inbtwn.
(beginnings) ISSUE 02
Dear readers, This issue is about beginnings. You know that feeling when you wanted to start doing something, but it seemed too difficult, but then you started it, and now you’re doing it, and you can’t imagine not doing it? Yeah, that feeling. Or when you found one song by a band you’d never heard of, and now you know every album, and you’re getting ready to see them for the third time? Yeah, that. Beginnings happen quickly, and they happen slowly. Sometimes they happen within our awareness and sometimes outside of it, but they’re happening all the time. This issue looks at all those kinds of beginnings. We interviewed photographer, Phoebe Kelly, about her perspective on shooting 35mm. We also spoke with lead singer, Niko, and drummer, Jordan, of Lighting Cola about the band’s evolution and direction for the future. And that’s just the beginning (heh) of what we have for this issue. We also received some great writing, photo, and art submissions. So, thank you to everyone who submitted content or contributed to the “Recently, I began...” collage. For future submissions, send your writings, photos, artwork, or whatever else to inbtwncollective@gmail.com. Enjoy! Always, The “inbtwn” Staff
how foreign it feels to begin again when I never saw an end to us. // anonymous
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// photos by Claire Richards
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Phoebe Kelly
3 // Tabitha, Amsterdam
// Water, London
film is not dead. a conversation with Australian photographer, Phoebe Kelly.
4 // Boys along the water, Slovenia
// Janni at the reservoir Q: How did you get into photography?
Q: Do you develop your own photos?
Phoebe: I bought a digital camera, but I didn’t use it much. I never felt like I was really in love with it. But then I bought a film camera because I loved the aesthetic — the color and the grain — and so I bought one in I think 2015, and since then I’ve been doing it quite steadily.
Phoebe: At the moment, I get them developed because color film is a bit tricky to develop — the process and stuff. But I really want to learn how to develop and print in the dark room because you have way more control with what you’re doing, editing in there with chemicals rather than digitally. There’s just not a lot of places where I live that do that, so I just have to wait.
Q: Do you only shoot film or do you shoot digital as well? Phoebe: Primarily I shoot 35mm film, but I do use digital for uni related projects or low light where it’s more fitting with the logistics. But, all my personal stuff is with film. I like the aesthetic, the process, and the tangibility of it. I’m looking to do medium format soon as well, which is exciting. I just bought a 120mm camera.
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Q: What is your perspective on analog versus digital photography? A: If someone has interest in photography, definitely give analog a go. It’s the best way to really understand the whole process because you’re forced to understand all the manual settings yourself.
And that was definitely my case, I didn’t really understand it until I did it myself because digital at times can be a bit to easy, you can just put it on automatic and not really understand the settings. So analog is great for learning the settings. Obviously, I love film because I use it a lot, but I think digital is just as valid. I’m going to try and use it more. It’s better if you have an idea and want to see it materialize immediately and then be able to alter it straight away. It’s just the editing side which I struggle with. I don’t have a digital workflow, and I always end up wanting it to look like film
Q: How quickly do you go through a roll of film? Phoebe: If I’m at home, it can be a few weeks. But if I’m travelling, it can be an hour or a day. Q: Do you experiment with different films? Phoebe: At the moment, I’m using some expired film. I’ve experimented with a bunch of different films, but I found that I didn’t really keep notes of which was what. So when I’m looking through photos I’m like “Oh, I like that look!” but then I don’t know which one I used. Sometimes I have six rolls developed at once, and I forget which film is what photo. But something I’ve tried to do is shoot a roll of film and soak it in water and put lemon juice and then have it developed. So, I’ve tried that but nothing too much recently.
// Henri
Q: When it comes to taking the photo, what are you focusing on?
does anyway. But with digital, you can experiment a lot more and more quickly.
Phoebe: With most of them since it’s film, I just take one photo of the subject matter. Mostly, it’s just I see a certain composition or some light. There’s not a lot of preplanning, it’s just what I’m doing in that moment. This year, I want to look into planning shoots with more concepts behind them, more portraits and actually planning rather than just
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shooting whoever’s with me. Q: What photographers inspire you? Phoebe: Wolfgang Tilmmans is up there, if not my favorite. His shooting style and aesthetic is very much the kind of thing I go for. But also, he’s found a way to bridge all genres. He’s not just commercial but also does fine arts. He manages not to be pigeon holed into one category. I also like Uta Barth. Her use of light and observations of the everyday and detail is amazing. Ryan McGinley’s series on summer road trips is something I became obsessed with. He’s who got me interested in film. I’ve recently discovered Sophie Harris-Taylor who I really like for the way she notices and transforms small moments.
