Q&A with NY Advertising and Editorial Photographer PETER RAD

Peter Rad is a New York artist and photographer best known for his hyperrealistic, narrative tableau produced for international clients which include American Express, Sony-Ericsson, EA Sports, Master Card, Microsoft, Sony and publications Arena, Details, Esquire, Fast Company, GQ, New York Magazine, Time Magazine and T-New York Times Style Magazine among many others.

I am especially interested in photographers who are working to bring a quality of reality into commercial imagery. This is of course open to interpretation—the most imaginative and expressive work of photographers that utilize digital technology to evoke a feeling or mood are also depicting a felt reality. Peter Rad employs technology towards a different end. He draws on a passion for realist painters and filmmakers and employs masterful lighting and composition skills, a deep knowledge of image making, the capabilities of the latest sensors, occasional compositing, and a refined post-production process to build cinematic tableau that have as their end goal the reality that we see everyday. He works almost exclusively with actors, he scripts dialogue and directs them in their roles, all driven by highly sophisticated concepts.

In response to the over-produced, slick images that have evolved with the advent of Photoshop, beauty and reality have been redefined. Many photographers, in response, have chosen a deliberately lo-fi approach to the representation of ‘reality.’ Often, the result is devoid of formal considerations and beauty as if they are somehow complicit in the deception. Technology also takes the fall. Instead of being understood and utilized as a tool that can, in unprecedented ways, help to depict how we actually see and to layer in imagination and feeling, it is misunderstood as the agent. As a result, many of the images that are held up as authentic or relatable are missing an element of true inspiration and realistic aspiration and are as unrelatable in a way as the images to which they are responding.

Peter Rad’s integrity to his vision has him on course with the vanguard of contemporary advertising as clients increasingly need to reach savvy consumers with honest and authentic imagery that achieves the marriage of concept and imagination with relatability. I have the hope that this level of image making will play a part in ushering in a new era of corporate consciousness in which the roles are reversed and corporations realize they have to be in service to their customers. There will always be a place for selling, competing and entertaining in advertising, but perhaps it will come from a place of inspired candor and will evoke our real needs that, when met, will create a sustainable economy.

Peter is exceptionally smart and thoughtful and lovely to speak with. We spoke for nearly two hours and the conversation ranged from Courbet and the Occupy Wall Street Movement to how his pitch-perfect lighting once had an art director convinced he shot using only natural light. But before all this, we talked about how he landed BAM’s 150^th Anniversary campaign out of 400 photographers, how the bar for submitting a treatment has been raised, and what is required of photographers faced with this new reality.

Thank you to Peter for such an enjoyable and deeply thoughtful interview.

POP: Where did you get your start?

I started working in Australia 10 years before coming here to do my MFA in photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

I was offered by a high-end agency to be represented and to project me into fashion. I said no because it’s the antithesis of what I’m interested in. They had a huge job for me immediately for Wallpaper. They said if I came on board with them, I’d be a fashion photographer. The kind of work I do now is much more interpretive. I’m not that interested in fashion. I would probably be more interested in fashion if it could be represented in ways that weren’t so driven by the image of the clothing or the whole fashion scene.

The job I just did for Time was about men’s contribution to the household. Good things that can be learned from asking these questions rather than what are you going to wear. More and more I’m gravitating towards things that at least to some degree raise consciousness or awareness. There’s only so much you can do as an artist. At the same time, I’d rather be thinking about that than how we need to be something else.

POP: You have a very specific style. How did this evolve and is this limiting in any way?

It does cut me out of more of the bread and butter jobs. That started at grad school when I stopped thinking about what style I wanted to shoot in and instead thought about why am I photographing. But once I started working in this style, it did close off the everyday jobs that are really handy for paying the rent.

In my experience, there was a huge influx of new photographers for a while, but it seems to have leveled off. With limited budgets, clients are happy to pay a little more if they’re working on an interesting project and they want to hire someone who is going to give it a specific look. Often times what happens is that a lot of big money goes to the big name photographers and then there’s a cut-off point. And beyond that, it’s hit or miss if the job you’re going to do is going to have a big or small budget or no budget. It’s sort of a redistribution of wealth that mirrors our culture right now. A lot of the bigger photographers are getting more work and it’s a safety factor. Clients tend to think that going with the big names will give them the best results.

