Dave Raphael

May 1, 2009

Topic: Featured | Tags: , ,


Hey Dave, how’s your day going?
haha. Slooooow.

Well this will be the highlight of your day. Where did you grow up and how did it influence your photography?
Wow good question. I grew up in NJ. I lived close enough to NYC to make it in there after school and had a lot of friends in the music biz so when I was in high school I started shooting bands. That was really the first time anyone really took me seriously as a photographer and definitely solidified the mold that I would grow into as an adult. I grew up very close to an old missile base and we used to hang out up there a lot as kids. Kinda like that “party at the moon tower” vibe in dazed and confused. This led to an absolute obsession shooting the decaying infrastructure of military bases across the country when I first started traveling in my 20’s

So is that what genre you would say you were drawn to?
hmm. Documentary was huge for me as a kid and I jumped right into shooting documentary stuff in my teens, so I’d say that is very well ingrained in me. If you look at Peter Lindberg, his work is amazing but my favorite stuff of his is all the stuff he shoots sorta “behind the scenes” on set with a Leica, those pictures always have the most life to them.

How long have you been at it now?
I’ve been shooting seriously for I guess maybe 20 years. Leica’s all I shoot with. I don’t know about other people but the photos I take with a rangefinder are completely different than what I shoot with an SLR. My whole approach to photography with a rangefinder is completely different

How?
The biggest leap in my growth as a photographer was when I started using rangefinders. I’ve thought about that a lot and don’t have a solid answer. A big part of it for me is comfort: I work in the motion picture industry, so when I look at a frame, I’m used to seeing the frame lines and all the area out of the frame that you will see on a typical Panavision or Arriflex finder. Most rangefinders will show you the same thing, you get the frame lines and then a bunch of area outside the frame visible in the finder depending upon the focal length you are using. this makes me mentally think about the frame a whole lot more than just looking through an SLR which shows you I guess around %96 of the frame, or something like that. It’s a little less than %100 with most SLR finders I have seen.

The other thing with a rangefinder is that you never actually see through the lens, so you never really know what you are getting until you look at the film and that kind of excitement brings a lot of energy to shooting for me.

What’s the wildest thing you’ve done to gain better access for a shot?
I once flew to Spain and showed up at the front door to a band’s tour bus. “I’m a photographer from NYC, I want to shoot a week of your tour”.
“You flew all the way from NY to shoot us?”
“Yeah,” They let me on and I think I did two weeks with them, totally random.

Haha, wow.
Yeah, that could have ended so badly!

Do you remember a first photograph that made an impression on you?
I don’t know who took the photo, but there was a photo shot at Woodstock from the stage, over the band and onto the sea of people that really floored me as a kid, like, a little kid. It was that picture more than anything that got the wheels turning with the union of music and image in my life. That was just an alien thing to see; a hundred thousand people watching a band play. We take that kind of stuff for granted sometimes but when I was eight or nine I just could not understand that and got totally sucked in trying to understand more. Mike Wadleigh, the guy that directed the Woodstock doc and ran the A camera with the 10mm lens is just such a ridiculous influence on me.

What photograph that you took made you realize this was your purpose?
Well, purpose wouldn’t come until later but I know that when I started to see photos of bands that I was taking in high school, and their management and labels were happy with the work, I knew I was doing something really right. I think once I started traveling a lot, I spent a large part of my 20’s on the road, the real purpose started to sink in. I’d go to a ghost town, shoot it, go back three years later and it would be gone. Poof. I’m amazed how much the US has changed in 12 years or so. You know, you think that abandoned gas station in the middle of the desert would always be there, or the Mojave phone booth. Stuff like that, but lots of Americana from the 60’s has either just rotted away or been turned into malls, it’s a shame.

So having binders full of that type of stuff, it became really really important to me to be shooting as much as I can. The hard part is staying conscious of the ordinary that is basically invisible in daily life that only becomes interesting after they tear it down. Drive in movie theaters are a good example of that type of thing, they used to be everywhere, now there is a website dedicated to marking their locations…

So would you say that’s the most important story you’ve told, in your opinion, with your photos?
No, the most important story will be the one of my life. Not to suggest that my life is important but at the end, all those pictures Ive taken, they all amount to all this stuff Ive seen and places Ive been, people Ive met, I think the large scope of that will be more important than focusing in on one facet of the work.