Q: Where do you see yourself taking photography? Phoebe: I’d love to somehow pursue it as a career, but also I’m realistic, and I know it’s a very hard thing to do. Photography is something I’m always thinking about, and I don’t see myself becoming less obsessed with it in the future. There’s still a lot of things I really want to explore. A dream would be to be able to be like Tillmans, to do the fine arts side then do portraits, documentary, do a broad spectrum of things. But I think I’ll have to find other ways to support doing that, but I think whatever I do will be in the arts.
// Tabitha, Barcelona
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// Cup on table, Slovenia
behind the photos Boys along the water, Slovenia This was taken at Lake Bled in Slovenia where I was staying for a few days as I was travelling with my sister in June. The afternoon after we arrived, we had a walk around the lake where there were groups of people suntanning and lying by the water, and I saw this group of guys and sneakily took a photograph as the light was really lovely. I thought it was just a nice moment of a group of young people doing nothing more than relaxing by the water, kind of sums up that summer feeling. Janni at the reservoir This one is of my friends, Janni, at a reservoir that we visited a lot in the afternoons after uni last semester. After we’d gone there a few times, I thought it would be an interesting photo to have someone lying in the lillipads, and this photo was one taken as I was just chatting before taking the proper one, just at a moment where he was laughing at something and pulled a face. I ended up liking this a lot more than the photo I had imagined it looking like. Henri This photo is of another friend, Henri, on a trip to waterfalls during a camping trip last winter. I was sitting on a rock below him and just looked up and told him to hold what he was doing as I liked the angle. It’s a photo that reminds me of a good weekend.
Tabitha, Barcelona This photo is of my sister, Tab, lying on Barcelonita beach last August before we were both going to the UK for 6 months exchange. She was having a nap on the beach, and I remember thinking the light on her hair was really beautiful and wanted to take a photo of it – it was taken with a point and shoot, which made me happy how sharp it was. Both my sisters are quite reluctant to let me take photos of them, but Tabitha’s recently started to be a bit happier to be in my photographs so I think it will be really nice to have more photos of them in the future. Cup on table, Slovenia This was taken in a hostel in Slovenia in June. As I was making tea, I noticed how the light hit the glass and thought it was quite beautiful. Tabitha, Amsterdam This photo is of my sister, Tabitha, in an airbnb in Amsterdam. She happened to walk past the mirror, and I just thought it was a nice composition, having the reflection in the mirror and thought the muted colours worked nicely together as well. Water, London I’ve more recently been finding nice compositions within small details and quiet moments, I think more of a focus on light – taken of the bath in London, June.
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Kerri Mulcare I’ve been interested in art and making from a very early age. It’s the one thing that I liked above all other things in school and I would often get in trouble for drawing during times when I was supposed to be doing school work. I’ve always been a day dreamer and I loved, and still love, to draw and paint. I spent many hours as a kid in my “fort” behind my parent’s recliner, jamming to bad 90s pop and cutting things out of magazines to paste in a notebook. I had volumes of them. They were all images of what I wanted my life to look like when I grew up. My friend and I started these notebooks together and we would have competitions to see who could cut around the images we chose with the most precision. I would say this honed my eye for detail and kick started my love for found imagery. I do a lot of collage and mixed media work. I started exploring collage pretty heavily in 2008/2009 and its continued to be a part of my practice since. I like to explore different things and don’t necessarily try to limit myself to one style or way of making, but I always seem to come back to and incorporate collage in my work. Piecing things together that normally wouldn’t belong together to create something entirely different is what I find most satisfying. I’m currently finishing my BFA in Print, Paper, Book Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and I’m really interested in how I can incorporate my current practice with print making and book arts. With my found photographs series, Lost & Found, I alter the images in some manner through the use of embroidery, collage and paint. Each piece is an exploration of the idea of personal histories and the moments we choose to preserve through photography, as well as their transition from lost objects into found/repurposed ones with new histories of their own. Some are more serious than others, but the ghosts are mostly a way to make myself laugh. I also just really like ghosts. I draw my inspiration from many places, including but not limited to: the natural world, history, storytelling, poetry, music, abstraction, color, form, pattern, fleeting moments, loss, memory/the unconscious, and dreams.
