CulturePOP - Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters on ACT-I-VATE.com

Thank you all for continuing to follow my experimental webomic, CulturePOP: "Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters."
This week's edition, Melisa Winitzky: Rooftop Yoga, tells the tale of a young woman who finds inner-peace high above the streets of Manhattan.
See it HERE.

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

The Hypothetical Library

Designer extraordinaire Charlie Orr's Hypothetical Library has been a project of interest to me since it's inception earlier this year.

"The idea behind the blog was to create an opportunity for a part-time book cover designer to collaborate, with a wide range of amazing, contemporary writers on a project outside of their normal body of work," Orr says in his blog's intro. "The catch is that these books will never really exist." He elaborates - "I ask each writer to provide flap copy for a book that they haven’t, won’t, but in theory could, write, and then I design a cover for it."

This week's installment show readers the hypothetical cover for author Neil Gaiman's If You Read This Book The World Will End. When I heard this concept I was excited to work with Charlie on this project.

This week's entry has taken several months of planning, as Orr's concept required the involvement of: a sculptor/metal artist, digital print house, a locksmith, an audio engineer, a voice artist, and an html 5 programmer, (for an audio book, and an e-book cover which will be posted later in the week) a photographer, (me) and Gaiman himself.

Other authors who's recently received the hypothetical treatment from Orr include; Colum McCann, David Lehman, Lydia Millet and Kierán Suckling, Thomas Kelly, Brian Evenson,and cartoonists Gabrielle Bell and Nick Abadzis.

Check out the Hypothetical Library every week for more creative book covers to book which will never exist. Though, I hear Mr. Gaiman mentioned that he may want to actually write If You Read This Book The World Will End someday.

Laura Lee Gulledge

Laura Lee Gulledge is a newcomer to the comics scene, but she's already working on a YA graphic novel for Abrams called, Page By Paige, scheduled for release in Spring 2011.

CulturePOP - Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters on ACT-I-VATE.com

The latest installment of my webcomic, CulturePOP - "Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters" features Clark Gayton in "My Sousaphone."
See it HERE.
Comments welcome and appreciated, as always.

Graphic Novelists - Day 61

Last month at the MoCCA Fest here in NYC, I had the honor of photographing Jaime Hernandez. Jaime, along with his brother Gilbert, form Los Bros. Hernandez, creators of the super influential Love and Rockets series.
Learn more about Jaime Hernandez by reading the GRAPHIC NYC Profile on him.

CulturePOP - Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters on ACT-I-VATE.com

This week's edition, John D'Aponte: The Family 'Stache, tells the tale of a man attempting to connect with his family history through his moustache.
See it HERE.
Comments welcome and appreciated. Hope you enjoy it!

CulturePOP - Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters on ACT-I-VATE.com

In this week's edition, Caits Meissner: Dear Roger, I slightly break format and collaborate with subject Caits Meissner by visually illustrating one of her poems, rather than taking the text from a recorded interview. I think the result is just as revealing.
See it HERE.

CulturePOP - Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters on ACT-I-VATE.com

The second installment of my webcomic, CulturePOP: "Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters" is up live. This week's features graffiti artist/sculptor Carlos 'Mare 139' Rodriguez.
See it HERE.

CBDLF website

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund just launched their new website, designed by Charlie Orr and featuring my photos.

The concept Charlie and and CBDLF Executive Director Charles Brownstein had was to use my cartoonist portraits to give a face to the organization," Seth says. "The photo (with a quote from each artist), located in the upper right corner of the main page, changes when you refresh the page.

Currently, there are several cartoonist photos being rotated on the site, including Paul Pope, Dean Haspiel, Neil Gaiman, Molly Crabapple, Ben Templesmith and more. A roll-out of more images is planned in a few months.

Go to cbldf.org and help support a good cause

MoCCA Fest photos

I spent last weekend at the Mocca Fest and with exclusive access, took the portraits below. Thanks to Jeff Newelt and Brian Heater.

The panelists of The Art of the Superhero: When Singular Vision Meets Popular Mythology, which gathered these iconic cartoonists,

From L to R: Paul Pope, Dean Haspiel, Frank Miller, Moderator Jeff Newelt, Kyle Baker and Jaime Hernandez

Dean Haspiel and Frank Miller

Jaime Hernandez

Chip Kidd

David Mazzucchelli

Bill Ayers

Tom Hart

Josh Neufeld

Ward Sutton

See the full posting at GRAPHIC NYC.

Seth Kushner's CulturePOP: "Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters" launches at ACT-I-VATE today

CulturePOP: "Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters."

New profiles every Monday, starting 4/12 on ACT-I-VATE.com

Seth Kushner loves comics and loves taking photos of interesting people. Over the past year, Seth began experimenting with 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 photocomix were played for laughs, but Seth's doing something different: a fusion of photojournalism, personality profile, and comix. His first photocomix profile was of Harvey Pekar, for GRAPHIC NYC, the comics journalism site he co-edits, and the reception was so positive it set Seth to concocting an ongoing photocomix project.

"What Seth achieved with that 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. I work with four artists who masterfully illustrate Pekar's words, and I was dumfounded by how much Seth's experiment succeeded."

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

With Culture POP, Seth's shines 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 Douglass Rushkoff, VJ Jonny Wilson of Eclectic Method, artist Jen Ferguson and more TBA.

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

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

See it at ACT-I-VATE.

