Archiving a career…so far
I spent a lot of my time working for David LaChapelle as the print archivist. I went in knowing some stuff about cataloging and archiving, I came out fully appreciating the importance of it.
I lost a box of negatives once. I started with film. I shot the first five years of my then very young career on it. Because it wasn’t until I was 20 years old that digital SLRs or dSLRs as we now call them became readily available. I had a few smaller digital cameras but they couldn’t keep up with shooting live music.
At the time that was all I shot. So it wasn’t sensible to make the move from 36 frames a roll to digital until the first dSLR I bought came along. When you lose negatives, that’s it. Maybe you have the odd really small scan by today’s standards, but that’s it. Whatever prints you had of them is the record of that image you have. It was devastating.
The pandemic has um…given me some time. So I’ve been combing back through dozens of drives to make sure everything digital is safe and duplicated multiple times. Just to be sure. It’s been an interesting experience. A lot of my life is timelined by what I shot. I remember the events surrounding those times in my life in vivid detail when I see the photos, even when the photos aren’t of the events I recall when I look at them. Photos are just frozen moments in time, with a lot of action dancing around them in that drive in movie theater that plays back moments in your mind.
Some of it has really been a lot of fun. First times I shot certain artists, or one off shows that meant I got to photograph artists that mean a lot to me. Sometimes it’s been film stuff I’ve shot long after digital took over because of how much I enjoy film photography still. So while something might have been officially deemed “work” I’ve brought a vintage medium format camera along for the ride just for fun too. Sometimes it was stuff I shot around where I was working that had nothing to do with the work at hand, just taking the time out on the way to cover it.
It’s been refreshing to see. There was one shoot that I was told was going to be something completely different from what I was asked to do upon arrival. I spent years avoiding ever looking at the photos because of the physical cringe I felt when I did. I felt like I had wasted an opportunity. In hindsight I see that I did the most I could with literal minutes to change everything I’d planned and that some of the photos aren’t just “OK” they’re actually really cool. I’ve just had the distance from the moment to take most of the cringe out of them when I see them.
I can see the evolution of my work as a documentarian, and as an artist. It’s been interesting to see, and I believe it will help inform the next stage of me.
So here’s a few of my favs that I stumbled on in this process. Each photo has a quick note about why it’s here. Click on any photo to expand to full view and see the story behind the image. On your phone you’ll need to click on the image to expand it and then click the dot at the bottom right side of the screen. On a computer click on any photo and just hover over the photo to read the caption.
