My Year in Provence

This is a hard post to write. I have such a flood of emotions looking back, reflecting on what I have learned, how I have grown, and what I have loved. You can not recap a year’s experience without ending it with what is next? To be honest, I don’t know. Sure, I thought I would come to spend a year in Provence and answer all the questions for myself about my life, about who I am and what I want. I can certainly answer now some of these things but other aspects have grown even more confusing. I loved things I never thought I could love like living in the country. I learned things about myself I never knew. For example, I am an introvert which finally explains why I hate talking on the phone, why people who are upset or angry give me anxiety attacks, why I feel so exhausted after social events, and most importantly, why I work so much better alone. So where does that take me next when I come back to the United States? 

It was shocking when I first arrived. Nothing seemed to be possible, from getting boxes delivered to buying food on a Sunday… or any time after 7pm. I missed all the things about New York I took for granted. 24/7 Uber service for instance. There is ONE Uber guy and he lives and hour from my little town. I am ecstatic when my train pulls into Avignon and he’s on the clock. I missed laundry service. The last time I took a linen shirt to be pressed they estimated a turn around time of two weeks… lol. So I got used to wrinkles. I missed Seamless, something which I never even think about now. The pleasure I derive in cooking is to the point of therapy. The access to organic, AFFORDABLE, locally farmed ingredients here puts the US to a great shame. I will never forget my first trip to the farmer’s market. Alone with only a handful of French words, I was terrified. I paid for everything with 20’s because I didn’t understand the amounts, and I was used to New York City farmer’s market prices, until I discovered how incredibly inexpensive everything was. Then I walked into the wine shop and my jaw really hit the ground. When it is not market day in my town or one of the surround villages, I have four bio (organic) grocers I can walk to. I know their names, what is happening in their life, who is having a baby and who is in the hospital. I am, for once, part of a community and I feel physically part of the earth here. 

I learned to live a life with less noise. My days in Provence are filled mostly with cooking, cleaning, and making photographs and those are the days when I am most happy. I found freedom. Above everything I learned, I discovered true freedom. Freedom exists beyond the ability to choose where you live or what you believe. I found freedom in my art and expression. I found freedom from money. Of course, we all need money to survive but they don’t worship it here in France and it’s amazing how much your stress levels dissolve when that’s not the goal to life. I’m really into being free from plastics and logos and that has brought down the noise in my life in the best way. I loved the freedom from a culture that tells woman how we are supposed to look. I loved being free from what society tells me I should be doing like having children and a corporate job so I have health insurance. I loved the freedom from ‘stuff’. I never had to walk outside my door and be reminded of all the ‘stuff’ I don’t have that I supposedly need to in order to be valuable. The value comes from within – in my mind, in my soul and if I can create something of meaning. I wish I had more time to work on these ideas. Time, I have come to find out, is the most valuable thing we have. 

To quote the French philosopher Albert Camus who lived in Lourmarin not far from me, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” 

Of course, these are just some of the many thoughts and experiences I have garnered in my year here. I slowed down on sharing (blogging) to take the time to be present and experience. I imagine when I return to the US I will begin editing and posting so many of the stories I have filled up 5 hard drives with. There is so much to sift through and my heart has been on a roller coaster. This week has been especially though as I try to figure out where I belong in the world and what value I have for an American culture. 

I created a self portrait to mark the year anniversary as part of my #ProvenceSelfPortraitSeries inspired by Jan van Eyck’s “The Arnolfini Portrait“. This is a great short video on the piece from one of my favorite YouTube art channels. I loved that this was a “painting of everyday life” as much of my personal work here in Provence has been a celebration of the day to day things. What is in bloom, what is in season, what bug crawls into the window, how the light is today.

