Why I Love Scot Sothern's Low Life

For a moment or two I was Philip Marlow, Robert Mitchum, but then for a moment or two I was the writer I was always meant to be and this was my story.- Scot Sothern from Low Life

In my mind, Scot Sothern essentially went from nothing to everything in the year 2011. These images from his project Low Life seeped out into the photography blogosphere and people really did not know what to do with them. The photographs were harsh but also intelligent, and the words he wrote displayed a self awareness and honesty that just really couldn't be denied. Of course everyone wanted to see what he looked like...and there he is, at openings, on Facebook, appearing as charming and gentle as one could be.

Photography critic and writer Colin Pantall went from baffled and confused to openly celebrating Sothern's work...after sharing all of his apprehensions in early writings. Myself...I didn't know what to think, but the honesty of Sothern's writing voice drew me in. I couldn't decide if I loved or hated this work, but I knew I wanted to know more and more and more about it...and have more of it.

Sothern knows what makes a great interview...and really no two interviews with him seem redundant. His writing seems to get you into his inner voice, the voice in his head at the time the images were made. His voice in interviews has maturity and some reflection, and he is aware of his audience. In a gesture of brilliance, he finds a way to have his son interview him about the project. More honesty, more gestures that make us question him and get into his head all at the same time. Here his son Austin Wolf-Sothern asks him the question everyone wants to know:

AS: Do you consider the photos exploitative? And if so, is there anything wrong with that?

SS: Yes, I do think they are exploitative and yes, there are things wrong with that. However, in spite of all the wrong things about the pictures, I think there is somehow a greater good that comes from them. If someone looks at a picture and goes, Whoa, that's fucked up, then isn't that a good thing? There are many many whores, all over the world and I don't think any of them are having a very good time. I'd like to help out a little more, but you know, life is tough. Maybe that's just my justification for being a lowlife in the first place. I like to think I can be a lowlife and also be an artist and a pacifist, a leftist and a scofflaw, and yet Pollyannaish and idealistic. A fine upstanding citizen. Exploitation, well I guess that's what it takes to say what I want to say.

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A fellow photographer shared a project he was working on with me around the time I found Sothern's work. My friend was photographing prostitutes in Las Vegas: getting the card on the street, calling the number, ordering the prostitute and photographing her in his room. His photographs were polished and stylized, the lighting and the colors all working together for a polished effect of these kind of hard life subjects...it was a great combination of style and content. I told him about Sothern's work, shared a link with him and he reacted viciously: he hated the work and it seemed like he really was repulsed by it. I wondered why he reacted so strongly...and I'll never really know. I do suspect that Sothern's work had this honesty that didn't hide all the lust and attraction he may have felt. There was nothing stylized to hide behind...no hip snappy packaging, everything was raw. I suspected that my friend was having a hard time wrestling with his own attraction/repulsion to his subject and was kind of frightened by Sothern's admittance of everything. The push and pull that Sothern admits to makes me take stock of my own feelings as well.

Why do I love this project? I look at his photographs, read his text, and I simply find it inspiring. Is the idea of this guy facing the struggles of life by running to the comforts of prostitutes inspiring? No, but his honesty totally is. Is the fact that the work was ignored for years, he worked on it in anonymity, and he had the belief in it to find a time when the culture would embrace it inspiring? Absolutely inspiring. Again, Sothern's words from the interview with Austin Wolf-Sothern:

SS: To be honest, I've always loved just about every picture I've taken. Now that I have so many of the images scanned, I like to smoke a little pot and fill the computer screen with my pictures. I'm the same way with my writing. I've always been my biggest fan. How else could I face all the rejections, without knowing they are wrong, I'm right.

                                                                                                                                
Buy Scot Sothern's book Low Life HERE.
Visit Sothern's website HERE.

All photographs copyright Scot Sothern.

Autobiography / Fourth Grade

My son had to write an autobiography for fourth grade. He had weeks to complete it. I sat down to help him get organized and we realized it was due the following day.

Don't worry. I think I know what I want to say.

It couldn't be easier.

I'm just writing about me. I'll just sit down and type it.

Sophisticated, With A Touch of Gnarly

The creative team at Duncan Channon brought us in to create this ad for Gnarly Head Wine in the early spring. Alot of times there are projects that seem to hinge on one crucial element. With Gnarly, I really can't envision it without the character of our talent Lawrence Clark. Lawrence never showed up for our first casting. We spent the late afternoon coaching prospective models thru our method acting approach:

Ok....so you are like....elegant....well bred...you've always had the best of everything...given to you and earned by you. Amidst this all you are tough...you live life to it's physical fullest...you can still rip it up outside, get eaten alive by your environment...crash your mountain bike...and still savor life and toast the sunset....got that?

