Tom Fords first motion picture. Que Oscar buzz…

Dead clever taxidermy by Polly Morgan. Photographs by me.

Frenchman living in London, he counts Ed Templeton and filmmaker Harmony Korine as his influences. Only uses order cialis online and never edits the outcome.

DIARYOliver Zahm for Purple magazine. New work includes Dash Snow, Glenn O’Brien, Takei, Terry Richardson and Waris Ahluwalia.

“Phat Knits”. Made using giant knitting needles. I want one.

très bien.

How girlfriends should dress.

“O.H.W.O.W. is here with the goal of raising the bar for the creative world and integrating it’s true spirit into the wider world of culture at large. We intend to exhibit creativity with mayhem, showcasing talent with an approach never before seen. We’re one of the select few that can truly package the low brow with high brow, the yesterday with today, and the superficial with the thought provoking. We intend to set the pace and carry this community on our backs to push the movement forward.

The power of people is undeniable. O.H.W.O.W. ’s strengths lie in its people: the creative community. The community is comprised of artists, musicians, photographers, writers, poets, filmmakers, skaters, performers, curators, designers and creatives joining together in a venue where we can express ourselves without limitations.”

I like The Virgins.

This is just too funny. Made by Digital Kitchen.

‘SUP is music magazine that looks and feels like an art or fashion magazine, and reads like a journal. All of the photography is original and bespoke to ‘SUP and we only interview bands we like, so the stories are written from an informed perspective. The new issue is 160 pages and its on purple paper!

‘SUP MAGAZINE Issue 18 Featuring:
Cover artists The Kills shot by Kenneth Cappello

Exclusive photography and artwork from:
Michael Schmelling, Magnus Unnar, Asher Penn, Leonard Greco, Marius W Hansen, Andreas Kohler and lots of others!

Interviews with:
Dirty Projectors, Band of Horses, Map of Africa, Lightspeed Champion, The Virgins, Frankmusik, Bat for Lashes, Yeasayer, White Williams, Italians Do It Better, The Cribs, Santogold, Beyond the Wizards Sleeve, The Felice Brothers, Esau Mwamwaya, Apache Beat, Le Loup and many more…

Finally a store in Oslo that have American Apparel. Now we’re just waiting for the first A.A store to open.

Other brands: Henrik Vibskov, Casio Databank, Wood Wood, Kokon To Zai, A.P.C, Jbrand Jeans, Batlak Og Selvig, Best Behavior, ACNE, Retrosuperfuture, Cheap Monday, Vintage Pop Swatch, Sneaky Steve

Mini Manifesto

Begin with ideas
Eliminate superfluous elements
Subvert expectation
Believe complex ideas can produce simple objects
Trust the process
Allow concepts to determine form
Reduce material and production to their essence
Sustain the integrity of an idea
Propose honesty as a solution
Remove subjectivity

Hi Brian, tell us about your professional background?
I earned a BFA in Photography in 1996 and a MFA in Photography in 2004. I’ve been teaching photography since 2000.

What does the name of your site “notifbutwhen” signify?
Not If But When came from the weeks after 9/11. On one day it seemed this phrase was the headline of every newspaper and for me signified the messaging from the media the psychological climate of this country should shift from one of empathy and grieving to one of fear. I decided to co-opt this phrase to try and turn it against itself. Using ‘Not If But When’ as a moniker for my projects as an artist gives the phrase new meaning.

Why is photography important to you? What drives you to create, curate and teach in this field?
I am fascinated with photography’s ability to render the world in a such a realistic way that viewers will have a visceral, emotional response to an image. Photography is one of the most powerful mediums simply because people will believe it, even in the age of clear understanding of digital manipulation, we can’t help but be moved. If this wasn’t so, advertising wouldn’t work.

One teacher, Pat Bishop, early on as an undergrad really reached out and had a huge impact on me. Part time teaching is certainly not a lucrative endeavor, but if I can have a similar effect on students it is certainly worth it. Curating is much of the same, I love photography and art, many people have helped me along the way so it becomes important to try and do the same for people whose work I respect and admire.

How do your surroundings influence your photography?
My current project, Copia, is one that started as a small idea of making photographs in shopping malls and stores and has become a long term investigation of ideas of consumerism in America across many middle, lower, upper and working classes. It has become such a big project, (at the moment it’s about half done), simply because once I started paying attention and spending long periods of looking at something as simple as a supermarket checkout, I came to understand that how powerful, sublime and manipulative that environment is. The proverbial light-bulb (blue light;) went off in that, a picture of such a simple everyday stupid moment can transcend those things and hopefully becomes an idea that asks us to evaluate our own decisions and self reflect. It’s quite amazing that this works but I often hear from people who tell me they cannot go into a store the same again, that now a trip to Target brings to mind my photographs.

