Snapixel Magazine Issue 10 by Snapixel

SNAPIXEL

Edward Olive Jose Javier Serrano Janet Delaney OntosHIKi Simon HĂ¸gsberg Instagr.am

Want to submit to the magazine? Check out our website. And while youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re there, take a peek at all of the additional content we have online.

Photo: Ontoshiki

snapixelmag.com

in the magazine 08

single frames

On the Town

Check it out

Pop Culture

tech spot

Measure Of Success

I Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Really Care What You Think.

Part of the crowd

workeatsleepbreathe

Streetstyle

Q&A: Instagr.am

a word from the editor

Photo: Jose Javier Serrano

ou are going to notice some big changes in this issue – this month, the Snapixel crew is proud to bring you our newly redesigned and reconceptualized magazine. Snapixel has grown so much over the past year, and our new and more refined design reflects the increasingly high quality photography that we’ve collected for you. Snapixel Magazine is a gallery in print – we want you to pick up every issue and see amazing imagery from new and growing photographers right next to work from more established artists. This issue’s theme reflects the complexity of the concepts behind the creation of our magazine – we want to explore comcepts that speak to the heart of good photography, and we’re starting with an attempt to explore the boundries of candid photography. We want to know, where is the line that we cross between the private and public domain when we depict people in our photographs? When does art turn into exploitation? At what point does photography turn into voyeurism? We hope that these questions and the photography that we’ve chosen to help us explore this topic make you think more about the real meaning behind the art of photography. It’s only the first of a whole new series of intriguing themes dealing with the complexity of photography that are going to be featured in the months to come. Please enjoy!

contributors

editor kaitlyn ellison content editor robin lam art director adam oliver creative director sarah marshall contributing writers alexander powell

henson,

stephanie

contributing photographers cecilia austin, david gibson, devin yalkin, edward olive, janet delaney, john tran & dyanna dawson, Jose Javier Serrano, ontoshiki, phil oh, simon hogsberg

cover photo by Devin Yalkin contents photo by Edward Olive Photo: Phil Oh

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Single frames

LUNAR DEVIN YALKIN Www.Devinyalkinphotography.com

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SINGLE FrameS

London 1991 DAVID GIBSON www.gibsonstreet.com

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SINGLE frameS

Boudoir Cecilia Austin www.ceciliaaustin.com

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on the town San francisco

New Orleans THE OGDEN MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN ART: BIRNEY IMES Opens January 13 There’s some great documentary work up for display in the Ogden Museum of Louisiana this month. Birney Imes has lived in Columbus, Mississippi his entire life and this new show captures the beautiful culture of the deep South. Find out more at http:// www.ogdenmuseum.org. The show ends in April. Photo: Joyce at Sugar Hill,Crawford, Miss., 1982

Photo: Grace Roberston, Good Friends and Neighbors, 1954

Peter Fetterman Gallery: Farewell A7 Opens January 11 This is the last exhibition that the Peter Fetterman Gallery will have on display in Gallery A7, at Bermanot Station. They’re moving to a new space soon, so take a peek at Farewell A7 to celebrate the good times. If you’ve never been to the original gallery or if you’re looking for a kooky collection of work, this is definitely the right place for you. See http://www. peterfetterman.com for more information, or if you’re not within visiting distance, to check out the images residing in the show.

San francisco SF MOMA: EXPOSED ON FILM February 1, 3, 10 and 17 Maybe you’ve already seen the exhibit EXPOSED (if you haven’t, go see it already, it’s not to be missed,) but there’s even more to MOMA’s presentation of voyeurism. Exposed on Film is a film series presented by the museum featuring titles like “Voyeurism and Early Cinema” and “Surveillance Then and Now” which explore the ideas of the exhibit through a longer-format genre. The series starts February 1, check out www.sfmoma.org/events/series/1339 for more dates. EXPOSED runs through April 17, 2011. Photo: Nan Goldin, Nan and Brian in bed, New York City, 1983; detail from The Ballad of Sexual Dependency; 1979-1996; nine-carousel projection with approximately 700 slides, soundtrack, and titles; dimensions variable; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; © Nan Goldin; image: courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

New Y0rk City

Los Angeles DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY : WILLIAM E. JONES February 12 - March 2 In February, the David Kordansky Gallery will be presenting a new show from William E. Jones about the “cultural history of sexuality, ideologies of power and strategies of social control” in America. If that’s not titillating enough to convince you to go to this exhibit, we don’t know what is. More info at http://www. davidkordanskygallery.com. Photo: Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Photo: F Devin Tepleski’s sereies “Ghana”

HEARST 8x10 PHOTOGRAPHY BIENNIAL Opens January 11 The second annual Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial exhibition will feature artists Nicholas Mendise, Devin Teleski, Christoph Engel, Jonathan Smith, Gareth Kingdon, Victor Yuliev, Rena Effendi, and Thomas Stanworth. These photographers were chosen from more than 4,600 entries from over 70 countries, and have been thrust in the spotlight as “the next generation of emerging photographers.” If you can’t see it in person, the website hearst8x10. com has images from both this year and last year’s competitions.

