by Sonny Mayugba
Washington D.C, February 1999: I'm standing in the infamous Dischord house. Surrounding me are three of the most historically important photographers of the late 20th century. Cynthia Connolly, Bud Fawcett and Glen E. Friedman all have two things in common: the first, they were each present to document the beginning of scenes that would later (now) become landmark movements symbolizing a generation and an era. The second thing in common is they are all still shooting.
Cynthia Connolly grew up in Los Angeles and moved to DC where she witnessed the birth of Bad Brains, Minor Threat and many other seminal punk bands. She spent several years booking bands as a promoter. As well, she was integral in the evolution of the world's archetype of the DIY ethic, Dischord Records. She has self published a book, Banned In DC.
Bud Fawcett moved to Lake Tahoe from North Carolina when snowboarding was an illegal activity. Bud became a staff photographer for the first ever snowboard magazine, International Snowboard Magazine. His images of snowboarding became icons of the sport. He, along with other founding fathers of snowboarding, has photographed many first descents, mountains never before ridden. His photos have been published in books and magazines worldwide. Currently, he works as the art director for Palmer Snowboards.
Glen E. Friedman has been shooting skateboarding since his early teens. Having grown up in Dogtown (Santa Monica), he witnessed the birth of aggressive skateboarding. He also was the first to document LA's punk scene and more dangerously, the birth of hardcore hip hop. He has self published three critically acclaimed hard cover books entitled Fuck You Heroes, Fuck You Too, and The Idealist.
Getting these three artists together for one conversation was no easy feat. They are all very busy and live on different coasts. Once it happened, what took place that evening in DC was a historical event and a phenomenal experience. By bringing these people together, I wanted to bridge the gap between consumer magazine and art gallery show. This is the document from the historians of the cultural underground.
Sonny: You've all witnessed many firsts. What comes to mind when thinking back to witnessing and documenting things that happened first?
Glen: Well, I got a lot of them. I could talk about the first time I saw someone get hit in the head by a police officer, the first time I saw Tony Alva do a frontside air, it was the first time anyone had ever done an aerial. The first time seeing Stacy Peralta do a kickturn on
vertical, how could anyone do a kickturn on vertical? That was radical to me.
First time, man I've seen a lot of fuckin' things that blow me away first time. What
about everyone else?
Bud: First time I was watching all these snowboarders load into
Tahoe and try to live "the life," cramming into one house, like 12 people, and just destroying a house. The first half pipe in the snow, that was cheesy compared
to today's half pipes in the snow.
S: Did you actually see the first one ever made?
B: No. Not the very, very first. The first year or two of half pipes in the Tahoe scene. My background as far as California goes and the first time I ever saw a Glen Friedman photo was when I was working for Sims Skateboards back in '77.
G: I got one of those first Sims boards they ever made, you know the big plastic ones. I just got it recently out of my grandfather's basement.
Cynthia: Well, some of my first things is the first time going to a punk show in L.A., but it wasn't a punk show. I went with my brother, John Connolly, which Glen, the coincidence with me and Glen is that it turned out we grew up in the same neighborhood and we never knew each other. I didn't know Glen until I moved to D.C., and the connection was my brother. My brother took me to a show, but it turned out not to be a punk show at all, it
was at The Starwood in Los Angeles, and it was terrible. But then I figured out that's
where I needed to go to go to punk shows. To me, that was like a really big first thing for me.
S: Can you guys tell me about how each of you got involved in photography?
C: I got involved because when I moved from L.A. to D.C. in 1981, I saw the scene, the sort of music scene here is so different than that of L.A. L.A. was so huge and sort of seperated, and D.C. was so focused and really small and for some reason I thought it was something really important; that there was something going on, and I had no idea what it was. I couldn't believe that nobody was taking pictures at the time and I just took somebody's camera and flash and just tried to take photos of stuff because I thought that something should be documented even though I don't think I was doing a very good job. To me it was so full of energy and there was something there that just had to be done. That's how I started.
B: I have little experiences of photography from high school and college, but the first time I really strived to do something with photography was documenting, starting to document snowboarding because it was new and people weren't doing it, weren't documenting what was going on and it wasn't really planned, that's just the way it worked out. That's where I
really learned a lot of my technical ability, was shooting snowboarding. And so most of my
photos in my first year of shooting snowboarding are kinda bogus, because they're either over-exposed, under-exposed, or out of focus (laughter). And I finally figured that out after a couple of years, but it's unfortunate that some of my best images are pretty cheesy.
G: Just like everyone else, I always loved pictures. Everyone loves looking at pictures from the time they're little, but I got a Polaroid camera when I was 10 years old, took a couple pictures with it; they came out perfect. And I just thought, "Okay maybe one day I'll try taking pictures again." About 3 years later I asked for a real camera for my birthday or
something like that, got one, it got stolen. But before that, I took a class in 7th grade at Paul Revere, which was [also] a really cool skate spot. I actually went to school at Paul Revere and I took a photography class because the typing class was too crowded. I was like, okay, I'm just going to transfer and take photography, sounded okay. Took that with a pocket Instamatic 110. I was in the class and they said you could use it, and I really thought there was no reason to use a bigger camera. But why use a big camera if I can have one that fits in my pocket? I didn't understand that there was a difference in the focus and that you could switch lenses and stuff like that. In the class, I learned about lenses and how to develop and print film, and proceeded to get a "D" in photography at Paul Revere Junior High. The reason I got a "D" was because I only shot pictures of my friends skateboarding and stuff like that. Everyone around me was getting really famous for skateboarding, or famous in my eyes. The whole crew, the whole Santa Monica Dogtown crew of people, and everyone I would see every weekend down at Kenter or Paul Revere was getting in magazines, and I wasn't really a good enough skater to get in the magazines. I said, "I got to get in the fuckin' magazine somehow!?" So I started taking pictures of them. And I also thought I could do a better job than what I saw in the magazines, 'cause I was seeing guys do stuff that I didn't see in the magazines. I found this pool and brought Jay Adams there. I borrowed a camera and I got slide film and I got black and white film, and I shot pictures there with the right stuff one day, and the shit came out really cool. I sent it to Skateboarder. Finally I had the film, what they needed, and the first time I sent them photos, they published them, and it was a full page, a Jay Adams for a subscription ad. That's kind of how I got started. Once I got that, and I got a credit in a magazine and a full page with my name on it for a subscription for Skateboarder when it was only $6.00 a year, and it was bi-annual, I was just stoked beyond belief. I was 14 years old, and I got the check, and I was like, this is the greatest thing that could ever happen to me.