POP: Do you find that you are asked to create treatments more often than you used to? And are you collaborating earlier in the process? What is required of photographers to remain competitive under these circumstances?

It’s becoming the norm, especially with bigger jobs to get a treatment from a photographer. I see it as a need to justify to their clients why they’re making a choice. It’s part of the process of choosing and helps them understand how you are going to approach the project and the clients need three estimates because those are the rules. If an agency wants to make a creative choice, then the artist has to go above and beyond. Clients aren’t making decisions based almost entirely on money. It’s a creative choice to a large degree.

Photographers themselves have raised the bar a little bit in order for them to get work. Every time I’ve been able to have a solid conversation about the brief prior to estimating it has been helpful in getting the job. If I don’t get that call, it’s hard to take the prospect of getting the job seriously. These days they want to hear your rationale. The times when I tend to win the job are when I’ve gone out of my way to make clear my intention to do the job in all aspects: technically, creatively, conceptually. I’ve done test shots without being asked to, to illustrate what I’m trying to convey and included them in the treatment.  At times these have ultimately won me the job. I’ve also asked producers for short, written treatments so that they can further explain costs.

POP: You were awarded a job earlier this year to shoot the 150th anniversary of BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) out of 400 photographers who were initially considered. Can you talk about the brief, how you interpreted the assignment and your treatment and anything else that contributed to your landing the job?

This was the ultimate advertising job. When the concept was presented to the client, it was in very early stages. The tagline had just come into being and they had come up with the idea to use assets from shows and to build a context around them which would be set in New York with a protagonist being a New Yorker. There were many scenarios brought up by the art director. Some of them did stick, but a lot of them changed. The point being, I was brought in really early before the job was awarded. I felt extremely lucky to get this gig, given that people like Philip Lorca di Corcia were being considered for this job. (He’s someone who has inspired me.)

As a part of my submission, beyond my treatment, I offered to come up with some ideas as well, and do some drawings. The client was impressed with the creative and practical solutions I came up with for envisaging the concept. Even though we didn’t have full confirmation for about a month, I was involved in all the meetings. BAM was super excited for this and it was a very serious project for them. They usually do this in-house, but their sponsor Chase was paying for this so they outsourced to McGarry Bowen.

POP: Why do you think you were chosen for this job?

I think the reason I got chosen for the job, from so many people who do what I do – people who create tableau – is that I create slightly hyper-real images, but try not to make things look slick. Even though advertisers generally want their images to look aspirational – a notion that fosters slickness – this was such a fantasy-based campaign it didn’t matter so much. That’s what they liked about my work. The creatives felt that there was an honesty to my work which they considered necessary for the concept to be expressed convincingly.

We were all into surrealism and askew narratives, and that helped a lot with how we saw the idea being interpreted visually.

POP: What was the collaborative process like on this job?

I worked closely with Joe Mongognia, the Creative Director and David Black, the writer on the job. Basically this job was very restricted in terms of what we could do with the assets we were given. We wanted the protagonist to be stopped dead in their tracks to some degree in their daily life – BAM and then it hits you. They have this moment of remembering, a powerful remembering, so much so that it materializes in the space they are in be it outside or inside, they are stopped in their tracks and see these characters from the performance in their world. But no one else can see them; only they can see them.

You can imagine there were a lot of restrictions in terms of matching lighting, matching angles. And then beyond that conceptually coming up with scenarios that not just made sense technically (into the jigsaw puzzle), but they had to be somewhat jarring and interesting. It had to be something you wouldn’t see everyday. There were assets that were rejected by us because they were too close to someone in everyday street clothes so it wouldn’t have been too interesting. So the more bizarre the better in that regard. We kept narrowing down the images. Originally they wanted to do 6 – 8 ads but we got so excited; I sat in my favorite café for days just drawing. It was very fun work and I came up with a lot of ideas. The client must have been excited too because they increased the ad count to 11.

And then as we went along in production, some things changed in minor ways and some got canned. One in particular was our favorite and got canned after it was shot because it was considered too risque by the client’s sponsor. It was a really intensive production and there was a myriad of things that had to be considered being built around the assets.