London LONDON STREET PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL July 7 - 17 Though it’s not until July, we couldn’t resist mentioning this street photography festival in this issue. There is still an open call for student and international photography, so all interested photographers should go to http://www.londonstreetphotographyfestival.org to find out more information about participating. There are tons of events, projects, and workshops leading up to this event as well. Go to page 16 of this issue for a great project associated with this organization! Photo: Nick Turpin

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Check it Out

We’re All Gonna Die. 100 Meters of Existence. Simon Høgsberg’s piece is literally 100 meters long. One image composed of a multitude of photographs stiched together, all taken from the same spot over a 20 day period. On his website, the photographer has the image set up to scroll so you can look through all 100 meters of it. This is a perfect example of a great piece of artwork that was just too large to fit into Snapixel’s pages, so we’ve featured it in this section specifically set aside for cool projects.

us. Because we don’t want to die alone. I believe that many of us instinctively know about the freedom inherent in forming relationships and engaging with other people, but many of us are afraid to do this. The title We’re All Gonna Die is a shock-reminder that our time is short and that being passive out of fear of engaging is not an option. How did this project come about for you? What was the inspiration for it? Was there a reason you had for choosing the location - that specific bridge?

Can you explain the title of this piece? What meaning does it have for you? We all know that one day we will die. But with this piece I want to remind myself and others that one day we will no longer be here. Being reminded of your own death means being reminded that you are a fragile individual who needs other people. Many of us—especially in the western world—tend to withdraw into private spheres from which we look out on the world but without being able to truly engage with it. It’s a hellish place to be, a comfort zone ruled by fear and desire. And I thought: if we’re not getting together while we are alive, why be alive at all? Hey man, we’re all gonna die. When we get this on a really, truly emotional level we will have to reach out to the person next to

In 2007 I went to Berlin to write a novel. At least that was my intention. And I got restless, and I got up from behind the computer and took my camera bag with me, left the apartment and started going for long walks in Berlin. One day at noon I ended up on the top of a bridge—The Oberbaum Brücke it’s called—that turned out to be a very good place to take portraits of people. On the top of the bridge pedestrians coming from each side of the bridge in a constant flow were entering a pathway that led down to trains running under the bridge. I sat down on this pathway, put on a 400 mm lens and started taking pictures of th upper bodies of the hundreds of people who were entering the frame of the camera.

Simon Høgsberg The cool thing about taking pictures on that bridge was that behind the pedestrians there were no trees, no buildings, nothing to disturb or direct attention away from the people entering the frame of the camera. Behind the people was only sky, which immediately made me think that I could simply and easily cut out these hundreds of people I was photographing and put them into a very long image that could just go on and on. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, to make one long image full of people that just kept coming. This inspiration became the birth of the 100-meter photograph “We’re All Gonna Die—100 meters of existence.” What kind of equipment did you use, both while shooting and to stitch the photograph together afterwards? The camera I used for the project is a Canon EOS 1D Mark II and the lens a Canon 100-400 mm zoom lens set at 400 mm at all times throughout the project. I used Photoshop to stitch the image together. What is your latest project? Since April 2010 I have kept returning to the same small spot in front of the same big supermarket on a big street in Copenhagen, photographing, paparazzi-style, pretty much whoever enters the frame of the camera. By now I think I have 35,000

or 40,000 portraits of people, and I’m not really sure where this project is heading. The whole issue about how each of us is so incredibly influenced by the culture we are a part of interests me very much. And I believe that with this particular project I’m somehow trying to document patterns that I become aware of as a witness in front of this supermarket, and which connect these strangers. I’m so interested in documenting how alike we really are, and how many of us seem to be unconscious of how much we really are products of the culture we live in. We’re not unique. We’re the same. I suffer, that may be so, but my suffering is not ‘my’ suffering. My happiness is not ‘my’ happiness. The thoughts and feelings we have are products of culture, and I want to show how funny [and] sad it is to see how life unfolds if one is not conscious about this fact. Let’s see what this project points to. Something more, I hope. A culture more developed than this one. A culture less based on fear and desire and consumption than this one. We all very soon need to take the next step to let go of our habitual convictions and get moving. Culture is stuck where it is. I have a camera, and I hope I’m in the process of documenting that and by doing so pointing to possibilities that are more fun, more exciting, bigger, better, and more liberating. See more of Høgsberg’s work at http://www.simonhoegsberg.com/

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pop culture ART

BOOKs

Film

Music

RETAI L

Street Photography Now If you want to get a look into the minds and work of some of the best street photographers out there, take a peek at the Street Photography Now project. The most visible component of this project is its recently published book, which shows off the work of 46 artists in a survey of street photography beginning in the 1980s. But the coolest part of the project is in the website, where a leading contemporary street photographer creates a challenge for the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s followers once each week. For the seven days following each post, photographers can post their responses to the prompt via flickr. The best part? The project is running for a whole year, and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still plenty of time left to participate. To join in on the fun, go to http://streetphotographynowproject.com

Tech Spot By Alexander Henson

1 Polaroid x Lady Gaga = Grey Label

21 Casio Tryx Having realized the market potential for narcissistic Facebookers and casual camera users, Casio has released the Tryx, combining a dual hinged-design (one on the body, one for the LCD) and touchscreen controls that will undoubtedly appeal to those of us addicted to smartphone swiping and social networking. Ditch the tripod, flip the frame into a stand and photobomb to your heart’s content…or simply reverse the LCD for fail-proof self-portraits. A 12 MP sensor, 21mm wide-angle lens, and HD-quality 1080p movie capture capabilities package function alongside the fun. Available this spring for $249.

