vhcle ISSUE 10 SEP 2012 / FALL VHCLE MAGAZINE
CONTENTS Vhcle Magazine Issue 10
ART
02 CONTENTS
MUSIC FILM
03 MASTHEAD
PHOTOGRAPHY DESIGN
04-05 CONTRIBUTORS
FASHION LIFE/POLITICS REVIEWS
06-09 Getting Objectified: The Ranking Epidemic by Marc Ingber 010-017 Citizens United Against Fair Elections, Presidential Campaign 2012 by Tim Sunderman 018-023 The George Inn, Keswick by Andrew Donaghy 024-029 VHCLE WOMAN Recommendations by Nicole Kniss 030-047 Q&A with Camille Carbonaro 048-061 Q&A with Julie Craig 062-075 Q&A with Todd Mclellan 076-083 Designer – William Earle
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Vhcle Magazine Issue 10
Charlie Lee / Founding Director charlie@vhcle.com EDITORIAL Cassie Lee / Founding Editor cassie@vhcle.com -Jamie Thunder / Sub-Editor jamie@vhcle.com DESIGNERS Raoul Ortega / Visual Director raoul@vhcle.com
Vhcle Magazine Tel: USA +1 415.364.8568 contact@vhcle.com Facebook: Vhcle Mag Twitter: @vhcle
Thomas Adcock / Visual Designer thomas@vhcle.com
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Bruce Mai / Visual Designer
Published by Charlie Lee: Vhcle Magazine, www.vhcle.com
bruce@vhcle.com
Vhcle.com designed by Charlie Lee
CONTRIBUTORS
All content copyright 2012.
Andrew Donaghy / Writer
All rights reserved.
Camille Carbonaro / Photographer Julie Craig / Photographer Marc Ingber / Writer Nicole Kniss / Vhcle Woman Tim Sunderman / Writer Todd Mclellan / Photographer William Earle / Designer Cover: Camille Carbonaro
Without limiting rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior written permission from both the copyright owner and the publisher of this magazine. Vhcle Magazine is not responsible for the return or loss of, or for any damage or injury to, any unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.
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VHCLE Issue 010
CONTRIBUTORS
A LPH A BETIC A L LY BY L A ST NA M E
Vhcle — DURHAM, UK
ANDREW DONAGHY / WRITER Andrew Donaghy is the Editor of Under The Influence magazine and works as a freelance features writer between issues. He graduated from Newcastle University in 2008 with a Masters in Journalism and has since experienced the joys of working for ITV and BSkyB in London. Now back in his hometown of Durham, he is bearing the fruits of taking stock and working hard. Andrew was inspired to write after discovering the New and Gonzo Journalism of the 1960s when he was 16 way back when. www.undertheinfluencemagazine.com Vhcle — PARIS
CAMILLE CARBONARO / PHOTOGRAPHER Camille Carbonaro is 23 and lives in Paris. She graduated with a Bachelor’s in Design and also in Photography. She’s had exhibitions in Nimes (south of France) and in the shop, EN FACE (Paris). She discovered press photography through Baudoin with whom she had been a photographer’s assistant. She was also finalist in the master class directed by Oliviero Toscani (ARTE Photo for Life), laureate of the photographic marathon, Fnac-Canon Montpellier, in 2010, and has been published in a regional daily newspaper, Midi Libre. www.camille-carbonaro.com
Vhcle — ST. HELENA, CA
JULIE CRAIG / PHOTOGRAPHER Julie Craig is a 24-year-old girl wandering her way though life, merging her love for photography and baking. Though studied to be a photographer, she now works as a pastry chef in St. Helena. Never staying in one place too long, Julie can always find home in the kitchen, behind the lens. www.alwayswithbutter.blogspot.com
Vhcle — MINNEAPOLIS, MN
MARC INGBER / WRITER Marc Ingber is a communications specialist and writer for a nonprofit based in Minneapolis, MN. He was born and raised in the Twin Cities and attended journalism school at the University of Kansas. His primary interests include rock n’ roll, movies, food and drink, the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Twins - probably in that order.