Is Anton Corbijn’s work with U2 the important thing, or is it his adventure as a dutch guy traveling the world with rock? I dunno. His photos of U2 are amazing but I would kill to see all the stuff that hasn’t been published, you know, the personal version of that vision. I think his early portraits of Herman Brood get close to that vibe.

Good point. Do models / non-famous women incessantly ask for you to photograph them?
No. Not at all. You’ve seen my work.

Yes, that’s why I’m surprised.
Most people in my life, they just see a guy with a camera. It’s not a novel thing anymore and for me, I hate approaching people, its creepy. Well, its not creepy but its an invasion of space and it can weird some people out. I don’t like being approached on the street at all. Like, at all, for any reason. So I guess its that do onto others mentality my mom taught me as a kid.

Are you scary looking?
I wasn’t scary looking in the 90’s when everyone in the world was Chris Cornell obsessed and had a goatee. I still have my flannel, I should wear it more.

What’s the most important quality a photographer needs to have?
If you are shooting people, psychology, without a doubt. Photographing people is like %2 photography and %98 psychology. A person has to trust you and if you are shooting strangers and want some sense of intimacy in the work you have to put them at ease and provide some sort of path for them to find you, the photographer, interesting almost instantly. if you cant do that, all you wind up with are photos of people looking awkward, or suspect and of course, that can work as a style but its not so much mine.

So for me, putting people at ease is critical and its been the hardest thing to hone and Im constantly working on it but I like really quiet moments in my portraits and short of spending two weeks with someone, there’s gotta be a way to silence their guard right off the bat.

Pomegranate Pirates, the one of the girl in a kitchen, v-neck t-shirt – that one’s amazing. Sat with me long after I saw it.
The tumultuous tale of Ashlee the Pirate. I think all my best work is candid, the other photos above it obviously are not.

So is there another road you’d like to take subjectivity wise?
I’ve always cut my own path and that’s brought me to a lot of unplanned places but in a total fantasy, put me on the next moon mission. That would be insane, barring a new relationship with NASA. I’ve been shooting more and more fashion these days, last two years, and that has my full attention right now. I haven’t shot a band in probably four years or so and am happy to be away from that world. My focus right now is entirely with shooting fashion. And I’m not comfortably setup in that world so for now, that’s totally serving as a new and uncharted route.

What about traveling? South America, Mexico?
Did you know that the furthest into the earth you can go is in Peru? I think it’s Peru, in the Andes. It’s beautiful – great photo op with the incredibly beautiful decaying scenery. You climb to like 10K feet and then go 10K feet down into a cave in the mountain and then climb back up the cave and then down the mountain. Apparently people do this, crazy. I don’t do well in caves at all; a deep dark bottomless pit. I’ve been in a ton of mines and that is ok but there is something about caves. The few Ive gone through just never sat well. Cool shit goes on underground though.

Ever watch the movie The Descent?
No.

It’s all about cave diving, effed up. All journey to the middle of the earth and no way out.
No thanks! The snake river runs underground in Idaho through lava tubes and that’s basically how we were able to hide our nuclear development from the soviets way back in the stone age. Makes you wonder though if fish realize they are in this cave for miles and miles all of a sudden… Its probably all the same to them. wet.

See the rest of Dave’s work at DaveRaphael.com

Other Posts

«Previous Skate, Dance and Thrift | (Art)ificial Gallery Next»

One Shout to “Dave Raphael”

  1. Brian McGloin says May 1 at 7:26 pm

    Awesome. I met Dave in Union Square one nice day. We were both there with cameras taking in everything, looking at people. He and I have a lot in common and absolutely nothing at all.
    Dave is one of the few people I miss from NYC and the first one I’ll call if/when I ever return. Or maybe a certain Thai girl but for entirely different reasons.
    Dave is a true artists, adventurer, photographer and journalist in the truest definition of the words.

Go Ahead, Speak Up!