CulturePOP Season 2 continues Tuesday 11/16

Tim Hall - CulturePOP preview

I took this shot of soon-to-be CulturePOP subject, writer Tim Hall a while back as his author photo. Tim is the author of such books as Full of it: The Birth, Death, and Life of an Underground Newspaper, Half Empty, One Damn Thing After An­other and Triumph of the Won't. Tim's work can also be seen in the text-based comic, Uplift The Positivicals, a collaboration with artist Jen Ferguson (also a CulturePOP subject) at ACT-I-VATE.com.

Recently, Tim launched Undie Press, a literary website, which features free audio books, podcast interviews and essays.

My upcoming profile on Tim will focus on a trip down memory lane as he laments on his time in NYC and on his desired return from Chicago, where he's been living for the past few years. Look for it soon.

BORED TO DEATH @ THE BROOKLYN LYCEUM

On Saturday, November 6th, at King Con at the Brooklyn Lyceum, comics promoter / editor Jeff Newelt (Pekar Project, Heeb, Royal Flush) interviewed author Jonathan Ames, creator of the HBO series BORED TO DEATH & and comics creator Dean Haspiel, who drew the show's Emmy-winning title-credits and whom Zach Galifianakis's character "Ray Hueston is loosely based on. I shot pre-panel portraits as well as some shots during the proceedings.

These three pics are a preview of the full multimedia recap that will appear next week on HEEB Magazine, including full panel audio, video highlights, more photos, Dean's art from the show, and text excerpts from the panel.

GRAPHIC NYC Presents Dean Haspiel: The Early Years

Graphic NYC Presents Dean Haspiel: The Early Years by Christopher Irving and from IDW publishing is out now. While I'm not an author on it, I did design the front and back covers and provide the photos for the interior, including a centerfold (really!) and a four-page photocomix tribute to Dean. It's also the first book from the Graphic NYC brand which I helped to establish.

The book traces Dean's development as an artist through essay's by Chris and a ton of Dean's early comix work. It's a great read.

Icons of Fandom

Tom Savini is an award-winning make-up artist, known for his work on the Living Dead films as well as Creepshow, Friday The 13th, and Maniac. He has acted in films such as Dawn Of The Dead (and its remake), From Dusk Till Dawn, Grindhouse, and the recent Machete.

Jim Kelly is a martial artist best known from his performance as Williams in the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon.

Ernie Hudson is best known for his roles as Winston Zeddemore in the Ghostbusters films, Warden Leo Glynn on HBO's Oz, and Sergeant Albrecht in The Crow.

Ralph Macchio is known for his roles are as Daniel LaRusso in the Karate Kid series and as Johnny Cade in The Outsiders.

CulturePOP Photocomix on Dean Haspiel

CulturePOP: Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters returns today with a profile on Cartoonist, Emmy winner and ACT-I-VATE founder Dean Haspiel.

A version of today's photocomic, The Angel was originally created for the book, Graphic NYC Presents Dean Haspiel: The Early Years by Christopher Irving, which is available in shops this week or at Amazon.

An interesting note about my profile on Dean is that it's actually written by Dean himself. The text for The Angel was originally written for a two-page strip Dean created for Overflow Magazine. He provided me with his very personal words from the strip to use in creating this Photocomix profile. Because of this, I consider it to be a collaboration.

See it HERE.

Comments welcome and appreciated, as always. Hope you enjoy it!

CulturePOP Season 2 continues Tuesday 11/2

Molly Crabapple Collaboration

Illustrator extraordinaire Molly Crabapple recently took one of the many photos I've shot of her and contributed her own drawing to create this collaborative piece. The concept is one we discussed a year or two ago, so I was thrilled to see it come to fruition.

Dave Franzese - CulturePOP preview

I recently worked on a profile of Dave Franzese of the design team, Dark Igloo. It shaped up to be a fun piece on living and working in a house aesthetic of creativity and will run as a new CulturePOP Photocomix installment some time this December.

CulturePOP Photocomix Profile: Lisa Natoli

CulturePOP: Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters Season 2 continues today with a Photocomix profile on Aerialist Lisa Natoli.
I met Lisa a couple of years back through her boyfriend, cartoonist Mike Cavallaro and she's been on my mind since beginning this project. My concept for this piece was to play with the whole 'secret identity' angle. There's the Lisa who waitresses at a restaurant and the Lisa who can fly through the air, but which one is the "real" Lisa? Or, are both simply aspects of a greater whole?