CulturePOP teaser-7

CulturePOP teaser-6

CulturePOP teaser-5

CulturePOP teaser-4

CulturePOP teaser-3

CulturePOP teaser-2

CulturePOP teaser-1

Poet Caits Meissner releases her second EP, The Wolf & Me, May 1, 2010

I recently collaborated with poet Caits Meissner on two projects. The first of them was for the cover and packaging of her new album, The Wolf & Me. See info below.
For the photo, Caits wanted to somehow combine herself with the idea of the wolf. A few different ideas were bandied about, but in the end Caits, a graphic designer herself, went with the treatment seen below on my portrait of her.

Our other collaboration was for my project, CulturePOP, which will be formally announced later this week.



Poet Caits Meissner releases her second EP, The Wolf & Me, May 1, 2010

Executive Produced by Just Plain Ant; featuring Maya Azucena, Jesse Boykins III, Dunce Apprentice and Broke MC; with production by Blu, Cazeaux OSLO, Just Plain Ant, Bisco Smith, Cave and The Aftermath.

Caits Meissner, well-known for her writing in respected poetry circles, and work as an educator/community organizer in youth circles, now steps out with a fantastic music project. Embedded in and influenced by the experimental hip hop community, Caits’ songs are word-driven vignettes delving deep into the heart of human experience: loneliness, inspiration, love and loss set over visually lush landscapes from current hip hop/electronic producers.

In regards to her past work, Erykah Badu calls her “fresh, honest and loving… a delicate heart like mine.” Doodlebug of Digable Planets describes her as “melodic words of wisdom… streetjazzoetry.” This round, surprising her fans by singing at times in her honest and edgy tone, Caits reveals the soulful songwriter beneath her poems. Something precious, her words beat like a full heart without false bravado, a seeking for something beyond, a prayer. The Wolf & Me is something that will linger in your soul.

The Wolf & Me is a multi-platform project, inspired by classic elements of the vinyl era, which includes a PDF download of the lyrics designed by Caits (who also holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Pratt Institute), art directed by designer Tishon Woolcock and shot by renowned photographer Seth Kushner. London-based poet Warsan Shire contributes her words, reviving the lost of art of liner notes. According to Caits, The Wolf & Me aims to be “a multi-sensory journey, the kind of album you listen to under headphones, in the dark hours of the early morning.” She hopes the words bring you alive.

Caits has a substantial background in performance poetry but recently transitioned into working with music, most notably with German producers Comfort Fit and Portformat on the Tokyo Dawn record label. Originally from Albany, NY, she has been Brooklyn-based for the past eight years. Caits studied in Africa under Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa, and building off such legacies as Gil Scott-Heron, works to create a musical experience rooted in storytelling.

Download the new single, “Blackest Blood” from the forthcoming project at
www.thewolfandme.com or www.caitsmeissner.com

GRAPHIC NYC in Italy's #1 newspaper

This past weekend, D-La Repubblica delle donne (The weekend supplement of Italy's #1 newspaper) featured a great nine-page feature story by reporter Anna Lombardi on the NYC comics scene. The story features 13 of my portraits from the GRAPHIC NYC project.
The article describes Christopher Irving and me as the journalist and the photographer who are documenting the history of comics in NYC.

Graphic Novelists - Day 60

A midtown pub was the location for Ben Templesmith's portrait. The Australian born artist is best known for his painterly style as seen in such books as Fell, Wormwood, Groom Lake and 30 Days of Night.





Ben's latest series, Choker is a collaboration with writer Ben McCool.


Please be sure to check out the full GRAPHIC NYC profile on Ben.

Graphic NYC site update

Back in November of 2004, I had the opportunity to meet and photograph the guy I wanted to be when I grew up, Mark Hamill. My seven-year old self would not believe that my thirty-year old self would get to meet Luke Skywalker, but, I did, and it changed my life.

Check out my article, How Meeting Mark Hamill in a Comic Book Stor Changed My Life, and see accompanying photos below.

CulturePOP preview

In the photos below, you'll find; a Tuba player, a singer/songwriter, a poet, a yoga instructor and a designer with a crazy moustache - what do these five people have in common?
They are all subjects in a new series I've been working on called, CulturePOP.

What is CulturePOP? Well, that's somewhat complicated to explain, but for now, let me just say that it's a project I'm extremely excited about and it's something that combines all of my interests. More soon.

Graphic NYC site update

This past Tuesday, we posted a GRAPHIC NYC profile on the great Will Eisner. Unfortunately, Mr. Eisner died long before I started this project, so I never had the opportunity to photograph him. So, to illustrated the piece I came up with the photo-illustration below.
Also, be sure to check out the full piece.

Graphic Novelists - Day 59

Christopher and I were recently lucky enough to have grabbed up comics scholar Scott McCloud while he was in town to research his latest book.
Scott is best know for his work Zot! and for his three excellent and essential books on comics theory; Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics.

Being a fan of Scott's work for years, I immediately had a concept for the photo, and thankfully he was game. In his three "Comics" books, Scott breaks down how comics work, are created and are read, and he (or rather, his cartoon avatar) does it though - among other things - charts, diagrams, schematics, etc. Scott, who I see as comic's ultimate professor, spent over 45 minutes drawing the comics theory pieces seen on the blackboard in the photos below and it was far better than I even envisioned.
Thanks to the gang at XOXO studios for the use of their space and blackboard.

Check out the full GRAPHIC NYC profile, posted this week.