Gary Oldman, photographed for Time Out New York in 1998

I’m pleased for Gary Oldman and his well-deserved Best Actor Oscar nomination for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Not only am I fan of his charismatic acting style but I also have fond memories of shooting with him in 1998. He was interesting, relaxed, and clearly cooperative.

Some years later flattery took the sincerest form when a young photo student emailed me his homage to my Gary Oldman portrait. I loved it! I was impressed by Matt Yeroschenko’s eye for detail, as well as his effectiveness in re-creating the spirit of my original.

Good luck on Sunday Gary!

Matt Yeroschenko's homage to my Gary Oldman portrait. Sweet!

]]> http://chrisbucknews.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/gary-oldman-homage/feed/ 0 chrisbucknews Gary_Oldman_Chris_Buck GadrianoOldman http://chrisbucknews.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/direct-mailer-part-3-andrew-hetherington-tease/ http://chrisbucknews.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/direct-mailer-part-3-andrew-hetherington-tease/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:09:17 +0000 Chris http://chrisbucknews.wordpress.com/?p=1047 Continue reading →]]>

Chris Buck, as shot by Andrew Hetherington, for his Shooting Gallery series

Amongst the many odd and old bio bits hidden in my Euphemist promo is something new and fresh – an on-set portrait of me by Andrew Hetherington. I was very pleased to be asked by Andrew to be included in his series of portraits of photographers at work, but even happier that he allowed me to include this one in my promo piece, even though his series is not public yet AND I’m his direct competition.

Chris Buck and Andrew Hetherington, at a random photo-world event

We came to meet when Andrew approached me at a PDN Annual party many years ago. I was very flattered that this great photographer asked to get his photo taken with me until the next day when I looked at his blog, “What’s The Jackatory?“, and saw that he’d gotten his picture done with nearly everyone in the room.

Nevertheless we’ve become good friends and I’m continuously honored that he talks up my projects and, well, talks with me at all. Speaking of which, Andrew is throwing a contest in which my crazy massive and deeply rich promo Euphemist is being offered as a prize. Go to his blog today to see details.

One of my favorite shoots from Andrew Hetherington - awesome!

Just before Andrew shot this, Bill O'Reilly said, "I won't be giving you those Bachmann Eyes."

Andrew gave me a nice print of this for my sister-in-law, but don't tell anyone.

Ed Helms, as shot for Bon Appétit

Bon Appétit recently came out with their Southern Food issue and I’m pleased to be a part of it as I love barbecue and soul food. Alex Pollack assigned me to shoot Ed Helms, who grew up in Atlanta but now works out of Los Angeles. The picture was to accompany a Q & A that focused on his taste for boiled nuts, which are heavily salted peanuts, boiled until the shells get soft.

Ed was shooting The Office that day so we had him super early – our wrap time was 8:45 AM! The whole crew, and props, including a big green tractor, arrived promptly at 6 AM, we all worked hard and fast to be ready for the talent. His Call Time arrived and…nothing. A number of nervous calls from the publicist later and he arrived.

His time with us was brief but we had some mutual history (having both lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the nineties), a mutual friend (in comic actor Brian Huskey – also from the south – North Carolina), and well, he’s truly a pro. Ed gave us precious little time but he hit his mark and delivered the goods in record time.

After photographing him in a tub of boiled peanuts (thank you Prop Stylists Mark Helf & Kim Pretti) he was off to his day job, and we were left with eight pounds of boiled nuts and not a southerner in sight to take them off of our hands.

Going rogue (off of the tripod) for this Ed Helms Bon Appétit shoot, iPhone snap by Ice Lee

We took advantage of the Green Screen (no, we didn't). iPhone snap by Ice Lee

Baba Brinkman in a loving tribute to the Evolution Of Man graphic, Wired December 2011

Shooting our tribute to Evolution, one pre-historic pose at a time.

One of my favorite assignments so far this winter is my session with Baba Brinkman, the Evolution Rapper. Wired magazine proposed this as a modest still shoot then requested video just before the shoot date. A white rapper doing an off-Broadway show about science and evolution is certainly unusual but the portrait solution seemed almost predestined once it came to me.

I surprised photo editor Anna Goldwater Alexander with this multiple-figure image the day after the shoot, and her response was:

OH

MY

GOD.

the fucking evolution rapper is INsane!!

 

Which is definitely a satisfying response from a client, although I had to put it in context considering this was her response when I made my own call sheet:

oh WOW!!

I have NEVER known a photographer to make their own call sheet.

I’m aghast with love.

thank you

thank you

thank you.

wow

 Shout Out for Evolution, wired.com  1:46 minutes

 

Chris Buck posing with a tagged mail box, 6th Ave in the mid-50s, Manhattan 1982

My new mailer, EUPHEMIST is bound with a French fold and hidden within each fold is some odd or interesting biographical item. The right edge of each page is perforated, as in invitation to tear open the French fold.