In a collaboration between global icons (or more likely, celebrity product piggybacking), Polaroid has taken a page out of Lady Gaga’s “Crazy F***ing Ideas” Moleskine and developed a new Grey Label line of products. The GL10 Instant Mobile Printer and GL30 Instant Digital Camera are no surprise, using Polaroid’s ZINK inkless technology in the same vein as their namesake instant film. However, the gem of the Gaga collection is the GL20 Camera Glasses. Look, snap, and share photos with your friends via the camera lens and LCDs built into the glasses. Just don’t get pissed when you inevitably sit on them or leave them in a random dressing room. Prices and release dates TBA.

3 Fujifilm FinePix x100 2

One of the most exciting products for 2011, the Fujifilm FinePix x100 harks back to the timeless analogue camera body design and detail while packing prosumer-level guts and a 23mm (equivalent to 35mm) semi-wide angle Fujinon lens. Easy-access dials for manual controls, a hybrid viewfinder and 2.8” LCD display, and to-die-for retro looks are sexily intriguing for the photographer looking for a full-function walkaround camera. Lose the bulky DSLR without too much compromise, and give all the other camera nerds you know a hard-on in the process. But don’t toss your backup D60 onto Craigslist yet – the x100 will be available in March for the “Hey…still cheaper than a Leica” price of $1199.

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Measure Of Success Words by Robin Lam, Photography by Janet Delaney

Photographers always have the most succinct way of describing their field. I remember sitting one morning with Bay Area photographer Janet Delaney in the corner of her second-story workspace, sifting through various online photo magazines when Ms. Delaney heaved a big sigh and said offhandedly, “The world is full of sad people taking sad photos.” Then she laughed and after a pause, tilted her head to one side and said,

“I guess that’s the way it is.”

With short, cropped, greying hair, red-rimmed plastic glasses, and a newfound penchant for the benefits of exercising, Janet Delany has a decidedly stoic approach to life. Modest by nature, she talks little about herself in normal conversation, preferring instead to listen to you and keeping her thoughts to herself, while every so often glancing at you with a convincing twinkle in her eye which reveals that she has more on her mind than she’s letting on. Perhaps this trait of listening more than speaking was picked up from her 28 years of teaching, though some of it probably has to do with a desire to maintain control over a fast paced and oftentimes hectic life of teaching, family, and photography. But as I speak on the phone with her one foggy morning soon after the New Year, she speaks frankly about her relationship with photography. With the majority of her professional career spent teaching alongside photographing, Delaney attributes much of her personal growth to the experience of mentoring and guiding students in the medium. “The experience of teaching has always been a real joy, I was probably going to teach regardless of anything else in my life,” she says. “Teaching is about working with ideas and working with nurturing other people’s ideas, and I find that really rewarding. Anyone who’s ever taught Photo I in the darkroom has the same kind of response, a kind of thrill

watching other people see that print come out of the chemistry. And that first initial acknowledgement of the magic of the whole process and being able to shepherd other people into the world of photography was always very rewarding. It is less so with digital.” Like many photographers who had their start in the pre-digital era, Delaney laments the overall switch from film to digital, though she admits that there are some benefits to the changes that digital has brought. “There are a billion images out there,” she says, referring to the plethora of photographs that are taken and uploaded onto the Internet on a daily basis. “When I began, a photograph was still a bit of a special thing. To be able to make a photograph one had to devote a great deal of time and energy. There are so many more people making images now because of the digital camera and camera phones. This raises the bar for all of us—it may even increase our visual literacy. The technique has been changing since the invention of the medium. The challenge still remains: how to make a consistent body of work that shows something in a unique manner, that brings new light to the content.” This struggle to accurately realize a project that represents a larger view of a moment in history, while still staying true to her personal perspective is a challenge that Delaney has felt throughout her career. She admits that one of her greatest

difficulties is completing the various projects she has accumulated over the years—a project can take between six months to over 10 years to complete. Her longest project, a retrospective of San Francisco’s South of Market district, started in 1979 and is currently in the process of becoming a book. “I’m still working on [that] one, you know obviously not everyday. There have been years where I haven’t even been able to touch it. I’d photographed from ‘79, had a big show in ‘82, kind of kept working with it for a year or two afterwards, and then put it down. And then I was asked to show it again in ‘98 so I revisited it, fixed it up and then put it back in the box again. Now I’m working on a book that I’m hoping to get published of the same images.” Delaney considers one of her most successful periods of photography to be the two years in the mid-1980’s during which she photographed People and Places, a New York City project that explores the experience of photographing strangers. “Sometimes I wonder who it was that had the nerve to do it,” she says now, 30 years after completing the project. “People watching is a familiar term—‘Oh we’re just people watching.’ But there’s this kind of feeling of extending your experience out beyond just your own personal needs of the moment. When I am doing it, I’m not thinking about what I have to do, I’m thinking about what other people are doing. And so it’s nice to

shift away from my own personal demands.” Most people welcome the opportunity to be photographed, she says, but there are always those who will balk at the sight of a camera. Delaney does not pursue. Is it a photographer’s right to be able to photograph anything ‘public,’ even if it’s against an individual’s wishes? “This is always a big question. I have mixed feelings about it. I knew I did not want to be a news photographer running in for the ‘Shot that would Tell The Story’ at the expense of the privacy of the people whose lives were being directly affected. Yet I am glad other people do this because I want to know what is going on in the world. Pause to imagine a world where no one made images of people on the street without their permission. We would not have a record of our time, of what it felt like to be us here now.” Though the photographs were made in the 1980s, People and Places has never been published, partly as a way for Delaney to distance the images from the actual people in the photographs. She now sees her project as a form of time travel, allowing her to go back in time and see things the way they were. “The photograph freezes a moment for future viewing,” she says. “It allows us to linger on an image of a time that may have happened a split second earlier on our digital LCD, or 100 years previously. That is time travel.”

