March 2009

Nabil Elderkin, originally a native of Australia, began his photography career when he picked up a camera to shoot portraits of fellow surfers. What started as a hobby, rapidly developed into a working career. From surf portraits, Nabil began shooting action sports and musicians. In 1999, Nabil moved to Chicago to continue and expand his career. Today, Nabil lives and works in Los Angeles at his studio in Downtown. He shoots hip hop artists, fashion lifestyle and musicians. Nabil is currently working on a book with Kanye West and Rizzoli and several documentary projects from here to Africa.

How do you come up with a concept for a shoot? Is it generally a collaboration between you and the musicians that you photograph?
‘I honestly don’t really get too concept driven with my photo shoots with musicians. Though I have here and there when the project called for it, and will continue to explore it more and more. But unlike commercial work, where concepts are the key element to the shoot, I prefer to capture something about the person in their natural environment, where they are most comfortable, or in a moment of self, in a more documentary-type style’.

Along with photography, you also direct music videos. Do you prefer one over the other?
‘I have really enjoyed my transition into film and directorial work. I feel I am still in a very experimental phase, but I really enjoy being able to create things in motion. The boundaries are endless — well, as far as you can push the budget — and, luckily, thanks to the digital age, they can be pushed much further than ever before.

‘I also feel that in motion work, I can really push the conceptual realm. In the moment of a photograph, I just want the viewer to connect in some way with what I see through the viewfinder. The nature of motion and my personal frame of mind tends to be more conceptual’.

You have recently been shooting Kanye West on and off stage going to parties and shopping to be published in the book, Kayne West Glow in the Dark, to be released in September. Can you talk a little about being a fly on the wall in Kanye’s world?
‘He is very comfortable with me as I have been shooting him for almost five years now. Because of that, he trusts my intentions and that intimate dynamic allows for me to garner a much better perspective than most would get’.

You shoot a lot of editorial and musicians. Do you think much about the future of photography given the movement away from print as being the primary medium for content and the increasing push of content online?
‘Well, this is an interesting and important question. For the sake of self-gratification, print is always my goal and more rewarding. At least when printed well. However, online media is definitely where I feel the masses will be viewing just about everything. So hopefully we can embrace it and push the distribution of photo essays and art in a way that the photographer is happy with the online viewing and the viewer gets to see the work in its highest possible online quality. For instance, good PDF layouts’.

Along with shooting celebrities, you also have been taking photographs of everyday life and poverty in Africa. Can you tell us about changing your style (or not) when shooting such contrasting worlds?
‘I love Africa: the continent, its people, the different countries, and all their diverse cultures. I don’t think my style changes, just my approach to different situations. You have to be respectful of the fact that you are intruding on these fellow human’s lives, and sometimes in the most horrific of circumstances. I also don’t have the means much of the time for anything but natural light, so that also dictates the look of the imagery. And, most importantly, I find that some of the people I shoot in my African adventures are the true celebrities’.

Karen Morgan is a commercial photographer whose work has an emphasis in people and animal portraiture. She earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University where her visual arts background honed her love for photography. But her immense passion for animals, especially the relationship between people and dogs, started at a young age. Her work conveys a sense of honesty, capturing the characters in life.

How did you get started photographing animals?
‘As a child I always had pets: dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, ferrets and fish. I find myself in a place of true happiness when I am hanging out with my pets. My animals are more like dear friends, family to me than just pets. The other passion that brings me true happiness is creating images through photography. I began my commercial photography career shooting people. My animal imagery was the focus of my personal work. Years ago, a good friend and local art director hired me to shoot a series of images for a dog collar company and after seeing the photos, my Chicago Rep sat me down and told me I should follow my passion and make animal portraiture the focus of my photography. Her advice, was that I should find one thing I love doing, and become a master of it. It’s advice that has worked beautifully for me and has made me a better person, photographer and pet-owner’.

Since you shoot a lot of advertising campaigns, I’m guessing you work with a lot of talent. Is there a huge difference photographing talent as opposed to regular pups?
‘Yes, but there are genuine benefits to both. Pro Pups are never afriad of the flash, can continue working longer on the set. But sometimes they can look too trained. There eyes and body languege show too much focus on what their “supposed to do” they sometimes forget to just be a “dog”.