There wasn’t a great margin for error. The tagline being “BAM and Then It Hits You,” so it had to be that way. And of course with so many people involved in the job, it can be so interpretive.  But they left a lot up to me and we worked really closely as a team and there was a lot of respect.  They were really nice guys and there was good energy. It was their campaign. We three were equal creatives and worked together as a team. Millions of emails back and forth day and night with no begrudging that because it was a really exciting project to be working on.

POP: In your images, aspiration is used to evoke an emotional response rather than to create a materialistic desire based on lack. It seems that this is the point where people can relate.  

This campaign is aspirational in a different sense, in a creative sense. In a shot from the campaign of the girl stuck in a huge rain storm in Williamsburg on a dark, industrial street, the character from the BAM show Vollmond was some crazy, long-haired character running down the street, with this intense light on him. The way he was lit in the production made me think of lightning flashing in a storm so I came up with the idea of him on a dark, stormy street running towards car headlights and that this is why he had light on him. The lighting in the show dictated the concept. We had to come up with a reason for the lighting on him.

The girl is just standing there and is being blown away by this massive wind. Her umbrella’s broken and the rain is pouring down on her. It’s hardly an aspirational moment. Something most people would want to avoid. But people would love to be entranced like that by something they feel so strongly about. And they get to do that through this image; they get to be part of that. I would prefer transformative. One can relate. As an artist, I see myself more as the person in the rain as I do the sexy silhouetted figure from the iPod ads a few years back. This whole commercial slick, “I’m so cool, I’m so great, I have an iPod.” I relate less to that and more to the stormy weather, which is more organic.

POP: This impulse towards honesty. So many photographers seem to be  interpreting this moment where an authenticity is being asked for with the snapshot aesthetic for example. It doesn’t seem transformative to me because it doesn’t always include the feeling quality. Reality is inspiring. It’s not bland. And I think it’s hard to capture this.

If I’m understanding you correctly, there’s something that’s lost technically in the photographic medium that doesn’t allow that kind of honesty to transpose into the final image. Even putting aside other senses like smell, taste, hot cold. Just experientially when you’re seeing something happen, outside the window your mind’s eye is putting together tones that are not jarring. So even if you’re looking directly at the late afternoon sun, you’re not getting excessive flair, you’re not getting silhouetting. Your brain is working all of this out when you’re looking at a scene. It’s really powerful when you’re able to incorporate all those visual things at once.

And technically speaking imagery is getting more sophisticated. There’s work being done in the way our eyes work where depth of field is perceived to be full all the time because our eye is scanning from one part of the scene to another putting it all together and it is translated as all being in focus. But if you concentrate, you will see that not everything is in focus. Photographically, it’s impossible to get what you experience visually. There’s not a photographer who wouldn’t say they wished they could instantly recreate what they see in their mind. But it doesn’t happen. Tones get blown out or go into shadow. Colors change.

What is exciting to me is to look at real-life situations or films where those tonal elements are brought back into that scope in the way that our mind’s eye sees reality. In film, lighting is used to bring back or create detail. Moving image productions, because of better budgets and therefore higher technical values, do this in a much more sophisticated way. Photography has always tended to be more formulaic because budgets are smaller and there’s less time.  A lot of that is changing now with the advent of new technologies that bring still and moving image-making into a collective realm.  Also, needless to say, ideas transcend regardless, and often in spite of, technology.

What’s been really important to me is to find ways to get that feeling across where I’m creating something that feels real and setting a stage for that to happen and then documenting that as a documentary photographer might. Not necessarily moving around as a documentary photographer would because that’s not part of the process I use. But the idea of bringing all the information back into a tonal range that feels real. And that’s a big, big part of the realist part of the work.

Early on I was up for a job and the art director told my agent that they really liked my work but didn’t see any evidence of my ability to light because “he uses all natural lighting.” We had to explain to them that it was all lit so that it’s brought back to that level of realism. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the job because it had already been awarded. But we realized in terms of the marketing strategy that we needed to let people know that we were not using just available light, that they were lit to look like they were available light.

