By April MacIntyre Mar 29, 2009, 20:58 GMT
Photographer Eric Ogden is one of USA Network’s honored “Characters” from their Character Project.
Bootsy Collins, portrait by Eric Ogden, courtesy of USA Network
USA Network's Character Project is an ongoing artistic initiative committed to celebrating distinctive people from all walks of American life who make this country extraordinary.
The project was inspired by USA Network’s “Characters Welcome” brand and with the support of the not-for-profit photography organization, Aperture Foundation,
This cause is near to network President Bonnie Hammer’s heart, the creative president of NBCU Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable production and the creator of the whole Character project. Also a photographer, Hammer has had her work displayed in several galleries and published in Time, the Boston Herald, the Los Angeles Times, and various Houghton-Mifflin and Little Brown books.
Hammer has assembled a team of 11 world-class photographers to capture the character of America today.
Legendary photographers Mary Ellen Mark and Sylvia Plachy are joined by Dawoud Bey,Jeff Dunas, David Eustace, Eric Ogden and emerging talents Marla Rutherford, Anna Mia Davidson, Joe Fornabaio, Eric McNatt and Richard Renaldi, each of whom brings their unique style and interest to bear on the subject of character.
From high school football players in Brownwood, Texas and organic farmers in the Northwest, to students in Chicago and the people connected by a single transcontinental road, the artists have created a collection of portraits as varied as the country itself.
American Character: A Photographic Journey Introduction to “Michigan Music” By Eric Ogden is photographer Ogden’s own story.
Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, Ogden studied at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before moving to New York City to pursue work as a photographer.
He has lived in Brooklyn, New York, for the last thirteen years, working and traveling frequently on assignment.
His photographs have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Rolling Stone, W, the New Yorker, Esquire, Time, Interview, Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Spin, and on covers of Newsweek, as well as in advertising for ABC, USA, FOX and the CW television networks; Nike; Sean John; Atlantic Records; Sony Music; Warner Bros Records; RCA records; and Miramax and Paramount Pictures.
His images have been awarded publication in the American Photography annuals and his work has been featured in articles in American Photo and Photo District News.
Ogden is currently at work on a book of evocative portraits and landscapes of his hometown, Flint, Michigan.
Ogden writes:
“Flint, Michigan. Sitting on the cracked concrete of a friend’s driveway, huddled around a boom box, a cassette by some new band turning its wheels in the deck, we would sprawl out and watch the night sky. The porch light was off. Parents were gone. Yards were dark and empty. And we had no desire to talk, just to listen as a world unfolded.
"For those growing up in a small Midwestern town, music was an escape, but it was also an identity. It helped us create ourselves. Surrounded by a landscape of faded strip malls and parking lots, neon diners, and the fluorescent lights of gas stations and convenience stores, kids growing up in Michigan needed a soundtrack to set to the endless nights they spent driving around in their cars.
"And as often as not, in their boredom they’d strap on a guitar and create the soundtrack themselves. I know that’s what my friends and I did, inspired by the shows we’d seen in the basement of the Capitol Theater.
"Sitting on thrift store couches in rooms heavy with the scent of clove cigarettes, talking to a girl with rings in her nose, we’d watch bands rotate through pounding sets of melody and noise and plot our own band’s takeover.
"When I was given the opportunity to pitch an idea for Character Project, it was important to me that it be personal. A kind of return to something I knew, a place I’d lived, or people I’d admired.
"So the idea of celebrating the music that has come out of my home state of Michigan seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally combine my photography with my passion for music. It was also a way to revisit the landscape of my youth, a place where music was life changing.
"Not to mention the fact that it was an incredible opportunity to work with some of the artists I have long admired. I set out to create a portfolio of idiosyncratic musicians that would span different genres, from living legends to rising bands just under the radar.
"In a place that has given birth to a great range of talent, I aimed for theartists just left of center, independents who ride the edge of the mainstream. People grounded with a real strength of character, who often have a vivid sense of the absurd, the bizarre, or who just have their ownunique take on the world.
"I started with artists I knew, and from there my research expanded, often linking one band to another as I discovered a network of collaborations formed over the years. Sometimes I’d find the odd satellite fullyformed at the edges of the map, an artist who’d managed to come out of nowhere and find his own path. But there was a definite core of musicians from Detroit who all knew each other (or knew of each other), and inthat way, it was like shooting portraits of as many members of one expansive, eccentric family as I could cram into a few weeks.
"Detroit occupies a unique place in music history. It is rich with the legacy of Motown, but also the origins of punk and garage rock, and happens to be the birthplace of techno, too. Why? Maybe it’s because of what afriend of mine calls “a Midwest work ethic.” Or maybe it’s because Detroit is a place with no musical borders.
Musicians here aren’t averse to mixing styles and genres, bringing history crashing up against the present, or pushing it toward the future. Every one of the people in these photographs has sent their own unusual vision into the world. Whether they’re brash or deceptively quiet, whether they’re creating original works or reformatting little-known classics until the songs have taken on a new life, they each capture an independent spirit that drew me to music in my early teens, that sparked the excitement I felt of seeing music played live.
No matter how small or dilapidated the venue, the bands of my youth always seemed larger than life. In this portfolio I aimed to show the musicians I photographed in that light."
Monsters and Critics had chance to ask Eric about his photography.
How would you describe your style of shooting portraiture?
Eric Ogden: I guess the portraits sort of blur the line between captured photography and created photography (though that probably sums up most pictures these days). Even though I spend a lot of time selecting locations and lighting, I still want to find some real, spontaneous, unguarded moment from my subject.
