© Armando Bellmas

My submission to this month’s Word It over at Speak Up.
The word is middle and there it is.

I recently listened to a fascinating and inspiring interview with legendary designer Vaughan Oliver on an episode of Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

Millman and Oliver talk for a while about his iconic work for the 4AD record label, for which he has designed albums covers for bands like the Pixies, Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Throwing Muses, Lush, Mountain Goats, and many many more.

Oliver steers the conversation towards the use of photography in his designs, specifically about the Pixies and their album covers.

Designs by Vaughan Oliver

Oliver worked with photographer Simon Larbalestier on most or all of the Pixies albums. Oliver declares Larbalestier “the fifth Pixie” because his photography, especially his personal work, jives so well with the band and the essence of their music.

Photos © Simon Larbalestier

Vaughan the goes on to talk about collaborating with photographers:

Generally when I work with photographers I give them a lot of space. Half the job is done if you choose the right photographer. And then I’ll kind of work with that photographer, identify aspects of [their] work that I like, that I think fits with the music.

A lot of photographers that I’ve worked with have one foot in the art camp, have one foot in the commercial camp, and they have a lot of kind of personal work. Where are you going in your personal work? Where would you like to go next with it? Can you see it relating to this music?

I’m not [the] kind of an art director that stands over the top of a photographer and looks over his shoulder and directs him, but has the confidence in the first instinct to go with that photographer’s own aesthetic.

Getting hired for our aesthetics, instincts, and vision is what each of us strives for no matter what kind of art we create. Awesome.

Find out more about designer Vaughan Oliver, listen to the interview on Design Matters with Debbie Millman (which is a great show you should be listening to every week anyways), and view more work by Simon Larbalestier.

And of course, always listen to the Pixies.

Mark Porter turns us on to the stylish and progressive design of the 1960s magazine Town. He writes:

Under art director Tom Wolsey, [Town] had a golden few years in which it set the template for an entire visual language. It had all the style and energy of the better-known magazines, and a unique – and very British – personality of its own.

Check out these covers. Minimal design and a distinctive use of photography:

courtesy of Mark Porter

things to look at has a few scans from the pages of Town. Again, great photography and art direction:

courtesy of things to look at

courtesy of things to look at

In his post Porter writes:

If you’ve never seen a copy of Town, beg, borrow or steal to get one. Marvel at the virtuosity; despair at the brilliance; and then channel the energy. There’s so much there that it still gives off sparks!

Read more about Town at magforum.com.

Photo by Kelly Campbell

Joshua Ferris’ debut novel Then We Came To The End is a funny and deliciously detailed story about a group of coworkers at an ad agency in Chicago.

It’s a fun read, especially for those of us who work in and with ad agencies.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when one of the agency employees Jim Jackers — struggling to come up with concepts for a particularly difficult campaign — calls his ornery old Uncle Max (who has graced Jim with ideas in the past) seeking new ideas and inspiration.

Max gives him a good idea and Jim tells him “he’d missed his calling.”

“You should have been a creative,” [Jim] said.

“A creative?” said Max.

Jim explained that in the advertising industry, art directors and copywriters alike were called creatives.

“That’s the stupidest use of an English word I ever encountered,” said Max.

Jim also told him that the advertising product, whether it was a TV commercial, a print ad, a billboard, or a radio spot, was called the creative.

Then,

Sometime later in the afternoon, Max Jackers surprised Jim by calling him back. “You folks over there,” said Max, “you say you call yourselves creatives, is that what you’re telling me? And the work you do, you call that the creative, is that what you said?” Jim said that was correct. “And I suppose you think of yourselves as pretty creative over there, I bet.”

“I suppose so,” said Jim, wondering what Max was driving at.

“And the work you do, you probably think that’s pretty creative work.”

“What are you asking me, Uncle Max?”

“Well, if all that’s true,” said the old man, “that would make you creative creatives creating creative creative.” There was silence as Max allowed Jim to take this in. “And that right there,” he concluded, “is why I didn’t miss my calling. That’s a use of the English language just too absurd to even contemplate.”