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Vhcle — SACRAMENTO, CA
NICOLE KNISS / VHCLE WOMAN Nicole Kniss and her boyfriend, Justin Johnson, started their clothing line, Van Der Neer, in 2007. They make conceptual clothing by hand and each piece is one of a kind. They are preparing to show their latest collection “The 11th Dimension” in the Avant Garde finale show for San Francisco Fashion Week on September 30th. www.vdnclothing.tumblr.com
Vhcle — SAN FRANCISCO, CA
TIM SUNDERMAN / WRITER Tim Sunderman is a Graphic Designer in the San Francisco Bay Area whose first love is drawing and painting, tries to avoid computers until there is no other recourse, and because there is no other recourse, yearns for the open spaces. Tim is a graduate from the Academy of Art in San Francisco, and majored in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a college art and design instructor and freelance artist. www.timsunderman.com
Vhcle — TORONTO, ON
TODD MCLELLAN / PHOTOGRAPHER Todd Mclellan was born and raised in Western Canada where he did his bachelor’s degree in fine arts with a major in photography. Shortly after graduating he moved to Toronto to pursue his career in photography. He has been shooting professionally for over six years now. www.toddmclellan.com
Vhcle — SACRAMENTO, CA
WILLIAM EARLE / DESIGNER William Earle is regarded by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum as the pre-eminent American Minimalist. He has enjoyed numerous high-profile placements of his designs, from the set of The Tonight Show to the libraries of both Yale and The University of Pennsylvania, as well as countless hotels, restaurants and airports. His designs have been published in countless publications, such as Metropolitan Home, Metropolis, Wallpaper, Surface, Flaunt, and W Magazine. All of William Earle’s original designs are built by hand by the artist working alone in his Northern California studio. All of his designs are branded and signed by the artist. www.williamearle.com
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Getting Objectified: The Ranking Epidemic WR ITER
M A RC I NGBER -September 2012 V hcle Maga zine Issue 10, pp 6 -9
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A COUPLE OF years ago I was eating dinner
with a friend and his wife when we happened to get in a discussion of which TV show was better – The Sopranos or The Wire. On the surface it might have just been dinnertime conversation about a couple of HBO shows, but as anyone who has a tendency to take novelistic, expansive TV dramas a little too seriously knows, this wasn’t merely a debate about preferring New Jersey Mafiosos to Baltimore drug dealers. It was a matter of great importance, as the winner would be blessed with the title of (drumroll please) ”The Greatest TV Show of All Time” - or at least according to two guys with Netflix subscriptions sitting in a Mexican restaurant in Northeast Minneapolis. Many of our conversations going all the way back to junior high have evolved into debates over TV shows, movies and music, so it was only natural that the “Sopranos vs. Wire” discussion would come up, as these two are typically cited as examples of TV at its highest form. But the person with the most shocking statement of the night happened to be his wife. After listening to us go back and forth for about 20 minutes, she simply asked, “Why does it matter? Why can’t they both just be really good shows and leave it at that?”
Now this was something that never occurred to us. Of course it mattered – how could it not? The greatest TV show of all time? This is not something that should be taken lightly. This is an important proclamation. But the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with her. There is no point in trying to reach an official answer as to which is the best because the question is stupid to begin with. There isn’t such thing as the “Greatest TV Show of All Time”, and even if there somehow was a consensus opinion on it, I’m not sure what that would accomplish. Would it make the second, third and fourth best shows any less valuable? Nevertheless, ranking things like TV shows, movies, albums and just about everything else has become a dominant part of the media landscape. We in Generations X and Y probably didn’t invent the concept of attempting to objectively rank creations that will always be subjective, but it has become an epidemic problem. Go to any magazine rack at a grocery store and count the number of times you see headlines like “The 50 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time”, “The 25 Greatest Seafood Restaurants in San Francisco”,
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“The 100 Best Guitar Solos in Metal”, or what have you. It’s probably more difficult to find a magazine that doesn’t have one of these lists than one that does. The internet is the same way, inundated with websites that take the liberty of ranking everything from Coen Brothers’ movies to Simpsons lines.
I have a feeling much of this ranking fever can be traced back to sports fans. Unlike most art forms, sports are able to crown a definitive “best” every year through a playoff system that doesn’t require opinion and voting. Acting, for instance, doesn’t have this luxury. Phillip Seymour Hoffman isn’t able to take on Daniel Day-Lewis in a conference playoff game to determine who was a better actor in 2007.
Like anything else, these lists range in quality quite a bit. Some are well researched and present a clear and logical explanation as to how they were formed, whereas others were quite obviously slapped together quickly with the goal of increasing page views by having thousands of visitors click “Next” on their web browser 25 times in a row. Compiling these types of lists isn’t hurting anyone and it can be fun to debate with friends (or more likely, anonymous internet commenters) why a movie or band is better than another. But not only is it ultimately a pointless endeavor, these rankings have become so commonplace they are not even memorable, which is what they should be at the least. Can you remember the results of the last ranking list you saw? Even one you read yesterday? I can’t, and I have a tendency to remember trivial matters like this. The market is so flooded with them, none stand out.
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Though sports are able to delineate clear winners and losers every year, fans still find other things to compare and argue about. For instance, they argue over whether one championship team could beat one from an earlier era. Could the ‘61 Yankees beat the ‘27 Yankees? Does LeBron James have more natural talent than Michael Jordan did in the ‘90s? These types of subjective, impossible-toresolve arguments have become ubiquitous in the mainstream sports media in the last decade and it was only a matter of time before the concept started seeping into other topics. It led to entities like the American Film Institute ranking Psycho’s Norman Bates as film’s second greatest movie villain of all time, falling short to Hannibal Lecter. Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo recently made news when it dethroned Citizen Kane as the
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British Film Institute’s greatest movie of all time. The institute’s Sight & Sound magazine has published its Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time every 10 years since 1952. Citizen Kane has been at the top ever since the beginning, but that changed in 2012 when Vertigo overtook it. While I understand that critical opinion can change over time, I also wonder what the point is of determining an “all time” winner if it’s liable to change anyway. If we’re continuously re-assessing and changing our mind about what the greatest fill-in-the-blank of all time is, it seems to be a hollow title. I hate to put on the nostalgia-colored glasses, but whenever you see these “all time” lists, you rarely see anything from the modern era anywhere near the top. This makes sense, as it can come across as “generationally arrogant”, so to speak, to place a movie or album that came out in the last few years alongside ones that have stood the test of time for 50 years or so.
