Some clips from a recent shoot I did at Leader Bikes new warehouse for an upcoming interview in Fixé Magazine, featuring Leader’s team rider Emi Brown.

p.s. Sorry, can’t get the player to embed. Click the link though to view the video.

Some images I shot from my recent trip up to SF.

]]> http://mattlingo.shuttrr.com/2010/02/10/san-francisco/feed/ 2 http://mattlingo.shuttrr.com/2010/02/02/alexs-cuevas/ http://mattlingo.shuttrr.com/2010/02/02/alexs-cuevas/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:30:19 +0000 Matt Lingo http://mattlingo.shuttrr.com/?p=65

Last year my friend Alex was struck by a driver while riding his bike through downtown San Diego. The driver ran a stop sign, hitting the front tire of his bike and sending him 20 feet through the air and under a parked car. His bike was sent up about ten feet in the air, before crashing back down and bending. After the driver fled from the scene attempting to escape, Alex picked himself up off the ground to find his bike bent and unusable.

His frame was made in the United States by Cuevas, a man who hand makes bicycle frames. Hand built frames by well respected builders take time, meaning most frame builders only put out 20-30 a year so it would not be easy for Alex to find another Cuevas track frame.

Velo Cult bike shop, where Alex works, specializes in vintage and hard to find bicycle frames so it was a matter of time before they got their hands on another Cuevas track frame. After eyeing it for a few months as it hung from the ceiling, Alex purchased it. His old Cuevas still hangs from the ceiling in a corner of the shop, bent and twisted like a pretzel.

“Since then I have devoted everything I have to my art, this gift, this thing that is the reason I am alive. Shit, I was supposed to die that night.” -Will Steacy discussing the night he was gagged, tied, and held captive in the basement at a shoe store he was working at while a man pressed a gun to his forehead.

Will Steacy’s series Down These Mean Streets features photographs in an around Philadelphia, and castes light on aspects of urban life that normally don’t see the light of day.  Steacy’s work, shot in large format, depicts grungy and gruesome content in bright and inviting light.  The ensuing contradiction between presentation and content causes us to look at these people and places in a different light.  We look at the filthy, grimy, and depraved “Mean Streets” more open minded, and more willing to accept the humanity that lies within the photographs.

At times however the work shows us the dangerous aspect of urban living for what it is.  The pornography theaters, racist graffiti, and broken homes all take their toll on the audience, blow after blow.  One really has to question the sort of photographer it takes to go into these situations with a large format camera.  Large format is a slow and methodical tool that allows the photographer to analyze their content more in depth then small camera due to the fact working with it requires much more time in between frames.  It’s not the sort of tool one would expect to bring to these situations.  Photographer’s work in the same vein such as Boogy, opt for 35mm small camera.

This sort of methodical approach is evident in the work, as the moments photographed give us much more in depth content to explore. Nestled in between images of hate and violence we find pictures such as the image of the storefront of a jewelry store. The warm soft glow of the light within the shop alongside the brightly lit letters saying “OPEN”, “GOLD” draws us in, however the image speaks of society’s desires for that which doesn’t matter. Steacy presents issues that no gold necklace or diamond ring will resolve.

The depressing yet utterly clear reality is that camera companies have us trained to buy the products we do.  A pinhole camera is about the only camera most of us can construct on our own, which is not the most practical tool for many of the applications we make use of our medium for.  Therefore we turn to Canon and Nikon, Mamiya and Hassleblad, Sigma and Tokina, to deliver us from our dilemma.  Through many decades these companies have led the masses to believe that the photograph relies on the equipment.  As technology snowballs and continues to stretch our definition of what a camera is, the products we buy are outdated in a matter of months.  Through marketing campaigns and advertising, companies attempt to lead us to believe we need to keep up to date to continue our photography.  When was the last time you picked up a news stand magazine regarding photography that actually talked about photography?  Publications such as “Digital Photography” release issues every month, who’s pages are jam packed with articles talking about the latest gear being released and comparing it against each other, showing you what you should buy.  When was the last time you picked up a magazine in a grocery store that discussed only photography, and not the cameras?

Oh Ashton Kutcher, what camera should I buy?

Not only are the cameras being forced upon us, but the technical aspect of photography in general is what permeates society’s notion of the novice photographer.  The popular website Flickr, where users upload photographs to “photostreams” for the viewing pleasure of the world wide web, displays “EXIF data” next to each image.  This data lists all sorts of meaningless information that doesn’t help us understand a photograph any better.  We’re given everything from the aperature and shutter, to the YCbCr positioning and encoding process.  How does any of this pertain to the actual photograph itself?