S: Let's talk about what it takes to be a photographer, both physically and mentally?
C: For me, mentally, it takes a lot. I have to be into what I'm taking photos of, I can't take photos of stuff someone asks me to do and I'm not into it. I can't do topics or people or anything I'm not into at all, 'cause mentally I'm not there, the focus isn't there, and it just doesn't work at all. It's terrible, it's torture, it's the worst thing. Mentally it's really hard. You have to understand what it is that you really like and what you don't like, and understanding it sometimes is hard to know, until you're already in that position and you realize that this just sucks, this is not what I want to do at all. And the focus, I don't think a lot of people understand that you really need to concentrate a lot of times and people think it's just taking a picture; it just happens. But I think there's more to it than that.
B: I think physically, it's a real interesting story. When I first started taking photos, I didn't have many cameras, so it was just a matter of throwing the camera in a bag, going up on the mountain and going around. Then I went to my first contest and Mt. Baker, I had a 200mm, and Wow! I put it on a camera, put it in my bag, and I was in a mogul field, I slammed, broke the lens off the camera and it was an unusable camera in my bag. And
as the years went by, more and more equipment was added, and I got this Lowe Pro pack
that weighs 40 pounds, and I'm hauling that around on my back, and believe me, I started streamlining a little bit and getting less and less equipment again, because you have to be able to move fast. What was the other part of the question? Mentally, I'm the type of person that's slow production, because I always take a lot of time to find the right spot or
the right light, or the right person, usually the right spot, or just the right look. So I don't produce a lot of different work. More specific.
G: I think that to be a really good photographer, it takes a lot of sincerity. I think what everyone's talking about, that's one of the things that probably ties us all together, maybe more than anything else, we shoot things that we live, that we're interested in. That really is what it takes to be a good photographer. After that, you need to learn and you need to have a little bit of technical ability and understand the medium and your equpiment that you're working with. I think if you're just shooting a lot of stuff that you're not really interested in, it's obviously not going to produce anything with any character or content or really interest other people. I mean, you can fake it, people do it all the time, for their job,
people shoot things that they don't want to shoot, but in my opinion, generally those photos suck. And even people who do care, just 'cause you care a lot doesn't mean you're going to take a good photo, either. I'm looking at magazines every day that every picture sucks, and
maybe these people care about it. I'm sure anyone who's shooting pictures for a skateboard magazine or a snowboard magazine, they love what they're doing, they got to, I'm sure. 'Cause I have that much faith in most skateboarders and snowboarders, and people involved in those cultures. They must love what they do, but it takes a little something extra; a little more intensity to really know how to capture the character of the people that are
in the images. It's more than just catching the action. The idea to me is to get the shot and also show some character, show something interesting about what's going on at the same time. And that's with the action even, I really try and concentrate and see people's face, even when I'm shooting skateboarding. I would shoot people doing backside wheelers and kickturns from inside the pool, not from the coping, just so you could see the expression
on the person's face and get more of an idea of the style. And when I'm shooting music stuff, anyone can shoot a band with a fuckin' microphone stuck right in the person's face. And especially lately, or the last ten years for me, it's more about showing the band with the audience, and how they relate to the audience. If you're standing in the front row like I used to do, all during the early days when I would shoot punk rock photos, you see the band, and that's great, but after a while what's the difference between that shot and one that someone may have taken during sound check? You can't really tell unless you're using a really wide angle lens and you get a particular angle where you see everything that's going on. And God knows, I don't want my photos to look like they were taken at a sound check, I want my shit to have the real action, the real intensity, what's really going on. I think that that's what's important about photos, that they express a certain amount of reality to people.
C: So many photographers can't do that. I'm not saying that I do, I don't know, but, for example, I work at Dischord Records and I get a lot of live band photographs that people just send in, and so many of them are not... there's something missing. And all of a sudden you get something, it's probably like 1 in 50 or 60 photos that you get, and you just know this person is into the music, there's something about it, they're really into it, they're focused on it, and they're understanding what's going on, and they're actually wanting to express what their music or the band is through their photograph, which is something that's really hard to do.
G: It's definitely not easy. I don't think you can get a camera and just fuckin' be a photographer. But at the same time, you don't need a good camera to be a photgrapher. It's something that you really have in your heart, and even if you have it in your heart doesn't mean you're gonna do it, you really gotta fuckin' practice and just deal with it. I think
shooting skateboarding since I was fuckin' twelve years old really helped me learn a
lot about capturing intensity in that particular moment and showing it in just the right way 'cause skating was so fast, and moves were so minute compared to what they are now. I really learned to get my sense of timing from that. Also being the younger person in the whole crowd, there would be days at the pool where fuckin' Tony and Jay would be just like
trying to do flyaways and hit me in the head with their board! Just 'cause they're all a
bunch of fuckin' wise asses and I'm just a little squirt, you know, you learn how to hang out with the tough guys, you gotta fuckin' really prove yourself. I had a real proving ground and I know a lot of people don't have those opportunities or have those tough guys pushing them, but I think that I was really pushed in a lot of ways by the people who were around me. And then again, like Cynthia or anyone else, when you're around people that you respect and they respect you, it also helps you get good photos because you have this appreciation for each other and it helps you express yourself that much more clearly. If someone starts talking to me about photos, or about photography, or about art, or about music, and they haven't seen my books, or they never heard of Black Flag or Tony Alva, or whoever, it's like, I can't talk to this person. It's frustrating, it's really fuckin' difficult. I can try and do it and I can try and be polite, but generally speaking, I'm not that social. I've got a real fuckin' specific interest, and I'm gonna go for that, and I'm gonna try to share it with other people, and you really gotta believe it in your heart, you gotta really feel it, and then you
really gotta fuckin' practice it. I was fuckin' devoted to the people that I shot. I wanted to help them share their ideas. It wasn't about me. Early on, I did want to get in a magazine, but at the same time, I wanted to fuckin' share with the world. I thought I was the fuckin' man to fuckin' do this. I fuckin' had to fuckin' bring it to the people. It's how I really felt,
like a fuckin' missionary, man. I wanted fuckin' people in Sports Illustrated to see what
Tony Alva did; I wanted people in Rolling Stone to see what fuckin' Black Flag and Minor Threat were doing. I wanted people in the rock magazines, in the mainstream press to see what fuckin' Run DMC and Public Enemy were doing. I started shooting those people before they had any white press. I got them their first white press. Again, from the heart, I wanted to show other people that something special is going on here, and it's something I
fuckin' really love. I loved it so much, I had to fuckin' do it justice. I had to do my subjects justice, and that fuckin' motivated the hell out of me.