Which brings me back to The Wire. Airing from 2002-08, the show is an extremely modern creation for something that is frequently referred to as “the greatest TV show of all time”. While it’s nice to think that a show from the current era is worthy of holding that lofty title, it also seems a bit premature to make that proclamation. It would make sense to wait a few decades and see if it still holds up. As a fan of The Wire, I hope for the show’s sake it doesn’t get overwhelmed by its critical reputation. The “greatest of all time” title is a heavy burden to bear, as it leads to expectations that are almost impossible to meet. Why can’t we just say it’s a really good show and leave it at that?
But the realist in me thinks little from the modern era measures up to the classics anyway. It’s virtually impossible to imagine anything ever coming out today the critical community would mention in the same breath as Citizen Kane or the Beatles.
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Illustration by Tim Sunderman
Citizens United Against Fair Elections, Presidential Campaign 2012
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T I M SU NDER M A N -September 2012 V hcle Maga zine Issue 10, pp10 -17
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HUMANS ARE A peculiar species. We are
and Mississippi. In this case, the Federal Constitution’s guarantee of inalienable rights superseded State majority rule. There are balances in place to protect against the decay into mob mentality. In this way, democracy is necessarily more complex than may first be apparent.
caught between our instinctual impulses of survival, territoriality, and the consequent defensiveness that emerges from that primal state, and our higher aspirations of expression, exploration, and inclusion. As human beings, we are primarily social creatures. The majority of our daily lives are given to our interpersonal actions, and so our social order is very central to our concerns. We have evolved to the point where we are ready to move beyond the autocratic dictates of feudal lordships and monarchs and have begun the tenuous transition into a democratic model of rule that allows citizens input in their social order. We are not subjects of a kingdom, but co-participants in our rule. At this point in history, most would agree that democratic principles are preferred to being told what to do by an appointed ruler. However, the principles of majority rule are not without their own limitations. For instance, we cannot be bound by majority rule if the opinions of the majority would supplant human rights. This was the case during the Civil Rights movement when the rights of minorities were simply voted away by the white majority in states like Alabama
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The current presidential election is certainly revealing the complexities and frailties of a democratic union. The worst of these is unquestionably the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court which gives corporations and other entities unlimited spending power and anonymity to sway elections under the guise of the first amendment guarantee to freedom of speech. To most Americans, the abhorrence and absurdity of such a proposition is patently obvious because of our belief in equality and electoral fairness. If political advertisements had no effect on election outcomes, money would not be spent on them. But it is an incontrovertible fact that elections are swayed and corrupted by money, which is why it is so important to have strict limitations on how money is allowed to be contributed and spent to influence voting, and transparency in where that money is coming from. But the current law has no such boundaries.
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Secret money from invisible organizations with hidden agendas can act with impunity using nearly inexhaustible resources to bend the democratic process to their personal gain. And because freedom of speech is so broad, political advertisements are not beholden to any level of honesty. The overt distortions of truth and outright lies that are presented violate no laws. This brings up huge questions of accountability. We are asked to believe that corporations are people under the law. To most real people, this is such an absolutely blatant falsehood that it needs no explanation to the contrary. If corporations are people, why can they not be prosecuted and imprisoned when they break the law? The fact is that corporations are only considered people under the law to the extent that they can skirt the law when it suits them. In other words, it creates a structure that allows them to be above the law in many situations. And so it is in the case of the Citizens United ruling — corporations are under even less oversight. And yet, under closer scrutiny, the majority of money being donated to political action committees is not from corporations or unions, but from private individuals.
Statistics from January 2012 show that the top twenty corporate donations to superPACs (Political Action Committees) totaled 24.3 million dollars, while 39.9 million dollars were donated by private individuals. Do political donors expect favor for their donations? In a 2009 study published in the American Journal of Political Science, it was found that for the average firm lobbying Congress, each additional $1 spent on lobbying was associated with $6 to $20 in new tax benefits. And those tax benefits are passed directly on to the corporate owners. We must then ask what effect is this having on our social order as defined by the democratic principles of fairness, equality, and inclusion. The unlikeable answer, is that we have been moving toward a plutocracy where there is a ruling elite based upon wealth, and that those wealthy individuals are using the power of money to leverage their own interests at the expense of the common good. But it is important to be clear here. This is nothing new in the long view of world history. Power is a volatile thing that is constantly being pulled, shifted, and formed by those in its sphere of influence. So, what is the agenda of a wealthy ruling elite? The obvious answer is to amass as
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much money for themselves as possible. And because their largest expense is their tax bill, their priority is to lower their taxes. The biggest victory in that regard is the lowering of the capital gains tax to 15%. Vastly wealthy business owners simply structure their paychecks to be in the form of stocks and take their pay that way to skirt actual income tax rates. And this is why secretaries are said to be taxed at a higher rate than their executive bosses. We are not paid in stocks, our paychecks are considered income. Their stocks are not.
that has been held in trust by the government to be repaid to each us with interest in our retirement years. It is our money. An actual “entitlement” comes from the old tradition of passing on royal titles to lands that ruling lords would inherit by no effort of their own. It is no coincidence that the political phrasing of those wealthy classes would use the term that that specifically describes their method of amassing wealth against those who have actually worked for their own living and retirement. It is the double-speak of spin doctors that has become so common lately.