When I ask her how she has evolved as a photographer over the 30 years since the NYC project, Delaney responds, “I wish I had changed more,” followed by a small chuckle. “I still feel like I’m at the beginning,” she says. “I think I still have the same love affair going, just like you would if you were married. I guess I could say I’ve persevered and I’m still hoping that it’ll all come together. Often then I’ll lament, ‘Oh, I haven’t done anything,’ and people say, ‘Yes you have, you’ve done all these things!’ And I’m only thinking about all the things I haven’t done yet. What about this project? And what about that project? So in that way it seems like I’m never getting it done, you know.” Delaney’s other projects, Trees: Between Chaos and Grace, and Housebound, developed intermittently as she had kids and began to raise a family. “I don’t tend to create a project and then try to fit my life around it, it’s probably more the other way around and my projects are an outgrowth of my daily living,” she says. “It’s an organic process. I think my biggest concern is getting these things finished, you know. I have a lot of loose ends and that’s not very successful, I wouldn’t consider that a plus. I’d like to see them more defined.” But with a 28-year teaching career, a 10-year stint as a documentary photographer, three NEA grants among other awards, photos in exhibitions and collections, a book in the works, two grown daughters, and a position curating an upcoming American photography exhibit in India, how can Delaney not be considered successful? For the photographer, it’s her mindset that refuses to admit success—there’s always another level she can aspire to. “From what I’ve observed no one ever thinks that they have succeeded completely,” she says after a moment’s thought about what it means to be successful. “I think everybody’s always striving towards the next project and that’s what makes it so fascinating. I’ve had some success and sometimes I haven’t followed through, and sometimes people didn’t give me the support I needed to get them done. Then, either you need to let them go or persevere on [your] own. But you know, I don’t think I’ll ever know if I’m successful.” Pause.

“Well, I guess I know I’m successful because I keep doing it and I didn’t quit.” See more of Janet Delaney’s work at janetdelaney.com

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t REally Care what you think.

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Or at least that’s what he wants you to believe by Robin Lam, Photographs by Edward Olive

Photographer Edward Olive has a penchant for stirring things up, being a little confrontational. “Sometimes you need a bit of spice, otherwise [things] can be very soppy,” he says to me. “I like to fantasize a bit, amuse people and rub people up the wrong way—say things to provoke. But not all of it is real. Don’t believe everything you see in my pictures, and certainly don’t believe everything I say.” Olive had no idea what wedding photography was like when he was first hired on a whim to shoot a wedding for 600 euros. “My first reaction was, ‘Fuck, I charged too little,’” he says while reminiscing on the experience. “I had no idea what wedding photos looked like [when I started] so I just did what I felt like and I had like people smoking cigars and kissing and dancing and crying and hugging and falling over and just the normal things that people do at parties—and it was very different from what you get when you pay wedding photographers.” As I flipped through his wedding photography, the first word that came to mind was: sexy. But wedding photography isn’t sexy. Innocent, dreamy, and beautiful— yes. But smoldering? Like something out of a film noir? Not exactly your typical wedding shoot. Originally from London, Olive was a lawyer and screen actor before he stumbled into photography a mere five years ago. “I wanted to do my actor’s book and I didn’t want to pay for the usual rubbishy photos. So bought a digital camera, a tripod, a remote control and did it myself and that’s

just what happened. One day I was just in the street taking pictures of people and the local area, which was kind of a bit like SoHo in New York or something, when the guy who owned the antique postcard shop had a look at my photos and said, ‘You’re going to do the wedding for my daughter!’” “I didn’t give a shit [about the first wedding],” he admits. “But the client loved the photos because they owned the antique postcard and antique photo shop and they sort of understood [my style]. The only problem I had on the first assignment was that I hadn’t realized until I looked at the photos on the computer that as of two o’clock in the morning, everybody had their eyes shut and their faces looked like they’d been hit by a car. The only problem in weddings is that people get so drunk.” Olive works entirely with film, sometimes even using expired film or slides in order to give his photos a more aged and authentic feel. He has no qualms about stating his oftentimes harsh opinion of the wedding industry and how his raw, confrontational and sometimes erotic photography stirs up the ire of those in his field. “Most wedding photography in Spain is pretty appalling, and not only is it appalling, but people want to be appalled,” he explains when I note the distaste in his voice as he speaks about the industry. “First of all I say that digital photos are too clean, too normal, too much like reality, and also everybody’s doing them so they have absolutely no value. A child of four

can get a camera out of a box, put batteries in, and take pictures that come out perfectly well. Those are completely worthless and the Internet is just full of stupid worthless pictures.” The staged and ‘cheesy’ photography that Olive particularly dislikes is difficult to avoid in the wedding industry. However, as an actor he claims to be able to detect any form of overacting in his clients, a frustrating ability because people naturally put on “absolutely revolting and stomach-wrenching” poses when they spy a camera nearby. “Some people are very easy,” he says. “Some people are fantastic. Basically anybody under the age of five and over the age of 70 is perfect. They are natural and they are always incredible. The problem is with people between these age groups who are not professional politicians, not professional performers on stage, screen, or whatever. They are a very difficult group [to photograph] because they feel stupid. They need other people to hold their hand through it because otherwise it’s too much pressure to have a big camera poked in their faces.”