Beyond that, I wanted to explain some of the personal symbolism I added into this photographic rendition that pertains to my own experience at this year mark. First, there is meaning in the absences. The absence of furniture is symbolic of feeling unsettled, homeless. I brought in chairs, tables, daybeds and pushed them back out. I feel at home in Provence in my soul, yet I do not have a home. I left the shadow of the table with a bowl of pears cast along the left edge to show there is life that happens in this space. I planned to bring in a newly born kitten from town as I love all the cats that roam my village and have earned their trust but then I felt the absence of the pet represented my life more. As many of you know who follow me on Instagram stories, I DREAM of having pets. Both women wear green gowns by Loup Charmant (left & right) in green, green being a symbol of hope. My hope that this path I am on will lead me to where I belong. The hope that I can do something with this work I have created in Provence. The woman on the right holds her gown close to her chest, representing holding everything dear to me I have learned in Provence. The only real valuable thing I can take with me when I go. Her slippers are on because it is time for her to leave. She looks back, sorrowfully to the woman on the left, sometimes I feel my heart being ripped out when I think about having to leave this place. Originally, I had taken a photographic plate with tear stained cheeks but felt the expression was enough on its own. The woman on the left is turned to be ‘looking back’, reflecting on her time in Provence. Her slippers are off and she is barefoot to represent feeling at home here. She gestures with her hand in the way of a ‘blessing’, feelings blessed from this time in France. Though they are married together, in the sense as one, their hands rest together open, vulnerable of being torn apart. The inscription on the wall is my signature and dated for my one year. Hanging above them in an antique mirror which I borrowed from a shop in town, hides a third self portrait. The real me, the photographer. I stand in my men’s linen suit with my camera on the tripod. You can see a discarded green dress on the table, my phone in the bottom left which I use to create these self portraits as a remote control to my camera. I am standing in the kitchen which is pretty much where I always am while at home either working or cooking. You can see the large French doors that over look my garden and her ripened fig tree. 

I will be here a bit longer. I have some more personal work I need to do before I go and a few professional jobs on the table. So there is some time to ponder what happens next…

Old School Photography

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Perhaps the most meaningful personal shoot of the year comes every December. We sit down and talk about what the year meant and how to capture that in a photograph. How to express where we were at that time. I shoot the annual Ann Street Studio holiday card photograph in the same format each year, on a 4×5 film camera with black and white Ilford film.

This year’s image crossed continents twice from start to finish. It begins in France, taken in the afternoon light of Provence with flowers I bought at my little town’s Saturday farmer’s market. After I framed the flowers just so, I used two magazines to manipulate and block the natural light of part of the background and on some of the arrangement while the shutter stayed opened for 30seconds. I shot somewhere around 15 plates with variations on lighting and exposures then packed them up and brought the sheets of film back to New York with me to be hand processed at LTI.

As always, I took the processed film and contact sheets to my favorite darkroom lab in Boston which I pilgrimage to every winter and spent two days hand printing the set of 200 on Ilford warm tone fiber base paper.

I brought the final 200 back to France with me and spent days by the window light addressing each one, some with added personal notes, to be mailed out all over the world. It is a long process but one that brings me great joy in a digital age. To give someone a physical object you made with your heart, soul and abilities is like having a small piece of me in your home. The sense of pride I feel when people send me photos of the image framed in their home makes me feel grateful that I am a photographer. However, for the most part I don’t know what people do with them. I like to imagine someone using one as a bookmark to later discover again years from now. I like to fantasize a child or grandchild will come across one decades from now in an old box and feel a connection to me or at least to who I once was. They don’t have to know me personally but I hope they know my work.

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When Pigs Fly…

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When I first started my journey to France I got a new piece of jewelry, something that represents my approach to life. It was a signet ring by Retrouvai, a modern heirloom designer based in L.A., with a flying pig engraved in gold in the middle.

I love signet rings with their classic monograms so this was a bit of a departure but the symbolism of the flying pig to “embody strength to overcome life’s greatest obstacles” was exactly the reminder I wanted to give myself to be strong on my new journey in a far off land with a foreign language I did not speak, I was in a town I’d never been and was living in an apartment I’d never seen before, in the middle of nowhere. Fast forward five months and everything worked out.

It wasn’t always easy.

I have cried from frustration, fear, exhaustion, confusion but now I’ve grasped the swing of things. I’m a better person. I’ve learned so much about myself and grown immensely by doing something so completely different than the life I had created in New York. I am stronger. I’m a better photographer, I’m an inspired artist. But perhaps more important than any of it, I took the courage to live one of my dreams.

When you test what you can do you realize that anything is possible. The limits we create in our mind are just that, creations of the mind. Every time I slide this ring on or off or catch glimpses of it reflecting the light I think about that line engraved on the inside, nestled against my skin, a message that is one of the things I most believe about how to live a fulfilling life… “Anything is Possible.”

“A wise man once said anything is possible when you stop believing it is impossible.”

More stories from my life in Provence here.

Old School Photography

Holiday_Card_2014_02Much about being a creative is really understanding your voice and your vision, which isomething I have struggled with in the past while trying to find myself as an artist. With the passage of time and constant study, you start to see who you are, what you love and then… how the world truly looks to you. I will never be able to escape my tendency toward romance, beauty, simplicity, emotion and the classics.

So, I embrace it.

