and follow us on social media for new trees and forests that were documenting. @gatheringgrowth. Were also always looking for brands that align with our ethos and want to help amplify our voice and mission.


Do you have a favorite tree or any favorite moment you’d like to share. Trees are also called knowledge keepers, what have you learned so far?

I’m not sure I have a favorite tree, but I have a favorite memory while shooting a tree. While photographing a tree in the Lost Forest Research Area in southeastern Oregon I experienced silence like never before.  The drive into the Lost Forest is an experience in its own.  Bumpy roads and potholes on unmaintained BLM roads nearly destroyed my van.  Getting into the forest around sunset I parked the car, turned it off and the instant I opened my door it felt like a vacuum had just sucked all the sound out.  I felt unsure, like I wasn’t supposed to be there, or something was watching me.  I wasn’t used to silence like that, so much so that the only sound I heard was the blood rushing through my ears. That level of silence was so foreign.  I wasn’t able to find the tree that night and had to wait till morning.  Eventually finding the tree in the morning I was finally able to start to acclimate to the silence.  I’ve never been anywhere else and felt that way.  I don’t think most people have or ever will know that type of natural silence.

The Daily Edit – Newtok: Patagonia Journal and Film: Andrew Burton and MIchael Kirby Smith

 

Newtok: Patagonia Journal and film

Photographers: Andrew Burton and Michael Kirby Smith

Heidi: Why was it important to you both to make this film?
Andrew and MIchael: We set out to tell the story of Newtok, AK, in 2013 because we were tired of the overly simplistic media narrative that climate change was something happening in the future, predictive in nature, affecting generations down the road. We felt the story was happening now across the globe and in the United States. It was important to us that we found a story in our country after reporting abroad. When you start to look at stories in America impacting citizens here you quickly find Newtok.  In news, the media often distills stories into simple digestible narratives and the more we learned about Newtok, especially after our first reporting trip, we quickly learned that the story is very complex, nuanced, with a beginning that dates back further than we could have imagined. We didn’t want this crisis to be portrayed through cliched and stereotyped imagery, such as a sad polar bear or melting glacier, knowing that this is not where we’re at with the climate narrative. Newtok’s story is complex, which in a way is representative of the larger complex issues when discussing the climate crisis in the sense that the narrative, and possible solutions do not have easy answers. The crisis is here in the U.S. happening today, to our fellow citizens, and our goal was to tell a story that immerses the viewer in the emotionality of this unfolding catastrophe.

This project was seven years in the making, how much photography and motion did you collect and what are your hopes for it beyond this feature film?
The project has grown into a much larger body of work. In a lot of ways the project’s growth was very natural in the sense that when we first started we were really reporting by taking pictures, writing, and documenting anything we felt was relevant to better understanding the story’s complexities. It’s now turned into a behemoth body of work that has been overwhelming at times. We filmed 130 terabytes of footage from 2015 – 2020, including hundreds of rolls of film and 20,000+ digital photos. In collaboration with the village and with their expressed permission we’ve collected old family photos, home videos, archival documents, maps, etc. We’ve handed out 70+ disposable cameras to the community for them to document their relocation and had kids fill out surveys about what they think of the relocation. Newtok began in 1949, under forced federal mandate, and according to the land exchange deal everything must be deconstructed in Newtok and handed back to its natural habitat. Because of this we do feel a certain obligation to document this entire process, especially since this is one of the first communities impacted by the climate crisis. The film is part of that ongoing body of work and our ultimate goal is to have an expansive multimedia document of a place that will not exist down the road. We want to create an archive which includes a documentary film (coming out April 22), a photo book, an online website, and a traveling exhibit. Eventually, with the blessing of the community, we’d like to see the entire body of work donated to a museum or university archive, but we still have many years ahead knowing the relocation is not complete.

The past four years have been dynamic to say the least (politics, the pandemic) how did that impact your project?
Like everything impacted by the pandemic it’s been really tough. Covid has kept us from traveling to the village for two years (2020-2022) which was the longest we’ve been away from the community. It’s also disrupted our ability to screen with the community in the way we’ve always envisioned, but with that said, there is a lot of understanding of the obstacles we’ve faced in this regard. We spent much of that time editing the film and getting it out into the world. Beyond covid, this project has now been through the Obama, Trump, and Biden administration. What is remarkable is all the lip service and attempts to help the community from 40+ state, federal and nonprofit agencies, and all bluster of partisan politics, how remarkably little has changed in the village. It speaks to how complicated it is to navigate climate change politics in the current state of our country’s political stalemate in writing meaningful policy.  Other than the big surge of funding in 2019 which moved 1/3 of the community, the majority of people still live in Newtok. So now you have a situation of a divided community which is tough for everyone. The goal is to remain together as a community in a safe environment and that has not happened. The river is still eating away at the shoreline, funding is not secured, and the community continues to fight for relocation while struggling in living their lives because of degrading conditions and families torn apart. Covid had the biggest effect on our ability to work on the story, but beyond that, the situation in Newtok is still dire and very real.