The argument behind the capital gains tax cut was that it will give vastly rich people a better opportunity to reinvest in more business and give people more jobs. However, the actual consequence of lowering capital gains taxes and deregulating corporations has led to the highest unemployment this country has seen since the great depression of the 1930’s. But this reality never is spoken in the dialogues of the country’s economic direction. We are constantly told that we need to cut Social Security because it is an “entitlement” program. This clever and subtle use of the term “entitlement” is intended to present Social Security in the light of a handout program that people have not earned, never acknowledging that it is our money
And if some are still attached to the illusion that the wealthiest Americans fairly deserve their billions, it would help to remind them that the lowest earning 60% of the population owns only 2.8% of the wealth. That statistic is according to the US Department of Labor. The lowest 80% of US earners have only 7% of the wealth of the nation. These statistics move the onus onto those that would argue for the wealthy that the lowest earning 80% of the population do not contribute more than 7% of the work that gets done which creates the enormous profits of the owning class. These are the lowest 80% of earners, that is, people who have jobs, not members of society who are not working. Most reasonable people would
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have to agree that the lowest earning 80% are doing quite a bit more than 80% of the work that generates profit and certainly they are deserving far more than 7% of the economic power of this nation. The top earning 5% own 70% of the wealth and they are using that wealth to sway elections to their own benefit. And so now we have arrived at this point in the 21st century where the democratic principles of fairness, equality, and inclusion are being subsumed to a plutocracy. We are inundated with political commercials, mostly saying what awful people each political opponent is, and trying to support their argument with the most dubious and pathetic logic that you would think that most ninth graders would see through. Unfortunately, this is America, where the prospects of critical thinking cannot be taken for granted. So many voters lack the capability of looking behind a message to see its true agenda, so that they are often simply swayed by the mere repetition of messages. One thing that can strengthen a democracy is intelligent, well-informed citizens. But that is not coming any time soon. When people can be so easily moved by fear beyond any recourse to reason, then campaigns will will
resort to fear tactics to motivate voting. Both sides are guilty of this. The reason political ads are predominantly negative is because they work within this context of American society. But there is a difference between the hyperbole of fear mongering and the reality of unpleasant facts. Looking at both President Obama and Governor Romney, there is much to dislike. During his previous campaign for President, Obama said, “I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.” (October 27, 2007). Not only are our troops not home by the end of his first administration, we have more troops in Afghanistan now than when Bush was President. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as of June 2012, 409 drone strikes have been carried out under the Obama administration, killing at least 2,114 people, compared to 53 drone strikes carried out under the Bush administration, killing at least 438. A New York Times article has revealed that the US president personally approves or vetoes each drone strike after
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consulting closely with security officials. This, from the man who won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
business” proposition that Romney is offering America. He has flatly stated that he would move to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act for Wall Street reform, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and weakening derivatives regulation.
With the economy firmly resting front and center of the 2012 political landscape, Mitt Romney’s record puts him in a nearly indefensible position. He would argue that his successful business record makes him ideally suited to pull America from its recession. But one does not even have to scratch the surface to see that the success of his business model was built solely on shipping American jobs overseas, and acquiring, cutting up and dissolving viable businesses at the expense of local economies. A typical example was Bain Capital’s purchase of American Pad and Paper Company (Ampad) for five million dollars, and within seven years had driven the company into the ground, hundreds of jobs were lost, the stock went from $15 a share to 15 cents a share and the business was deliberately bankrupted. That doesn’t sound like such a good business model except when you factor in the $100 million that Bain made out of the deal (according to the Boston Globe). Make no mistake, this is precisely the “good for
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Who does one vote for? Many have said that it doesn’t matter what lever you pull at the voting hall, you will simply get Obomney. In other words, both are backed by massive dollars that expect reward after the election. One point of view suggests choosing the lesser of two evils. This is reductionist thinking. Another way to consider the issue is — which way should one try to push the center of the balance of power? It may be argued that in a democracy, your vote doesn’t count unless you vote for the winner. Again, this is a reductionist way to look at things, but one is free to vote their conscience, particularly in uncontested states where the outcome is a mere formality. Democrats will take California, Republicans will take Oklahoma. In these states, people can vote for third party candidates like Green Party or Libertarian as a way to statistically show a clearer cross-section of the electorate. In more
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heavily contested swing states, one may not feel so cavalier with their vote, knowing that each vote is more influential to the outcome. But, in defense of the act of voting, do not despair. Do not give in to jaded thoughts of futility. Yes, money will have its reward, but the force of public opinion will not be stopped. Vote. Vote often. When voter turn out is only 20%, your vote counts for five people. Make your opinions known. There may soon be a time when the internet will evolve into an infallibly secure form of a means to vote, where elected representatives may become obsolete, when each citizen can vote from home on all policy issues, making lobbying and paying for votes a much more untenable prospect. Until then, voting is the most direct and minimum level of effort one can employ to participate in the larger social order. If you don’t vote, someone else is doing it for you.