There’s no getting away from that hyperrealism. You can feel it even if you don’t recognize it technically. It’s changing. People are becoming more sophisticated in their techniques, becoming a little more savvy. I’m not protective and will impart information that I know. But I also realize it’s an even playing field and you have to be a little careful sometimes.

Beyond that you have to believe in what you do. Honestly I don’t care about competition. If the job is right for me then I’ll get it.

POP: I wonder if now that we have more authenticity and honesty in advertising images, that people will start to recognize that traditional advertising images often leave them feeling bad? And not just with a sense of lacking something. 

That’s a good question.  Do you mean spiritually, philosophically? I’ve been really encouraged by the Occupy Wall Street style things happening as an extension of that. There was a Facebook post about a march through Soho of mostly young people. One friend took a photo out a window and posted it on Facebook and another person commented that these are mostly kids in New York whose parents are paying for their school. This didn’t bother me at all. I was just so excited to see them out there and think in some ways more excited that those are the kids out there because those are the ones you’d expect to have the least awareness. And I feel that this awareness is growing. But that it takes a high level of visual sophistication to recognize that.

It also depends. A lot of what is bad for us is so deliberately targeted in that way that it only breeds more negativity and pain. The people who make really violent movies are probably not coming from a good place themselves.

Technology and the computer age is now projecting us into a place where we sometimes don’t know where we stand. So in some ways we are becoming more aware and in others we are getting more and more confused. Certainly in terms of people being able to recognize this new type of imagery, it’s quite splintered.

With our culture changing as it has through computer technology and the dissemination of information, what’s interesting to me and how I work in that arena is just a very small component. All of the other stuff still exists and in some ways is going against the grain of what you’d expect. For instance, American Apparel is becoming more and more sexist in their advertising and it’s amazing to see this still happening. I guess it’s the kids who don’t see it because it’s such a strong imagery and they’re the ones to whom it matters to look sexy or hip.

You have to look at the money market. The people they’re selling to on that level of aspiration. Or banks selling security or stability as an idea when they’re the ones causing all the problems. A recent bank campaign I did was interesting. They really wanted to keep it honest. But they went back through the edit, the full edit – we gave them all the raw files. They pulled images we hadn’t worked on yet with lighting during testing that gave the images a flatter feel. This broke it down to the lowest common denominator. And this happens more and more with the bigger clients.

POP: You are hired for your specific voice or style. Is the brief more often than not asking for some level of honest depiction?

Yes, most of the time it is. Most of the time they want me to portray some sort of scenario between people where there’s an honesty and the story doesn’t feel so staged. We do this in a number of ways. It’s not just how we direct talent or what they’re wearing or how they’re cast. It’s a little hard to retain a lot of control over that. Even the clients who say they want me to do what I do in terms of telling a story, but they come in and micromanage every element.

It’s the nature of the beast. Everything has to be accounted for to the money people and their marketing strategy. I can only put in as much as I can. And maybe something I present is pulled back. Which is not to say that I go into a job saying “we have to do this!” and am then upset if we don’t. It’s more that I say “here’s an interesting possible way to do this” and discuss it with the art director and usually we’re on the same page. It’s usually the client that brings it to a slightly different place based on marketing.

POP: This authenticity is of course demanded or required for a campaign to break through our filters.

There is a broad cultural movement where people are becoming more savvy and they’re not so gullible as they once were so advertisers need to be more sophisticated—to represent a sense of earnestness and honesty. That’s not to say that all advertising is approached in this way. If you look back, it all used to be very slick. If you look back to the 80’s and 90’s, it was super slick and evoking amazing lifestyles. And people are getting wise to that. They realized they don’t have that lifestyle but are interested in embellishing the life they do have. What can you give me that is a little more real that I can relate to? It means relating to things that are not the best things in their life either. Might be more akin to problem solving. I think there is an increased audience for that now. To be a little honest and show things as they are.  To talk about that somehow or talk about how you might want to improve your life.

There was an old ad for a soap called Imperial Leather. The ad was a guy in his Learjet in a spa bath with his lady friend telling the captain to veer off to some island. Not too many people who can relate to that.