How did this self-sustaining community influence you as a parent, citizen, and creative?
As journalists we try to keep our personal baggage away from conversation, but in the context of process and longform storytelling, there is value in discussing this more as a way to encourage other filmmakers and journalists, and to just personally reflect, which is always good. To begin, throughout the making of the project we have had monumental personal change and professional growth. How we would begin to tell a story of this nature now looks different than how we did and that’s rooted in learning and growing as individuals and as a team. That doesn’t necessarily mean we would be telling a different story either. Personal life, all the ups and downs while working on a project like this continue, and the inherent difficulty to navigate individual stress is amplified in long form independent storytelling. You don’t have the same institutional support, in terms of financial help, which makes it harder to justify an undertaking of this nature if you are reliant on freelance income, as we both have been throughout this process. This means you really have to believe in the storytelling process where you find yourself somewhat blind to what awaits in terms of success, both editorially and financially. That’s really tough and stressful.  What the community has really taught us is the value of being more present minded in general and how to find hope and joy in the face of struggle and overwhelming odds. In a lot of ways this informs everything in terms of the filmmaking process. This has made us better communicators with each other, and strengthened us as a team. We’ve been taught values that come out of a small, tight knit community and family – emphasizing forgiveness and love no matter what. The community has also taught us what real sustainability and self reliance look like – of knowing the landscape and ecosystem and weather patterns and nuances of your land. What incredible beauty and lessons we have to continually learn from this symbiosis.  The project has taught us to be open and collaborative and that good storytelling takes a lot of time that can’t be forced.  It’s almost as if each story has its own temporal governance, that you have to learn and adapt as a storyteller in order to fully realize the potential of the story, and that the story will unfold in its own rightful time. It has entirely and holistically changed the way we will approach future projects, and we are indebted to the community of Newtok for teaching us better awareness, which we grow from for the rest of our lives.

The community of Newtok trusted you both to tell this story and invite you into their homes and lives, what were some of the pivotal moments of trust building?
It’s been a real honor getting to work with the people of Newtok on this story, and this could not have been done without our producer Marie Meade. Bringing her into the field was a seachange and a huge moment in transforming the story and gaining trust from the community. Marie is a highly respected Yup’ik elder, and leading Yupik anthropologist, author, linguist, and scholar, who is an incredible teacher both in an academic setting as a professor, and outside of one. She has direct familial roots to the Newtok community, specifically her family lived in the village of Keyaluvik where the people of Newtok were prior to forced relocation, but she had never had the opportunity to visit when the community was divided. This was very serendipitous for the project, because working on the film offered her an opportunity to visit with extended family and see her ancestral lands. So, our team not only had a known Yupik educator and leader come onboard, but someone who had personal connection to the land and people of Newtok. It’s impossible to quantify the value she continues to add to the project, we can only say that it wouldn’t be close to what it is today without her agency and insight into the community. She is someone who has devoted her life to better understanding her own heritage and has been instrumental in preserving the Yupik language and culture for future generations and she has given us leadership and guidance through the making of this film. We adore Marie.

The second, pivotal element that comes to mind, is much broader and came through by time on the ground just continuing to show up to the village, and reiterating our intention to try and get the story right. The community has seen a lot of parachute journalists, filmmakers, photographers, and tons of nonprofit and government agencies on top of that. They’ve become wary of outsiders for good reasons. People don’t often present their intention to the community, or get to know people and listen, so it sets up a potentially exploitive result that sours community perspective.  We’ve now logged more than 300 days in the village and know folks there intimately, and we have been granted access by the community’s leadership by trying to be transparent and open about our intentions. What began as distrust has evolved in time to an alignment of intent, which is to bring attention to the traumatic disaster unfolding. Time has given us the opportunity to learn from the people of Newtok which is instrumental to the storytelling.

You are both photojournalists, how did this project reinforce / continue to inform you both that this work is essential in an age of misinformation?
This is a very complicated question to try and begin to answer. People are aware of how news consumption has drastically transformed in the digital era with social media platforms abound, but we still don’t know what the implications are on society and what that means for the future of documenting history if journalistic guidelines lack clarity. The journalism transformation is happening so fast that we can only speculate. There is incredible work analyzing this stuff, but it’s mostly in a slower moving academic dialogue, and while that is being pondered journalism’s voice to tell stories is being diminished. Photojournalism comes from a lineage that has journalistic guidelines and principles, as an example, actually being transparent in the journalism methodology itself. These ethics were traditionally shaped and defined by legacy journalism institutions and publishers, which have been folding throughout the country and world. What has risen in the wake are numerous platforms, and even forms of storytelling, that have no clarity on the code of ethics in reporting, fact finding journalism, and publishing. Photojournalism remains essential because the intent is clear and the methodology is clear. The struggle now is there are fewer platforms for publishing the work which makes it extremely difficult to have a career which is a great loss to journalism in general.

The community is in a constant state of migration: homes they grew up in,  their land, culture and tradition. How did this project make you rethink what it means to be home?
This project made us reconsider the definition of home in a visceral, tangible way, that it is more than just a physical structure as we have perhaps defined it prior to the project. The definition is different across cultures, and for the community of Newtok “home” is more than simply a house, or the village itself – it includes the ecosystem that provides subsistence life. It is a much broader swath of the Yukon Kuskokwim delta, where, for millennia, they have moved between seasonal hunting grounds, a migratory understanding of the word.