With that, Max hung up.

[Excerpt Copyright 2007 by Joshua Ferris]

One of the greatest validations of what we do as artists and creatives is having an agency, design firm, marketing department, or a publication bring you on for a project or an assignment based of your style of work. It’s happened to me and it feels great. And I love seeing it happen to others.

Photographer Richard Renaldi has a distinct style: very natural, solemn, and sensitive. Especially with his photographs of people.

© Richard Renaldi

© Richard Renaldi

© Richard Renaldi

Renaldi recently wrapped up working on a campaign for Microsoft and McCann (the ad agency) that is all him.

Microsoft ads photographed by Richard Renaldi

On his blog Renaldi writes:

In the end I am so happy…that [Microsoft/McCann] produced an entire advertising campaign of real people in eight by ten large format with all natural light- all extremely rare and unusual in this business especially in the digital age.

What’s even better is that they chose Renaldi to photograph it based on his style and vision, which is making photographs of “real people in eight by ten large format with all natural light.”

It’s a perfect example of good things coming your way when you stay true to your vision, are honest with and about your work, and make it your own way.

Poster by MODE for AIGA Charlotte

AdCharlotte.com points us to a super-cool poster the folks at MODE designed for an upcoming AIGA Charlotte event with designer Stefan Sagmeister.

Sagmeister is on the road plugging and talking about his book Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far and will be doing just that here in Charlotte on April 21, 2008.

About the poster:

For [Stefan Sagmeister's] lecture tour stop in Charlotte, the AIGA was in need of a poster promoting the event. Inspired by the spirit of social discovery in Stefan’s book, MODE asked various individuals around the city to share some of their own personal maxims, which were captured in their very handwriting. The individuals were chosen at random and photographed over a 10-day period at 30 different locations around the city. They represent a variety of ages, social statuses, races, professions, religious beliefs, and life experiences. The final piece was elevated to greater social level and beyond design circles, having a reciprocal relationship between the city of Charlotte and Stefan.

Cheers to designer/photographer Maxim Vakhovskiy for the great photos.

© Armando Bellmas

Musician Ken Vandermark is the subject of an aptly titled television program called Musician. I stumbled upon this show recently on the Ovation cable network. It was great to catch a glimpse of Vandermark at work, at home, and on the road.

Vandermark is devoted to his craft, true to his vision, and is driven to make it successful both creatively and professionally. He’ll always be an important figure in my own creative/professional endeavors (especially since he was one of my first “clients” way back at the beginning).

Play on, KV.

The Vandermark 5 “Aperture (For Walker Evans)” (6:45)
from A Discontinuous Line

I go back and forth about posting work by other photographers on this blog. The primary reason I do it is to show work that influences me and pushes my own work forward. (See here and here.)

I always come back to an old Cuban saying my Mom and my grandmother Mimi use to tell me all the time — in Spanish, of course — while I was growing up:

Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.

This is literally translated as “Tell me with whom you walk and I will tell you who you are” and loosely translated as “A man is known by the company he keeps”.

I’ve always been a little suspect of the phrase. Just because I keep the company of a certain person doesn’t mean that I am like that person or that their ways are mine. However, that may still be the rebellious kid in me bucking the parental wisdom.

The funny thing is that I keep coming back to that proverb every time I consider posting the work of influential photographers and artists on this blog. It’s as if a part of me truly believes the proverb to hold some truth.

I’m thrilled that I can find and wax rhapsodical about connections between people that inspire me and my own creative process. Making and finding meaning in those connections pushes me to be more passionate about my work and my life.

So yeah, I will likely continue to post influential work alongside my own work around here. My influences and inspirations are the company I keep. I couldn’t be more proud to walk with them.

