Fright Catalog

My photograph BASEMENT is on the cover of Fright Catalog.  As part of the deal, they are going to hook me up with a giant 16 foot long snake to use in an upcoming photograph.  Yeah for Fright Catalog!

Prozak

One of my favorite clients is a rapper from Detroit named Prozak. He is also an emerging filmmaker. He calls himself the Hitchcock of Hip Hop. Prozak and his company Cohesion Productions hired me to shoot some original artwork for his album Tales From The Sick.

Prozak is Arab American. His mother is from Iraq. Many of his songs are explicitly political. I had written the idea for UNCLE SAM years ago. I pitched the idea to Prozak and he used it as the interior artwork for his album. The dead body of Uncle Sam was played by my brother-in-law Tom, who also played the monster in FACE. The police were played by my friends. The detective is actually my accountant.

The second image I made for Prozak is called GAS MASK CHILD.  I went through several Army Surplus stores trying to find the perfect gas mask.  I glued taxidermy eyes to a halloween mask I bought on Ebay, and used it as the face underneath the gas mask.  I used the left over set from ISOLATION as a background, a trick I learned from Roger Corman.  The best part is the cute little gas mask that my sister Sarah made to go on the Bunny Doll. 

The last image Prozak hired me to make was a publicity portrait.  He said he had a giant chainsaw to use as a prop.  I talked him into the Mad Surgeon idea.  He drove down from Detroit and one of his roadies ended up playing the victim strapped down to the gurney.  My friend Tracy Humphreys came in at the last minute to play the nurse. 

Unlike UNCLE SAM or GAS MASK CHILD, this shot required a photo shop trick.  While the window really was part of my set, it was only two feet tall. I put a lab coat on the production manager and photographed him separately.  I used three different frames and inserted multiple versions of him into the window, creating the illusion that the operating theater was much larger than it really was.

Virus Magazine

This month my work is also featured in the Art section of Virus, Germany’s leading horror magazine!  

The other horror artist featured in this issue is sculptor Mark Powell. His work involves intricate and meaty tableaus that are at once stunning and nasty.  Of course, I mean that as the highest compliment.  Here are two of my favorites.

This second image in particular really excites me.  While it is clearly referencing Francis Bacon’s seminal painting Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, it also reminds me of Rob Bottin’s visceral work for John Carpenter’s The Thing.  Bacon+Bottin=Brilliant.

Tech N9ne

I like doing commercial work. So far, my favorite jobs have been for independent record labels.  I enjoy writing an original concept that is tailored for a specific individual or band.  Sometimes people will present me with great ideas of their own. The best jobs pay for my personal work as a Horror photographer.

My first ever client was a rapper named Tech N9ne.  He and I both hail from the same hometown of Kansas City.  Which makes us, technically speaking, homeboys.

For the uninitiated, Tech N9ne is the best selling independent rapper in the world, even though his music receives very little national airplay and virtually no video support from MTV or BET.  But he is third of top hip hop touring acts behind Jay-Z and Nelly, and his most recent album KILLER rose to number 12 last month on the Billboard Charts.

He hired me because he liked my Horror photography.  We share the same favorite movie, EVIL DEAD 2.  When we’re on set, we talk about horror movies to bridge the cultural gap.  Once, while waiting on hair and make-up, we watched the end of THE EXORCIST together.  We both knew the movie by heart, and spoke along with the characters, word for word, as they delivered their dialogue.  It was a tremendous display of mutual horror-geek prowess.

This is the original cover I made for Tech N9ne’s album EVERREADY, based on his own concept.

This image unfortunately was never used.  The L.A. based PR Firm hired by Tech N9ne’s label considered the image to be commercial suicide.  There had been a tremendous backlash from the black community over the sacrilegious imagery of his previous album ANGHELLIC.  As it was explained to me by the owner of the label, my photograph was “too scary for black people.”  Some neutered out-take was used as the cover instead.

Tech N9ne has a personal mythology.  He dresses up as different aspects of himself on stage.  One aspect is The Clown.  The Clown is a lascivious and decadent jester, pure unbridled Id. The King is his higher aspect.  The King is wisdom and power, and serves as a counterbalance to The Clown. In the middle is the human aspect, The G. The two opposing forces of light and dark struggle for supremacy over The G.

This was what I intended to be the back cover.

And inside was going to be this single portrait of The Clown, surrounded by lyrics.

So, I dunno, maybe it is a little scary.  They certainly didn’t go for it. On the next album CALLABOS they asked me to control myself.  At their suggestion, I shot the cover as a straightforward portrait in an alleyway.  I was all for it as long as we did it at night and I could use my fog machines. This was the cover.

The most recent project was a double header.  I shot artwork for his album KILLER as well as his DVD documentary TECH N9NE PSYCHUMENTARY.  He knew that he wanted the cover of KILLER to be a take-off of Michael Jackson’s THRILLER.  Except that he would be in a white straight jacket. With a naked tiger lady.  

And really, how can I say “no” to that?

But as consolation, they let me do what I wanted with the documentary artwork.  So I locked Tech N9ne up in a mental institution and gave him electric shock therapy.

                                            ZZzzzzzzzzzzzztt!

Lodown Magazine

This is pretty exciting.  My work is featured in the current issue of LoDown Magazine, a very cool special interest magazine focused on left-field pop culture.  They are based out of Berlin Germany, but are distributed worldwide.  They gave me a 5 page spread that included 6 of my images and a lengthy interview.

Another photographer featured in the same issue is the amazing Amy Stein, a fine art photographer and teacher living in New York City. This image, my favorite, is from her series Domesticated, which deals with the separation and collision between man and the natural world. 

A monograph of this series will be published this fall.  This forthcoming book won the best book award at the 2008 New York Photo Festival.