There is an argument made by some fiscal conservatives that it is too expensive to relocate communities like Newtok and that it would be cheaper and easier to simply offer a buyout to residents, forcing migration into a major town. This argument hinges on a limited western definition that a home is definable by a four-walled structure, or version close to that. Such suggestions lack ethical consideration especially considering the community of Newtok only became attached to western infrastructure under forced mandate by the same government that would be suggesting a buyout. The fact is, to move a native community like Newtok, that has chosen to remain on their ancestral lands and disperse the community into a larger city would result in the opposite of “relocating their homes.” It would be the destruction of their lifestyle, their culture, their way of life and is genocidal by nature.

How did the community receive the film and how can folks give back or get involved?
We began showing the film to the community in stages. First, while we were still editing the film, we began showing rough cuts to our advisory board – a group of people made up of Newtok community members, a local journalist who worked in Newtok, a Yup’ik philosopher, a Yup’ik anthropologist, a project manager on the relocation and a member of the Smithsonian institute. After we received notes from the advisory board and incorporated their thoughts into the film, we showed the film to the people depicted in the film and had conversations with them. Throughout this process our aim was to make sure we were getting the story right, being culturally accurate and culturally sensitive and to learn about our inevitable blind spots. Then we showed the entire community of 400 people the finished film. We’re humbled, grateful and proud to say that the community has been very complimentary of the film.

How difficult was it to use your equipment in the elements?
Operating in Newtok was never easy – we were exposing our gear to -40 degree winter snow storms, giant Bering-sea storms, salt water spray, mud, muck and moisture. We demanded a lot of our gear and ourselves (frostbite while changing rolls of film isn’t fun to deal with). To the camera manufacturers unending credit, we never had any issues with our cameras – they worked amazingly well throughout the entire production.

What were the advantages of being a crew of two?
Photojournalism puts a lot of focus on the individual – one byline, one person, one credit, and filmmaking is so collaborative by nature. There is strength in numbers and we really wanted to collaborate on a project and move towards a team approach. The process of that had a lot of growing pains and forced us to really listen and rely on each other in a way that is really incredible when you start finding the cadence of that other person. We often joke that our personalities are so different to the point of describing it like we’re ascending the same mountain on different routes, but there are real advantages to the differences once you fully trust each other’s approach, and how our process differs. At the end of the day we usually always land in the same place, in agreement, and along the way we have grown as collaborators and friends.  We learn from each other and believe that by working as a team, the final product is greater than the sum of the individual parts; a sort of 1+1 = 3.

Tour dates here and see how you can support climate justice.

The Daily Edit – Wrangler: Scott Pommier

Wrangler

Filmmaker: Scott Pommier

Heidi: Did you go into this with the hope Wrangler may be interested?
Scott: I knew it was a long shot, but yeah, that was the hope, irrational as it seemed at the time.

What was your connection with the brand prior to this?
It’s always been high on the list of brands I wanted to work with. I didn’t have any relationship with Wrangler before this project. A friend of mine was able to put me in touch with someone in their marketing department. That was key. I sent them a treatment and based on that they sent out some clothing.

Did you have a stylist?
I’m not sure if it’s more accurate to say that I was the stylist, or that there was no stylist. Wrangler sent clothes for me to shoot and we mixed in some of the talent’s wardrobe. In the end the styling was pretty minimal, but yeah, I was the one tumble-drying the creases out of the shirts the night before the shoot.

How much spec shooting are you doing?
Over the last few years I’ve prioritized doing little personal documentary projects over specs, but it was time to shoot something for my reel that had the form of an ad.

Where/how did this idea come about?
My favorite films are not only beautiful, but emotional. Those weren’t the kinds of scripts that were being sent to me and I knew if I was waiting for one to show up it might take forever. I tried to think of what I had access to. A few years back I shot with some trick riders for a fashion shoot so I called up Jennifer Nicholson once again. She runs the operations at Riata Ranch and trains and performs with a with a world class team of trick riders and ropers. She was such a great collaborator the last time around and I asked her if she would let me come back for another project. I told her this time instead of pushing the styling I would want to really show things as they are. I gave her a semi-coherent ramble of a pitch and she said “I’m not totally sure that I can picture everything you’re saying, but sometimes that’s what makes for the most interesting creative partnerships.” I mean…you can’t ask for better than that.

We talked a few times and I started to develop a story based on the ages and the abilities and personalities of the girls she was working with. We wanted to show what happens behind the scenes, some of what goes into the polished performance that an audience sees.

How long was the shooting process
It was pretty extended as we had to break the job into two shoots. Early on I had the idea that part of the story would happen at the Riata Ranch in Three Rivers California and part of it would happen at a live rodeo. The timing was lucky in that the Salinas Rodeo was coming up, and it’s one of the biggest rodeos in the U.S. and it’s only a few hours from Three Rivers. The plan was to drive down (from Portland) to shoot at the rodeo, and then follow the team back to Three Rivers to finish off and then home. But the California wildfires made that impossible. The fires came so close to the ranch that the animals had to be evacuated at one point. We had to wait until the visibility (and breathability) improved and the roads opened back up.  The level of smoke was a nonstarter, even if the roads were open…which they weren’t.  It was probably a month between the first and the last shoot day.

It was was eight and a half days of shooting, which sounds needlessly long, but the first four at the rodeo were really just to capture a few shots. Those first four days only account for about 8 seconds of the footage, which is about what I had anticipated. In a lot of cases time is a pretty good substitute for money. We had less control over the light, but more room to use the schedule to get us the light we were after.