The George Inn, Keswick WR ITER
A NDR E W DONAGH Y -September 2012 V hcle Maga zine Issue 10, pp 018- 023
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WE WOKE UP without an alarm or any
clothing. I’d known the girl beside me for one month and she’d already taken my “26 is going to be the year” statement way beyond a drunken slur I half remembered. Today we drove from the pavements and into the mountains. It was a Thursday. The sun beat down on my beaten up silver Volkswagen outside and we needed coffee. Nothing else mattered. Except maybe some cigarettes to take the edge off any nervous moments during the two hour drive. Keswick was our destination, and more specifically The George Inn, where we’d risk everything to find out too much about each other over a two-night stay. Having over-packed for the mud and rain, the start of our journey began stressfully when we discovered we had the smokes but without the fire. This quickly became an itch we should not have needed to scratch, until we broke onto the motorway and the inevitability of a garage brought with it a certain calm. For the first half hour everything looked great. The playlist I’d found from touring up the east coast of America last year was
sparking memories, and cuing up stories with every track. On exiting our first pit stop, the smooth ride was about to be interrupted. The sky looked full of hell and ready to spit all over us. The first drops of rain fell like heavy slobbering fists on the windscreen. I could feel my passenger clench her own fists in anticipation of the storm. Day had turned into night ten hours before nature intended. Whatever was coming looked rough. It took five minutes for the road to become a river and the windscreen a waterfall. Two red blurry lights - one left one right - guided us along the busy road. With each car that passed I gripped the steering wheel tighter, convinced we would lock up and drift helplessly into an on-coming truck. A mood built in the car as did a silence, her visible anxiety and my nervous tension. When we first met it was the reverse. Natural disasters don’t happen in England. Flooding, fires, earthquakes, volcanoes and avalanches are things we read about in the news between the latest press scandal and scandalous allegation about how the press sourced it. We are a nation that feeds off the
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weather for small-talk only. It does not serve as part of the larger conversation.
I always imagined this was a place where giants got their kicks. Roaming around, throwing things, bashing rocks, digging out rivers and lakes with their filthy bare hands.
When a bolt of lightning ripped through the sky to scorch the earth in front of us, I thought this might change. With the speed now dropping to 8mph, the car bonnet was taking waves head on. We’d been in this wet nightmare for 40 minutes and there was no sign of it receding. We’d at least passed halfway - at least we could say that. It was then we made an ascent and through the darkness we could make out the harsh jagged rocks at the foot of an unknown mountain. Blurry red lights cleared and became the back ends of vehicles. Others had made it and the rain had stopped. By the time we’d reach Keswick the weather would be back to grey and damp, and could only just qualify for small-talk. The rest of the drive was how I remembered it when I was growing up. It left me feeling insignificant and passing-through. Whereas that used to be a negative and a literal, things have changed since.
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The Lake District reminds me of family, of not caring about anything other than my knees hurting from walking too much and being a whinging shit to my parents. I mean that in the best possible way. This time around there was no whinging. I was with my girl and we had just checked in to our room. The bed and the bar were only two flights of stairs apart. She unpacked with an incredible efficiency, filling every cupboard and wardrobe as if she’d been a long-term resident, and me, with all the care and diligence of an overweight gym hater. Once we’d ditched the bags it was into the streets. There was a strolling attitude to the place. Everywhere you looked people had no sense of direction, time or the concept of having to be somewhere. The cobbled roads and pathways were tightly knitted together,
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dissecting the individual houses, shops and of course, wide variety real English pubs. Walking towards Lake Derwent, the view confirmed this place was exactly where we wanted to be. We tuned into the locals’ frequency very quickly, slowly drifting back to our room. Stopping at every bar for a drink on the way, that by the time we were PDA-ing in the corner of The George waiting for our food, it was clear we were drunk. It was also clear that we might have been the only ones. I was advised by the barman, who you’d think I’d just called a twat, not to order the Full Cow pie as it was “1KG of meat”. Not normally one to shirk a challenge, I conceded and ordered half. On arrival it was sage advice, the thing was a monster, all meat and gravy framed with a thin slice of crust. The pastry looked cautious of what it encased, and I was relieved I didn’t have to attempt double what was staring at me from the plate. People around us smiled that kind of smile you get when they aren’t quite sure about your presence. If they had heard some of our earlier conversations, then I could not argue with their viewpoint.