Often I will direct them if there's something I'm going for--so it's really a combination of the two. My portraits are almost always anchored in an environment, so the locations are very important and often play a large part in lending a sense of narrative or additional character to the shot. I like to create a strong sense of place and will use lighting to also push a very slightly heightened sense of realism, which is often inspired by cinema lighting.
I noticed in several of your portraits of musicians, your placement of them- were these in their spaces or did you recreate a visual idea you had in your head?
Eric Ogden: With most of these portraits, there was no idea in advance, no visual that I was working to recreate from my mind. This is mostly due to the fact that a lot of the variables were up in the air until we were walking into the location the day of the shoot.
There was a lot of freedom in these shoots--no hair, makeup, PR people, handlers, managers (rarely), and I had no idea what people would wear. With a few, I hadn't seen a recent photo so was not certain how they would look.
Almost all of the locations I was walking into for the first time on the actual shoot, though with some I'd seen photos beforehand. So it was really thinking on your feet.
What also happened was that the shoots I planned for would change (I chose one backstage room for Iggy, planned the lighting, and then an hour before the shoot I was given a different room. Etc.) and the shoots I had no plans for would sometimes be gifts, like when I walked into the warehouse building to shoot the Dirtbombs and discovered a decaying stage complete with old high school theater set pieces. So I scrambled to recreate a theatrical lighting on the stage in the two hours before the band showed up.
Of all the musicians out there-who would you love to shoot -and why?
Eric Ogden: I'm such a big music fan and listen to a pretty large spectrum of it, so there's many people I admire. I think I'm drawn to people who have a lot of their life visible in their faces, so someone like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, or Brian Wilson would be great to photograph.
Also those people who have a natural sense of the dramatic in their music-- like Nick Cave, Thom Yorke, or Bjork. These are all people who have retained an aura of mystery throughout their careers, and forged their own way, found an unmistakable voice. Also the great storytellers--Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen would all have to be on that list.
What is your personal favorite musician's portrait-and why?
Eric Ogden: Out of the Character Project shots, my favorite keeps changing. It was such a personal project for me, and I still feel close to many of these so it is hard for me to pick. Some days I like Iggy, other days The Dirtbombs.
I do have a special affinity for the Sufjan Stevens portrait, partly because more than all the others it was an image I had in my head before the shoot, and I think I executed it to come very close to that initial idea.
Also it feels close in sensibility to his music. Of course I might also be fond of this one because it was the last shoot of the whole project and we wrapped as the sun was setting across this Brooklyn rooftop and our tiny crew celebrated, sitting up there with a bottle of champagne, eating my friend's graciously-homemade guacamole.
I noticed in several of the photographs of yours, you tend to favor a cool palette surrounding your subject, lots of greens, blues. Talk about the power of color and the effect you find it to have inside your work.
Eric Ogden: I think the color is incredibly important, along with the other visual tools like composition, lighting, etc. It's no different than a painter who chooses to include some colors and leave out others, creating a palette to influence the feeling of the shot.
It always amazes me how a subtle shift of say, magenta to green (or vice versa) can be the thing that makes a photo work or not work, to me at least. The cool palette is not conscious, I think I do a lot of it just on instinct. In this same group of pictures, there are several images that are very warm, and even go into deep reds, which is always fun to play with.
I usually try to use "motivated lighting", so the light is coming from a real (or imagined real) source, like a window or a lamp. But again, I think you can heighten the emotion by bringing out those colors.
Tell me about your gear-what do you use?
Eric Ogden: I shot on film for the entire project, medium format, using a Mamiya RZ67 camera. Most of the lighting was done with Profoto strobes, or a combination of strobes mixed with the existing ambient (natural or tungsten) light of the locations.
Michigan is home to so many inspired artists, including Michael Moore and you. How important is keeping a close bond to Michigan and your northern mid-western roots for you?
Eric Ogden: I never thought it was important until I realized how much influence it was having over all my work... and life. I started going back to Flint, MI, four years ago to work on a project about my hometown, and it really helped to coalesce a lot of things for me, personally and artistically.
I think you really can't deny your roots (but you can expend a lot of energy trying), and the more you go into yourself, who you are, where you came from, what does it all mean for you--those things can give your work a lot of power, whether it is expressed explicitly or not. Michael Moore has definitely tapped into that.
When I was first starting this project, I did some research on people who came out of Michigan (artists, writers, sports figures, musicians, actors, etc) and was blown away by the list I created. Something in the water?
What is your earliest memory of music-and what album did you first buy when you were a kid?
Eric Ogden: Earliest memory of music...hmmm. I was just telling a friend how I remembered roller skating to Peaches & Herb's "Reunited". Not sure if I want to share that, but I guess I just did. The first album I bought might have been the Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl. On vinyl. My brother had that double album of theirs... I can't remember what it was called (in the album art the guys were looking down from a balcony), and I kind of liked his better. That was when they were getting trippy and growing beards and ditching their boy-band status. His album was more interesting, adventurous, sonically amazing, but the "new" Beatles also kind of scared me, too.
Strawberry Fields and some of the other songs left me with a queasy feeling as a kid. What the hell was this music that stirred up all these feelings? And a lot of it was done by the sounds they were using, the production, the colors you might say. Just the way you'd create emotion in pictures.
Tell me your favorite peer who also does portraiture photography, and why you admire him/her work?
Eric Ogden: All of the photographers selected for the Character Project really did a fantastic job, I would never single one out. And there are so many talented people doing really strikingly different work out there right now. Just one example, the most recent book I picked up is this tiny photo book called "Amelia's World" by photographer Robin Schwartz. It is so funny and beautiful and strange, all of the pictures are of her young daughter with various domestic and exotic animals. Just awesome.
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