In the end, we didn’t have the access we would have hoped for at the rodeo, and Ava the young trick rider had problems with her horse on one of the key performance nights, so we shot at another private facility in Three Rivers as a double for the Salinas Rodeo.

How big was the crew?
For the Salinas Rodeo it was just me and a photo assistant that came down from Seattle. I showed him how to use an external sound recorder and he helped me navigate the menus on one of the cameras I rented. For the stuff we shot in Three Rivers the crew ballooned to two…at least on the three days that our local assistant showed up. Most of what’s in the film was shot by my friend Alex Bros who flew down from Toronto to do the shoot. It wasn’t an easy shoot by any stretch, but it was a great time.

We knew that what we were capturing was special, you could see it in the monitor. The beauty of the locations, the intensity of the stunts and then the subtlety of the performance. This little girl who had never acted before but she was such a natural that when you pointed the camera at her somehow could just see her inner thoughts.

Did you edit the film yourself?
I sent Wrangler a director’s cut, which was a gratuitous  2:40 in length. I’m not great with shorter cuts, especially since the music went with the film in a very particular way. I got very lucky with the post on this film. Some friends help me get it in front of Arcade Edit where the wonderfully talented Matt Laroche agreed to cut a :60 second version. Ben Freer of Fiddle Leaf did the mix and Dominic Phipps of Company 3 in London did the colour grade. I’m beyond grateful to all of them for elevating the film.

 

The Daily Edit – City Anonymity: Lisa Saltzman



Photographer: Lisa Saltzman

Heidi: How did your parents’ art patronage influence you, did you gravitate towards a specific genre of art?
Lisa: My parents’ art patronage had a profound, immeasurable influence on me. Their passion for art was intoxicating. Growing up with it and always being surrounded by it left an indelible imprint. Their collection is truly eclectic but there is a predominance of the human form. There is that predominance in my art.

How the collection shaped your own creativity?
My parents very eclectic collection with a predominance of the human form was ingrained in me, it was completely immersive. I know that kind of exposure was definitely the catalyst. Their passion for art was relentless; it was complete joy for them. The collection is comprised of a lot of sculpture and I have been told that a lot of my work appears sculptural. The three dimensional form of their sculpture informed my two dimensional photography, I see form and movement.  I am grateful to have that exposure and parents so connected to art. My sister was also a photographer and photo editor, we both pursued creative endeavors, when I reflect on this, it makes sense.

How are you honoring your father’s legacy in both his art collection and his work as the founder of Designtex
I have established The Saltzman Family Foundation in honor of my father to perpetuate his legacy and recently established the Ralph Saltzman Prize at the Design Museum in London, it’s a prize for emerging designers. To me, this was another way for me to express my love and admiration for his impact as a father, a mentor and visionaire. These qualities braided together helped me develop as an artist and photographer.

When did you make the transition from creative agency to creator or photographer?
Having founded an advertising/promotional merchandise company and working with very high profile brands I understand brand identity. It was several years later that I decided to apply that knowledge and create as a photographer. I owe so much to my Father and am so grateful as he had a tremendous impact on my career,  I am the fortunate recipient, he was a pioneer and innovator in design, his acumen, passion and love of art was unrivaled. He bought me my first camera and tripod when I was 9, the tripod was almost as tall as me. Both my parents have incredible taste.

Where did your love of street photography develop? or how did the streets of NY inform your eye?
Born and raised in New York, I have always been part of the hustle of New York. The energy on the streets is ripe for photographic exploration. Much of my art focuses, pun intended, on the quotidien passerby. We can never fully engage the people we pass by, I don’t want to lose sight of that fact. Capturing my subjects the way I do ,in the midst of their fleetingness, where time is slightly stretched, renders them extraordinary, unfamiliar, with no possibility of recognition but also strangely sculptural.

When and why did you choose to explore color?
Much of my photography focuses Black and White but this prestigious award affirmed my use of color.

In the series City Anonymity® did you visit the same area over and over again?
I see the stairs as a recurring element. City Anonymity® depicts my images on the streets of New York, there is so much opportunity and possibility, there is one particular location that was exceptionally magical. I am looking forward to the next one.

In a time when we’ve been isolated due to the pandemic, what do you hope these images resurrect?
I believe my photographs bring us back to pre pandemic times, kinetic energy and a lot of movement

Where do you hope to see this body of work evolve?
I hope that my work can be incorporated in editorial and branding.

The Daily Edit – Support Photojournalism: Guide to Ukraine

Support Photojournalism

Curator: Paul Bellinger Jr.
Ukraine Guide 1
Ukraine Gude 2
Ukraine Guide 3


Heidi: Along with giving agency to the local and relevant photographers, how and why did these guides come about?
Paul: Well the purpose of my instagram account @support.photojournalism is to promote the work of photojournalists, documentary and street photographers from around the world and to strengthen our community as photographers. These photographers are generally over worked and under paid so my goal is to spread appreciation for the important work they do. I try to set a good example of being generous on Instagram: sharing, reposting, saving, liking, commenting, all the little things I can do for free to uplift photographers. I repost about 10-15 posts a day on Instagram stories, all from photojournalists, documentary and street photographers. I’ve been doing it for about a year and half now. I’ve gotten to know our community really well and we have photographers from around the world. When events happen, I usually see the pictures on Instagram before they are published anywhere else.