I do like the idea of coming from a little more honesty. This was one of the things I liked about the BAM campaign. It was all based in the everyday life of a New Yorker and from there it goes into fantasy, which is what they’re in the business of.

POP: How do you  depict reality without it devolving into straightforward representation or a narrow vision? 

I don’t think of myself as a niche market photographer or having that specific a voice or narrow a vision. I often see ads for American Apparel or things like that that maybe traditionally have nothing to do with what I shoot, in a marketing sense. But I sometimes consider how that product could be presented in a smarter way that’s not demeaning. So it frustrates me sometimes to see campaigns that rely on old advertising tricks that shouldn’t even exist anymore because they’re sexist or racist or whatever.

Things could be conveyed, even if they’re simple imagery, in a way that is more real. It takes you back to the beginning of modernism when you had the classic nude that was beautifully presented and soft and devoid of detail – a cherub-like image of a nude. And then Manet’s Olympus was one of the first nudes that showed a woman (a prostitute), reclining and pudgy and fully exposed. It doesn’t go into how we’d want to interpret an American Apparel campaign. It was the beginning of Modernism and got people thinking who didn’t necessarily want to be led by the church and how they viewed things. It was jarring at the time and stirred things up. It brought a greater awareness. Maybe the point is to go back and subtly inject reality back into things a little bit more. It’s more interesting to me to see a captivating image that doesn’t overtly say sexy than something that screams that.

POP: Many photographers are interpreting this trend towards realism and authenticity as a move away from Photoshop, formal composition and compositing. You instead utilize these tools to create a hyper-reality that allows for multiple perspectives and entry points.

I’m very interested in the surrealist movement. One or two jarring elements that take a viewer into a completely different headspace. The Avant-garde film from the 20’s and 30’s, people like Man Ray. That’s closer to where I’m going. This is why the BAM campaign was really nice. It allowed us to go there.

POP: By breaking away from the decisive moment, what is revealed? You’re representing reality, an interpretation of an interpretation of reality.

I’m not trying to avoid the decisive moment. However what happens before or after is and can be more interesting to, and demanding of the viewer. I don’t like to think it’s the perfect moment we’re trying to capture. Mistakes are often happy mistakes if they’re already within the context of something you are controlling. I think this is important to talk about a little bit. While there’s a realist bent to my work, it’s not reality. It’s a representation of reality. Or it’s an interpretation of an interpretation of a reality. It’s so far removed. What the camera sees is one interpretation of reality and what I do with it after is yet another. So I’m not saying this is real.

On one hand, I don’t care if it’s real or not. And sometimes it’s frustrating to me when in by-lines it’s referred to as photo illustration. I think it’s irrelevant. What’s important is that you’re trying to convey an idea through visual honesty. Again, referring back to an image for Time magazine. A friend said to me “Thank god for Photoshop. I love the dog in the corner.” And I explained that actually it was in the shot. That’s a good example of “who cares”? Because that dog was there. It was doing its thing regardless of which frame you’re looking at. It was part of the story. It wasn’t the main part of the story, but its inclusion served to tell the story in a more complete way.  It doesn’t matter whether it was captured two minutes before or two minutes after. Ultimately I’m only giving you an interpretation of what happened anyway, so you might as well let me do it without limiting me. I think it’s the artist’s prerogative to be interpretive in that way which is why I have no issue with compositing or editing in post.

Sometimes it’s the removal of information as well. While I don’t necessarily like to remove the building from a landscape because it’s there, but if it’s completely contrary to the idea or completely sending the viewer on the wrong path of consideration, then remove it. Certain signage, certain colors in the background. But that’s the painter in me. I don’t think of it in a purist photographic point of view.

It depends on the genre though. I don’t think documentary images should be doctored at all. It happens so much and sometimes so badly it’s embarrassing. But we’re talking about a much more interpretive genre of image making.

POP: Your editorial portraits have the same nuanced complexity as some of your most elaborate tableau. How did you approach the images of Charlie Sheen and Bernard Madoff?