B: Oh yeah, totally. When I started shooting snowboarding, it was more about the athlete than it was me at any one time. It was about what they were doing. I was learning photography, to me it was, I was secondary. I wanted to get these guys in front of the magazines, 'cause I had always admired other photographer's work, and I was actually trying to copy their abilities. Finally I started getting published, and it was just stuff that
I had in the can already. But I think it's very important that the person in the photograph be rewarded by being published.
S: When you're shooting photos and getting your photos published, what percentage of the motivation is for you personally, and what percentage is for an audience?
C: I don't even care if I get published. For me, it's just for me, and somehow for me to teach myself or to understand how to express whatever it is I'm taking a picture of to think that I'm doing it rightfully to show who the person is, or what the thing is, or what it is I'm seeing. So I can take a photo and print it and know that it's how I remembered it. I don't actually concern myself about the publishing part of it.
G: Nowadays, it's definitely much more for myself, but everything I shoot I do for myself, I shoot it because I want to do it. But, early on when those movements and cultures I was so involved in were just spurting up, I took the photos for myself, but it was equally important at the time, that I'm doing it for other people to see. I want to share these images with other people. I created them in a way that I would appreciate, that I was always very selfish in the way of thinking if I appreciate it, other people will appreciate it. If I do it this way, the way I think is right, it is right. And this is what I need people to know. It was definitely a little bit self-centered or egotistical to think, "I know what the fuckin' shit is, and I'm gonna force it down everyone's throat, 'cause this is what's right." It is because of the subjects that I did it, because the subjects were so important; I think they deserved the coverage, I think they deserved to be portrayed in a real way, in the way that they really were, that perhaps other people hadn't done yet. That was my biggest motivation, even in the hip hop music in particular, 'cause all the photos I had seen in hip hop were whack, there were never any good shots of rappers before I took them. I mean, other people eventually came along, as hip hop got bigger, more and more people started taking photos. Before that, it was like, they would take rappers and photograph them in studios and with makeup and just all stupid shit. I knew, just like everything else that I did, if you show people the hardcore souls of things, no matter what the fuck you do, if it's hardcore, people can relate to it. If it's emotional, if it shows character, you don't have to know what fuckin' hip hop is, you don't even have to know what skateboarding is, you don't have to know what a frontside grind is, you don't even have to know who Minor Threat was, you could look at a picture, and feel the emotion, or the character, and if you're fuckin' 80 years old, you could appreciate that image.
B: Everything from the beginning was totally for me because
there wasn't a
market for snowboard photos. There wasn't anybody really
publishing too much
snowboarding.
G: Let me interrupt for one second, just so you know. When I
shot punk rock
photos, there was no market for them originally. And even hip
hop photos,
these were things I believed in, I had to force it on people,
believe it or
not. Now people hear about Minor Threat and Black Flag. Years
before anyone
ever talked about them in the press, I was sending pictures of
these bands.
And even skateboarding, I sent skateboard pictures to Sports
Illustrated,
thinking I gotta expose it to other people. So really, I didn't
want to
interrupt you, but I just want people to know that there wasn't
the
opportunities that there are now for stuff to be published. It
wasn't easy.
When I started getting published in 1976, there weren't so many
magazines as
there are now.
B: That's for sure!
G: There are way too many magazines now and most all of 'em
suck. And let me
make a point, Bud sorry to interrupt, but fuckin' 99% of not
just the
magazines, every page in magazines is just filler to put in
between fuckin'
advertisers. Half of what is in magazines is necessary to be
printed even,
it's just bullshit. But people are so used to getting their
fuckin' monthly
paychecks, they want to put out a magazine every month, 'cause
that's what
everyone else does. Who said you have to put out a magazine
every month?
'Cause God knows, I don't read something every month that's
interesting in
every one of these magazines, or maybe one thing in a whole
magazine. So they
should maybe wait more months, but it's about fuckin' destroying
the
environment by printing these fuckin' things just so they can
fill the space
in between the fuckin' tobacco and alcoholic beverage companies,
and it makes
me fuckin' sick.
B: Absolutely.
G: Bud, I apologize.
B: Well, in the beginning it was totally for me because like I
say, I was
learning and it was interesting. It was interesting just being
out with
people snowboarding and learning how to take photographs, and
then later it
was for an audience. Mainly because those guys, or girls, should
be in the
magazines.
C: Did you snowboard?
B: Yeah, I snowboarded. All the time.
C: So you were snowboarding with these people anyway.
B: Yes, yes. Actually, snowboarding for me, as a photographer
carrying a
bunch of equipment on the mountain, it was less about
snowboarding than just
keeping up with most of the people I shot.
G: You were a snowboarder beforehand anyway. That's what you
already loved.
C: That makes a big difference.
B: Yeah, it coincided with my photography, though. Almost the
first day I
went out to snowboard, I had a camera with me.
C: So you really just wanted to document what was going on?
B: That's why I took the camera.
C: That's true, because in L.A. I never took any photos of
anything. I took
some photos of my friends hanging out, which I thought was, I
thought hanging
out in L.A. was more important than the actual bands, partly
because of the
same fact that I didn't have the nerve to do it, and then going
to D.C., it
was like now or never, you know? You're a loser if you just
don't do it!