How are you leveraging Instagram tools?
When Instagram rolled out the guides feature (basically a self contained, numbered list, made up of Instagram posts, with text fields for a title and a caption) I started using it right away because one of the options is to make a guide from your saved posts. I was already saving around 250+ posts a week to consider for reposting on stories so I had the idea to make a weekly guide of what I thought were the best posts of the week. Instagram limits guides to 30 posts, so it’s basically a roundup of my 30 favorites from the week called “Weekly Faves.” It’s very easy to share a guide on your instagram story so this gives people a really easy way to share the work of 30 photographers in just a couple taps on their phone. Hopefully when people see the guide they click through and follow the photographers and start engaging with them.

Tell us about your Weekly Faves
I’ve never said it out loud, but in my mind these Weekly Faves are kind of an alternative to the “Photos of the Week” slideshows that most major publications do. I say alternative, because of course I have my own subjective ideas about what makes a good picture or story, but also because I’m not limited to photographers that work only for one agency or another, or one publication or another, or even limited to pictures that have been published anywhere besides Instagram. My Weekly Faves also differs in content because I mostly follow independent photographers. It gives me a reason to look back at the previous week and be a little more considerate. I’m always in awe of how much amazing work is posted each week from our community. It’s really hard to only pick 30.

How did the Ukraine guide come about?
Making the Ukraine guides came on kind of a late night delirium actually. I could barely keep my eyes open after listening to coverage on TV and scouring Instagram for hours on the day that Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. I knew several photographers on the ground in the weeks and months leading up to the invasion and they had already started posting work from the invasion. I was reposting their work and they were reposting the work of other colleagues on the ground. I knew we were about to see an avalanche of posts and I wouldn’t be able to keep up reposting all of it. So before I passed out with my phone in my hand around 3am, I had the idea to use Instagram guides to make a list of all the photographers I knew working in Ukraine, and then I’d just post that guide on my story and people could go follow all of those photographers and keep up with what was happening in Ukraine on their own. The community did the rest, sharing the guide generously and sending me messages with more photographers that were in Ukraine, especially Ukrainian photographers. I updated it with new photographers and it quickly reached the 30 post limit for guides. By then, it had already started going viral thanks to our community for being so supportive of their colleagues on the ground in Ukraine.

What is the intended goal of the guides and are they acting like an agency of sorts, or is this more of a grassroots collective?
The immediate goal was to provide a resource for spreading reliable information from Ukraine. I want @support.photojournalism to be useful to the people who follow it, helping them stay informed about what’s going on across the world. There is a lot of misinformation out there. Photojournalists provide the antidote to misinformation. I want people to be able to get their information straight from the photographers themselves, including photographers who are from Ukraine. I believe in the power of pictures to show the world through another’s eyes. Pictures share different perspectives on what’s happening. In order to make a picture, the photographer has to be there, on the ground, bearing witness to whatever is in front of them and that gives pictures an element of persuasion that few other mediums have.

I also wanted to let everyone within our community know who was already on the ground so we could all start promoting their work and hopefully they could get their work licensed, published etc., so they can earn a living and be able to keep going. We really need to pay photojournalists more so they can focus on making pictures and not worrying about how they’re going to make ends meet or cutting corners on their health and safety. If nothing else, I hope we got their work some love and it lifted the photographers spirits during difficult times.

But the broader goal is always the same: to promote photojournalism, documentary and street photography, and to build community. These photographers put their lives on the line to cover dangerous situations and inform the public about what’s happening in the world. To me they’re like rock stars, or better yet, super heroes. They play a very crucial role in our society but they’re under appreciated today. They work hard to make amazing pictures under the toughest conditions so I think the least we can do is thank them for their service to society and spread the love for their work.

Lastly, as photographers we’re stronger together. We can use social media to promote each other and the stronger our community is, the better off each individual photographer will be. Individually we may only be able to reach a few thousand people, but together we can reach millions. So I try to use social media to connect photographers and foster a community of lifting each other up, sharing each other’s work. I also host a weekly audio-chat room on Clubhouse for all of us to get together and talk about anything and everything photography related. Hearing each other’s voices on Clubhouse has helped us become closer friends over the last year and many of us have met up in person as well. Our core group is very strong now and we all help each other and our community however we can.

I saw you held a 2 hr conversation on Clubhouse, what were the most salient points from the discussion?
We have a weekly audio-chat room on Clubhouse every Tuesday at 5pm PST (Wednesday mornings on the other side of the world). We talk about all things photojournalism, documentary and street photography. Every week we are joined by some of the leading photographers today, along with editors, photography students and non-photographers who want to learn from the discussion and ask questions. It’s very casual and everyone is welcome. We usually go for two hours and people come and go as they can. Last week we had Nicoló Filipo Rosso stop by after he had just won a staggering four awards at the Pictures of the Year International (POYi), one of the most prestigious awards in our industry. The previous week we were joined by Gabrielle Lurie, who had just won back to back Photographer of the Year in a Small Market along with three other awards at POYi (she might be the only person to have ever won back to back years like that). Natalie Behring and Raquel Natalicchio co-moderate it with me and they are both outstanding photographers too.