To deal with his subjects’ lack of emotionality, Olive compromises on lighting and technique to capture spontaneity. LomoLCAs, point-and-shoots, and other ‘easy cameras’ are part of his general repertoire, allowing him to blend in with the crowd and put wedding guests at ease. Instead of a DSLR with a giant lens, Olive will simply pull out his Lomo, or more often, his medium format Hasselblad which “amuses people because they don’t realize you’re taking their photo [with] the camera at your waist level.” At other times Olive brings out his zoom lens and photographs from afar, a common trait in his photography being that his subjects don’t know they’re being photographed. Is this a bit creepy? Yes. But are they good photos? Excellent. Olive describes his approach as more akin to photojournalism than event photography. His photographs take on a surreptitious, almost sneaky quality as he intentionally hides himself among the crowd to take the most natural and genuine images he can possibly capture, sometimes causing his photographs to tread

“I’ve seen everything. I’ve had people fighting, I’ve had guests threatening me with violence because I’d take pictures of them.”

haw ha-ha’ to the photo.”

on the voyeuristic. “The wedding itself [is] an incredible concentration of emotion. All these people [the bride and groom] haven’t seen for years have come from all over the world and they’re just hugging and kissing, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for photojournalism,” Olive says of the feeling and atmosphere of weddings. Of his more voyeuristic photos, he clarifies that they are deliberately made to be voyeuristic in a humorous way. “Instead of just showing nakedness maybe you show less, but you show it in a certain way that is quite clear to everybody that you were crawling under the table with a large medium format camera and a light meter under a girl’s skirt, because there’s no other way you can get it. That amuses people and it gives it a kind of burlesque, a sort of cartoon ‘hee-

Yet in his wedding photography, the bulk of Olive’s attention is concentrated on capturing realistic slivers of each particular wedding, meaning that his images aren’t necessarily always of smiling family members surrounded by halos of light, but rather, gritty black and white images of the best man smoking a cigar, children hiding behind chairs, and always, beautiful women— mostly without their escorts. “I’ve seen everything,” he exclaims, his words tumbling over each other in his hurry to get the story out. “I’ve had people fighting, I’ve had guests threatening me with violence because I’d take pictures of them. I’ve had weddings where two weeks later when [the couple] came back from their honeymoon, they didn’t even want to take their photos because the groom had [slept with] another woman and the couple split up. I had a wedding where I was basically working for a Columbian; big fat guys who all had

silicone Pamela Anderson 18-year-old girlfriends. At lunch time the Spanish military police broke in, 70 of them with their bulletproof vests and automatic weapons, and took the groom and six of his henchmen away and found several million euros and various kilos of cocaine inside the doors of their Porsche sports cars. That’s how they made their money.” As a result, some of Olive’s photos look like they come straight from the set of The Godfather. Rugged old men menacingly pulling at their suit jackets, sultry women staring defiantly into the camera—Olive’s work definitely falls outside the realm of what is generally expected from a wedding photographer. For his more cinematic impulses, Olive turns to his personal photography, a large portion of which is photographing nudes. With a subject that has the potential to be overly explicit, Olive treads a fine line between art and eroticism. “[For] my female nudes, I basically work on the principle that in any picture you have to justify artistry. And in the case of any nudity, it really has to be justified. You have to have so much technique, point of view, play on words, expression, thought, colors, contrast, light and dark in that picture, that nobody could possibly say that this is dirty and is not art. So with female nudes it’s a massive, massive challenge to make sure it’s not too obvious.”Olive doesn’t deny the allure of simply shooting sexy photographs of women, but he tries to rein in those impulses in order to maintain the dignity of his subjects. “Erotica should be glamorous and upmarket,” he writes on his Flickr photostream. “The young ladies should feel elegant and important, not cheap or cheapened.” As he explains to me: “I’ve had rolls of film where it’s a big temptation because obviously I’m a guy and I like girls, and there’s a big temptation when you see a girl with a great body to just take pictures of that body because you get all excited since it looks great. But you’ve really got to resist that. [Instead], the whole time I’m thinking, ‘How can I mess this up so you can’t actually see anything?’” During a shoot, Olive manipulates the light so that his photos come out ranging from innocent to explicit and every grade in between, looking for the one image “where you can almost see it, but can’t quite, and the shadow is just falling on the way where you can’t see anything—but you know it’s there.” Though Olive’s photos may seem extremely suggestive in their posing and style (ie. lots of heels, legs, and boobs), the photographer insists that