S: Tell me about the dark side of shooting photos?
C: Sometimes I take photos of people and I say it's for
something, and all of
a sudden somebody else wants to use it for something and then I
have this
sort of like, well, I told this person it's for X,Y, and Z, and
then it's
gonna be used for something else. I have this really intense
sort of guilt or
something about having things used where they're not supposed to
be used, and
it's almost too over the top or something.
G: I think there's disappointments in photography. Especially
when people
don't use the shots you want them to, and they use shots that
you don't like
instead that you know aren't good. For example, I threatened to
scratch the
fuckin' front cover photo for Public Enemy's second album cover.
The shot
they used, I was really bummed. I had scissors right on the
negative. They
told me that if I did that, they would never use me again. So I
didn't cut it
and I let them use it. It's funny when people appreciate shit
that you don't.
Or when they miss the point of your photo. It's kind of a
bummer, but it's
nice if people say, "Oh, it's beautiful and this and that and
that and this,"
but you know what, they almost never see exactly what you see,
so that's the
dark side right there.
B: I think maybe missing a shot that you really wanted to get.
Or maybe
having so much material in your files, that you know that you'll
never get
caught up and go back to some of the images that you really
wanted to print.
I mean, that for me personally is probably the hardest 2 things.
C: How about when you have something, and you develop it, and
for some
bizarre reason it's the part where the negative is like,
something fucked up
because of whatever processing happened. I swear, some of my
most favorite
photos are just destroyed.
B: Like Glen said, it's really nice having the face in shots
because you get
the emotion, and sometimes you'll take a photo and you know it's
perfect, and
then you find out that the face is hidden. You've just missed an
important
element of the photograph. That can be a dark side.
S: Tell me about your feelings the first time you were
published?
B: First time I was published, my photo credit wasn't put on the
photo, and I
don't know if that was imporant or not. I guess it was as far
as having a
little pride in the photo. The second time I was published, the
second photo
ended up being published in 3 different places at the same time,
which was a
nightmare because one was an ad, and one was an editorial usage,
and boy, you
learn quickly how you're supposed to do business in photography
when a
mistake happens early in your career. I think it was a shot of
Shaun Palmer.
One was in a Sims ad, and one was in a magazine, full page in
Thrasher, and
then another was somewhere else. I can't even remember.
C: I actually really don't remember that clearly, but I know
that it was in
Flipside. I used to do a scene report, and I would just send
them the photos
and they would print them. I think that the only time after
Flipside that I
remember is the book, the Banned in D.C. book that I did. That
was like 2
years of my life pretty much, devoted to making that book and
when that thing
came out I was terrified to see what it looked like and what
thing had been
created, and how the whole thing was. I had no idea. It was a
really big deal
for me.
S: Discuss the sacrifices that you guys made to enable yourself
available to
photograph the scenes that you guys were each involved in.
B: As far as snowboarding goes, I got to move to a really great
place, so it
wasn't really a sacrifice.
G: Well, I'll tell you, I sacrificed a lot. I feel like going to
shows
carrying a camera is a sacrifice.
B: Yeah, that's true. On some of those snowboarding days, it's a
big
sacrifice, those powder days, for sure.
G: That's right, there you go. There's a sacrifice. I don't like
carrying a
camera. I fuckin' don't like it. I don't like being a nerd with
a camera.
(laughter) I sacrifice being cool, just being a fuckin' loser
carrying a
camera. And I sacrificed being able to slam dance a lot of the
times 'cause I
had a camera. And that's the truth. I sacrificed not skating,
because I had
to worry about my camera equipment. I sacrificed not having a
lot of fun at a
lot of shows 'cause I had to carry my camera around. I also
sacrificed a good
part of my childhood getting published as young as I did, 'cause
all of a
sudden I was up in this business world at fuckin' 14 years old,
worrying
about getting my check. I didn't really worry about the money, I
just worried
about being taken advantage of. And as soon as I started getting
popular,
people started treating me differently 'cause I was so young
getting this
stuff published. All of a sudden, I obviously wasn't a fuckin'
rock star,
professional skateboarder, professional snowboarder, but you ask
anyone who's
been in any of those things, you sacrifice some privacy, and you
sacrifice
weird different little things, like knowing who your real
friends are and
shit. At fuckin' 14, people wanted to hang out with me 'cause
they wanted to
get in a magazine! Who knows who really likes you? I lost a
certain kind of
innocence, 'cause I had to make sure I wasn't being exploited,
or taken
advantage of. I had to always be wary of people who are nice to
me. I feel
that if I didn't take pictures, I wouldn't have had to do that.
I could have
been just a normal fuck, but I feel it did affect me in that
way. I know it
did. Now when I don't bring my camera, I think, "Damn! I missed
some good
shots."
B: Yeah, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
If you make
a choice not to take a camera out, you're sorry that you didn't,
and if you
make a choice to take the camera out, then you're sometimes at a
disadvantage
of having a good time, or being worried all night, or whatever.
But that's
just part of the game that you have to play to capture the
moment.
S: What are your personal philosophies and choices of camera
equipment,
specific brands, and what types of film you guys shoot?
C: I used to use a Canon, now I use a Leica L5. I'm just
printing a lot of
stuff. For me, I'm really into the 3200 ASA T-Max film, and I
like sort of
large grain, and I like the grain to be in focus. There's a huge
difference
between anything shot with a Canon and a Leica and the Leica is
way more
clear.
G: Do you think that's because you learned how to focus better,
or...
(laughter)
C: No, it's the camera, the lens, the Canon lens is fucked up.
(laughter)
It's like a toy camera, the past two weeks printing stuff, I've
been printing
16 X 20 and the 24 mm Canon lens is a piece of shit, it's like
it has an
irregular amount of blur on the edges, it's out of focus. With a
16 X 20
print, it's like an inch in from the edge on the left and right,
it's just
out of focus. The 24 mm lens is like that, it's just fucked up.
Either just
low quality, or it wasn't made to blow up that big. But the
Leica camera is
incredible. I got a really good lens for my enlarger and that
makes a huge
difference. I really like the grain to be in focus and that's
what I need.