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// Coral and Ochre Ghosts
// Maybe I’m Dreaming
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// shirt by Michelle Maquet
“Towards the end of the school year I realized that I wanted to be able to do something at home other than watch TV or clean my room. Also, I have an obsession with bathing suits and didn’t want to have to pay as much for them anymore. So, I decided to sew my own and tried sewing shirts as well.” - Michelle Maquet
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// photo by Claire Richards
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How did I by Shelby Newallis
I’ve always been a word person. Maybe, it’s because from an early age, my parents would read me stories, expose me to satirical comedy and encourage hours on end of silly Mad Libs. Fortunately, all that, combined with a handful of extraordinary English teachers from grades 8 -11, gave me the confidence I needed to try my hand at attempting to create the stories I so enjoyed. This resulted in a poetry contest submission, some alternative, yet formulaic college admission essays and a half-finished screenplay, all before 18. Though, I liked writing, and felt like maybe I was even good at it, I was still intimidated by the word “writer”. Especially, at the college level, since I had never written for a real publication. I grew tired of academic writing after Fall Quarter, so, I decided to bite the bullet and submit a sample piece for my campus newspaper’s Lifestyle section. I wrote about what I liked — food and Italian culture. It was a wannabe
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restaurant review of an Italian place that I had recently tried with my family. I emulated styles that I had seen in past LA or NY Times restaurant reviews, going into great detail about the lemon-basil cream sauce that made the handmade ravioli taste like they were from another planet. When the Lifestyle Editor called me in for an interview, she asked me where I got my inspiration to write, and I said with a naive confidence, “Well, I’ve always kind of wanted to be Carrie from Sex and the City, but like with the comedy of Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling.” She chuckled in a ohhoney-you’ve-got-a lot-to-learn kind of way, and gave me the job as a Contributing Writer. I’m not gonna lie, that title made me feel 2 Legit 2 Quit. I was a proud lowman on the totem pole, working my way up to Staff Writer, Editorial Assistant and eventually Columnist. I had done it! Finally, I was my
get here ? own version of Carrie Bradshaw, minus Mr. Big, the Manhattan apartment and ok, I was really nothing like her....except we both had our own column. While Carrie’s was about love and sex, mine was about love and/of pasta. Writing about my year in Italy in a column for thousands of people to read (or ignore), weirdly helped me to process everything that was changing in my life. From publicizing the fact that I pretty much no idea what I was doing, most of the time, I felt like I was able to not only open my mind to the infinite cultural differences and nuances that one experiences as a fresh face in a foreign land. I was also, able to connect with readers and influence opinions about travel and culture; which was and is still, my reason for sharing my work publicly. When I returned from study abroad, I wrote about reverse culture shock and the weird sensation of leaving the college bubble to enter the workforce. My
writing was evolving as I was, not always for the better or worse, it’s just the reality of moving on. And it still is… Fast forward to now, just a little over a year since college graduation, and I’m still trying to figure out how writing fits into my life. As a twenty-something Substitute Teacher and Editor-in-Chief of the E-Zine, High Faluter, my life is not what I anticipated as that naive little freshman writing a restaurant review. It’s not what my naive little college senior-self anticipated either. What I’ve learned from working, meeting people from diverse backgrounds and life after graduation, is that balancing act of life is much like writing. You write something you like, and you’re happy with it for a while, then, you get tired of it and change it over and over again. The trick is to never lose the insight and respect for the deleted paragraphs and old drafts, because it’s those first scribbles that give character to the final, more polished pieces.
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Recently, I began... To dislike getting up anytime after 9. I have realized that my days don’t need to begin at 12 and that there is so much more to see and do throughout the entire day. No moment should be wasted. To think about the future. What I want comes first right now. To sleep earlier, wake up earlier, and do breathing exercises! (coping with the MCAT lol) Trying to focus on living in the moment rather than viewing right now as a stepping stone towards the future. There will always be more goals I hope to achieve, but the journey towards them is what I want to remember. Creating new dreams and looking for new adventures. Reading I'm beginning to fall in love :) Eating cherry tomatoes and I'm convinced they're just grapes in disguise.
Enjoying the entire process of traveling Journaling To think that our lives are perfectly planned even though we may not be aware of this plan. All instances in our lives happen for a reason, and all the "bad" things that happen throughout our days have a purpose. We just need to accept it and embrace it in order to live a happy and stress-free life. Meditating. And whether it is because of the meditation or just by chance I am starting to feel more content. More content with boredom, more content with hearing and doing absolutely nothing. To feel lost. To think about training for a more challenging multi-sport race like a triathlon or Spartan event - to push myself out of my normal routine. Actively listening to silence. Applying to internships for next summer. Listening to Podcasts! S-Town and How I Built This are favorites
a series of submissions 15
// Untitled 01, by Emily Kang
// Untitled 02
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Lightning Cola a conversation with lead singer, Niko, and drummer, Jordan, on their beginnings, their style, and their direction Q: How did your interest in music start? Niko: We’ve all played and been into music our whole lives. Always had a magnetic pull towards music. Jordan: Jordan: Yeah, I think it started with my dad playing music in the car when I was a little kid. Niko: Yeah, like when you’d go on car trips as a little kid and have music playing the whole way.
