Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, Photography, Video, Cinemagraphs, New York City
You don’t have to think about Rodin to feel Rodin. Perhaps, even, it is what you feel first that stays with you after. How can someone sculpt the thoughts of man, the memories of love, the history of humanity with seemingly such ease?… take a walk through the Rodin Museum in Paris on a sparkling afternoon and find yourself haunted by the beauty of his immortalized humanity…
After heading out to L.A. to experience the Sound of Luxury we decided to make it a long weekend…why would you not, it was 18 degrees in New York at that time. We rented the most amazing Airbnb industrial loft in Marina del Rey to hide out in when we weren’t experiencing all the best food L.A. had to offer. Mostly, I wanted to just cruise around and play in the sun, dance in the light, and feel the ocean spray on my face. Here are snapshots from a weekend in Los Angeles shot on black & white 35mm film with the camera I first learned how to take photos with…
While in Guatemala I discovered Swedish designer Rodebjer whom I’ve since fell in love with. Above, wearing Rodebjer’s white shirt dress that allows you to unbutton the front, back and sides in any conformation to change it from a shirt to a dress to the perfect beach coverup. 
Continue reading “Snapshots from Los Angeles”
After we wrapped our Hamptons Magazine shoot, we decided to play around on digital and on film with our model muse Vita Sidorkina. There are whispers in the industry that she is the next “it” girl, and it says a lot that she just signed a contact with Victoria Secret PINK. I’ve shot a lot of people through the years from models to artists to friends and business folk so I’ve felt the differences in front of the lens. I do my best to make the sitter feel comfortable, beautiful (or handsome), and safe, even if that means helping them pose down to their pinky toe to get a balanced and aesthetically pleasing shot for both yourself and them. However, sometimes you have someone who truly knows how to move in front of the camera. You start a dance and dialogue together both giving to create. Vita does that and as a photographer, it’s my favorite way to photograph someone. It feels like watching a flower bloom in high speed through your camera box.
This was my favorite shoot from summer: I love the simplicity, I love the styling Kelly did on Vita that she picked up from how some of the “cool” guys in the Hamptons had been wearing their sweaters in the chilly night air, and of course, I LOVE Ralph Lauren which is all she needs to wear out East…
I‘ve been thinking about Earth Day coming up tomorrow and how much more conscious we are of the globe now thanks to air travel, digital technology and the speed of communication. When I think about the Earth, certain words or earthly elements pop into my mind: Water, Plants, Animals, Wind, Earth, Sound, Gravity, Light, and Humanity. I wanted to put these earthly words into a visual photographic story while also telling the story of one of the most “GREEN” luxury brands and conscious companies out there.
John Hardy, the sustainable luxury jewelry brand based in Bali, thinks about their approach and place in the world in a 360-degree way. For example, all the silver jewelry is made from reclaimed silver which can come from a variety of places, such as old jewelry, computers and refrigerators! They believe they can produce a luxury product that is in harmony with our environment; instead of pulling more out of the earth and continuing to strip our natural resources, they want to use what is already out there.
In Bali, the jewelry is handmade by local jewelry artisans, who have centuries of passed-down knowledge and expertise in craftsmanship. The company knows how important these people are and goes to great lengths to take care of them, providing organic meals for their artisans and a single mother initiative that allows women to work from home in order to care for their child. Together the designers and artisans collaborate to make what ultimately is the distinct look of John Hardy.
When I was interviewing them at their New York City offices about the company philosophy, the passion simply poured out of the team. The pieces I ended up shooting below are all from the Bamboo Collection – this is significant to point out, as these pieces are part of an initiative. For every piece purchased from this collection, one or more bamboo trees are planted with help for forest management and water preservation. This year to date, John Hardy has planted 900,000 bamboo seedlings, which is 6 times the size of Central Park. In honor of Earth Month in April, John Hardy will donate 20% of all Bamboo Collection sales made on JohnHardy.com to support Trees New York which goes to funding a project where the John Hardy team will plant evergreens in the middle of West Harlem with the idea of creating a canopy effect to help filter the air and, in winter, add color to our gray days.
We are all beginning to become conscious consumers. I talked about that a bit in my personal style post: supporting brands that give back. John Hardy is all about what they call “Sustainable Luxury” which breaks down to Culture, Community, Commerce and Care.
Care – Giving back and especially giving back to nature for a “greener every day“.
Culture – the John Hardy Family. Supporting the collaboration between designers and artisans and the preservation of the Balinese art forms and traditional french jewelry making processes.
Commerce – Creating a profit to sustain their initiatives and give back while connecting with consumers and educating them on what their products do beyond the monetary exchange.
Collaboration – Taking care of their the employees either through organic meals, enabling single mothers to work, providing amazing health care to supporting the local orphanages and communities of Bali.