B: I've been using Canon equipment since I first started. Ever since they came
out with their EOS Auto Focus camera, I've been really amazed with the precision
that camera can follow focus an image. So with any long lenses, like 300, so
to utilize EOS obviously, and my favorite lens is a 20 to 35 zoom, and an 85,
real fast 85mm. T-Max 3200 is film of choice for lifestyle. I'm generally happy
with any slide film. I used to be a big Kodachrome buff, and I still go back
to those slides and look at 'em, and when they're scanned, they just look a
lot cleaner and crisper than the E-6 films, but the E-6 films are more colorful.
I'm generally happy with all Kodak products, as far as that goes.
G: Yeah, I believe in the minimalist thing. I said it earlier
before, I use
exclusively Pentex stuff. K1000 is my favorite camera. I have a
couple of
Pentax MX's, too. That's how I started on Pentex, with the MX,
'cause where I
came from after the fuckin' pocket Instamatic. MX is the
smallest single lens
reflex 35mm camera made, and also had a motor drive. I got that
when I was
really young, and I still have that first one, and I still use
it sometimes,
but I use the K1000 because it's a little more durable. It's a
little bit
bigger, but it's just so solid and so simple. I've never used an
automatic
focus lens in my life. I think it probably makes sense for the
surfing, and
the stuff that Bud talks about when people are really far away.
But, I
couldn't even imagine someone else focusing, a machine focusing
the camera on
what I want it to be in focus. It's just hard for me to believe
that it
actually works. I like just lining up the needle on the inside
of the camera,
and focus, and composing the image all on my own. It's like as
manual as you
can get, the better is. I don't recommend an automatic camera to
anyone.
Unfortunately, there aren't many manual cameras left. I don't
like the
Leica's that Cynthia works with, either. Certain people know how
to use them,
and obviously Cynthia does. I think overall, it's kind of a
trendy thing now
to have those cameras. If they can't take an in-focus picture
with any
camera, why the fuck are they going to do it with a Leica? Most
cameras come
with a 50 mm and people say that's the average. To me, 50 is a
telephoto. An
average lens for me is a 28. A lot of my earlier punk rock stuff
was done
with a 28, 'cause it was still kind of compact, and it could
work well. But
the standard lens I use all the time is a 20. And even, my
favorite lens of
all is a 15 ultrawide angle. I became well-known for using
fish-eyes and
brought that into music and stuff pretty early on. But I use a
fish-eye
pretty much never anymore. If I was shooting skateboarding, I
would use a
fish-eye if it was in a pool, someplace that's round, but I
really don't like
the way that it bends poles anymore, and I know that I used to
use it in
everything. But even when I did use it back in the day, I was
still trying to
be really conscious of my horizon lines and how things would get
bent in and
out of shape. I think if you're conscious of that, you could
still use it.
But I just hate it when things are overly distorted in a really
unnatural
way. I think that stretching things, and making somethings round
works, but
there's a very, very particular way to use a fish-eye and an
ultrawide angle
lens and still make it look natural. I mean, I'll compose images
in the
camera for 10 minutes before I fuckin' click one photo. But
those are the
favorite lenses. I do own and 80 to 200 zoom, I own a lot of
different lenses
just to have them, and when I was collecting stuff, to just have
it when
Pentex stopped making a lot of the manual lenses, I just tried
to buy up
every one that I could find. I even have a Pentex 6 X 7. I've
only shot five
rolls of film with it. LL Cool J's Bad album cover, Davy D's
album cover,
and Slick Rick's first cover, I did all those with a 6 X 7, but
I haven't
used it literally since Slick Rick's album cover, that's more
than 10 years.
I just can't be bothered with all that technical shit. Not being
able to just
take photos. My photography is very much about having a fucking
good sense of
timing, the perfect sense of timing. When shit is cumbersome, or
you can't
reload quick enough, it defeats the whole purpose. If you could
focus a
camera decent, there's very little reason to use a big format,
unless you're
doing product photography or something like that. All of my
stuff that's in
all of my books has been done with Pentex equipment. Asahi
optics are really
good, and I've been told by some people that they're really the
greatest and
they've invented a lot of optical things that other people have
copied and
made their own, Nikon included. It's just like the Asahi optical
company just
really invented these really cool things. Some of my photos
could certainly
be sharper. God knows when I was young, and even now, I
definitely have a lot
of out-of-focus pictures, and I used to get teased about it when
I was young
shooting photos. Film, I agree with those two, the T-Max 3200,
man, we're
all on that one. It's great film. You don't need any light to
use it barely,
and the big grain on black and white is always fun and good to
use. I really
shyed from even using a flash in the last 6 years. I don't even
want to use a
flash anymore, so I definitely need the 3200 when I'm shooting
gigs, and you
just concentrate on available light, and you can get some really
beautiful
stuff. And then for color, it's like, I've always loved
Kodachrome. That's
what I grew up on. Ectachrome was always way too blue, and
disgusting to me.
Also, Ectachrome and the E-6 films, I've heard that they're
never as archival
as the Kodachrome film. I've got slides that I printed for my
new show that
were from that very first roll of film that I shot, that are
Kodachrome and
they fuckin' haven't lost shit. They're like, 23 years old or
something like
that, and they're in great condition. And some of them were kept
in really
shitty places too! I don't use Kodachrome 64 anymore, since I
was used 64, in
the beginning 'cause they only made 64 and 25. Can you imagine
shooting 25?
Who the fuck would do that? When you're shooting in a pool, the
light's so
bright, that Kodachrome 25 was feasible, you could still shoot
it at 250th
and 500th of a second 'cause it's such bright light. But in the
last 10
years, Kodachrome 200 is my favorite, period, more realistic
than the Fuji
films, but I do use Velvia also. I use Velvia and some of the
Fuji stuff for
landscapes, but Kodachrome is so beautiful and so natural and
has a big fat
grain for color film. And it's always slide film primarily,
because that's
where you get your truest reproduction when you're trying to
scan for
magazines and stuff like that. Now, in the 90s, you can get good
scans from
all kinds of film, but there's a muddy thing about negative film
that I just
don't dig. I've got some good stuff, that's shot on negatives.
