Scenes From Amos Studios 3/2012

Stylist Shannon Amos and I have collaborated for years now, really to the point where we simply brainstorm our concepts and then she runs with it. No one needs to really "sign off" on anything...it's all about trust, history, and a shared and evolving aesthetic.

Yesterday we did our first shoot together at Amos Studios in Emeryville. Bagels pulled out of the oven, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in the fridge, high ceilings and drive up parking. What more could a jet setting photographer want?

Weaving

Trying to spend time weaving together various images to make a PDF portfolio to work as an easy email-able introduction to my work.

A series, a book, a story- all of those projects typically are easy to edit. A portfolio is more like a greatest hits type of collection, and is always much less satisfying for me. I can never really hit it right or weave the elements together to make a bigger statement.

But I'm trying...

Here are some screen shots from my attempts. Enjoy.

Green Felt for ZEIT Magazine

Setting up a makeshift studio in an opthamologist office was the first shoot of 2012.

Dr. Brien Seeley and his very ambitious flying hobby....preceded by a trip to Discount Fabrics in Berkeley, CA.

Out this week in Berlin for Zeit Magazine, Germany.

Runner's World 2 / 2012

Just got a copy of Runner's World's February issue in the mail today. Right in the middle of Thanksgiving we were trying to put together this very affordable and very story-boarded photograph and I was reminded really just how hard it is to produce anything around any holiday. But...it landed.

Lot's of sketches, lots of fedexing of clothing and juggling of dates and wow...by the time we arrived in the studio the hardest part was behind us. Andrea Maurio of Runner's World handling it all with charm and patience. Me? I was just trying to find a way for it not to look like a stock photograph. And once you get that in your head it's hard to shake it. Tyler Wood, starring as the interview-ee, tapped into his acting skills and brought his character to life.

Micah Bishop, always elegant, managed the wardrobe and Studio 308 SF was our location. We rented a natural light studio and then set up a bunch of strobes to look like better natural light. Can you fool Mother Nature? Prolly not.

For me...this is the year of the Commercial Photograph, so every opportunity is one that I jump on....

Below are the sketches that led to the end product above. Enjoy.

Sunday School

It kind of feels like Picasso's Guernica, but the After School Special version.

Details of a large scale public art project currently in progress at the UU church we go to. Dipped into the ever flowing river of parenthood, the one that never stops, and pulled these pieces out.

Scraping together some other bits and pieces of the year ahead and trying to tie up loose ends from 2011 this week...so maybe nothing to report on the blog...it may be quiet?

Stay tuned to Stereoscopy Photographs, it seems like all my attention and energy flows in that direction these days. And commercial photography of course...

Good Morning, Mr. Gehry

Good Morning, Mr. Gehry.

I think I used that line back in 2011.

Well...here we are, first spam of the year.

Onward.

Special Holiday Issues

The holiday is here.

It arrives like a brick thrown through my office window. Sometimes I duck. Sometimes it hits me in the head.

So much going on in the months ahead that I'm excited about: working on an audio spoken word piece for Daylight Books for the forthcoming book "The Photographs Not Taken", curated by Will Steacy. Then there is a photography/design neutron bomb being cooked up by Kate Osba at This Is The What. Of course we don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but we want to get you all curious.

Yes, print lives....at times. And sometimes better than ever.

Then still building the Stereoscopy Project, curious name and all, on my elegant new Tumblr space. Please join and follow it at http://timothyarchibald.tumblr.com/ or HERE.

Things may be quiet around the holidays...but ya never know...

Turn Your Dial To Tumblr

It is dark so early these days. I needed something to get me through the winter.

I wanted a place to collect images I am playing with and I wanted to see them with size and splendor.

When ECHO became this viral entity that was shared among the visually hungry high school / young adult tumblr crowd, it led me to their visually savvy world. The kids are using tumblr as an art gallery, a mood board, a way to toss things out and see them and think about them. Kind of like push pinning your photographs to your wall so you can think about them and keep them or kill them. This is what I need.

Now it's called .Stereoscopy Photographs.

It is located at http://timothyarchibald.tumblr.com/

Why did you call it that?

Follow it and find out. See it grow and evolve HERE.

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.

.................................................................................................................................................

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.