‘Regular pups can be nervous or anxious on set. But they also have a natural, honest look in their eyes – almost like a bewildered child. I have worked with some regular pups that were superb and really enjoyed the experience. It really depends on what the creative direction is for the ad. Different pups do better in different situations and sets. The photos of the dogs you picked for this interview are all “real” (non-union) pups. Just kidding!’

Are you involved with the casting calls for “models”, and can you describe this scene?
‘Yes, I always shoot my casting calls. I want to meet the animals, see how well they respond to me and other people who may be around me. I want to see if they will follow my commands, how well they warm up to me and how cuddly I can get with them. Some dogs are great alone in pictures but not with people which holds true with cats as well. Casting calls tend to be long days and for those who haven’t experienced it, it might seem very surreal’.

Can you talk a bit about photographing the squirrel?
‘The squirrel is actualy a groundhog named Wilber. He knows how to raise a flag on a pole and ride in a toy car. He has been on TV many a times. I have a fabulous animal trainer who has many special animals like Wilber. This was shot specifically for my portfolio. We started at three in the afternnon on a rainy Sunday and finished shooting alot of cats, Wilber and a rat at about midnight. Needless to say, Wilber was pooped’.

The creative team Ioulex (‘yoo-leks) is Julia Koteliansky and Alexander Kerr, originally from Moscow and Boston. They met in Paris while studying graphic design and illustration at Parsons School of Design. Since they moved to New York together in 1998, Alexander and Julia pursued successful careers as art directors and graphic designers for some of the most prominent advertising agencies. Ioulex emerged as a photography team about five years ago and they have since built a portfolio of editorial and personal work reflecting an intuitive approach to the creation of poetic, graphically driven imagery. They are repped in New York by Josette Lata Inc.

Where do the inspirations for your stories come from and does it usually take you long to conceive an idea?
‘We look at painting, performance art and theatre; dance is a great source of inspiration. Cinema is probably the most important visual reference; we like to think of models as characters in a movie and often bring film stills to a shoot.

‘There are so many things we want to try out. We keep a list of ideas, so when it’s time to plan a specific shoot, we check to see what would be appropriate and how we could make it work for the magazine or the client. So we start with lots of visual references, then focus on a specific look and feel. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right angle’.

Have your backgrounds as art directors and graphic designers had any influence on your work?
‘Yes, of course. We love typography, and it’s always a thrill to see how the image interacts with words. We’re especially interested in the sequence as well, and we try to plan the story as a whole narrative entity. So we often use art direction techniques: storyboards and mood boards. Our background also helps us recognize good art directors and designers, we appreciate working with them and really enjoy the collaboration’.

Do you feel in that it’s necessary to have a distinct personal style in fashion photography or better to be flexible and be able to switch styles as the project requires?
‘Not sure about personal style, if there really is such thing. We think more in terms of approach and techniques. It’s more a question of personal perspective and context. Maybe if you look at a whole body of work of a great photographer, you could narrow it down to a specific style, but that’s not always the case either. The main thing is to develop a point of view and continue experimenting’.

You’ve been working as a team for about five years now. Do you play specific roles for each shoot or do you take turns with responsibilities?
‘We do everything twice. Being two people allows us to be more thorough. We both shoot and give directions to our team, discuss with clients, etc. We’re very different from each other, and often disagree, but that only makes the process more exciting. We live and work together, and it’s an amazing privilege to be able to talk through and share everything’.

You have a gallery show coming up at Audio Visual Arts in March revolving around death and the TV show, Dallas. Can you talk about shooting for a fine art project as opposed to shooting a fashion story.
‘The approach is different, when we come up with a personal project, we try to have an element of risk, we want to investigate something we don’t know, hoping to make a discovery. When we shoot for a magazine or a commercial client, we’re part of team and interaction with others is key. For our personal work, it’s just the two of us. On a practical level, some of the elements are the same, like research and collecting visual references.

‘In the end, our fashion photography does inform our personal work as we always end up dealing with the same themes: perception of beauty, decay, and creation of desire. The project we’ll be showing at AVA, called “Carpet Death” is about the iconography of idealized dead’.

Raised in a family of artists and oil workers, Nate Bressler is a former archaeologist who found his love for photography during a three year road trip. Still on the road a dozen years later, his adventure continues. Nate now spends his time between the California coastline and the bayous of the deep South. Some of his clients include Interview, Paper, Tokion, Men’s Journal, and the L.A. Times Magazine among others.