Public Enemy's
first album cover was shot on negative film, on just some
fuckin' shit that
we bought at K-Mart before we did the photo session because we
wanted it to
look grainy, we wanted it to look shitty. It's supposed to look
rough.
S: Tell me about one or two of your favorite shoots that you've
ever had?
B: The favorite shoots, my top five favorite shoots are... let
me think back
here. It's probably a lot of the black and white stuff of Tahoe,
just
lifesyle stuff of people first coming to Tahoe. Just the
strange, bizarre
stuff like broken houses. Just really interesting, weird
lifestyle things
where 12 or 15 people moved into a little three bedroom house
and you sit up
one night with a camera, and they're just a little too much for
the house. Or
action from that period. The first time I ever left the country,
I went to
the Soviet Union and that was obviously right before the
Republic of Georgia
left the Soviet Union, so all the statues of Lenin were covered
with blankets
and the people were acting really bizarre. So that particular
photo shoot
there was a lot of material that got published and that I really
loved. We
were there for seven days, and we felt like we escaped with our
lives. I
think my most beautiful photos I ever took snowboarding were the
first time I
went to Italy. It was a story assignment for Snowboarder
magazine, the first
time I went on a story assignment for a magazine. We had crappy
snow, but we
had some beautiful scenery and some good snowboarders that made
do with what
we had like Jason Ford, Nicole Angelwrath, Ken Achenbach, Steve
Matthews,
Mike Kildevald, and Pietro Colturi. In the US, probably Jackson
Hole. I used
to always go up there. I used to do road trips, there was like a
three year
period of time where I thought, I want to go shoot snowboarding,
and I just
started shooting color like, 1988, and it was like, wow, this
stuff really
works! Color slides. And so I went to Jackson Hole, made road
trips to
Jackson Hole from North Tahoe, or from Colorado. We used to have
friends
there, and we'd do the back country, and the place is just
incredible for
photography 'cause the landscape's beautiful, it's steep,
there's a lot of
talented snowboarders there. That's about it for that. Obviously
whenever I
was with Terry Kidwell or Shaun Palmer, it was always fun
because they really
enjoyed working with me and I enjoyed working with them.
C: For me, a lot of pictures I did was of people with their cars
because I
got to take photos of a lot of my friends and people that I
really wanted to
sort of document them and the way they looked, and the way I
remembered them.
I had a really good time doing it, and it was really relaxed
because they
were my friends, and all of those were really great for me to
do. More
recently, using a lot of the half frame stuff. Anything I do
with that is
totally unexpected; I have no idea what's going to come out of
it. And to me,
it's like Christmas every time I get the film back. It's
surprising and
really fun.
G: Tony Alva bringing me to the original Dog Bowl pool. Shooting
there when
he was doing the first aerials. Black Flag, from like 1980 to
'83, almost
every show they did was amazing to shoot. Minor Threat at the
9:30 Club was
amazing, great to shoot. I mean just amazing. Run-DMC taking me
to Hollis for
the first time in 1985, that was a trip. That was unbelievable.
I learned
some crazy stuff. And those were all good times. All that was
fun. I've had
some fucked up times, too. But those were the good ones.
S: What other photographers do you admire?
C: Sally Mann, I think she's amazing. Robert Frank is amazing.
Of course, I
don't remember any of the other names (laughs). I'm a
photographer, it's so
pathetic. I know what their photographs look like, but I don't
remember names
of the photographers, a lot of them are from the 40s, 50s, and
60s I would
guess.
B: I think that the person who got me really interested in
shooting action
was James Cassimus photos from the Action Now days. When I went
to Sims,
Craig Fineman was a photographer with Sims and I got to see
firsthand what
happened when a photographer took film out of a camera and that
was really
important. I was doing some production and he was sitting across
the desk
from me cleaning cameras and he kind of got my interest sparked.
There's many
photographers in Tahoe, but Hank deVre' and Deacon Chapin are
real creative
icons of the area, so those are the four.
G: Honestly, almost none. There's a few maybe that have created
some images
that I appreciate, Craig Stecyk influenced me in a way. He
showed me that I
needed to do something different than what other people are
doing in order to
make it interesting to people, and to separate myself from the
others, and to
give it some kind of validity in that field of creating images,
of being a
photographer. His work taught me that. Why take a photo unless
it's gonna do
something that hasn't been done before or done in a way that
someone else
can't do it? Create an image that only you can create.
Obviously not every
image that I have is like that, but that's the instinct I have
when I'm going
into it. His work and his ideals, and even his writings made me
see that. So
I respect him for that and I admire him for that. Lots of
photographers are
technically astute, and some of them are even nice people and
stuff, but...
I'm kind of, egocentric or photocentric. I really like what I
do. I like my
ideas, and I don't necessarily appreciate what I see too many
other people
doing. Honestly.
S: Specifically in the music, skateboarding, and snowboarding
scenes, how
have they changed?
G: That kind of a ridiculous open-ended question could go on for
years
describing what has changed in those scenes if it's that broad.
You want to
say photography-wise, I feel that nowadays being photographed by
any one of
us is a given for anyone who's out there, right? I mean, those
kids that you
go out with, they just expect to be photographed now when you're
snowboarding, right? Cynthia taking pictures... it's just a
given now that
you're going to be photographed. When I started taking pictures,
it was a
fuckin' privilege to be photographed. No one took it for
granted, it didn't
happen every day, it was something special. Not everyone had a
camera, not
everyone had a video camera, not everyone had the chance to be
on MTV, not
everyone had the chance to be in a fanzine, or anywhere. It was
a fucking
privilege to be photographed. It was difficult to use the
camera, there
weren't automatic focus, automatic exposure, automatic
everything, that's the
main difference to me. Do you understand what I'm saying, what
my point is?
People now are all fuckin' spoiled little babies, most of 'em.