I can never ignore the soul fulfilling satisfaction of taking a photograph from concept, to composition, and then captured at just the right moment on film. That one shot, the quarter of a second pulled from time and eternalized into a physical object of study. This was the birth of photography for me, this was how you would take a picture and then agonize through your fear of mistakes in the waiting of development; a torturous process that I’m insanely in love with. In 2012 I decided that our studio holiday cards would be created in this fashion every year as a way for me to count the passage of time, to make something of an artifact for the people in my life, and to slow down from our crazy digitized lives back to where it all began for me as a photographer. I get to give the best I’ve got in this old school process; my vision, my thoughts, my mind, my passions, my skill and most of all, my time.

For this year’s studio holiday card I thought about the recurring visuals from 2014 and let my mind’s eye wash away in the strong currents of pictorial memories. What stood out to me? What did I learn about myself? What did I realize I loved? We traveled around and around the world to Bali, Brazil, Australia, Ghana, Dominican Republic, Provence, Germany, England, the American South, and Peru (more on that next week!) and you’ve been with me each step of the way these 12 months.

As I reflected on the year the place I loved most was Paris. It keeps coming back to me, as if a part of my soul is there waiting. I love the classic nature of her perfectly white architecture. The endless amounts of art and inspiration. And of course, the light. I love the way the french look at beauty and the physical form. As an adult now in charge of my own body, destiny and confidence, I’ve found that I am now enamored with the beauty of the body, it’s evolution and ever changing shapes, the softness of skin and functionality that make us human. I thought about the beautiful sculptures of Paris that dot my endless walks, the thing I love to do most there. I thought about that day I spent in the Louvre with my father and all those breathtaking halls of beauty celebrating the female form. Then that was it. I wanted to bring all of those things into my world, in front of my lens, on an early winter evening at Ann Street Studio…

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Using a dark changing bag I loaded Ilford Delta 400 black and white film into my 4×5 sheet film holders. Below our intern Sarah Rocco captured behind the scenes shots photographing model Mitzi who I previously worked with at our studio and who I knew had the type of body I was going for. Holiday_Card_2014_07Holiday_Card_2014_11

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Snapshots of Summer

Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY

I always have a camera with me, it’s part of fulfilling that need inside to capture the moment: the moment in time, the moment in my life, the way we were that makes me a photographer. I collect photographs in a way of possessing all that is beautiful in the world. If the picture is made, I then have it for always and the stress of the passing moment dissipates, and it is forever with me.

After our Paris trip I took a load of film to the lab collected over the past few months. I love the rediscovery of these moments I photographed, random snapshots of time I had to have live on forever. Oh yes, I remember the feeling of my hair blowing in the wind on the long car rides to Montauk or the way the sun was glowing through the trees in a burst of golden particles on the way to Sag Harbor or how beautifully the boat’s sail danced on a pivot as the rain headed our way. I look at the photographs, like a diary of my life, a fluttering of heartbeats forever trapped in a moment in time.

Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY Snapshots of a photographer's life. Summer in Amagansett, NY

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Men in This Town

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I met Giuseppe Santamaria, a men’s street style photographer, back in 2011 covering NYFW together. Since I’ve watched Giuseppe’s career and photography really grow into something very special in the men’s style realm. So special, in fact, that a book of his photographs was published this September called “Men in This Town“.  Giuseppe’s approach to photography, men’s fashion, and street style is quite romantic and not at all trendy or concerned with the “who’s who”. He really shoots from his heart. We sat down at our studio last week to catch up and ask him all about his first book~

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Above, a portrait of the photographer photographed on 4×5 black & white film

How did Men in this Town begin?

It started with a tweet. I had photographed my friend’s cookbook cover, and then I started following his publisher on Twitter. One day he said, “Done for 2013 books. Onto next year. Any ideas?” I jokingly tweeted back, “How about a Men in This Town book?” And a year later, it came out.

When did you first start photographing?

By trade I’m a graphic designer. I’ve been working with photos and amazing photographers my entire career. That’s where my eye was trained – not conventionally at all.

How did you learn photography?

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Kyle Ford

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Every so often, you meet someone in a way that could only be described as serendipitous. Such was the case when we traveled to SCAD Lacoste and met photography professor Kyle Ford, a fine-art photographer who normally is based at the SCAD Hong Kong campus, but just so happened to be teaching the summer session photography classes at SCAD Lacoste.

As we know well, I love talking to other photographers…it’s always such a pleasure and honor to engage with people about their passions, especially when it’s in a field that I know and love myself.  So it wasn’t long before Kyle and I were planning a photo adventure in a Provençal vineyard and closing the night at a spectacular restaurant with our conversation about his path to photography, why he chooses film, and the research and thought behind the work he creates now…

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What was your first photograph?