I never want to be those two that sit with each other and don’t say a word. We were sat next to that. We then proceeded to speak about not speaking to each other for 10 minutes and moved back to the R-rated stuff. Dogs roamed free, in what was promoted as a ‘dog friendly’ venue. Stretched out and happy in what I imagine must be some kind of canine utopia. Soon after we’d turned in our attempts to the waitress, it was back to the room with drinks in hand. Once we’d packed the rucksack and laced the hiking boots in the morning, we necked our weak tea and left. Keswick market supplied us with the food and a huge bar of Kendal mint cake in case we ran into any trouble on top of the world. If you’ve never heard of this ‘mint cake’, think of a bag of sugar melted down into a slate tile’s worth of rambling goodness. History’s Red Bull. Everybody around us wears a fleece and a pair of hiking boots. Presumably at any time if you are a local you can be called on a testing but picturesque ascent. After passing up the invitation to purchase the finest deer skin rugs, as well as classic cassettes and VHS, we headed to the car.
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My car is more than ten years old, has 89,000 miles on the clock, visits the garage regularly for repairs and hates two journeys back-toback. Once that key leaves the ignition, it will not start again quietly. Saying that the silver box on wheels has not let me down yet, we christened her Pauline when she decided to play and take us to our first destination.
looking us both up and down quickly came back with the words ‘Dodd Wood’. This did not sound like the tyrannous climb to Mordor I’d hoped for, but more a stroll for infirm. Anyway, that’s where we were headed.
It took us ten minutes to reach the stone circle at Castlerigg. It was 11am, raining, and the hiking boots started to make a lot of sense. As we approached the pre-historic site made out of 40 very individual stones, I noticed the other tourists more than any sense of something ancient and significant. But once we had outlasted the others, the huge circle did feel special. Its audience were the great peaks of Cumbria, surrounded by Hellvellyn, Skiddaw, Grasmoor and Blencathra, and we were alone and in the middle of it all. The place was peaceful - it sent out a sense of importance and worth, and maybe some kind of orgy/suicide cult HQ. We got our pictures, we looked out to the view, and we made our move. The lady at the tourist information suggested this was not a day for adventure, and after
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I’ve read about people driving into rivers and off cliffs because their GPSsystem told them to, but typing the words Dodd and Wood and The Lake District into my iPhone, I never thought that would be me. Once a destination was found, the directions were handed over to my navigator and she began to shout out the commands. With Van Morrison and the Chieftains blaring from the tape player, everything was cool… for the first half hour anyway, until the terrain we were entering got hairier by the bend. With the GPS changing destination-end constantly, the roads narrowed, the inclines got worse and the ability to call the surface we travelled on a road, a joke. She laughed. I sweated. And that’s pretty much how things developed for the next testing hour. We did reach a Dodd Wood, but after looking at the real map that rested nicely on the back seat, we had travelled 40 miles in the wrong direction. What was a five minute
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Sunday drive had turned into an off-road shit shower of wrong turns and anxiety as I waited for Pauline to finally slow up and die in the middle of nowhere. My only comfort came from my laughing accomplice, so I knew this had the potential to be funny, but things were on a knife edge until finally we struck gold. A wellmaintained, clearly signposted road. Back on track we sped to the right route, used the oldfashioned paper map and parked up where we needed to be. I doubted the car would ever roar that rusty clapped-out struggle for breath again. Walking, pacing, clambering and running (at points) up to the summit was quick. Other walkers that were more out of shape than us spurred us on, as we seemed to be the only people going up and not down. Once we reached Don’s bench, a false summit with a brilliant view, and completed the final push to be the full 502 meters high we realised there was nobody around and the place was ours to do with what we liked. We did.
Celebratory beers in the Dog and Gun done, to our rooms we went to chill. Two pints of cider resting on each bedside table, we were living it up, listening to music, laughing about the day’s carnage and sleeping in between. Tonight was our last night and we were heading to the Orange Square. The restaurant bar cool café hang out is a happening place for Keswick, so if you do visit you should go. We ate all the pizza and anti-pasti we could, drinking two and a half bottles of red wine, whilst talking shit and finding out about each other. I imagined we’d do this a lot. It didn’t feel like an end, but something much better than that, as we headed back to room number 10.
All the way down I fought the urge to voice my complaints about knee pain. Some things will never change.
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VHCLE WOMAN September 2012 V hcle Maga zine Issue 10, pp 024- 029
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FALL IS MY FAVORITE part of the
year. The warm sunny days and amber tree-lined streets bring a sense of nostalgia and give plenty of options for mixing looks. Making clothes is my passion and makes me crave quality handmade everything. I personally believe it’s important to incorporate handmade pieces into your wardrobe - not only are you supporting someone who is trying to live off their craft, but you’re rocking something no-one else has. These are some of my favorite items for fall.
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A / 2ETN Jewelry: Their one-of-a-kind jewelry is beautiful, unique and made by hand in the States. I am lucky enough to own some of these pieces thanks to the gorgeous Pamela Tuohy, but she also has been kind enough to let us use her stuff in most of our shows. The duo behind this jewelry are truly inspiring, with Pamela making the jewelry and her husband handdrawing and painting the images. The Rhino necklace will always be my go-to piece.