Granted Flickr is seen as more of a website for those beginning to work with cameras, and this data can at times help with unanswered questions regarding exposure, I don’t believe this is the sort of questions the novice photographer should be asking when faced with a photograph they find intriguing.  In the book Image Makers, Image Takers by Anne-Celine Jaeger, the author interviews 20 of the most influential photographers of our time.  Thomas Demand, a German photographer inspired by politicol events,  is asked what advice he would give to a budding photographer.  He responds with:

“I don’t teach photography students, I teach art students, and if they think they can make use of a camera that’s fine.  But probabley they’ve started at the wrong end because they’ve chosen their medium before they’ve chosen their content.  Having said that, the chances of them making it as an artist are so small, I’d advise anyone to do something they are really passionate about, rather than speculating about what other people might be interested in.”

Photographers should be focusing on the content of the photographs, and continue to shoot normally.  An interview with William Eggleston in , one of the pioneers of the color negative in the fine art world of photography, quotes him saying, “You become technically proficient whether you want to or not, the more you take pictures.”  Continued exploration of content will necessitate needs that will be answered by these explorations of technical aspects of photography.  Looking to become technically proficient first, without any real creative direction towards what to point the camera at, is pointless.

What drives photographers to pick up a camera and explore the medium of photography should be content, a fact which camera companies attempt to hide behind the lie that photographs can develop based on an interest in the technical aspect.  They attempt to ambush entry level novice photographers by indoctrinating them with this obsession of camera bodies, lenses, and flashes.  Canon and Nikon seek to draw new potential customers by enticing them to buy cameras when there’s no clear reason to photograph the world around them.  You cannot put the cart before the horse.  What’s in your heart, not in your hands, dictates photography.

behind the scenes video from a shoot a week ago in Long Beach

Fixe, a French fixed gear magazine, was kind enough to send me a couple copies of their recent issue with the cover using a picture I shot of my friend Ric, as well as featuring an eight page spread of portfolio images of mine and an advertisement I shot for Leader Bikes.  I’m really happy how the images look in print.

I’ve been on the road the past couple of days shooting band promo work as well as images for bike shops, so I’ll post a couple in a later entry as I finish them.

Back before I began going to school for photography, I had been shooting for a few years and thought I had a decent grasp on what photography was about.  I was self taught, learning off of strobist and looking at sites like deviant art and flickr.  There was lots of taking pictures of “pretty” things like sunsets, taking pictures of “interesting” things like buildings and architecture, and lots of pictures of my friends that were very boring.  This is what photography was for me, simply pictures that were easy and enjoyable to look at.  Eventually though I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take some classes so I enrolled at a local college.

Second day of class the instructor put on a presentation using a projector showing off the work of well known photographers.  Everything that was being shown was nice, but I didn’t really identify with what I was seeing at the time.  Years later I’d see the same work and have a better understanding, but at the time what I was being shown wasn’t identifying with my notion of “good photography”.

Then the image above flickered onto the screen, the instructor said it was by a famous photographer named Gary Winogrand who shot three rolls of Kodak Tri-X every day of his adult life, leaving over 10,000 undeveloped images at the time of his death.  She began to continue talking about the photographer’s career but I couldn’t pay attention, what I was looking at had me.  I was staring at this image in total disbelief that this had happened, that this sort of situation was possible.  Winogrand was a street photographer, meaning he wandered the sidewalks of cities photographing life as it happened around him, he was an image taker not an image maker.  Here he stumbled on this absolutely amazing moment, all these moving elements that were in no way aware of each other’s presence collided into this amazing fraction of time frozen into eternity with a slight movement of of the photographer’s finger.  The women backlit, strolling gilded and careless down the Los Angeles sidewalk.  The man in the wheel chair, with his unnatural and unnerving posture, trapped in the shadow untouched by light.  The child at the bus stop, glancing back at the man with curiosity.  And the lighting!  The amazing and dramatic lighting that highlights and accents each subject’s role in the photograph.  All of these elements were real, I was looking at life in four corners.

I could now see what a camera might be capable of doing in human hands, and what a powerful form of expression it could be when used properly.  This wasn’t about creating “neat” and “clever” images, this was about using photographs instead of your voice.  Of utilizing the subtle hiding behind the objective to shout.  Of finding the meaning in how you feel about yourself and your surroundings that your eye can’t see at the moment that you’re there existing in it.  Of making sense in what I didn’t understand.  This picture made me want to be a photographer.