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nudity is not central to his imagery. “It’s very difficult if you just have a nude and you’re only showing nude. So I don’t want a nude photo. What I want is a landscape with a nude. I want architecture with nude. I want photojournalism but with some sexy thing in there. If you look at what percentage of the picture is actually female nudity, perhaps the woman only represents 10 percent of the picture and the nudity of that is two percent. The rest is like some big staircase with a wide-angle lens and you see a little girl right at the bottom and she’s pulling up her skirt. But 95 percent of what you see is the hotel. Some of my most successful pictures have been where there’s a big contrast between the nude and the rest of the picture.” Olive also makes sure to respect each model’s wishes in destroying any negatives the girl might feel are too explicit. “It doesn’t matter how good [I think] the photo is because I have to have the confidence [of ] these girls because you know, maybe nobody else knows who it is, but they know.” Olive’s nontraditional approach naturally draws its fair share of criticism from the Spanish photography industry in which he is based. Though he says that some photographers are jealous of his success and attack his work, he focuses on overcoming negative criticism by improving his personal photography and comparing himself to great photographers like Richard Avedon, Mario Testino, and Patrick Demarchelier. He pushes the boundaries in his personal photography in order to overcome criticism in the professional field. “Who am I in weddings? Well I’m a nobody, but then nobody really is anybody in

weddings. You have to look at yourself as a photographer in general and not look at yourself in a specific field. If there’s not a queue of people outside my door and Vogue’s not calling me, [it means] I need to take better pictures. My pictures are not fucking good enough.” Instead, Olive garners support and encouragement from an ardent and loyal group of online followers, mostly on his Flickr account. “I am very lucky that online I have a lot of kind support. I try to make things interesting for people and to create interesting content which means that people come back.” Outside of Flickr, Olive struggles to deal with the impenetrable art world. “I don’t know how many nominations and wins and first prizes or second prizes I’ve won this year, but more than 20. Three years ago I entered three and I won two. Last year I entered five and I won four, or was a finalist. But why isn’t my work getting in the top [galleries in Madrid]? I’ve sent my CV, portfolio, photos, everything, to every single gallery in Madrid, but it’s not that they’re rejecting my work or me, it’s because Spain or southern Europe in general is very affected by the Cosa Nostra attitude. Basically [...] they’re going for nepotism, corruption, or fame.” Those are pretty strong words from a man who has only been in the business for a mere five years. Yet his work has won numerous international awards including recognition by the Hasselblad Masters photography competition. His quick rise from a dilettante taking head shots to a successful wedding photojournalist can be attributed to his intense work ethic and ruthless self criticism,

which causes him to be highly critical of his own work as well as the work of others. “My pictures are gratifying for about 24 hours after I finish them. My awards are gratifying for about one hour. Basically I never get real gratification from what I do because I’m incredibly obsessive about the future—improving, taking better photos, looking for photos, and constantly going for the new thing. I’m always looking at the next thing.” More often than not, Olive’s confrontational attitude makes it easy to dislike him, to write him off as an egotistical individual whose work is not nearly as loud as his words. Yet this bravado seems to originate from a deeper fear of intimacy that the photographer masks through his imagery. While weddings are his profession, Olive vehemently protests the idea of ever marrying himself. “No, I don’t want to get married!” he exclaims when I ask him about his own matrimonial happiness. “I think it’s just a stupid waste of time, although it’s my business and I probably shouldn’t say that. I used to think that maybe one day I would get married dressed as Elvis, [with] her as Marilyn and jump out an airplane like Nicolas Cage in a film or something, but no… I don’t want people looking at me, I don’t want to be the center of attention.” He pauses, then continues in a softer voice. “Everybody looking, no I don’t want that stuff. I want to keep my private life private and I just prefer to be with somebody because I really want to be with that person. As soon as you start getting into contracts and living together, you stay together because of reasons of convenience or

“I don’t want a nude photo. What I want is a landscape with a nude. I want architecture with nude. I want photojournalism but with some sexy thing in there.”

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kids or whatever. If you have no ties like marriage then you’re with that person every day you are because you deliberately choose to do that.” Whether as a photographer or an actor, Olive hides behind his trade and uses his acting and photography to express himself in the way that others do in real life. “As a person I’m emotionally challenged, probably. As an actor I’m able to portray those emotions, hiding behind a persona. As a photographer I am able to capture them—not only capture the emotions,

but be able to provoke emotions in the spectator of those photos.” “I want to take photos and I want those photos to be really great. I want people to see them. I want my photos to be more important than me. Maybe it’s egotistical that I want a lot of people to look at my pictures and for them to be in galleries and books and magazines and things, but what I think doesn’t really matter, you can just look at the pictures. I’m pretty boring, you know, just some

fat middle-aged guy with a funny accent that I’ve always had… the pictures are great, much better than me...” As his voice trails off and we finish our conversation, I finally see that the fire and fury contained within Edward Olive’s photographs stem not simply from their striking content, but also from the vulnerability of an individual struggling to use his art to solve the elusive questions of emotional understanding that he can’t quite grasp in real life.