They just
expect to be put in a magazine, because they're doing something
good. But
when I came up man, fuck that. It was not that simple, and there
were not
that many people doing it. You had to be really good and really
special to be
photographed by me, and you still do. And even by other
photographers back
then. It wasn't something that just happened too easily. Talking
about
skateboarding, how that's changed, and how punk rock has
changed, and how hip
hop has changed, it's like... everyone's a rock star now.
Everyone. But I'm
generalizing here. Overall, that's the deal. These fuckin'
little skaters
that have no style, but learned one new trick, they think they
deserve to be
in a magazine. It's like, give me a fucking break, man. You
don't even know
how to carve. It's like being a surfer and not getting wet. You
don't know
you're fuckin' roots, you don't know what's going on, you're
just trying to
get in a magazine. People have all these false appetites.
They're motivated
to be good just so they can get laid, or they can make money, or
be famous.
It's like fuckin' people like Tony Alva, people like Ian McKaye,
people early
in hip hop, they did it because they had to, because they loved
it, and they
would have done it whether anyone took their picture or not. You
understand?
It's not about being a star, it's not even about getting
recognition. It's
about doing it 'cause it's something that you have to do, it's
in you. It's
not about being in a fuckin' magazine and having someone take
your picture
because you're cool and you deserve it. I fuckin' hate that
attitude.
B: I agree with you. Snowboarding definitely, the magazines in
'85, '86,
whatever, developed a niche. They developed a market for
snowboarding. And
now it's just flooded by people that want to be in the magazines
that feel
like they should be. It's crazy. And snowboarding itself, if you
look at the
last five years, the number of photographers that have jumped
into shooting
snowboarding, it's incredible.
S: Where do personal politics get into photography?
G: Photography is my life, and personal politics is my life. So
they are one
and the same.
B: I have no political agenda.
G: I have every political agenda. My life is a political agenda.
C: I feel guilty every time I use photo chemicals. I think about
how much
heavy metal I'm absorbing by putting my hand in the fixer.
B: I'm into digital stuff now, so...
S: But Glen, shooting someone like South Central Cartel... That
doesn't
conflict with your political views at all?
G: At the time, it didn't at all. At the time it was a very
important thing
to show people, to expose to people. That's the last time, by
the way, and
I've said it publicly before, that I'll never shoot a picture
with a gun in
it. They had a viewpoint they wanted to express. So did Ice T
when he first
started talking about crime and how it related to politics and
life in the
streets and their hardcore reality. The name of that album was
In Gats We
Trust. That was a fuckin' heavy photo. That was almost worse
than going in
jail and shooting The Lifer's Group. That was fuckin' in South
Central L.A.
after the riots. When I was down there, people looked at me
like, "What the
fuck are you doing here?" And I've been going down to South
Central for years
before that riot happened. People looked at me like I just
fuckin' stepped
off the fuckin' plane! I was in the middle where I definitely
did not belong
at all, in a foreign country without a passport. People
threatened us with
guns that day, who were a part of the photo session. It was
fucked up, and I
did that photo session because I wanted to help them express
their viewpoint,
and I liked some of their music, and I liked what they were
saying in some of
their songs. And it was my friend's record label that put it
out, and so I
did that, and I think it was pretty important at the time. I
look back at it,
and I'm proud of the images that we created, but at the same
time, I wouldn't
do it again. A lot of those pictures I did with guns, you gotta
realize, were
a bit earlier than when everyone else did them. And they got
very
overexploited after that point. I thought every time I did it, I
tried to
make it have some kind of meaning behind it, you know? I mean,
In Gats We
Trust, these guys said, "We got nothing to live for." They just
had their
guns, that's the only thing they could trust, and that's the
only thing
that's gonna get them out of a situation, when they're in
trouble. And that's
a fuckin' sad commentary. Even if today, showing guns would tell
a story on a
record cover, or on a poster, whatever else, and someone could
rationalize to
me how important it is to use a gun in this picture, I'm making
a statement
after doing that cover, and other one's, but particularly that
one, I just
won't do it again. What I did early on, it was making an
important statement,
and it wasn't glorifying it. After a certain point in time, I
had finally
gotten to the point to even if I'm telling that story, it's
still glorifying
it in a way. Even if it's an important thing that someone's
trying to get
across, even if I'm documenting it, putting a gun in your
fucking photo is
such a cop-out. A gun, it's such a powerful instrument in so
many ways, it
attracts so much attention, it's an incredible fucking piece of
machinery.
The amount of attention it demands, because it literally takes
lives away,
and it's overwhelming. And so to put that in a picture, now I
say this, I
didn't say it then 'cause I didn't know, but I've thought about
it now, and
I've learned, it's a fucking cop-out. It's simple, it's easy.
You put a gun
in a picture and all of a sudden it blows everyone away. When I
was doing it
originally, it had not been done before. Really, to the degree
that I was
doing it, and I was really expressing something new, and sharing
different
ideas at the time that hadn't been expressed in music, in
culture through
music. I won't do it again. I fucking hate guns, I hate drugs
and alcohol,
and I fuckin' will not do that stuff. If it's a part of
someone's culture to
take drugs and to shoot guns, that's their perogative, and they
can talk
about that, and I don't necessarily have to support them. But
again, I want
to show how they're really living. Maybe I will portray that.
But I will be
very careful in that. I really sincerely doubt that I will ever
shoot a
picture with guns in them again. I might shoot a picture of
someone holding a
cigarette or a blunt, and I don't agree with those things, but
if that's
their lifestyle, and they're expressing themselves in a
particular way, and I
sympathize with their views, then I might take that photo. I
might. More
likely than not, I won't, but I might. I'm not perfect, and I'm
not also
going to censor everyone 'cause it is a form of my own
censorship on that. I
mean, it is my political agenda, right? You know, if someone's
fuckin' right
wing group comes along, and they play great music, you know I
fuckin' loved
Ted Nugent growing up, and do you think I'm gonna help promote
him? But I
would never deny, ever that Double Live Gonzo is one of the
greatest pieces
of vinyl ever made.
S: How is shooting portraits different from shooting action? And
vice versa.
B: I feel a couple of ways about portraits. One is, I feel that
if you don't
get it in the first five minutes, sometimes you miss your
chance. I also feel
you have to make your subject very comfortable, and if you don't
reach that
plateau, hopefully there's not a plateau, then you won't get the
shot either.