Time and time again we ran thru these words...these words of motivation...to get the talent into our roles. We had a Tony Danza look-a-like. We got a guy who could smile. We got another guy who had the rough, but he really had no elegance. The next morning we had agreed to come in and cast again, Lawrence would be there.

Lawrence arrives a bit flustered. The receptionist follows him into our room with a glass of orange juice. People wait on him, people clear the way for him, simply out of instinct. We give him our pitch, in a lazy half hearted way:

Ok...you're the rich guy, but rough guy too. Got that?

Lawrence looks at us and becomes the role: A subtle eyebrow lift. A sneer that falls into a smile. A bit of arrogance, a bit of charm. His body starts to inhabit the space with a sense of privledge. We snap a few photographs of him there in the crowded office and look at each other silently.

I walk him out and thank him for coming. I come back to the room with the creatives and the feeling is universal: he was everything we wanted....we have our talent.

Wilson Archibald At Work

Wilson Archibald is my youngest son. He has no blog, he has no book about him, he has no Facebook identity. He was doing his homework one night, I was helping him, and I snapped this photograph with my phone.

The next week we made a cake for his Mom, and he decorated it with the football, baseball and soccer themes, acting simultaneously.

Mike Disfarmer, meet The Wear Twins

Art Director Charlie Hess and I were discussing the forthcoming story on the Wear brothers, a set of twins now playing and attending UCLA. He wanted to know if I had any ideas for the shoot. A quick search revealed a these mirror-imaged, 7 foot tall young men. They seemed like they could have been from any time period, nothing looked trendy about them at all: solid, steady, all american good looks and deadpan expressions. Our conversation went like this:

CH: So...do you have anything you'd like to do with these Twins?
TA: Well, they kind of look timeless to me. They look almost like someone who would be living in the 1940's. Do you know the work of a photographer Mike Disfarmer?
CH: I own a Disfarmer.

So there, that was our start. After securing a location that had a feeling of...oh...Hogwarts maybe...we did a series of images with the Twins. But like many things, our simple ideas were the keepers. Does our shot look like a Disfarmer? Not even close. Yet, to the amazement of Charlie and I, our Disfarmer-esque attempt ended up as the magazine's cover. See the shots in all their splendor HERE.

I Found This And Was So Happy I Liked It

So this book I discovered earlier in the year, Maske by Phyllis Galembo was so consistently mind blowing that it is easily going to be the best photobook of the year...from this blog at least. I really have cut myself off from collecting photography books and now try to buy one book a year...and this one was it. I wrote about it HERE.

Like with discoveries in music or art or anything, you immediately try to go back and see what else is available that the artist has done. Here I find Dressed For Thrills : 100 Years of Halloween Costumes by Phyllis Galembo...and it is selling for $7.58! I had to buy it.

Is this an art book? Kind of...subversively. Is it historically important? Kind of ...alot of the stuff looks like it should be in some campy wing of the Smithsonian. Who is this aimed at...crafty soccer Moms going to Michael's or photo literate intellectuals? Well...both I think.

There is this unexpected thrill with this book, for sure. It is the experience where you are expecting the book to simply be a chronicle of the costumes, and boom, there, suddenly, is the most thought provoking photograph you've seen all week. The image at top depicting Red Riding Hood ( circa 1941 ) and Brown Bear (circa 1940) is one of those photographs for me. I really can't stop looking at it.

Find this and other books by Galembo HERE.

Photo Eye Sells ECHOLILIA

Photo-Eye Bookstore in Santa Fe and online joins forces with Echo Press ( me and my kid in our garage ) to promote and market ECHOLILIA / Sometimes I wonder.

The good folks at there were super helpful in selling Sex Machines : Photographs and Interviews and really sold more signed copies than anyone. Now they have set up a beautiful web prescence for the book that displays it more elegantly than ever before..the BookTease they put together really captures the arc of the book.

See it and love it HERE.

fototazo : What Makes A Great Portrait 2011

Tom Griggs of the online magazine fototazo dropped me a line last week asking if I could contribute and essay to his series " What Makes A Great Portrait". A great collection of interviews, including essays by Cori Pepelnjak, Anastasia Cazabon, Margo Ovcharenko, Shen Wei, Lucas Foglia, Susan Worsham, Steve Davis, Elinor Carucci, Mark Powell and Jess T. Dugan.

I was so enthusiastic by the copy of Maske by Phyllis Galembo that this essay really just flowed out of me. Hopefully it wasn't too easy. Here it is:

A great portrait is like a great book or a great song....it has the thing that it is supposed to be about, but then, at closer inspection, it can be about anything, everything, things that are personal to your journey and things that are universal.

It can be this thing you can project into and learn things from all at the same time.

How does a photograph achieve that? That...well that is the hard part...its just too hard to explain how to create it...one never really knows how to do it, but you know it when you see it.