How do people get involved?
For Ukraine I’ll defer to Ukrainians who know best. Marta Iwanek  has been sharing a lot of useful information and has helped me with the guides so I would start by following her. For our community, the best way is to follow along on Instagram and you’ll always be informed about what’s happening with us. I use Instagram stories to share the work of many photographers everyday, so I would love it if people go follow those photographers and show them some love by liking and sharing their work and supporting them financially when they can. People can come to our Clubhouse room to learn more about the people behind the pictures. There are several photography organizations that do good work for photographers that people can donate to such as Women Photograph, Diversify Photo and Black Women Photographers. I highly recommend people in the US to join or donate to the National Press Photographers Association because they do a lot specifically for photojournalists. Beyond that, subscribe to a newspaper or magazine or buy a photo book.

The first piece of what is considered modern journalism was published in 1703 by Daniel Dafoe, (Great Storm of 1703 in Britain) 317 years later we have the same need for journalism, but why is this even more important now?
I think it’s more important than ever now. Democracy and journalism are co-dependent so the erosion of journalism also erodes democracy. Journalism is essential to democracy because it informs the public, a necessary precondition for holding leaders accountable which is really the essence of democracy. Funding for journalism has been in decline for a long time now, with newsrooms and bureaus closing at an accelerating pace in the 2000s. I think we’re starting to see the political consequences as data show that democracy is weakening around the world for the last several years.  It’s impossible to know to what extent, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that strengthening journalism will strengthen democracy along with it, so it’s more important now than ever.

What are the benefits of the smaller footprint photography has over video, aside from speed and isolating a single moment?
When it comes to making pictures or videos, there are some practical advantages for photography in that it requires less/smaller gear, less storage, less computing power, editing time, etc. Video cameras are getting smaller and smaller though and many photographers make video with their cameras now too. But yeah if you have a smaller footprint then you can be a little more nimble and get into more situations.

When it comes to the output, photography and video are similar in their believability. When people see video or picture evidence of something, they tend to believe it because they know the person who made it was actually there. They’re both important and effective at visual communication and have their strengths and weaknesses. One benefit of still photography is that it can be printed and widely disseminated in print. Once printed it’s permanent and it doesn’t require electricity or internet to look at it. Through newspapers, magazines and books the still image has further reach and more staying power than video. Even when you’re looking on a phone, a still picture takes less time to look at. It has immediate impact. I think that’s another benefit of still photography in an age where the average attention span is extremely short. I have a lot of respect for video too though, ideally we’d have both and a lot of people in our community do both.

This global network of photo journalism provides a POV and firm ground for objectivity and lived experience. How has social media opened the aperture for creators to share their images free of traditional media institutions.
I believe one of the goals for journalism should be to provide as many perspectives as possible. Social media has given us access to more points of view than ever before, so it has had a democratizing effect on the images that are being made and seen. The types of stories we have access to now is unprecedented. Our ability to find talented photographers anywhere in the world through social media is really incredible for telling stories with more nuance. You’re right, many of these stories might not have ever made it through that institutional shaping you’re talking about with the major publications out there. Social media has removed the gate keepers, to an extent. But the gap between the work that is being made and the work that is being published by these institutions is still massive, and these institutions still have enormous reach, far more than individual photographers. It’s a double edged sword, photographers can reach more people than ever but their chances of being paid a reasonable wage are lower than ever too. So there are many more pictures out there today but there are also many more unpaid photographers out there now too.

Can you speak to your personal connection to journalism?
My mentor was a photojournalist. I know a lot of photojournalists and I’ve studied the work of many of the great photojournalists in history, so I would say I’m an admirer. I don’t call myself a journalist, only a photographer. I’ve done a few journalism assignments over the years but it’s not my career. I’m connected to it now as a freelance photo editor, curator, and community builder.

To connect with Paul please email him at paulbellinger@gmail.com

The Daily Edit: Transient Eclipse: Jeffrey Moustache

Photographer: Jeffrey Moustache

Heidi: How did this series come about?
Jeffery: I have been working on this series for a few years now as it has slowly evolved from a separate series I pioneered utilizing flashes and LED lights on drones back in 2015.  It has since evolved into these landscapes just before the pandemic began as an exploration of space, light, color and my involvement with nature.

How long does the set up take?
My setup times are fairly short,  I have become very efficient in preparing for an image, setup of my light sources and creating them in the field takes a few minutes but times to create the final image range anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour total depending on which “Light Brush”  I am using: ie; if I am using a large drone, or shooting multiple variations/ locations in one outing.

Are you scouting at night as well?
I typically do my scouting during the day while out on walks or while I’m driving to or from a shoot. I try to take different routes as much as possible to possibly discover something that feels right. I will mark the locations, take photos on my phone, figure out when the best lighting may be, go home and then sketch out a concept in my notebook and go from there. I try to setup to shoot around twilight to capture some ambient and then continue until It’s too dark to see, which can be tricky at times navigating out of the woods or through the fields while trying to avoid holes, puddles, thorns, spiders, anthills etc.

What shapes are the light sources?
My sources are a variation of LED panel lights, tubes and other “light brushes” I have created over the past couple years to achieve different results.  Some are square. Some are large rectangles, others are spherical, I have a couple I can attach to my heavy lift drone and fly, others are color changing.

Is this commission or personal work?
As of now this has been a personal endeavor which I have began to intertwine with commissioned work when applicable.