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B / Chanel Nail Polish: These two colors are my favorite for fall. They are girly and fun, yet subtle and sophisticated. Plus both go great with just about anything. Chanel also has good lasting power and comes out really smooth. C / Black Milk Star Wars Bathing Suits: This company makes some of the coolest leggings, bathing suits and body suits. They have just about every print you could think of. I love their bathing suit with Little Mermaid VS. Jaws, but my favorites are their Star Wars R2D2 and C3P0 suits. They look great with a high waist skirt and a blazer for fall.
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D / Lolita Lempicka Perfume: I can’t live without the Coral Flower. It has the essence of vanilla, amber, grapefruit and vanilla orchid. It’s rich enough to wear to fancier events, yet delicate enough for casual days. The enchanting sea-inspired bottle had me hooked before I even smelled the fragrance.
F F / Two Rivers Ciders: Ciders are my go-to drink year round so refreshing in the hot summer months and a perfect complement for the fall season. Two Rivers is my favorite brand because their ciders are more dry and champagne-like than regular sweet ciders, and they have delicious flavors like Huckleberry and Blood Orange.
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E / Miu Miu Platforms: These are from a few seasons ago, but I am still obsessed. They are such a statement shoe, yet being a Mary Jane platform, they are classic. This pink is my favorite for fall.
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G / Van Der Neer: My boyfriend and I started this clothing line in 2007. We make conceptual clothing by hand and each piece is one of a kind. I love our high-waist shorts for every occasion. We are preparing to show our latest collection “The 11th Dimension� in the Avant Garde finale show for San Francisco Fashion Week on September 30th. www.vdnclothing.tumblr.com
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CAMILLE CARBONARO --
September 2012 Vhcle Magazine Issue 10, pp030-047
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My photographs represent a disjointed road movie; people, places, a generation, carefreeness, life. --
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Tell us a bit about why/how you got interested in photography. I got my first camera at 10 - a white plastic Kodak. I staged a shoot with chickens and small cardboard figures in my garden. I didn’t think at this time that photography could become a passion. What I liked the best, I think, was making up stories and characters. In 2006 I got my first digital camera. It was easier to capture scenes, create worlds, improvise, dress myself up and invent stories and characters… and keep everything in memory. Describe your artistic style. My artistic style is between fashion photography and instant photography. My photographs represent a disjointed road movie; people, places, a generation, carefreeness, life. I am inspired by everything around me: images on the internet, magazine fashion photos, music and art exhibitions. I also like the fresh and sweet photos of Japanese artist, Rinko Kawauchi. There’s definitely a representation of people and places in your work. Do you like to travel to find new inspirations of such things?
It’s funny but I travel little. Well, not enough for me. I haven’t left Europe yet. I’ve wandered off to England, Ireland, Belgium and Spain, but all have little influence on my work. I travel through the internet, books, music and magazines. People and places that I photograph are most of the time familiar and intimate to me. What are some of your favorite music, magazines, books, etc. as you have mentioned? I love CocoRosie, they create psychedelic folk music. They are just what I like translating with photography: wild, crazy, fresh, strange and psychedelic. Also, The Beach Boys, The Strokes, Beirut, and The Beatles. The magazines I like are Vogue, WAD, and Focus (a magazine native to the south of France). I’m interested in fashion and art magazines as well. The websites that inspire me are Tumblr, Found, and Hel Looks. These websites are mixtures of inspiration, art and different cultures. Your favorite drink? Pastis - the anise drink originally from my hometown, Marseille.
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Q&A with
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June 2012 Vhcle Magazine Issue 9, pp44-55
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How long have you been doing photography? Well, I’ve always done it. Even as a kid I had one of those silly little cameras - you know, the instant film ones. But more seriously when I went to Solano Community College after high school and took their photo class with Ron Zack, who is the best photo teacher ever. He makes you want to be a better photographer. If you’re not, he’ll make you want to die. He’s so intense, but he’s amazing and makes everyone better. How long have you been doing food photography? Just since I got out of college. About a year and a half. Explain what type of photography you used to be into. I used to think I wanted to do fashion. I didn’t think about food photography at all and honestly thought it was stupid. “Oh you’re going to take a photo of a box of cereal… I don’t care.” I didn’t think there was any art in it. In school I did a lot of work with film and expired film and did very nonsexual nude photos of people running through fields, the beach and forests. When I got out of school, I was really bored, didn’t have a job and didn’t have anything to do really. I moved back home and it was kind of horrible. So I was looking at all of these
blogs one day and somehow stumbled upon food blogs where it wasn’t about the food so much, but about the photos. The photos were so beautiful that it inspired me because I had always been into baking; not really cooking so much because I don’t eat meat, even though I love when people do neat photos of a whole fish or whole pig that they are going to carve up, because it is intense. So I just mainly focus on baking. How was the transition from shooting people to food photography? At first it wasn’t easy because I never did studio work. I always just went out into nature and found something. With food photography, you have to place everything and find the props. I try not to overthink it too much. I try to think of as more of a portrait. The portrait is of the bread. Did you start food photography with film or digital? I did just film. I would use some of my expired film that I had, but with food photography you don’t want all of the funny colors expired film will give. You want something that will be more consistent, so digital seemed like what I had to do. What is it about analog/film photography that just does it for you?