See more of Edward Oliveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work at www.edwardolive.info

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part of the

crowd

Spanish photographer Jose Javier Serrano photographs SIAM PARK, capturing the multitudes of Spainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s masses trying to find relief from the hot summer heat. Vacation? Sort of. Relaxing? Definitely not. Written by Robin Lam

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Jose Javier Serrano seems to be a master of the disconnected shot. The distance between the viewer and the subject is palpable, extending across great lengths and boundaries and objectifying all within the frame of the lens. There’s a quiet, sterile feeling to his imagery whether he is photographing an abandoned school desk or a summer waterpark teeming with visitors, as in his most recent project, Siam Park. Serrano began photographing the water park as a means to illustrate the jarring contrast between what people need and what they actually pursue. He intentionally photographed the largest water park in Europe on a weekend during its busiest season to highlight the idea that ‘relaxation’ has become a mass commodity that is now bought and sold. “[My photos] are visual images about conventional and mass tourism in Spain. The main idea was to capture a hectic feeling of not-so-relaxing holidays,” he says. As a visitor, he describes Siam Park as “quite a hell” in the hot summer days of August, surrounded by 3,000 people and no shadows to escape under. Using his small Contax T3 35mm camera, Serrano slipped in and out of the crowd without being noticed, capturing an isolated and empty feeling that is at odds with the masses of people actually populating the images. From the hot and sweaty children who wait discontentedly in line to the overweight tourist sitting by himself on a patio filled with pool chairs, Serrano has a knack for noticing the little details that add context to the larger, superficial story being told.

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Photography by Ontoshiki

The Night Watchman

Hasselblad500 CM, 60m m f3.5, Por

tra400NC

Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Jap

WORKEAT SLEEPBREATHE

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Dinner for O ne

/ , Portra 800

Hasselblad503 CX, 80mm f2 .8 / n

, Tokyo, Japa

Takadanobaba

Jaded Soul / Hasselblad500 CM, 60mm f3.5, FujiPH 800 /

Seoul, Korea

Great Kanto Blizza rd

/ 8, Portra 800

Pentacon 6, 80mm f2. /

Tokyo, Japan

iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work at www.onto shiki.com

See more of ontoshik

Street Style.

Fashion for the Masses Words by Stephanie Powell & Robin Lam Photographs by StreetPeeper.com & TheSFStyle.com The alluring sound of a camera shutter as it snaps captures the attention of all within earshot. Passerbys awkwardly gawk as the photographer comes up to ask what you are wearing, and if would you mind having your photograph on a blog. Blushing, you say yes. Street style photographers roam the pavements equipped with a camera, confidence and discerning eyes, in hopes of finding the one outfit that will speak for itself. John Tran and Dyanna Dawson of TheSFStyle.com and Phil Oh of StreetPeeper.com have dedicated their style-seeking eyes to bringing influential looks to the public through their blogs. “There aren’t many people who do [street fashion] well; you see many people who try. But when you see those few people that do [do it well], it makes waiting on that street corner for two hours almost worth it,” Phil Oh says. And just what exactly does an outfit require to merit recognition on Streetpeeper.com? “That’s the one question everyone always asks,” he says. “There is no real easy answer, but I guess it’s when you have an emotional ah-hah reaction to an outfit. I don’t really look for particular trends or pieces.” The idea of a street style website had loomed in Oh’s mind long before the creation of Streetpeeper.com. “I had a bunch of free time and money lying around,” he says. “I was just hanging out at fashion weeks with friends and I figured I might as well try doing something with it. So I started taking a bunch of pictures and I wanted to start a street style blog.” Based out of New York, the local streets provided Oh with an ideal playground for the mixture of candid reportage and street photography he shoots. Oh began with a simple point-and-shoot camera, from which he rapidly progressed to the SLR he uses now. “When I

started my blog I didn’t really know how to use my camera, I was using a dinky point-and-shoot. As time went on and street style photos became more popular, I started getting more requests from magazines or for prints to republish my photos, so I upgraded to an entry double SLR. I’m fairly competent now with the basics, but I’d say learning how to use a camera has been a challenge.” Oh combines his street smarts and seasoned travel experience to create the stunning images on his site. His international presence gives him the variety and edge that that is essential to fashion blogs. He was recently contracted by Vogue.com to shoot for fashion week. “There is a lot of travel involved [in my work]. I base in New York, but I’m away five to six months out of the year,” he says. “I love shooting during Paris Fashion Week, and I love shooting in Shibuya and Tokyo, those are the places I get the most photos. There’s a lot of work [in Tokyo], I go twice a year for about ten days each, and I basically hang out on street corners all day long, it gets really lonely and boring but I do get really great photos. During fashion week it’s like the Golden Globes, there are so many photographers and it’s a ten minute free-for-all with all the editors and stylists. It’s exciting.” While Oh travels the international circuit, JT and Dyanna of The SF Style

focus their attention on the local streets of San Francisco. The duo met serendipitously. JT wanted to use a stylish woman doing her laundry as a muse for his blog, he saw Dyanna, and the rest is history. “I started with a 100 dollar point-andshoot Cannon camera and started learning from there,” JT explains. “If you go to the beginning of the blog you’ll notice significant upgrades in my technology. You’ll notice my photography drastically improves. I think jumping to an SLR camera and upgrading from a point-andshoot to a camera with interchangeable lenses was really a turning point for me.”

candid street shots. “Photography and fashion, they can change you and make you become whatever you want. Something even greater than what you are,” JT explains. “Fashion is a visual medium, you can touch fashion, you can create it. It’s a physical thing, but also in order to appreciate it, you have to see it. [Fashion] has a lot of colors and textures, and so photography [provides] a way to capture and show the visuals of it to everyone else. It’s a fun thing to do. It’s fun to look at people, it’s life flowing around you, and if you’re into something like fashion you get to see all different types of people.”