I was seven years old, and there was a competition I think my mother encouraged me to participate in. She was a painter, an artist, and perhaps she was hoping I would draw something or paint something, but I ended up photographing something. It was a tree. I photographed what I thought was a ghost, and I thought that was great as a seven-year-old…it was really my breath in front of the camera.

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Behind the Scenes

Telling the story of telling a story…

When we started brainstorming a new Lincoln Motor Co. project, we wanted to challenge ourselves in a new way and explore storytelling through video. It’s important as a creative to always be moving forward, pushing yourself and your abilities. Unlike past videos which have been more free form organic vignettes or allowing the subject to narrate the story themselves, this one was totally new for us (PS – This is what Kevin was talking about in Question #20!). We wanted to create a micro film, a little story and a fun way to unveil a new car as it was being unveiled for the whole world.

We started with just that thought – unveiling. So how can you uncover or discover a car creatively? …why though fun trickery, of course! How cute would it be to create a fantasy where the designer of this new car was a young, handsome creative living in New York and his date stole the plans to his work with the coordinates of the car’s secret location so that she could steal it as her own?! A calculated date, a thief, a chase through Manhattan, she’s got it!… but wait! a twist! He had her all along…

We had never gone to this place before but we had to try… we had to know if we could make our dreams a reality. Here is how it played out and all the funny tidbits you did not see in “The Lincoln Job“…

Fittings ~ The day before the shoot the stylist tried on the clothing options with our two stars. In our pre-production meetings Kelly thought based on the storyboards it would be cool to style them inspired by “The Thomas Crown Affair“, which we all loved.

Above: Kelly plays around with the idea of suspenders for the “at home scenes” before he throws on his suit jacket on the way out the door in the chase.

Below: The creative director Maury Postal and I watch on as we go through all the styling options.

Finishing touches… above Kelly thinks about that last something to complete the look and asks our creative director to borrow his Warby Parkers which got instant cheers once Amadeo put them on and it was done!

All in agreement on the final looks.

He wears:

Club Monaco suitNordstrom white shirtWarby Parker glassesFlorsheim shoes, Kevin’s suspenders from our wedding 

She wears:

Robert Rodriguez dressOrla Kiely coatChristian Louboutin heelsKaren Walker sunglassesPlukka Earrings, Plukka + Phillips House Rings

Setting the game plan ~ Kevin began to explain to our two models Amadeo & Michelle the storyboards for what we would be filming the next two days. We are all laughing in this photograph because Kevin, being distracted by our starlet’s dress, said “So it starts in the bedroom”, when he meant to say it starts in the living room!

~ The apartment scenes ~

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Adam Katseff

You do not want to put Adam and I across from each other at a dinner table too often because we will close a restaurant talking about photography, photographers, film vs. digital, the meaning behind photographs, technical process, how people experience photographs as art, who, in the history of photography, were influential in changing the dialogue in which we communicate through images and how technology is constantly changing photography everyday.

Back this past summer we were on a location shoot in Lake Tahoe with a client that has since become a wonderful friend and her husband who is a photographer was preparing for his first solo show in New York at the Sasha Wolf Gallery came along. It was fascinating to watch him work in the slowed down process of large format film. Of course, I immediately think of Ansel Adams, but some of his heroes are Ad Reinhardt and Hiroshi Sugimoto. In the car he kept a book of photographs from the late 1800s of the Lake Tahoe area and would study them declaring to search for “that waterfall” or point out boulders that now have tunnels cut through them. The great thing about Adam’s work is not that he creates beautiful landscape photographs but that what he sees before you is a totally new way of looking at something we’ve all seen photographed a million times and yet strangely relatable, the way your eyes adjust at night in those peaceful moments in nature.

It was such a thrill to get to see him create and now, to see the end result hanging on the walls of a gallery to be experienced. We sat down to discuss the thought behind his images, how he got to where he is now, and what’s next:

Jamie: How did the idea for the series of Night Landscapes begin?

Adam: We were on a plane back from Hawaii, flying at sunset. The sun sets really fast when you’re flying west to east. I looked away from the window for a couple of minutes and when I looked back, it was black…almost instantly dark. So I was watching the surface of the ocean and it felt like you could almost see the roundness of the Earth. I’m letting my eyes adjust and I start seeing the landscape, the earth, the way I had seen it before the sun had set. And then I realized what I was seeing – I looked again and it’s like, Wait a minute, there’s nothing there, it’s totally pitch black. And it was the memory of that landscape, not the actual landscape itself. It was almost the reflections on the window that I was imagining as the thing.

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Photographing NYFW

New York Fashion Week. What a beast.