These aren’t portraits. They are constructions of these people. For the Bernie Madoff image, the New York magazine came to me with a tight deadline and explained we were didn’t actually have access to Madoff. We found someone who looked just like Bernie Madoff, shot the actor in a Long Island Prison, and then I did the rest in Photoshop using my painting skills. I’ve re-sold the image many times and it’s the only creative portrait of Madoff -  it didn’t matter to the magazines if was actually Madoff in the shot or not. I was selected for this because of a group shot of NY celebrities I did for New York Magazine some years earlier. I had to shoot body doubles and photoshop, sourcing thousands of celebrity photos. It was epic.

Charlie Sheen was in the middle of his public media meltdown. This was shot for GQ in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria. It was styled to look as if it were trashed and I used a combination of three body doubles—one for the body, one for the face and third for the hair. It was finished in Photoshop with some finessing of paparazzi images of Charlie Sheen.

In both cases, it was disclosed that these were photo illustration. I don’t generally like this term, but was fine with it for both of these. I wanted to avoid a lawsuit from Charlie Sheen. When you see a pen illustration, we accept it. So why not a photo illustration? It’s akin to CG in a way. “We don’t have this thing, so why don’t we just make it.” The availability of new media and technologies are used to create a solution.

I tend towards environmental portraiture. I still enjoying doing non-contextual portraiture, but environmental portraiture for me is more evocative than a person staring straight into the camera—it doesn’t transcend photography because it’s so ubiquitous. It doesn’t mean what it did in the days of August Sander because our relationship to the camera has changed immeasurably. It was much more interesting at that point. I’m not saying it’s not valid, it’s just more about the forced relationship with the apparatus than what you might capture in a contextual portrait.

That said, a person’s gaze can be most arresting if it’s felt fully by the photographer. In some cased it depends on who the subject is. If it’s a celebrity, or someone whose public image carries a weight of mystery, then the most intense stare into the camera can be the best solution to expressing something about that person.

POP: How much compositing goes into building your images?

It varies. I try to composite as little as possible.  While shooting I’m constantly looking for elements that I might embellish a story with or give it depth in multi-narrative. I may notice something in the background that is secondary and might help inform the main story. I’ll shoot it with the view to include it later on as a sub-narrative. So compositing is really important to me, but only because it’s available, not because I always rely on it. It’s just great to have the ability to do that. I don’t look at Photoshop as a ‘nasty’ word, and think it’s a great tool, but always try to seamlessly put information in and not add a layer of hyper-reality by using Photoshop. I’d rather the visual interest comes from the story itself and lighting rather than Photoshop effects. Generally if you look at one of my images, I would rather you not think about Photoshop. But sometimes using it can’t be avoided in an advertising shot because the concept calls for compositing.

The shots with large groups of people are often composited. I try as much as possible not to composite them. Sometimes what I’ll do is shoot with a locked-off camera and re-direct specific scenes within the frame maintaining the same lighting and all the same conditions. There are times when I put 20 people in a shot. If they’re grouped I choreograph the shot if everything is happening all at once, but I’ll also shoot smaller groups of two – three people so that I can concentrate on that and get the best possible scenario because I can’t look at 20 people at once.

It’s not like with film where they have a more diminished role in the image if there are a lot of extras. A still image is far more open to scrutiny because it’s all there and it will still be there in three minutes. So it had better say something eloquently.  An extra in a film doesn’t function in the same way because they’re seen only for a fleeting moment while the viewer’s attention is on the primary narrative. If I go back to compositing, I’ll use it to add bits of information that even though they are secondary, they add bits of information. Same with lighting. I’ll highlight certain things to control the hierarchy of information.

POP: Do you do your own retouching?

I like to retouch myself because, if I don’t, a lot gets undone. Because of tight deadlines and budgets, they increasingly want to do it in-house. It happens a lot that you give your best and it gets watered down in the final stages. And you have to let go.

Generally speaking the American audience want bland advertising or at least that’s what they get. The British advertising is a little more edgy. A campaign I shot for a British client was retouched by the American division and got watered down. This happens a lot.

Smart clients will respect the process more and they will understand why I make decisions. The way I make images, retouching is an integral part of that. I come at it as a painter because that is my background. Putting elements together at different stages. You start broad and build details and not too different to how I like to construct paintings.

POP: What is your casting process?