See it here - http://activatecomix.com/104-14-1.comic

If you like to go back and read from the first chapter - http://activatecomix.com/104-1.comic

Comments welcome and appreciated, as always. Hope you enjoy it!

Sophie Auster L'Uomo Vogue

Check out the new issue of L'Uomo Vogue (Italian Men's Vogue) for my portrait of singer/actress Sophie Auster.
Also, see earlier posted outtakes from the shoot here.

CulturePOP Season 2 continues Tuesday 10/19

Reggie Watts - CulturePOP preview

I recently spent a fun afternoon in Williamsburg with comedian/musician Reggie Watts to work on an upcoming CulturePOP photocomic profiling him. The narrative will be about the genesis of his mostly improvised, consciousness stand-up and how it comes out of his day-to-day activities.

I'm just starting to construct the piece, so please check back in a few weeks for the finished product, meanwhile, see preview image above.

Icons of Fandom

I continued my long-running series this past weekend at New York Comic-Con. There were many more subjects present who were of interest to me, but huge crowds and difficult publicists made it tough.

Seth Green, best know as Oz on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Scott Evil in the Austin Powers films and is the co-creator of Robot Chicken.

Richard Hatch portrayed Apollo on the original Battlestar Galactica and Tom Zarek in the recent BSG remake.

Jerry "The King" Lawler, pro wrestler and foil to the late Andy Kaufman.

James Marsters, best know as Spike on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Brainiac on Smallville and from the Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica.

Icons of Fandom

It's been a long while since I've added to this series. Click the tag at the bottom to see earlier images. There are several event this month which will allow me to further this project, the first of which was last weekend's Wizard World Big Apple Comic Con.

Barry Williams, best know as Greg Brady on The Brady Bunch.

Mike Lookinland, best know as Bobby Brady on TV's The Brady Bunch

Burt Ward portrayed Robin in the 1960 Batman TV show and movie spin-off.

Jake Lloyd played young Anakin Skywalker in 1999's Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Ahmed Best, best know as Jar Jar Binks in the three Star Wars prequels.

Kevin Nash, professional wrestler and actor.

Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, pro wrestler.

CulturePOP Season 2 premieres today

Meet Baron Ambrosia HERE.

CulturePOP Season 2 launches tomorrow at ACT-I-Vate.com

CUBA: My Revolution

CUBA: My Revolution by Inverna Lockpez (above) & Dean Haspiel (below) is a new graphic novel from DC/Vertigo Comics. It's the true story of Lockpez's experiences as a medical student and artist in Cuba during the early 1960s when Castro came into power.

I went to an exhibition and artist's talk this past weekend and reported on it at GRAPHIC NYC.

The work will be on display at the Kentler International Drawing Space until December 12.

Inspired by the book, I really wanted to shoot a portrait of Inverna, one which might reveal some of what she went through in her life. Happily, the gallery made several very large-scale prints of Dean's work from the book, which made a perfect, graphic and bold background for my shot.

The photo of Dean, with his work, is a fine addition, I think, to what is now a large collection of portrait collaborations we've done together.

Seth Kushner's CulturePOP Season 2 starts 10/4 on ACT-I-VATE.com

Seth Kushner's CulturePOP:
"Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters"
Season 2 starts 10/4 on ACT-I-VATE.com, FREE
All 12 episodes of Season 1 available free:
http://www.act-i-vate.com/104-1-1.comic

Seth Kushner loves comics and loves taking photos of interesting people. Over the past year, Seth began combining the two passions, in the form of photocomix, AKA fumetti, first popularized in the U.S. with Harvey Kurtzman's Help and later in Robert Crumb's Weirdo. In those cases the experiment was played for laughs, but Seth's doing something different: fusing photojournalism, personality profile, and comix. His first photocomix profile was of the late, great Harvey Pekar, for GRAPHIC NYC, the comics journalism site he co-edits. CulturePOP is his new ongoing series of photocomix profiles on ACT-I-VATE.com.