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Q: When did the band start? Jordan: The band we have now, with the members we have, started 3 years ago. Niko: Yeah, this band sort of started when my brother Xander joined. The rest of us are just friends, but we’ve all become really tight. We became friends in high school when I overheard Jordan listened to TV on the Radio. Q: What led to transition in the name from Paper Days to Lightning Cola?
Niko: The transition was a pretty natural progression. When Xander joined the band, we were already named Paper Days. He was just 15 when he joined the band, and he as a musician has already grown significantly even in the short period of time from not playing in a band to being in one all of sudden. And in that transition, we’ve grown so much and keep on learning that it became a desire to reinvent ourselves in a way that we were more proud of — that better represented how we are in the moment. Paper Days sort of felt like us in the past. We wanted to separate ourselves. Q: Describe your music. Niko: That’s always a tough question. All of our influences come from such a diverse palette when you put all of us together because we write extremely collaboratively. It’d be a much more straightforward answer if just one of us was writing, but because we’re all contributing it’s much more diverse. Q: What is your creative process when it comes to song writing? Jordan: It’s similar but different every time. We throw sounds and rhythms at each other and compliment each other. It’s basically musical throw up that we build and organize into something cool. Niko: We jam and we record ourselves, so we can go home after a 2-hour jam session and find little moments that we like. Then, we
share those with each other over email, and when we meet again we build off of those little highlights. Each time the songs are constantly changing and evolving.
“The stuff we’re working on is stuff we are completely producing. It feels a lot truer to us because there’s nothing that gets lost in translation.” -Niko Q: Is there a piece of the song making process that’s harder than other pieces? Jordan: Well, vocals always come last, so that may be the hardest part. Niko: Because we write so collaboratively, we kind of learn the meaning of the song as it happens. So I wouldn’t say vocals are the hardest but it just comes last in the development process because we have to figure out for ourselves what we’re trying to express or what it means to us. It’s honestly different every time though. There’s things we have to work out for every song.
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more so than the end product of what you make with a group, and that’s what’s so surreal about being in a band. It’s sort of a constant surprise.
Q: How has recording evolved as the band has become more developed? Niko: Jordan and I just got our degrees in recording arts to be able to have more control of our end results — to make it more us. So right now, we’re in a transitional period in the band. The newer stuff we’re working on is stuff we are completely producing. It feels a lot truer to us because there’s nothing that gets lost in translation like when you’re trying to express it to a producer or something. It’s liberating. The same way that we’re collaborative in the jam room, we’re collaborative in the productions. Q: Do you like the dynamic of being in a band versus doing solo stuff? Jordan: It’s two different worlds. When you’re doing it on your own, you have more of an idea of the end product to some extent
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Niko: When we get together and write, it’s beyond what we could do on our own because we strengthen eachother. Q: “Sweet Destiny” is your highest played song on Spotify, can you talk a bit about how this song came together? Niko: We were on a west coast tour in a hotel room somewhere north of LA. We just were playing guitars in a dog park across form the hotel. I just sort of came up with those chords, and Nate wrote that riff kind of right away, and then we went back to the hotel and finished it. When we got back home, we actually forgot about it then found it later recorded on our iPhones and it came to life when we really worked on it. It had a really big progression once it got into the studio. We can never really anticipate how people will respond. We’re in a different headspace than the listener. Q: How has the energy at live shows changed as the band has grown?
Niko: We’re still fairly small scale, we’re local. But the biggest thing is in the beginning, we’d play shows and just hope people would stay for our set and listen. But now, it’s really amazing to see the room fill up as we’re about to play and see people who are ready to go crazy from the first song. But that didn’t happen in the beginning. It’s really amazing to see people respond in the way that we feel about the songs. Q: What do you hope people take away from your music, and what goals do you have for the band? Niko: I don’t have expectations about what people should take away. I just think we want to express ourselves through the music and see how people respond. For goals, we just want to keep putting new music out and tour with it. Touring new material with physical CDs is the ultimate goal for now.
“That’s what’s so surreal about being in a band. It’s sort of a constant surprise.” -Jordan
Top left: Niko Top right: Jordan Bottom left: Nate and Niko Bottom right: Xander
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Editor in Chief
Taylor Seamans
CONTRIBUTIONS Claire Richards // pgs 2, 12 Phoebe Kelly // pgs 3 - 8
Kerri Mulcare // pgs 9 - 10 Michelle Maquet // pg 11
Shelby Newallis // pg 13 - 14 Emily Kang // pg 16
Lightning Cola // pgs 17 - 20
To have your work featured in the next inbtwn, email us at inbtwncollective@gmail.com! 21
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September 2017