Will you continue this series?
Yes, there is a larger gallery here but even that is a small portion of the collection that has been created and continues to grow and evolve.

The Daily Edit – Leland Bobbé: Early Work



Photographer: Leland Bobbé

 

Heidi: How long did you work on this project, New York City 70s? and what was your process for shooting? ( did you walk everyday? was your camera always with you?)
Leland: I never really considered my 70’s NYC street photos of Times Square, The Bowery and general NYC to be a “project”. It is a collection of photos of street scenes that I felt compelled to capture. I moved into Manhattan in 1974 and my main interest was playing drums in a band that was part of the CBGB’s scene. Photography was a hobby at that point. To support myself during this time I drove a taxi and spent hours on the streets observing the different neighborhoods. I didn’t bring a camera with me when I was driving because it would have been an easy target for a thief. Remember, this was the 70’s in NYC. Whenever I was going anywhere outside of driving a cab, I had my camera with me. Often, I would just go out with my camera either on foot or on by bicycle looking for things to shoot. For much of my Times Square work at that time I used a 28mm lens pre-focused at about 5-6 feet, while holding the camera at my waist and firing off shots as I walked by. I also used an 80-200 zoom when I didn’t want to get to close. 40 years later I realized that I had a collection of images of a period time in NYC that no longer existed. Times Square turned in to Las Disney and The Bowery turned into high end condos and restaurants. I showed these images to a curator at the Museum of the City of New York and they took 18 images into their permanent collection.


I loved the umbrella story, did you go out in all rain events in NYC and what drew you to the shape and visual appeal of the discarded umbrella?
What attracted me to shoot discarded umbrellas on the street was not so much the shape of the umbrellas but seeing this discarded object on the street while life continued to hustle by this inanimate object. Many of these photos were shot at shutter speeds slow enough to capture the feeling of motion to illustrate this without total blurs usually at about a 30th or a 15th of a second. I would go out and look for these umbrellas after a rainy, windy day when umbrellas would get destroyed. I brought a portfolio of these over to Modern Photography Magazine and they ran a story titled Stormy Weather which was the first time I had any of my photos published.

When do you know a project is “done”?
Good question. I know a project is done when I feel like I’ve been there, done that or I feel as if I’ve said all I need to say. I just know when it’s time to move on.

What have you been working on lately?
The most recent photo project I finished was a collection of B&W street photos of NYC during the Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020. I titled this project Public Isolation. I have lived in Manhattan for 45 years and I’d never seen anything like this before. The streets were empty and quiet. I tried to captured photos with just 1 person in the frame to illustrate isolation. The museum of The City of NY is currently in the process of making selections for their permanent collection.

I’m currently working a music video of a song I wrote and recorded titled Don’t Know When (2020) incorporating my NYC lockdown photos and NYC Black Lives Matter protest photos shot by Mychal Watts.

What would you tell your younger self about photography as a career?
I’d tell myself that it ain’t easy. I’ve been through numerous reinventions and phases over the years and have learned and that one must keep evolving. It’s really important as a commercial photographer to develop a personal style and to shoot personal work to keep the creative juices flowing.

The Daily Edit – Sashwa Burrous


Modern Huntsman

Design Director: Elias Carlson
Photographer: Sashwa Burrous
Writer: Lindsey Browne Davis


Heidi: How long have you lived in CA and when did your relationship with good fire begin? 

Sashwa: I was born and raised in rural Sonoma County, California, Coast Miwok / Southern Pomo territory, and grew up just two ridges over from where I live now in Occidental.  A tiny town nestled in the redwoods, not too far from the coast. My interest in “good fire” started in 2017 when Sonoma County saw record breaking wildfires, taking out entire neighborhoods, blanketing the entire county in smoke for weeks on end and waking a lot of us up to the reality that we are all living within a fire adapted landscape here in Northern California. I quickly  realized that if I wanted to continue to live here in California I would need to learn to be in better relationship with fire. My interest in fire led me to start shooting a prescribed fire course with Fire Forward in Santa Rosa. Through photographing the course as a personal project, I began to learn both the skills needed to photograph wildfires along with how to reintroduce good fire back onto my own land where I live in Occidental.

Was this a personal project?
A majority of the images  you see in this story I made on my own time. I found myself really inspired after every burn. I would come away with a ton of ideas, excited to sit down and edit what I just shot, a feeling you don’t get on every shoot. I have learned that when you feel that spark of creativity, to lean into it. Oftentimes  “personal projects” are where an artist’s most powerful work comes from. The trick is then how to integrate this passion into “client work” so you can put food on the table.
After sharing stories with Lindsey Browne Davis, an outdoorswomen writer and good friend, we came up with a story about fire and water and how these two elements interact and relate to each other. We pitched it to Modern Huntsman for their Water Issue, the story got approved and was sponsored by Mystery Ranch.

What was your training like for this? Was the desire twofold; to be of help and gain access in order to document? 
After shooting a few wildfires I realized that in order to do this safely I really needed to look into getting some formal training.  Not only did I want to make sure I was safe when shooting the fires, I also wanted to be in service to my community and deepen my relationship to the land I am stewarding.  I learned a lot from photographing the prescribed fire course with Fire Forward but I wanted to take it a step further.  I signed up for and completed my FFT2 (Wildland Firefighter Type II) training in 2020. This course is the first step in becoming a Wildland firefighter and is required for a majority of the prescribed burns I attend.  The training was really interesting and helped me understand how to read the wind, clouds, and topography, all important lessons in situational awareness.
 