Jeff Harris injects a sense of humanness and life into the still life genre, creating bold, graphic, and whimsical images that push the envelope. Shooting conceptual commercial work for over twenty years, Harris has provided distinctive and memorable images for a diverse list of clients. Some of those clients include Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Dom Perignon, W Magazine, and Travel + Leisure among others.

Justin Newhall is a Minnesota-based photographer and educator. He attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (BFA, 1994) and the University of Minnesota (MFA, 1998). He currently teaches at the University of Minnesota and at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul. Newhall has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and his work is in numerous public and private collections. He is the recipient of several major fellowships, including the McKnight Photography Fellowship, the Jerome Foundation Fellowship, and the Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship. Images from his project “Historical Marker: Along the Lewis and Clark Trail” were recently published by Aperture, in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Photography, as an individual hard-cover volume in a three-volume set entitled “MP3: Midwest Photographers Publication Project.”

What led you to embark on your latest series on World War II Reenactors, Axis and Allies?
‘While working on my previous project “historical “marker” I attended a reenactment in Eastern MT for the Battle of Little Bighorn. The whole thing was surreal. Sitting in these bleachers on the high plains watching a bunch of people run around and play cowboy and indian and claim to be educating people about this historic event seemed like a bit of a stretch. I mean, sure it might inform a viewer in some manner, but not in any nuanced or critical manner. At any rate it got me thinking about what all this first person history stuff was all about. I started researching various types of reenactors and decided if I was going to shoot pics of people I wanted to do something that went beyond the normal Civil War stuff that most people are so aware of and go for something a little more out there. I found a group German and Russian unit that was based in my area and stated a dialog with them. I told them I wanted to make images of them while they were reenacting. They were understandably wary of me and ultimately wouldn’t let me do it unless i participated. I had to choose between being a Russian or a German. Being that I’m not at all comfortable wearing anything with a swastika on it i choose to be a part of the Russian unit. Most of the battles I shot were private events held just south of the Twin Cities’.

How much of your work is dependent on chance and how much is staged or preplanned?
‘That’s a good question. I think many people look at my Axis and Allies work and think I staged things, but that wasn’t the case. I was crawling in the grass with a bunch of people with guns and tanks and shooting i I went. Not unlike an actual embedded war photographer except of course for the little fact that their guns were loaded with blanks and no one ever got killed… a few people were injured badly though once when the jeep they were riding in flipped. The other reason that work looks so staged is that these people were essentially staging things without my direction’.

Your photographs are deeply rooted in history. Do you go into a project like this with a thorough understanding of the period and a firm sense of what you want to get out of the shots or is it more that your concepts evolve during the process of taking the photos?
‘Usually I have an idea about there being photographic possibilities and then things evolve from there. The Historical Marker work was very loose from the beginning, I just used the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s 200 year anniversary as the historic and geographic glue for making whatever pics I though would be visually interesting. Also I wanted the work to be true to the way I see history, tourism, and commerce co-mingle. With the Axis and Allies series I had to do a lot more planning and interacting with folks I normally would never talk to which was different for me. I also knew that I wanted the work to be both beautiful and confounding’.

What is the photography community like in Minneapolis? Do you shoot many commercial/editorial assignments?
‘The photo community in Minneapolis is very strong in the sense that there are a lot of amazing photographers. Like many places there is a sort of self-segregation that occurs between those working commercially and those who view themselves as “art” photographers. I think the impulse to make a distinction between the two is understandable but not all that helpful. There are people who actively straddle both worlds but most of those people tend to be doing work that lends itself to editorial type jobs — NY Time magazine, Newsweek, Time, and so on — not so much in advertising and such. Good art directors and art buyers do, I think, look to the fine art photographers from time to time which I wish they would do more.

‘I do occasionally do commercial/editorial work. Recently I have been doing editorial jobs now and again for Newsweek. Also an art director friend of mine, Brock Davis, hired me to shoot “behind the scenes” images for the first Jacks Link’s Sasquach shoot. I love jobs like those because they are a bit more out there and loose. Also, right out of college I assisted for a bunch of staff photographers at Best Buy. I got really good at arranging fake fruit and vegetables in refrigerators for product shoots. Not exactly the sexiest type of photo job’.

Noah Sheldon was born in 1975 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He completed a BA at Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA Visual Arts in 2000 at Columbia University. Sheldon is represented by Julian Richards with clients that include Assouline, Big Magazine, Details, New York Magazine, Tokion, and United Bamboo, among others.