His Canon 5D Mark II gave his images a new level of professional quality, but JT still remembers the foundation his point-and-shoot provided. “When you have a point-and-shoot, they’re called that for a reason because that’s what you do. You point the camera in a direction and you shoot, that’s all there is. There is still a lot you can learn from that, just learning where to place the camera, the lighting and how to point the camera at someone.”

For JT, one of the most gratifying aspects of being a street fashion photographer is the ability to bring a smile to a stranger’s face. “I’ve learned a lot about approaching people, and one thing positive I have to say is that 99 percent of the time people are very happy and flattered that I stop them to be photographed,” he says. “That part definitely makes it; Dyanna and I agree [that] we pretty much make their day when we stop them, and that feeling is really nice. You’re doing something you really enjoy, a hobby or interest, and at the same time you’re making a total stranger happy.”

JT remains true to three criteria in selecting his subjects: fit, uniqueness, and a point of interest. The SF Style has broadened JT’s exposure to photography and has led him into different realms of shooting. He is currently an event photographer in addition to his familiar

“When a photograph tells a story, that’s what you want to do with photography,” JT says. “You want just one moment in time.”

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Excusez-moi, but my dear you look fabulous. Pgs 50-54: Phil Oh, StreetPeeper.com Pg 55: John Tran & Dyanna Dawson, The SFStyle.com

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Q&A

instagr.am Robin Lam Interviews

Kevin Systrom,

Co-founder of Instagr.am The Iphone app instagr.am has blown up. Over one million users now shoot with their iphones, edit the photos with filters, and then share them with their fellow users - they’re obsessed. Snapixel writer Robin Lam was able to connect with one of the co-founders of the company, Kevin Systrom, to find out why this simple program has become such a big hit.

What was the inspiration for creating Instagram? We looked around and didn't have anything that let us share photos the way we wanted to in the moment. We believe in a world where everyone has a camera phone in their pocket, and we wanted to create the platform to share those images instantly with anyone, anywhere in the world. I feel like Instagram has really changed social media in that it has allowed people to share their lives not through words, but through pictures. Was this your intention when you built this application? Absolutely. We believe a world communicating through images is a more connected one. You don't have to speak Japanese to see the beauty in a photograph taken by someone in Tokyo. Images say what can't be captured in only a handful of words. What are some tips you would give to a first time user of Instagram? Don't hold back—turn everyday moments into beautiful photographs. Look at the world around you differently and take joy in the details you wouldn't have seen otherwise. On your bio it says that you interned at the pre-Twitter company, Odeo. How did your experience working on Twitter influence the creation of Instagram? Well, correlation isn't causation. :) I'd say I worked at Odeo because of my interest in creating social products. My summer there taught me more about creating products for people that influences what we

do now. In the end, I still keep in touch with those guys and they remain mentors. Which filter is your favorite? Toaster! One complaint I've heard is that the quality of the original photo is degraded after a filter is applied onto it. What are your thoughts about this concern? Well I guess quality is really in the eye of the beholder. I think when people start talking about quality of images on Instagram, they're kind of missing the point. It's like complaining that because Twitter only allows for 140 characters that it somehow lessens the quality of the ideas. We're not about producing archival quality images that will go in a magazine (at least at the current moment). We're about sharing your life as it happens through quick snapshots. It also really depends what you're maximizing. You could argue that without the filter, the photo somehow captures the true visual nature of a scene. But I'd argue most folks wouldn't take the picture if it weren't for the filters in the first place. You see, filters give people a chance to turn everyday moments into something beautiful, and because of that they take more pictures. I think at the end of the day, if people are taking more pictures and recording their lives in an interesting way, we've done our job. Why do you think people are so drawn to Instragram? What is the most important thing that Instagram brings to mobile phone users? 1) We make your mobile photos look beautiful— or at least extraordinarily different. 2) We make it easy to share on multiple platforms with the click of a single button. 3) We make photo uploads fast—you don't sit waiting for things to upload. An important aspect of Instagram is that it allows the everyday person to instantly create 'art.' Given this situation, what is your definition of art? Do you consider Instagram photos to be works of art? Of course—even without the filters I'd say it's art. People are saying something about their lives—they're telling a story. And in telling a story, they're teaching, making us wonder, making us ask questions, challenging us— and in the end that's what art really is, right?

Photographs from left to right. Top: @nickbilton, @babysmurf, @naomiatkinson; Center: @jasonpermenter, @laurenlemon, @grether; Bottom: @mikekus, @inckognito, @grex

What is the greatest difficulty that Instagram has had to overcome so far? Greatest success? Honestly, simply starting on the idea. Too many people told us it was a terrible idea or could name 100 reasons why it wouldn't work. It's hard to put those people aside and stick to your guns. I'm sure glad we did in retrospect. Will Instagram have a feature that will allow hard copies to be printed immediately? Maybe. It really depends if people want this. I'm sure at some point it will happen, but probably through a partner. What are some of the most asked-for features from your users? More filters!

Did you ever imagine that Instagram's popularity would grow so quickly in such a short time? Not in a million years. It's kind of like someone asking us what the most perfect situation could be when launching a new productâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and then surpassing even that expectation. We're humbled by it all. Do you have any plans for Instragram on platforms other than the iPhone? Android will come this year. How do you see Instragram expanding in 2011? What are some new features we can expect? I don't want to spoil the surprises. :) Join at http://instagr.am/

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