This winter I was asked by Filter magazine from Sweden if I wanted to open up for an interview. They sent me some samples of what they were expecting. The deal was really to not hold anything back and let the old history out.
I had kind of nibbled a little bit in the beginning of this blog with talking about the past and how I evolved into photography. But this would be way more revealing. So after hanging out with this question for a little while and talking to some friends, it was clear that my story doesn’t belong to me, so if he thought he could find something interesting in it - maybe I would even learn something myself.
So if you understand Swedish and would like to dive into a 23 page article about my story from a suburb in Sweden to the NYC fashion world and then over to a meditation hiatus in Burma and back again, here is a link to purchase the magazine.
I must say that even though it is hard to sit through four days of interviews with all together maybe twenty or so hours of questions - the process was very respectful and honest - much to the credit of Mattias Göransson the editor in chief who flew over to do the thing himself. He says he is working according to the classic American storytelling tradition “The Art of Hanging Around”.
Suited me fine - that’s what I do most anyway
And of course a picture of the guy taking a picture of me. Check out Martin Adolfsson
What an amazing premiere party we had. Thanks a lot to everybody who showed.
Anyway - just wanted to give a couple of words on how this whole video thing went down. After a super chill photo shoot with my buddy Sebastian’s friend Benjamin Taylor I thought it would be cool to make a music video for his song “Wicked Way”. When I approached him with the idea, Ben really wasn’t that interested in performing the song in the video - I guess he is not a ham after all. He is a beautiful guy so I had to come up with something even more awesome if he wasn’t gonna be in it. After some thinking I came up with the brilliant idea (if I do say so myself) to get a bunch of beautiful girls to perform the song for him. And before I knew it - I had blurted out that it would be cool to do the old morph thing as well. (I was to eat that up with endless midnight hours and a ton of licorice to keep the morphs going.) The casting was done by Nann Patridge at DirtyDawgFilms / NLP Productions who worked closely with Carlos Paz of Trump Model Management to gather a slew of stunning young ladies who appear in the video. In the end I had hundreds & hundreds of takes with these girls & realized that I would need the help of Mike Horan from Ohio Edit to mold the best takes into a body of work that I could then morph together on my own. The final result was definitely worth it as I feel I have come up with a strong, yet sensual piece of footage. Enjoy!
There are a few people that I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to as they each held an intricate part in the making of this video…
Benjamin Taylor, Iris Records, Larry Ciancia, Nann Patridge of Dirty Dawg Films & NLP Productions, Frank Snider, Erica Thompson & Mike Horan of Ohio Edit, Sebastian Wahl, Marco Valentin, Darin Rubell, Josh Boyd and all the guys from Ella Lounge, Jeffrey from Starr Rum and of course Carlos Paz & Trump Model Management along with the lovely ladies…Sharina Gutierrez, Ataui Deng, Zuzana Lettrichova, Melina Huettner, Kelly Gervais, Tassara Vilaca, Christina Ionno, Yulia Lobova, Kayla Camstra, Carlye Nabers, Gemma Hamilton, Cassie Lewis, Nell Rebowe, Masha Kirsanova & Rila Fukushima. And of course Angela, the most beautiful creature on the planet.
Oh - and right away it got mentioned on AOL’s Spinner.com they are calling it a tribute to the late great Michael Jackson. I feel honored.
After doing The Ghosts of Jimmy Boyle video it was time to dig into it. Thank Heavens for online videos. I turned off MTV a long time ago as they moved into silly reality shows. And for awhile it felt as if music videos had kind of been left behind. The ones that did play on TV seemed bland and stuck in their style.
Going deeper into music video research looking for the best new bands it became evident that you still need a good video to break through - it just is going to be played online as its main event. The great thing about that is that the new videos are becoming really creative again.
Here is a random list of videos from new or upcoming bands that stood out to me for various reasons.
if you have seen another one that should be added - drop me a line.
When Kelly Cutrone introduced me to Jagger and Chilli Peppers producer Jimmy Boyle he played me his new song Butterfly. The song was so powerful that this music video just had to happen. One night I asked Jimmy to hold the camera and spin while singing the song all through the streets of New York City. He whirled from downtown New York through Musegarden studio to Times Square in 60 takes and didn’t even throw up once.
This is a quick character study. I walked into John Crawford’s blacksmith studio a little while ago and was instantly impressed by the atmosphere. A couple of friends agreed to be filmed a little bit and just improvise a story for an afternoon. Here are the results.
Big Thanks to Jonathan Laffey and Major West for the performances, Nicholas K for the clothing, John Crawford for the use of his space and Nine Inch Nails for publishing music with the creative commons license.
