polaroids Mine.

Part of a project for a zine.

Nothing short of amazing, incredible portrait Sir!

I really like the deliberateness of this, both in terms of pose and setup, even, I assume, in terms of the word "fragile" written on the box, though that could be a happy accident -- since it's a magazine series, I'd think not. The feet together, the hands clenched, even the hair parted in the center and seemingly slicked back, his intense symmetrical stare straight ahead. It presents an air of order, even formality. Yet that is so undercut by something I have a harder time putting my finger on. There is a casualness here, even in your subject. It's as if he embodies this very contradiction of formality on the one hand and eccentricity and ease on the other. This whole thing is mirrored in the background of boxes, also feeling very set up, very ordered, yet with a randomness that is palpable. I love working myself with combinations of pose and genuineness, artificiality that seems to convey deep truths. That's likely why I admire this so. Even your framing puts a bit of a spin on it, the stitching effect in the most inner transparent frame device and then the organic quality to the frame butting up against the black outer edge, just skewed enough. There's such clarity in the expression of his eyes, such directness, yet again undercut a little by the shadows, especially on his right eye, adding a bit of photographic depth to the expression. Finally, the word "fragile," which I won't attempt to interpret, because it would get boring, but it does strike me and does affect me.

Thank you Fred. "terns of the word 'fragile' written on the box" was a happy discovery, once discovered I wasn't about to turn the box around. I consider adding more handwritten text to some of the boxes but I ended up not wanting to detract from whatever genuineness the background has. FYI, A LOT of the small boxes are from shipments of used camera stuff I've bought just in the last couple months.

I did this setup two Saturdays in a row and for the second set the boxes are arranged in a more detracting order with lots of the labels near the heads of the subjects. I did keep "fragile" in a similar position but I'm not as happy with the rest of the layout for the second round:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2560/3802178012_6ce2c4a8dd.jpg

I'm lucky I have several friends who have similar ideas to mine so I can just let them do their thing as it was in this case.

Was there a theme for the series? Did the magazine have something in mind you were fulfilling? If it was totally your own creative option, how did you approach it as a series?

I came up with the idea of creating my own zine with these after I cleared the first few negatives and after having a few people write some notes about their containers. I already have a couple of ideas for future zines.

 

The theme for the series is Containers and Their Owners. I'm a huge alt/underground music fan, The Fall being one of my favorite bands, and I re-listened to a early song of theirs the other day, Container Drivers, the chorus goes:

 

"Containers and their drivers"

 

And the idea for this series popped into my head, I don't know any truck drivers but I'm pretty sure everyone owns a container and many people probably have some favorite containers. From there things just kind of gelled.