Tucked between my black-and-white portrait of Kevin Smith and a grid of my Xerox ads is this photo of me at 18 taken by one of my parents on our family trip to New York in 1982. I had just gotten a proper 35mm camera at this point and I was excited to be shooting transparencies on this vacation. I shot a lot of pictures of my siblings and parents, and a handful of tourist sites (I had passed my camera to my mom or dad to get this street portrait). Being a pop culture obsessive, the highlight of the trip was being in the audience for Saturday Night Live. The show was not hot at the time (hence, getting last minute tickets), the host was Robert Urich, the musical guest Mink DeVille and funniest bits on it featured a modest young fellow named Eddie Murphy.

When I got back home to Toronto I made an 11×14″ print of this photo and hung it on my bedroom wall. It was very cool and New York, with the tagging of my name on the mail carrier’s box. Fifteen years later Magnum published a book of landscape photos and while flipping through it one day I found a photo from Bruce Davidson’s Subway series that pictured graffiti of the word “Chris,” and was shot in 1982. I looked more closely and saw that the tag also included the number “217.” This faintly rung a bell, so I dug through my old photos and finding my old midtown portrait I saw that, yes, it was the same tagger. Amazing! To be connected to photo history like that was a pretty exciting find.

Heather Morton, in a portrait by Derek Shapton

A photography auction is taking place on Sunday evening in Toronto in support of Art Buyer and photo blogger extraordinaire Heather Morton. Heather was recently diagnosed with Fibromatosis, a non-malignant sarcoma that requires two years of chemotherapy. The Canadian photo community (and many in the U.S.) has rallied to her side in an impressive way.

The primary organizers of the event are Kristin Sjaarda and Lisa Kannakko (I first met Lisa at the Santa Fe workshops when I led a class there). 44 photographers have donated work to the silent auction with printing services donated by Pikto, amongst them many of my close colleagues, including Andrew Hetherington, Mark Zibert, Adam Rankin and Lee Towndrow. I’ve contributed my potty humor portrait of Billy Bob Thornton.

Heather and I first bonded when she championed me for an ad shoot featuring a golden retriever getting it’s hair blown for an hour (it’s a long story), we continued our friendship by collaborating on a couple of blogs. She is a passionate supporter of photography, so it’s great to see the photo world come out so strongly for her.

Sunday’s events will include artist talks by Naomi Harris, Daniel Ehrenworth and Brett Gundlock, along with the auctioning of other photo goodies including memberships, portfolio reviews and consulting services.

To be auctioned on Sunday, by Jaime Hogge

To be auctioned on Sunday, by Jeff Harris

To be auctioned on Sunday, by Andrew B. Myers

The cover of my new awesome mailer, designed by Sylvia Gruber of Buero New York

Over the past month I’ve been rolling out a new direct mailer. I’m very excited about this piece. It’s likely the most impressive single piece that I’ve ever produced, but it didn’t start out that way.

A year and a half ago my newish agent Patrick Casey suggested that we do a printed promotional piece that primarily showcased my recent commercial work. I was sure that this was a terrible idea. And I was correct, at least in the strictest sense.

He talked me into moving forward with it based on this argument: “Our clients know that you are a top editorial shooter, and that surely brings in assignments, but many aren’t aware that you also work on outstanding advertising campaigns on a regular basis. If we show them this, in a very straight-forward manner, it will lead to some big ad commissions coming our way.” It was that last bit that got my attention.

The majority of the stand-alone images in the piece are from editorial shoots. Left, an outtake from an ad shoot for Moviefone. Right, Chloe Sevigny, shot for Entertainment Weekly

The funny thing is that once I was on-board it was Patrick who insisted that the piece must also retain the stranger and more unpredictable elements of my previous promotions and marketing. So here in lays the quandary: how do we make an overtly commercial direct mailer genuinely intriguing?

We actually went through two designers (friends of mine who over more than six months were not able to find a design solution) before Patrick and CASEY‘s Amanda Steinberger introduced me to the folks at Buero New York, a smart and fantastically creative design firm originally from Austria. The owner and creative director is Alex Wiederin, our project manager was Ronit Avneri and the designer who brought the piece to life was Sylvia Gruber. From the overall look and feel to the rendering of the smallest design choices Sylvia is responsible for everything that is special about this piece.

The solution to the commercial vs. intrigue question was solved by bringing in two truly non-commercial elements: personal biography and mystery. Sylvia designed the piece so that it has an enclosed French fold, allowing us to “hide” fun and random bits from my photography and personal history literally within the promo. Each page has a perforated edge, so that the recipient has the option of splitting the pages to fully reveal the inside materials (I recommend this!).