"What Seth achieved with that initial Pekar interview-cum-comic was a triumph," said Jeff Newelt, Harvey's editor on The Pekar Project. "He took key moments of an interview, matched the words with photos he took, and sequentially arranged the results so as to read as smoothly as an American Splendor comic."

In CulturePOP Season 1, Seth's shined his flash on the lives of subjects including poet Caits Meissner, sousaphonist/producer Clark Gayton, singer/songwriter Elyssa Loveless, designer John D'Aponte, graffiti artist/sculptor Carlos "Mare 139" Rodriguez, yoga instructor Melisa Winitzsky, former US champion rhythmic gymnast Olga Karmansky, toy designer Super Sucklord, author Douglas Rushkoff, VJ Jonny Wilson of Eclectic Method, burlesque performer Jennie Fiske and artist Jen Ferguson.

"Seth Kushner's omniscient lens distills NYC's brave and bold into graphic time capsules," says Dean Haspiel, creator of Billy Dogma, & The Alcoholic.

CulturePOP Season 2 launches Tuesday 10/5 with a photocomix profile on Bronx Flavor TV host Baron Ambrosia. Episodes run every other Tuesday and will include such scintillating subjects as writer / erotic editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, cartoonist Dean Haspiel, illustrator / designer Dave Franzese of Dark Igloo, aerialist Lisa Natoli, hip hop performer Akim The Funk Buddha, comedian/musician Reggie Watts and more TBA.

“Working on CulturePOP has been a dream come true,” says Kushner. “It’s the melding of my life-long love of comics and my photography into a new form of profile for me. Working on the first twelve was such a challenging and rewarding experience that I can’t wait for viewers to see some of the new tricks I’ve incorporated into the next twelve.”

CulturePOP is co-curated by Jeff Newelt, and edited by Dean Haspiel.

Join CulturePOP's Facebook fan page - http://www.facebook.com/CulturePOPphotocomix


Seth Kushner — shoots portraits of celebrity-types for such publications The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, L'Uomo Vogue and others. Seth's first book, The Brooklynites, (with Anthony LaSala) was published by powerHouse Books in 2007 and was) considered ”a terrific coffee table photo/interview book” by The New York Times. Currently, he's co-editing the comics journalism site Graphic NYC (www.NYCGraphicNovelists.com) (with Christopher Irving) and working on his next book on comic book creators. Seth first comics work was Schmuck (with artist Kevin Colden) and can be seen on ACT-I-VATE.com

ACT-I-VATE Live Comix Reading

I was very happy to be a part of a cool even this past Sunday - The ACT-I-VATE Live Comix reading at the DUMBO Arts Fest Digital Summit.

Simon Fraser started things off with a reading from Lily MacKenzie, and donned a purple wig to channel his avatar, Cosmo.

Joe Infurnari did a dramatic reading of his strip Vs. from SMITH MAG's Next-Door Neighbor series.

Graffiti artist/sculptor Carlos 'Mare 139' Rodriguez read from my own CulturePOP Photocomic profile on him.

Jeff Newelt, ACT-I-VATE Minister of Hype used his famous Havey Pekar impression to read from the late writer's Next-Door Neighbor piece, illustrated by Rick Veitch.

Jeff also read another Harvey piece, from SMITH Mag's The Pekar Project, edited by Jeff and drawn by Sean Pryor.

Dean Haspiel read from his autobio work, Street Code, with an assist from Chris Miskiewicz.

The event closed with a reading of Dean's Billy Dogma story from The ACT-I-VATE Primer. Assisting Dean were Jeff Newelt and Natalie Kim.

Thanks to Noah Norman for his help in making this a successful event.

Dumbo Arts Fest Digital Summit

I'll be a part of a very cool event this Sunday. Following a talk with Doug Rushkoff (a past subject of mine) there will be a live ACT-I-VATE comix reading with my CulturePOP photocomix profile on Carlos 'MARE 139' Rodriguez will be read by the subject himself, while the images are projected.