I often use and try to work with actors because I try to get a realism out of them. Sometimes I’ll cast people on the street myself if they have something visually I’m looking for and I don’t need to pull something out of them performance-wise. I generally go with normal-looking people. I use Impossible Casting for editorial here in New York. They source from a lot of agencies: commercial, non-commercial, acting agencies. I try to stay away from slick, commercial agencies.

POP: How do you work with the actors you cast for your images?

Just given the nature of the work and full range of expression I want to convey, I work with actors. I have limited acting training myself at HB Studios founded by Uta Hagen.

Working with actors is easier, more inspiring. It’s hard working with models who have a greater concern about how they look than what the image is trying to convey. This can often impede the performance. I’ve had fashion and even print models who have asked to stand the other way because it’s their better side. And I’ve said “yes, I do mind.” It’s about them considering how they look and appear. Not uncommon among actors either, but I prefer people who can let themselves go a little bit and go into character.

POP: You’ve said you are influenced by Courbet, the 19^th century French Realist. Courbet’s work depicted the realities of 19^th century France including the poverty and harshness of life and was infused with social commentary.  What modern interpretation of this is in your work? How do you bring this to your advertising images?

I’m influenced by any of the more realist style of painters. What I particularly like are the images that break through classical representation of what is considered to be a more traditional way of seeing that is heavily influenced by mainstream culture or religion that have traditionally empowered that way of seeing and added to it. What I really like is when that is broken down more and when there is something that is jarring in what is supposed to be a real representation. When there is something that shouldn’t be there. At the very core I like being challenged in this way and challenging viewers.

POP: How does this work for your advertising clients?

Honestly, I try not to think too consciously about the agencies I’m working for. They put restrictions on you and you don’t have to actually think about those restrictions because you’re constantly being reminded of them throughout the process. I don’t necessarily get involved in the content stage of the advertising. Generally for the kind of work I do, I do get asked to interpret something in my own style, so I don’t have to think too heavily about what the advertisers want. Marketing and advertising strategy is something I don’t like to get involved with this too much. I believe it works. I’m not looking for that kind of mind manipulation being an artist. I’m looking more at expressing honesty in a message.  I realize though that this is contrary to the business I’m in.

The best kind of advertising client is one that doesn’t conceptually burden you with the content or the way something is being sold. In any case it’s not really my area of expertise.

POP: Can you tell me about the concept for your personal image “Are You Saved?” Is this part of a series?

This is part of a series that questions the notion of being saved. Who is saving whom? Why is this person being saved? Do they want to be saved?  In a deeper subtext, the images in this series are an investigation of the notion of control (by self and others) and loss of control.

My personal work is semi-autobiographical. It deals with family relationships and in my case it deals with religious themes because that was a big part of my upbringing. That was the context for my relationships with an extended family, that in my case, was the church. My personal work refers to happenings within my family or alludes to a bigger picture or perspective of the relationships between people, in large or extended families including religion.

 

POP: Photographic influences?

I’m excited about photography in general. I went through a stage where I thought photography was dead. But I don’t feel that way any more.

I have looked at so much Eggleston, Arbus, Henri Lartigue, and August Sander. I’m also influenced by both sides of Edward Steichen work, both his fine art and commercial work. But I’m a 1920′s and 1930′s freak. I’m crazy about old things. There’s a tactile quality in older photographs because of the volumnous materials that were being used, and the richness of them. At this stage of digital photography, nothing has replicated the richness or three dimensionality of a sliver-rich fiber-based print.

Beyond technical quality, I’m also drawn to the  relative innocence of old photographs – the escapism associated with ‘not knowing too much’. It’s so easy to deconstruct an image today because we’re technically and theoretically savvy.  There’s a lot to be said for submitting to the magic and fantasy of the unknown.

As a side project, I just completed the full retouching on the Wizard of Oz books. They’re releasing the full 15 volumes. It was amazing. Despite the current printing techniques, you just can’t match the depth and organic quality of the printing techniques. Now people are scratching their heads asking how did they do this?

POP: You were also a painter and this influences your photography.

How I feel about the relationship between the two media is best summed up by this quote by Picasso… “Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.”

That’s the very essence of how I view making photographs.

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