Here, my beautiful assistant gives us a peak at some of the "hidden" material in the mailer

Sample "hidden" materials in the mailer: Left, photographer Sarah Wilmer brought a handmade card to my Nixon Frost birthday party in 2008; Right: an early 20th century photograph of a movie theatre on Queen Street West in Toronto, owned by my great-grandfather Peter Griffin.

The finished piece is 95 pages long! It still amazes me that something that started as an overtly commercial mailer has become the fullest and deepest rendering of my work and myself in a printed form. It’s part promo, part retrospective, part scrapbook, part fanzine.

A few subsequent blog postings will tell stories behind some of the bio materials hidden in the inner pages of the mailer. Watch for it here…

Yael Young and Chris Buck, in a non-work environment

I asked my current intern, Yael Young, to be a guest blogger this week. She is on her fifth month with me.

Working with Chris continues to be ever changing and evolving.  It’s funny to look back and think that when I first visited him from Toronto I thought he was super intimidating and formal.  Around the office (it should probably be noted that the staff consists of Chris, myself, and occasionally one of his two cats, Sunshine), Chris is known to play a variety of music (The New Pornographers, Feist, Fiery Furnaces, Frank Sinatra and LCD Soundsystem), and at times has a look of utter disgust on his face when I tell him I’m not familiar with a Canadian band.  Humor is a constant at work, sometimes corny and awkward (cough, Chris), often sarcastic (cough, Yael).  I did make a New Year’s resolution to be less sarcastic with Chris and so far I’m doing well, I hope that he notices my efforts.

Chris and I have some really great conversations (when I’m not trying to convince him that the word “healthy” is a positive description of a lunch choice), about business, life, religion, and, of course, photography.  I think we’re similar in some ways but very different in others, and that makes for an engaging work environment – we don’t always agree but we’re happy to hear each other out.

Chris, in Toronto for TVO, shooting the "flight attendants" Photo by Yael Young

Chris instructed me that I’m not to to gush over how much of a great mentor he is so I’ll just say that one thing that always impresses me (and speaks really well to his character), is that on set, no matter how big the group, he makes an effort to know everyone’s names.  Sounds easy enough, but when you’re on a shoot like the TVO print ads that we recently shot and there are 20 people to be directed in one shot, it’s pretty incredible to see him refer to everyone by their first name.

Chris being tested on the talents' names on the TVO shoot. Photo by Yael Young

As we’re both from Toronto and as I happened to be coming home for the holidays, I was able to help on the TVO shoot (TVO is an Ontario Television network).  The shots were of medium to large-sized interest groups, paired with TVO programming topics (such as legalizing marijuana, assisted suicide, and the Arab Spring).  One of the best parts of working with a photographer like Chris is that there are always interesting and knowledgeable people on set.  I met Chris’s Canadian Rep, Jooli Kim, who connected him to this project, as well as Senior Art Producer, Leila Courey, and the Group Creative Director, Sam Cerullo, who are both from the ad agency responsible for this job, Leo Burnett Canada.  Everyone was relaxed and extremely friendly, as they undoubtedly are on Chris’s shoots, and the finished ads look great.

TVO print ads, shot by Chris Buck for Sam Cerullo and Leo Burnett Canada

This is how my iPhone case looks with the phone in it.

I recently got a case for my iPhone. It’s made of bamboo and looks like a camera. It was shipped to me from Hong Kong from Signicase. I think that it’s super cool looking, although ironically the case bounces back the flash when I try taking pictures with it, causing an ugly flare.

Also, it matches my watch.

Not a very good watch, but a great President.

A week after getting the iPhone case I dropped it on a shoot and it shattered into many pieces. Good thing real cameras aren’t made of Bamboo.

1. Name
Chris Buck

2. Medium
Photography

3. Process
Photo-chemical

4. Aesthetic
Psychological portraits

5. Aesthetic horror
A great shot that I discover is out of focus

6. At which point in your process you are cheating / a fraud
Cheating – talk to the clients; Fraud – talk to the subject; Freud – talk to the subconscious

7. The elements by which you judge your work.
Visually resolved but not psychologically resolved

8. The basic unit of your work
My interest

9. Which trends in [your medium] are the death of [your medium]
I don’t mind the deadening trends (like the celebration of the Annie Leibovitzes and David LaChappelles of this world). They sort of inspire me to fill the void they leave, but I do want to have children so I’ll like to make a real living doing pictures I care about.

10. What you have borrowed from whom
Other portrait photographers (Penn, Corbijn, Barry, Michals, Hamilton, Arbus…), I borrow their visuals but also (and more valuable) their courage.

11. What is completely your own
Something apparently. I’m not sure what. (Can you tell me?)

12. The most astonishing thing you have seen today
People coming up to Muhammed Ali at the baggage claim, thanking him and kissing him.

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