So here is to our Mother Earth and all the gifts she gives us. May we have, as John Hardy says, a Greener Every Day and be the example of a new kind of balance. While photographing the concepts of these earthly elements, I asked our model to come completely barefaced, non-styled hair and bare nails. I wanted this to be about natural beauty, the natural beauty of us… the natural beauty of earth ~
WATER
Above Gold Knot Ring / Below Silver Link Necklace
Below Silver Rope Necklace
PLANTS
We have started a tradition of traveling to Paris in the fall. It’s my favorite time to be there. The saturation of colors, the excitement of light layering and new autumn jackets, the light of the day is still long and the temperature is perfect for endless walks. This time in Paris we were guests of Ralph Lauren, to bring light to the new renovation project at the L’École des Beaux-Arts, experience “An American in Paris” and celebrate with a gala as sparkling as the Eiffel tower at night… but the other nights we sat at Pont Neuf and drank wine while watching the sun set, we walked the cobbled streets to film the city as she is today – still so timeless and beautiful -, we picked up treasures for our new studio at the flea market, and we had many amazing meals with friends we have made, friends who call this place home and open their life to us so that we can dream the dreams of Paris….
we are safe to
tell our story here.
(for a week spent floating in Paris,
every year.)
structure,
she has structure,
tough as any skyscraper
though no building here
is more than a few stories.
she has lore.
she has a spirit
thousand of years in the making,
has a romance older than anyone’s memory,
anyone’s happy, lifelong marriage.
she has courage – our word that comes
from “coeur”, from heart.
she has dozens of parts,
arrondisements that speak to one another,
making something like a whole.
she has words
to spare.
she has
our complete trust.
This week, I’ve been talking to you all about the ancient Egyptian idea of maat, which dealt with conceptions of balance, order, and truth. As with all the stories I tell, I’ve strived to come at it from a place of celebration, a love of beauty, and a simplistic honesty.
The quest for truth is a challenging thing. It’s been difficult for me to claim in this medium called blogging, especially as I have tried to redefine what this site means, making it about something greater, more important, and more interesting than simply myself. I’ve been writing from China this week, where censorship has made posting unbelievably challenging. I have to switch IP addresses with every paragraph, as I keep getting booted off each new server. Is aesthetic expression really such a threat? Well, personal truths do not seem to carry much weight here.
Our story began with three women, three mythical beings: Maat and her handmaidens, Beauty and Truth. In mythology and Egyptian heiroglyphics, Maat was represented by an ostrich feather. The equal-sidedness of the feather, with its division into halves, rendered it a fitting symbol of balance.
Feathers recur as a sacred talisman in many cultures, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, by Mexicans and by Native Americans, who used them in headdresses and in dreamcatchers. Just as Maat was trusted to control the daily path of the sun, so the moon controls the tides ~ and so people have believed for centuries that we can control our dreams.
Dreamcatchers originated with the Ojibwe nation, who believed that, when hung above the bed, only good dreams would be allowed to filter through their sinewy webs; they would pass through and slide down the feathers to the sleeper, while bad dreams would be caught and trapped in the net. The tides of today bring both nightmares and dreams, for along the shore we find countless cigarette butts and plastic bottles mixed in with natural treasures like seashells and driftwood.
In the ancient world, myths were used as a means to understand the inexplicable, as a way to make sense of the great wonders and mysteries of the earth and to give meaning to humanity. Inspired by the cycles of nature, the mythology of ancient Egypt still holds our imaginations in its sway today. Ancient Egyptians saw time in the present as a repetition of the linear events of their myths; to them, this mirroring served to renew ma’at (or mayet), the fundamental order of all existence.
Myths were a way of passing down behavioral expectations, codes of conduct, and moral obligation. They were reminders that the actions we take today create the context for tomorrow. Today’s decisions are the gifts and curses we bestow upon our descendants.
Ma’at was the Egyptian concept of truth, balance, and order. Ma’at was personified as the goddess of the stars; it was she who conducted cosmic harmony out of the chaos of creation, she who maintained the equilibrium of the universe ~ the setting of the sun, the rising of the tides. She was justice and she was reason.
Ma’at was the central principle of Egyptian cosmology and ethics, and so the primary duty of an Egyptian king was to be the champion of ma’at. All the daily rituals and sacrifices would be deemed meaningless unless the king and his people were living righteous, balanced lives. The word itself indicated ‘that which is real’, and so for the ancient Egyptians, ma’at came to imply anything that was true, genuine or harmonious.
I didn’t know what to expect when we set out for South Africa. To be honest, I was quite nervous and very skeptical of the romantic aspect that had been advertised; this was our honeymoon after all. I’ve never been that far from home and although I had been to northern Africa and the Middle East, this was a whole new world… the animal kingdom. My most recent experience with animals had been a trip to the Natural History Museum and zoos growing up. I didn’t realize how much I was missing when I let this be my only relationship to wildlife. What I had yet to learn was that safari and ultimately Africa would change my life.
The conversation about safari started a few months before our wedding. We didn’t know where to go and on one fateful night over dinner with friends, I asked what their best trips had been. One couple answered with all their passion and excitement “SAFARI“. I wanted to do something extraordinary, I wanted to go someplace far so that when we tell our kids, they will be inspired to discover the world too. We flew into Johannesburg and connected onto what was at the time the smallest plane I had ever experienced (until this harrowing flight), landing on a tiny strip in the middle of the African bush at Londolozi Game Reserve. I was more nervous than excited (you might be too after the three shots and two medications you have to have before arriving) until I walked into the lodge, was handed a glass of champagne and looked out at the view in awe. I couldn’t guess what the next day, our first drive into the wild, would hold, but I knew at that moment I was living in a dream…