Dumbo Arts Fest Digital Summit: RUSHKOFF Talk and ACT-I-VATE Comix Reading

Sunday, September 26TH
4:00pm - 8:00pm
St. Ann’s Warehouse
38 Water Street, Brooklyn, NY



4pm - Media theorist / author Douglas Rushkoff's
Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Era

5pm - Live Comix Reading with members of ACT-I-VATE.com webcomix collective, Dean Haspiel, Joe Infurnari, Simon Fraser, Jeff Newelt AKA JahFurry, Seth Kushner and special guest Carlos 'MARE139' Rodriguez

6-8pm -- After Party / Wine Tasting: Brooklyn Oenology's “FRIEND” Riesling, label art by Jen Ferguson.
Blanc & Rouge, 81 Washington Street

--

4pm
Media theorist / author DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF presents:
Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Era
new book available at http://rushkoff.com/

Do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? “Choose the former,” says Douglas Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.”

We continue to accept new technologies into our lives with little or no understanding of how these devices work on us. We do not know how to program our computers, nor do we care. We spend much more time and energy trying to figure out how to use them to program one another, instead. And this is a potentially grave mistake.

Just as the invention of text utterly transformed human society, disconnecting us from much of what we held sacred, our migration to the digital realm will also require a new template for maintaining our humanity. In this talk, Rushkoff shares the biases of digital media, and what that means for how we should use them.

5pm
Big-Screen Live Comix Reading with members of ACT-I-VATE.com webcomix collective, Dean Haspiel, Joe Infurnari, Simon Fraser, Jeff Newelt AKA JahFurry, Seth Kushner and special guest Carlos 'MARE139" Rodriguez.

This crew will be reading comix not only from ACT-I-VATE but from SMITH Magazine's Next-Door Neighbor anthology as well at The Pekar Project.

Dean Haspiel is co-founder of ACT-I-VATE.com; creator of Billy Dogma and Street Code; creator/editor of Next-Door Neighbor; co-creator of The Quitter w/Harvey Pekar; the brand-new CUBA: My Revolution w/ Inverna Lockpez, and The Alcoholic w/ Jonathan Ames. Dean recently won an Emmy for his illustrations in the main title sequence for HBO's Bored to Death, the show based on Jonathan Ames life starring Jason Schwartzman as Ames and Zach Galifianakis loosely based on Dean.
http://deanhaspiel.com/

Jeff Newelt AKA JahFurry is ACT-I-VATE's Minister of Hype, as well as comics editor of SMITH, Heeb, & Royal Flush Magazines. He is editor of The Pekar Project, Harvey Pekar's (American Splendor) webcomics series on SMITH. Jeff will be reading two Pekar stories in his patented Pekar voice.
http://twitter.com/jahfurry

Photographer Seth Kushner, in addition to his renowned portrait series of on GraphicNYC, is the creator of CULTUREPOP: Photocomix Profiles of Real Life Characters. one of those real life characters, Carlos "MARE 139" Rodriguez will read his own profile. Carlos is a legendary graffiti artist and sculptor
CulturePOP - http://act-i-vate.com/104.comic
http://sethkushner.com/
http://mare139.com/

Joe Infurnari is an Eisner-nominated cartoonist with two books forthcoming from First Second and is the creator of the ongoing ULTRA-LAD strip http://act-i-vate.com/56.comic
http://joeinfurnari.com/

Simon Fraser is a Scotland-born cartoonist, is currently creating 'Lilly Mackenzie and the Mines of Charybdis' http://act-i-vate.com/9.comic and 'Nikolai Dante' the Eagle Award winning character that has graced the pages of Great Britain's 2000AD since 1997, co-Created by Robbie Morrison.
http://simonfraser.net/

AFTER PARTY 6pm - 8pm
Blanc & Rouge 81 Washington Street
Brooklyn Oenology winemaker Alie Shaper will be tasting the newly released “FRIEND” Riesling, which features the art of Jen Ferguson. A portion of the proceeds from this wine will go to support animal welfare. Jen Ferguson's art will also be on display in the store.
http://jenferguson.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/dumbo-art-festival-2010-bklyn-oenology-wine-tasting/
http://www.artinchaos.com

Graphic NYC site update.

While the Graphic NYC site updates has definitely slowed, we have two recent posts of some substance.

Where Superman Was Born: A Visit to Jerry Siegel's House

I was recently in Cleveland for a shoot and made time to visit the former home of Jerry Siegel. It was an amazing experience. See my thougths and photos.

Michael Kupperman and Tales Designed to Thrizzle's Lessons in Absurdity