Photo by Maria Mochnacz

PJ Harvey “You Said Something”
from Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

We don’t know exactly what was said and it doesn’t matter. What matters is how the world around her at that very moment looked from a distance, how it smelled as they stood by each other, and how it felt as words were said and never forgotten. It’s like remembering all the peripheral things that we associate with significant times in our lives more so than the thing that prompted the significant event itself. Most times the periphery is what we prefer to look back on or talk about anyways.

© James Day

David Byrne, one of my artistic heroes, has written a thorough and realistic piece about the changing music industry.

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

The web is changing things for artists and creators of all kinds. We can all glean some insight from Byrne’s article.

UPDATE 1/9/08: Byrne gets and posts responses to feedback his article.

UPDATE 2/15/08: Byrne’s Addendum to recent Wired Article (Part II)

Speaking of David Bryne, The Knee Plays has recently been released on CD for the first time. It’s nothing short of inspiring and a wonderful listen. Check out this video of “The Sound of Business” from The Knee Plays being performed live:

Photographer unknown/Courtesy Neil LaBute

I just read Neil LaBute’s play The Distance from Here. His work always knocks me on my ass or leaves me staggering, whispering “oh my god” over and over to myself. The Distance from Here was no different.

I won’t go into the action of the play since I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. I also believe that LaBute’s work, this play in particular, is not for everyone. I know for a fact that my wife wouldn’t like it at all. So forgive my being so vague about the story itself.

This quote from the back of the Tusk/Overlook paperback edition piqued my interest when I was browsing the shelves at the library:

No American playwright has written more compellingly about the subtle ways in which people inflict pain on each other than Neil LaBute.

I’m fascinated by the stories LaBute creates. I can’t look away for the sheer audacity I see or read before me.

LaBute writes about the idea for The Distance from Here in the book’s preface.

When I was in high school in Washington State, there was a myth that ran through our hallways; our own little urban myth, in fact, about a boy and a girl who had dated since junior high.

That story stayed with me for a long time, right up until I wove it into the dramatic fiber of this play. I hope it has finally left me now, a part of this world and no longer a frightening image from my teen years. I think that is often why writers write and painters paint and musicians play their instruments. It’s not just because they have a gift, but also to create something slightly more beautiful or coherent or illuminating than the frenzied, scrambled memories of their own pasts.

Our lives up to this point are made up of stories and experiences and influences we carry with us whether we like them or not. I don’t think LaBute will ever shake the story from his high school days. We may not or try not to think about them anymore, but we don’t shake them.

However, I’m intrigued by the idea of looking to those stories and experiences and influences, no matter how extraordinary or awful they may be, for inspiration or a source to create new work.

© Armando Bellmas

This is John. He works in IT for one of the big banks here in Charlotte.

I wanted to do something different with his portrait, somehow combine the conservative banker wardrobe that is so common here with an offbeat location or pose. I was dealing with quickly disappearing daylight and a lack of the right location. Then I asked myself, “What would Chris Buck do?” I thought about it for a few seconds, got myself together, and pressed on.

John and I walked for a few more minutes, looking for the right spot for him to stand in. We crossed a parking lot and came upon this brick house (which is a business and not a home). I asked John to stand over there and close his eyes. Sized him up, framed the shot. Got it.

I’ve been thinking a bunch lately about style. Specifically, making photographs that I want to make instead of the photographs that I need to make to land editorial, corporate, and advertising clients.

Since Chris Buck had been on my mind I went to his website to get inspired. (Buck is one of my favorite photographers.) As if put there to make me think more about style, I came across this photo Chris made of entertainer Andy Dick.

© Chris Buck

In the accompanying story about the photograph Chris talks briefly about his curiosities and instincts as a photographer and how photographing Dick helped nurture them. He writes:

A lot of what [Andy Dick] was playing with [during the photo shoot] was of particular interest to me though we played things out in different ways. The instinct to express our curiosities and openness, combined with a taste for extremes, created an instant bond between us.

It was very exciting to have ideas that were relatively extreme and yet have a subject embrace them. Most people in the public eye work so hard to hide those vulnerabilities and those fantasies, whereas Andy really was excited to put that part of himself forward.