Your work often seems like a commentary on society, particularly consumerism. Describe your thought process in the creation of the “Copia” series. Did you have any preconceived goals for the project?
As I mentioned above, the aim wasn’t something huge but simply to see if it was even possible to make any pictures in stores. Most of the pictures in ‘Retail’ (big box stores) were done candidly so I was of course worried I would be tackled by security as soon as I took out a camera. Surprisingly that was not at all the case. What kept me going back was the idea that shopping in the wake of the politicized climate of post 9/11 was an instruction from the government. I wanted to see if people were actually out shopping because it was something patriotic to do. Once I got past the awkwardness and worries about how to make the pictures, the portraits of shoppers were mainly focused on a psychological moment where we might be able to get inside the psyche of the subject. Initially the pictures were more critical but I quickly realized that I wanted the pictures to be more empathetic. If viewers identify with the people in the pictures we can’t help but think of ourselves in the same situation.
The Copia project began to grow as the more I investigated, researched, read and photographed the more complex a subject I was dealing with. At present Copia consists of 2 chapters, Retail and Thrift and I’ve begun work on 2 more. Retail deals with big box middle class shopping. Thrift came from a curiosity about what happens to all this stuff once it’s sold. The thrift store pictures are different though, more formal, elegant, and surreal with portraits of the workers making connections to things a bit more art historical, (classical portraiture). I always have ideas but photography really asks one to obverse so often paying attention takes me in a very different direction than what I could dream up.

Have your viewpoints or consumer habits changed as a result of the “Copia” series?
Indeed. Personally I am pretty analytical and that nature applied to this idea can be a catastrophe! Actually what it really means is I’ll often second-guess my ideas as I learn more. In terms of being a consumer at the moment I believe that the dilemma we have created for ourselves is one that may not exactly be the result of individual habits but a bigger corporate ideology that has shaped our landscape. This is not to absolve myself or anyone else for owning things but more that as a collective culture our environment is one crafted on desire, selfishness and apathy and what really needs to change is that environment.
Earlier I began questioning every thing I bought and owned and realized there is so much that I can do little about. If I live in a house I need to have heat and electricity, I can either get those things from 1 utility company and in effect support that company or not have electricity. We often talk about our abundance of choice but choice is really an illusion when that choice comes from 2 major food distributors, 1 major media company, 2 meat suppliers for the nation, etc. It is quite a quagmire but more people are becoming aware and hopefully this dialogue effects change.

Every picture in the series has something special about it that makes it interesting. What do you see as the most important elements of your photographs?
The ceiling! I often joke that one of the reasons this project has become so ongoing is that I have no idea what to do with sky. In the interiors you can use the diverging lines, or endless rows of lights and ceiling to point the viewer around the frame. Actually something I seriously think is more important is that the pictures look real, they’re sharp and hopefully when you look at them the camera disappears a little. If it works, it’s a bit like looking in a mirror.

You state that the images from “Copia” were taken with medium and large format cameras. Can you elaborate on the equipment that you use?
To make many of the candid pictures I wanted to use a larger camera to get a better quality negative (I shoot film), so I use a medium format camera with a slightly wider lens. It has a viewfinder that I look down into so the camera is never really to my eye. This helps to be more candid and also helps me be a little more conscious of the entire frame of the image. It’s not easy though, I have to hold quite still and hope that people don’t move. The lighting often sucks and most things are outside my control, but when it works it’s quite amazing.

The bigger problem with much of this project is how does one make a picture of something you see everyday and make it transcend that? The camera does play a vital role. When taking pictures without people it was more of an issue. I began to use a 4×5 large format camera because it can do exactly this. It can make very dumb things very serious and important, that especially came into use with the Thrift store pictures. I wanted them to look more like 17th century still lifes and less like piles of junk. By making a picture with sharpness and fidelity I think a photograph can bring about many of the issues I mentioned above.

Has the web impacted your career? And what are your thoughts on community photography websites such as Flickr?
The web has been the number one most important tool for getting the work out into the world and starting much of this dialogue.

It is obvious you are passionate about the art of photography, not only your own but the work of others. Name three current day photographers who you feel are producing outstanding work.
Ugh this is tough, there are so many.

The Big Ones:
Rineke Dijkstra
Paul Shambroom
Naoya Hatakeyama

The Up & Comers:
Bill Sullivan
Amy Stein
Kevin Bewersdorf

What are your future plans?
To finish this project! I’d like to see it as a series of 4 individual books, one for each chapter. From there sipping tall drinks with little umbrellas on a beach somewhere.

To view more of Brian’s work visit: www.notifbutwhen.com

COOLMEN read MONOCLE
new magazine set up by Tyler Brûlé, founder of Wallpaper*

My friend Michael Madrid just launched Last Nights Shoes. A mix of party photos and snaps of – shoes.

They are presenting their The One Weekend Book Series in Barcelona this friday (July 15th at 8pm) at the Ras bookstore.