You really find out your limits when you are thrown into this aspect of the fashion world: 20 hour workdays, fast, fast turnaround for image delivery, and speedy blog posts, scaling up and down Manhattan to a million different venues (despite the popular idea that most of Fashion Week happens at the tents of Lincoln Center). Here are some things I’ve learned in the past few years I’ve been privy to witnessing and photographing this industry occasion….

I now dress reasonably. The last thing I want is for my outfit to get in the way of my job. I try to keep it to basics. Ferragamo flats, men’s button ups, black turtlenecks (hello Steve), dark sunglasses and a good wristwatch…and so I don’t feel like a total dude, my camera bag is as chic as it comes.

Always keep it simple. I only carry that day’s invites, phone for all the Instas, the smallest wallet I could find, a little fashion notebook for thoughts on the collections, my signature red lipstick, GUM (you talk to so many people), perfume to refresh before a social event, my 50mm & 24-70mm lens, 5DMarkIII, lots of camera cards, sunnies to hide your tired eyes, and a Veuve Clicquot folding fan. Such small venues.. so many people… usually not enough air. It’s the most important thing.

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Sébastien Dubouchet

Kevin and I were recently in Geneva on a shoot for one of our clients who put us in touch with Sébastien Dubouchet to help with assisting. I didn’t know anything about him when he showed up on a foggy Geneva morning and we got to work right away. As the day progressed, we all chatted in between shots and we discovered Sébastien was an amazing still-life photographer with his own studio and a camera to make my heart flutter. After we wrapped the shoot, we went back to his place downtown to see how the Swiss do it. Scissor lifts, a digital view camera, an app on his phone to control his studio lights… it was a photographer’s dream.

Kevin took off his watch and Sébastien did a quick test to show us his process while I asked him questions about how he became a photographer and what it means to him.

How did you get started as a photographer?

I started because I wanted to be a wildlife photographer, I loved the nature and going out to see animals, wildlife, everything. I didn’t want to go into the world of adult people, I didn’t want to grow up. I was traveling and looking for strange animals trying to catch them with my camera. After a few years I realized I couldn’t make any money like that. So I started working in a hospital for a photographer of opthomology. The only field in the hospital where they have a complete department in photography. I then started to work for Stefan Vos as an assistant on everything from Harry Winston to Chopard. I spent 4 years with him and then I decided it was time to go out on my own and start my own studio.

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The PHOTOGRAPHERS

You know, as a photographer I’m always interested watching other photographer’s work, how they work and what their process is. When I come around at NYFW I’m very aware that I’m in the colosseum with these guys (who mostly ignore me since I’m the quiet one in the skirt) and this is their world. For the most part I stay out of their way which has saved my neck in more than one intense backstage moment, for example, one photographer physically threw out the other guys. It’s a cut throat job, everyone has to get the shot. I am, just as my NYFW coverage is, a silent observer of all the players in this world. It’s intense, the equipment is heavy and exhausting, and the schedule is relentless. I cornered one outside Jenny Peckham’s show to get the 411 on just what they are up to and how they shoot those photos we all see mins after the lights of the catwalk dim….

Talking to: Robert Mitra, Conde Nast Photographer, shooting fashion week for 25 years.

What Camera and lens do you use shooting the runway?

Canon Mark IV with a 70-200mm lens, always on a monopod.

What is it like in the pit?

A LOT OF FIGHTING FOR SPOTS. The Italians are always on the right, the french on the left and the middle is a melting pot.

What happens to the images after the show?

You have a runner that comes and takes the camera card to the office. I use no more than an 8GB size card in case the card corrupts and I shoot on JPG, around 1,000 frames.

Why don’t you shoot RAW?

Raw is like print film and you use photoshop, jpg is like slide film ran as it is. No retouching done after delivery.

How do you shoot backstage beauty?

Every guy does it differently, they build their own lighting setups. I use the same lens and also a 24-105mm with a Canon ring light.

What is your shutter and aperature typically set at?

The shutter is usually round 500 and I shoot at 2.8. I shoot shallow so the background is soft focus for the subject to stand out. Also, when you shoot wide open your lens is sharper.

You guys are not using flash on the runway, how do you meter for the ambient light?

You just light meter as the first girl comes down.

Do you just shoot full length?

No, I shoot everything from full length, three-quarters, accessories (handbags, jewelry), and shoes. There are some guys who only shoot accessories and they typically use a 200mm lens for that.

How has it changed since you first started 25 years ago?

When I first started there were 6-7 photogs shooting the shows. Vogue, WWD, NYT, the top publications. Before you had to be with a magazine or newspaper but now it has changed. Photographers from around the world, stock agencies, bloggers, and online media are all here.