A recent book that was filled with what struck me as great portraits is Maske by Phyllis Galembo. The attached image is titled "Surprise Box, Jacmel, Haiti 2004". There is no question that I would be able to look at this image time and time again and get something from it. The content is candy coated...the color and lighting gives us some visual splendor to suck us into the image. But look closely: a hooded man, shiny body, holding a box with a plastic E.T. in it. It's folk art, and pop art, and anthropology all wrapped up and presented to us...but that is just the candy packaging. Look at it long enough and its like looking at a Rothko painting. Is that guy me? Is that guy the photographer's alter ego? The body language and gesture...the act of giving a gift. Is it generosity...emotional and spiritual generosity....or is it simply American junk? And the pose...is it Madonna and child esque? Baby Jesus in the shape of E.T.? Really...I could go on and on and on. When that feeling overtakes me...the sheer enthusiasm in which I could really just spit out a stream of consciousness list of all the open-ended things in an image and their possible meanings and references...that is when I feel a portrait is great.

Explore all the is fototazo HERE. See my essay HERE.

American Express / Crispin Porter

It was January, we were on the coast. Weather had been below freezing at noon on our scouting days, and our shoot was scheduled for sunrise. When I woke up at the hotel on the day of the shoot and stepped out into the darkness, I felt balmy warm winds. I knew the Gods Of Advertising Photography were smiling upon us that day...

We just got word this ad is out and we can share it. 2011 started out with a shot of adrenaline, testosterone and coffee, putting together this image involving a mountain of carrots and a bountiful farm in the middle of winter....how are we going to find that? Actually...producer Mark Hoffman found it in his own backyard. Talent Shazi Visram and the creative team of Crispin Porter in Boulder flew in to SF, drove down to Half Moon Bay for sunrise, a day in the studio after that...magical retouching by Sugar Digital...and together...it came together.

And the mountain of carrots? Some ideas ya gotta embrace...some you need to let go of. But the mountain yielded the best crew shot ever...

Call Sheet / Kwikset

Actor/Comedian John Little 3/29/11

Spent the last few days putting together the pieces for a great humor driven campaign for Kwikset. Working with creatives John Vitro, Elliot Allen, Kevin Cimo of VITRO and the production company of 13 Keys, the talent and crew were a joy to discover and collaborate with. As the day evolved I shot some portraits of the team. Enjoy.

Prop Manager Spencer Vrooman 3/29/11

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Bloodhound Hunter, 3/29/11

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Digital Tech Sean MacGillivray, 3/29/11

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Assistant Albert Fu, 3/29/11

Wingspan

Sunny, Phoenix Arizona, 1996

Sometime around 1994 my sister Sue moved to Phoenix, changed her name to "Sunny", got a job at a place called "The Y'all Come Back Saloon", met Joe Massey, and adopted two dogs named Bingo and George. She and I made this picture in an alley behind my house...I was 28 and it was Joe Massey's eagle. We knew the light was pretty that night and made the picture as an experiment...just play acting everything. I had a forthcoming show and needed to crank out some work...she agreed to help me.

Sunny is fighting the fight this year, this month, this week: Leukemia, Bone Marrow Transplant, Chemotherapy. Now is the time to send the positive vibrations her way, even if you don't know her...or me...but you feel like you do.

Amen.

Shouldn't all photoshoots end with setting the props on fire?

Photograph by Amy Petrolati

Great snapshot taken by Duncan /Channon art director Amy Petrolati from our shoot on Friday. Her caption: Shouldn't all photoshoots end with setting the props on fire?

Suburban Dad Shoots Sex Issue

The subject asked us to meet her at VIRACOCHA .

In the basement, before it was VIRACOCHA, animals were sacrificed for medicinal purposes.

Yesterday, it was our studio. We thought of E.J. Bellocq.

Shoot continues through out the week...more to come.

The Golden Age Of Photography

Kodak Ektachrome Film Hardener, 12/2010
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I used to call it Photographer's Lighting, but I think its actually called Photographer's Supply.

It is the first camera store I ever went to in SF, after a guy at a lab suggested it to me, saying "well...it is kind of punk rock in there..."

I walked in today and took some photographs with my phone.

I asked for some inkjet paper and purchased a pack of 25 sheets.
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Kodak Hypo Clearing Agent, 12/2010

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Photographer's Lighting, Supplies and Rental, 12/2010

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Kodak Professional Indicator Stop Bath, 12/2010

Luv From Minneapolis

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And then...gotta also celebrate Flashlight Rental in Minneapolis. Everyone is loyal to Flashlight it seems...and that Day Of The Dead meets Lucha Libre graphic sticks in my head like only wonderful graphic design will do. And I couldn't be more pleased to discover that ECHOLILIA / Sometimes I wonder is a part of the Flashlight Library.

Visit Flashlight HERE. Buy ECHOLILIA / Sometimes I wonder HERE.

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