Some people can be not easy to shoot in action. Maybe they don't
have it, or
they don't know how to work with a camera. More than likely,
it's easier to
get a portrait than it is to get an action photo.
G: In some ways to me, they're both exactly the same. Action is
a matter of
timing, and timing is something that's become second nature to
me. I know the
right moment, I feel that I do. And that's when I shoot it. So
that being a
given, what you have to do in a portrait or in action is compose
the image,
and bring some character and intensity out in one way or
another. Like we
discussed many times already throughout this, by seeing the
person's face, by
seeing a particular expression, by getting in the peak moment of
action or
just right when it's the perfect moment. And even when you're
shooting a
portrait, action is a portrait of a person performing their art,
whether it's
someone in a band, or on a skateboard, or on a snowboard. It's
still a
portrait of that person, or at least that's the way I like to do
it. I don't
believe sports shot with long lenses are really that good, I
don't like it
'cause it's so sterile. I like to get really close to the action
and make it
intense. So that's why my action, I consider portraits, because
it really is
close, and it's not so flat, it's more 3-dimensional. You know
what I'm
saying, when you're using a wide angle lens? At least to me it
is. With
portraits, talking head shots or even like a lot of my hip hop
photography,
just band shots, or people just hanging out. I try to capture
the intensity
and the character and really just try to express to people in my
image what
this person is all about, or what this activity is all about.
It's the same
thing. It's a little bit different, but you're trying to do the
same thing,
you're trying to tell someone a story who doesn't quite know
what's going on.
Or you're trying to present something to someone in a way so
they can fully
appreciate it as much as you do when you're shooting it. And
sometimes even
more. Sometimes people look cooler than they really are because
we think we
know what's cool, and they don't really look cool, but we're
gonna make 'em
look cool 'cause we like them. And even with aerials, we'll lay
down on our
stomach just to make the air look that much higher 'cause we
want it to look
cool, we want to impress people.
B: You can't definitely make somebody a superstar just by using
a wide angle
and gettin' low.
G: Yeah, at least make it look like they got super air. But they
have to do
it consistently. People will know if it's fake sooner or later.
S: What goals are left for each of you in photography in terms
of just
photography, people or things to shoot, yet to shoot, or
projects?
C: Well, I'm really into doing a lot of landscape photography
where it's 3200
ASA and so I want to go southern Utah. I always just think that
I'll always
find something that inspires me to take photographs, and that's
sort of what
I hold on to. Just the idea that something's gonna be always
there that I
want to take a photograph of. I trust in that. That there will
always be
something there.
B: Photography's always been something that's very personal to
me. I think
I'm drawing back into the personal side, my own personal
photography, more
over the next few years. Not so much snowboarding as other
images that have
yet to be determined.
G: I just want to be able to continue doing what I've been
doing. And being
able to support myself on it. I don't know if I'll be able to. I
just keep my
fingers crossed hoping I get to keep on doing what I've been
doing. I gotta
keep being inspired. Not fucking turning people off with my
harsh attitudes.
I'm hoping to continue as I have been doing. I am very intrigued
lately.
Actually about five years ago, I started thinking about other
ideas, things I
wanted to do as far as photography, and I'm very intrigued with
natural forms
that are always in motion. They're constantly changing. And I
had thought
about two different books that I want to do on two different
subjects. Things
that are in nature that are never in the same state, like
they're always
different, and I want to photograph these two subjects. I don't
want to say
what they are, but if you think a little bit about it, you can
probably
figure it out. I'm really intrigued by that and I'm hoping one
day that I get
the opportunity to pull that shit off. I don't know how I'm
gonna do it. I
would like to do books on those subjects, but mostly just
continue the way
I've been going. If I could just keep doing it, I just hope I
can be lucky
enough to do that, 'cause I've been having a really good time.
S: Anything more you wanted to add or discuss?
B: I think that my interest in snowboarding created my interest
in
photography. For that reason, I'm very grateful to all
snowboarders I've
photographed in the past. Without the best snowboarders in the
world
appearing in front of your lens, your photos will be second
rate. Those of
you that are the best, know who you are.
C: Glen Friedman inspired me, indirectly to do photography but
also just
seeing his photos when I visited him once, I think in 1985, and
saw some of
his skate photos on the wall. It just really inspired me to
understand the
expression of what he was doing. It got me to thinking about
doing something
similar to that. You know, really understanding how he really
captured it and
what I could do that was sort of like that in some way.
G: That's cool. You weren't even a skater. See, then something's
accomplished. You get someone to understand what you're doing
who doesn't
even have any idea what the fuck is going on relatively. At the
same time,
people who are deep into it could also appreciate it. If you
could do both
those things, that's the shit. I'm stoked, if I could do that
every time. If
the most hardcore skater, punk rocker, hip hop artist could look
at my photo
and say, "That's the shit," and then someone who has nothing to
do with
anything, some old fart looks at my shit and says, "That's the
shit," that's
dope!
C: Yeah, that's pretty cool.
G: Not to take away any credit from Cynthia 'cause obviously she
knows a
little bit more than that, and had some idea about skate
culture, 'cause she
grew up in west L.A., but even so, you can't get much better
than that,
compliment-wise. You just gotta like what you're doing yourself.
That's the
most important thing, otherwise it's not even worth doing,
right?
C: It's true, that's true. That should be your last statement.
Bud Fawcett licenses original images. He can be contacted at:
Budlum@sierra.net
Glen E. Friedman's books are available in your local book store
or by calling
1-800-655-4897. And for more G.E.F.info check out
www.BruningFlags.com. All
Glen E. Friedman images used by permission of Burning Flags
Press.
Cynthia Connolly sells her self-published book Banned in DC,
original
postcards sets, A limited edition handmade book EAST TO WEST,
and various
framed photos. Write and ask if you're interested. Cynthia
Connolly PO Box
9743 Washington, DC 20016-9743 cynthia@dischord.com
This article ran as 26 pages with lots of photos from all of G.E.F.'s books,
as well as from the other two photographers archives