What are a few of the challenging aspects of photographing fires?
Personal safety and health are probably the most challenging and important aspects of shooting fires, especially wildfires.  There is a lot of gear (Personal Protective Equipment) that is necessary as well and knowledge on how to get yourself into the right position. This sometimes means driving hours through dangerous roads to get to the other side of the fire because the wind changed slightly.
The smoke alone can be a huge challenge.  After 3-4 days of shooting in conditions of 400+PPM in the air you can’t help but think how this is affecting your personal health.  As a new father I often question whether or not I should continue chasing these stories.  During fire season, I literally have the truck packed and ready to go at all times. If there is a local fire, I often have to leave the family with short notice to get the shots I need. This is exhilarating but also hard on my health and on my family.
In relation to photography specifically another challenge is the speed in which you need to move. Oftentimes you literally have seconds to pull out your camera, compose and make an image before needing to get yourself to a safer place. It’s a stark contrast from the commercial work I often do in studios where we spend hours perfecting every aspect of each image we’re creating.

I know you also have an interest in the power of the ocean, how are they different and similar in your creative approach to meeting them?
In my experience there are far more similarities than differences. The first that comes to mind is that with both elements humility is key. When interacting with the ocean and with fires, you learn really quickly that you are not in charge. Instead you learn to slow down and observe. For instance, when I show up to the beach to shoot a surf sequence, the first step is to watch the ocean, observe the wind and current to ensure it’s safe to go out with the camera. Similarly, before a prescribed fire you take time to observe and analyze wind patterns, like wind direction – is it a dry (offshore) east wind or a wet  (onshore) western wind coming off the coast. These factors play a huge role in whether or not it’s safe to carry out the burn. What I love about shooting in both of these elements is you never know what you are going to get. They are both complex and unpredictable which keeps me inspired and curious to learn more

The Daily Edit – Patagonia Fall 2021 Journal: Paris Gore

Patagonia Fall 2021 Journal

Photographer: Paris Gore
Photo Editor: Jakob Reisinger

Heidi: How did you expand as a creative and photographer while working on this story, “Child of the Setting Sun” for Patagonia?
Paris: Working on this story was very personal as I was part of the accident and close to the family. Most of the projects I’ve worked on in my career I’ve felt close to or always have some sort of tie to the story but this was just on another level. Knowing everything that went on and being so keen to show this piece the way I felt it should be showcased really drove my creativity out to shoot a certain way I felt I had never photographed before. I usually pull inspiration from New Yorker style photo pieces and wanted to really bring out a lot more emotion than what I feel like I normally do.

Where did you take this portrait?
The portrait I took of Stephanie Bennett to accompany her story had to really be powerful. At her house she had a barn that was walled with metal siding so it gave off a metallic reflection, also being an open door it provided us a really great location for the portraits. Holding her young child Robbie, squirming and looking in different directions posed some challenges but to be honest Robbie is very stoic. His eyes have a mature gaze that look deep. Stephanie too, her eyes are beautiful and could pierce your soul. We photographed for about 20 min, having them look out towards the house together and I really did know on this frame it was a special photo. Stephanie was giving me a hard time about not liking her portrait being taken but she really photographed so well and I truly did shoot some of the most powerful portraits in my career I felt.

It’s a monumental moment of resilience, courage, and the full spectrum of life, how did you know when to pick up the camera to capture those moments?

Our weekend shooting at Stephanie’s place was really fun and never felt any moment was forced. We just shot Steph and Robbie doing their thing and had a great time doing so. I also just feel so close to Robbie that any moment with him is a real gift so it’s pretty easy to have the camera out most of the time being an over zealous “Uncle Paris”.

KC Deane and Geoff Gulevich in Þórsmörk, Iceland down a trail that is rarely ridden and never had been photographed for mountain biking. It’s always exciting to be somewhere and know you are one of the first to photograph MTB in the location. We lost the light behind the clouds which I was a little bummed about but it actually turned out for the better.
Graham Agassiz in Bellingham, WA during a production for Dakine clothing. This is one of my more intricate lighting rigs that I’ve ever done on a job. We ended up hanging a softbox in a tree to get a top down light affect using arborist gear. Was pretty wild to put together and execute a shot like this deep in the woods where getting all the gear up was quite the challenge.

You were a mountain bike rider that evolved into a photographer, when did you know photography was your path?
I got into photography pretty early on in high school but was mainly focused on shooting content for the yearbook and school sports not really thinking about applying it to mountain biking. Then one day me and a buddy went out to shoot some bike photos and had my a-ha moment. I had so much fun and just realized it was something I could possibly do for a living because at that point in my life there wasn’t much else in the way of a career I would have gone for.

How do you stay stoked and inspired?
A lot of people know me as a bike photographer and I do love it but any advice I can give is to have a passion outside of your work. I really enjoy snowboarding for example and I do photograph snow sports from time to time but it allows me to shoot it with pure enjoyment and not treat it as my “job”. Having an outlet just to go enjoy without the pressure of bringing a camera is so important to me and I work really hard to not taint that. Burnout is real and having the separation has really helped me appreciate the bike world and everything I’ve worked for!