Come On Feel The Noise : ACP 2011

Atlanta Celebrates Photography festival sprawls all over the fall in Atlanta, bringing all sorts of artists to town: Emmet Gowin, Martin Schoeller, Zoe Strauss and so many more great shows as well. The end of October opens ECHOLILIA / Sometimes I wonder at the Emory University School of Medicine with a lecture on the evening of the 28th by Elijah Archibald and myself. The event is sposored by a collaboration between the School of Medicine, ACP, and The Emory Center for Ethics. Wow.
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More details to come as we put together the expanded show and figure out what we are going to do with this experience....what are we going to talk about?

Stay tuned HERE.

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.

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.

Richard Muller / Scientific American

Physicist Richard Muller let us into his house on a hill in Berkeley and invites us to make ourselves at home. His place was filled with books, art, dinosaurs, photographs, macarame, everything a life can and should be filled with. I gravitated to a photograph on the wall, a younger version of Muller and his wife with two kids on their laps...taken in the room I'm standing in. The lighting, the style, the print quality of milky blacks and reflected highlights looks familiar...it looked like Norman Seeff. He turns it over and there is a note "Photo by Norman Seeff, for GEO". It hangs in his house in two different places. He explains:

I knew he was creating a picture for the ages as soon as I saw it: the un conventional pose, separating the couple, the kids, our home. I knew Norman had something in mind that day and I was thankful to be able to be a part of it.

Muller takes me over to another giant photograph: a close up of a dandelion, so close and so big and so epic, it looked like you were staring into the universe.

Do you know the photographer of this photograph? 

I tell him I'm pretty sure I do, I think the photographer is Richard Muller. I am correct!

We get back to work and set up our gear. Once again, like many photographers before us, we begin to photograph Muller, at his desk, in his house, surrounded by his life.

Conference Room Studios

Busy with a bunch of projects over the last two weeks...lots of setting up studios in office spaces and trying to deal with the pros and cons of 8 foot high ceilings which don't really lend themselves to great studio shots.

But...we tried.

Working on a fascinating story on Tablo and Epik High, behind the scene shots here. Need to stay mum on this for now, but good stuff is in the works...

Backhoe Parks In Front Of The House

Sunday at sundown a backhoe parked in front of our home.

Wilson got on the thing, Eli went in and got some cameras.

One for me, one for him, then let's try this old film camera too, maybe Wilson wants to make some pictures.

You guys got it?

Any other ideas?

No. I think we are good.

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Commercial Enough? Weird Enough?

Babes In The Woods Redux, Workbook Ad #3

Are we done yet?

Not Commercial Enough

Spoiled Baker, Option 1

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A friend of mine suggested that the Babes In The Woods series was not commercial enough for a Workbook ad...or that it type cast me so specifically as a baby photographer. Seeing that these ads are thousands upon thousands upon thousands...oh, you know...I figured I'd try to look at some options. Keep in mind: Workbook is not about self expression...it is about getting ad jobs. If anyone is reading, please weigh in with your opinion.

Spacey Babies, Option 2

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.

BUY: Sofa Portraits by Colin Pantall

Sofa Portraits by Colin Pantall / cover

One of my favorite projects over the past few years has been Sofa Portraits by Colin Pantall. In an intro to the work on his site statement, Colin writes:

Sofa Portraits is a series of images showing my daughter, Isabel, as she watches television.
These portraits portray the flawed physicality of childhood and its mental and physical freedoms - but also the constraints that are applied by the adult world - the furnishings Isabel is so often pushing against, the dress determined by the educational system she is now part of, or even the attitudes to her physical self-expression as she watches television.

Sofa Portraits is now available in bookform - 42 pages, 29 pictures, measuring 30cm x 21cm, in an edition of 60.

Again, in his words:

It's handmade with a Japanese stab-stitched hardcover binding. I was looking for a cover that matched the sofa in the picture. I couldn't find one, but worked out with normal bookcloth the time limitations, imperfections and design flaws of a handmade book more than matched the dilapidated state I was trying to recreate. It's not perfect in other words.

If you would like a copy, they are £60 - made payable to colinpantall@yahoo.co.uk at paypal. Postage and packing is included in that.

There has been a big buzz about this series since it was first made public. This book seems to take the project on some new tangents, as books often do. I'm eager to see where it takes us. Drop him a note and buy this book.



Sofa Portraits / interior page



Sofa Portraits / interior page