It’s so reassuring to read that. I feel kind of weird when I ask a subject to do something that breaks down the fantasy, exposes a vulnerability, or is seen as “relatively extreme.” For instance, putting an IT guy for the bank up against a brick house with his eyes closed. There’s nothing bankerish about that yet it felt like the thing to do.

There are dozens of photographers in Charlotte — hell, anywhere — that can make a banker look like a powerful person. It’s been done to death and it’s an archetype that will continue to be beaten into the ground. I want to be the photographer that does it differently, that explores the curiosities and extremes, and is ultimately hired because of it. Much like Chris is.

Yeah, it may not be what the market wants or demands. Hell, I’ll shoot it straight if the art direction calls for it. I do have two young children to think of. I also don’t want to imitate Chris Buck or anyone else for that matter.

My intention is to develop my own style (which, admittedly, I’m still working on), build up the confidence to shoot my vision consistently, and get hired because of it and my ability to make the photograph the client wants.

I will get there. I’m sure of it.

© Armando Bellmas

Lots of new work to review, sort, and post here and/or on the main portfolio.

I can be very slow with my creative process/workflow, partly because of procrastination and mainly because of my desire to live with ideas and images for a while before they’re released into the wild, so to speak.

This photograph, however, was made just a few days ago.

I’m always making photographs, especially when there are no assignments or commercial projects to shoot. Those times between gigs are a good time to grab a model or a friend, hit the streets, get creative, and try out new ideas. I may make some amazing images. I may fail miserably and make nothing but crap. But what would I be if I didn’t even try?

A couple of weeks ago I asked Lauren, a model I just met, to meet me out on Elizabeth Avenue. We spent the better part of the afternoon walking around and being completely free-form with locations, poses, and ideas.

© Armando Bellmas

© Armando Bellmas

After a while I started to get really loose with the ideas. Lauren on the ground, sun towards the lens, flat on the hot asphalt, this may be good, it may suck, who cares, let’s try it.

© Armando Bellmas

© Armando Bellmas

Not really my regular style. I like these shots, though. Maybe put them on the blog, maybe on a personal or experiments section of the website. Whatever. Sometimes I shoot the vision, sometimes the flight of fancy. Who knows where any of it may lead? The familiar path, a road less traveled, or a dead end? You never know.

© Armando Bellmas

It was a creatively charged afternoon. I couldn’t wait to get home to look through the photographs.

© Armando Bellmas

As long as I keep shooting my vision and refining my signature style, going off the grid a bit visually and creatively — and knowing the differences and similarities between each — is something that I will always look forward to doing.

© Armando Bellmas

There are two things I really like about this photograph.

The first one is the bright light beaming in from behind her, the glow so close to the outline of her face and hair as if emanating from inside of her. The second one is that I trusted my creative instincts enough to put her back to the light in the first place.

The second reason jives with Alec Soth’s post about an essay he read by poet C.K. Williams. Williams referring to poets, and taking it a bit more broadly myself, artists:

“Another, related, right, is to be wrong, about anything and everything, and to know that even when your line of reflection or imagining might be viewed as absurdly illogical, you should be able to go on to its however provisional conclusion.”

The logical view might be to have the light illuminating her from the front and not from behind. More from Williams:

We should be able to entertain anything the mind casts up as potentially useful for a poem, while at the same time forgiving ourselves for such after all private matters, and this should be a forgiveness that arrives in a short enough time so that any shame or guilt arising from such scary glimpses within will be productive rather than debilitating for the germination of poems.

Yes, photographers should be as free as poets to, as Williams writes, “vacillate, to wobble, to shillyshally, be indecisive in one’s labors, and still not suffer from a sense of being irresponsible, indolent, or weak.”

There are also times when a photographer must be firm, decisive, and structured while still following his or her instincts. The ability to know when to be one or the other, or when to mix one with bits of the other, makes all the difference when you’re an artist and a commercial photographer.