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For me, digital is not a tangible thing. It’s just a file. You can delete it and it’s like it was never there and then no one will ever know you took it. That always made me not care about it. With film you have a negative. It could get scratched up but that sometimes makes it better. When I was visiting my family in Chicago we went to my great-great grandpa’s house and they had old film in metal little canisters. I had the film and you could see it and it was a moment in my life. I don’t think people will ever have the same reaction to finding old digital files as they would finding that negative; being able to put the film in your pocket and it’s yours.
by yourself. It’s kind of hard for me to meet people anyways. I don’t know why but I’ve often got that I’m intimidating because I’m not really paying attention to other people. I’m always on my own so it didn’t really affect me.
Do you print your work?
What inspires a shoot?
With digital I don’t ever print. I don’t like to have anything on my walls. I just put some old family photos up. I take the negatives and just scan them to put on my blog.
I’ll look online at recipe sites or I’m really hungry and I’m like, “wow I really want some scones!” So I’ll make scones and have to find a way to photograph them. If I make it and just eat it, I honestly feel bad. I feel like I miss an opportunity. It’s often based on hunger, looking at sites or even going to a farmer’s market. I found pink pearl apples one time at the San Francisco market when my co-worker told me. The apple’s flesh is pink. You can only get them a few weeks in the summer and then you can’t find them anymore. So I bought those and had to do a photo shoot with them.
You studied photography in Sacramento at Sac State, then moved back to your hometown of Benicia to where you live now in St. Helena. Has the transition from Sacramento to St. Helena have an impact on you in anyway? I wouldn’t really say so because I find food photography… not lonely, but you’re there
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In terms of access to food, is it more accessible in St. Helena? Well, everything I photograph I make, but yes, it’s more convenient. Here, there are a lot better quality stuff. You can get amazing cheeses, etc. I can walk down the block and go to a great cheese shop.
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So what is your process and setup for a shoot? I used to do more process shots of mixing, but then I got a different work schedule where I make stuff the night before I photograph them, so then the process stops more. The way I choose my props is completely at random. I don’t think it out whatsoever because if I think it out, it will get too matchy. Even when I was doing portraits I would try not to over think it. I overthink things way too much. So I try to go for that gut reaction. I consider your work as going against the grain from the normal food photography I’ve seen. That’s what really draws people in. There is a nostalgia that I feel looking at your photos. They’re very moody, playing with darkness and light. Is this something you think about and try to achieve in your photos? Most of the time I don’t think about it because I don’t think highly of my photos. With the dark and the light, some of it is more appropriate for certain foods if it’s in season. If it’s summer, I might shoot a loaf of bread and would like that to be darker. Just because the loaf is kind of dark and I would
like that to fade into a dark background. So you have to search for it. You have to search throughout the image to find what is important. I like the darker images a lot more, but the lighter images are easier. To find that dark light that has everything you want in it is difficult, and you have to find that exact hour of the day when it’s perfect. Is food photography something you want to do in the long run? I would love to shoot people more. I’ll look back at some of the photos I took of my friend Megan for the nude project I was doing for school, and I’ll feel like I have to grab that camera and start doing people again. It’s such a different experience because it is just more spontaneous. With food photography, I try to make it spontaneous but it has to be more thought out. I really like shooting people, but it was always hard for me to find people to photograph. And this, I just love it. It’s a bit easier. You just make it and don’t have to make a friend. What kind of cameras do you shoot with? For digital I use a Canon 5D MK II. I have the 50mm f1.4 and the 28-70mm f2.8 lenses. For film, I don’t really shoot 35mm anymore because I broke my camera.
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It was an old Canon AE-1 that was my grandpa’s. It was his old camera that he got from his work at the government base when they closed down. I loved it. It was amazing and it was 50 years old or more and was working perfectly. Then one day when I was in New Mexico and wasn’t paying attention, I dropped it, and it never worked the same since then. I kept shooting rolls of film and they were all blank. I got really upset and threw it in the trash but I saved the lens. I also have the Mamiya 645 AFD that I just got. I have a 6x6 square which I use for portraits and not really for food. What is your favorite drink? Alcohol: gin and tonic Regular: Snapple Diet Peach Tea
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TODD MCLELLAN --
September 2012 Vhcle Magazine Issue 10, pp062-075
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Q&A with TODD MCLELLAN Tell us a little about how you got started. There are always different levels of how a person starts. I would say mine was at the Alberta College of Art & Design. This is where I learnt that photography could be taken a bit more seriously. The first time I picked up a camera was back when I was a kid. I had my grandparents old 110, plus used my dad’s Canon 35mm. I recently found some pictures of a class trip that I had taken with the 110. They were pretty funny shots - shots that an 8- or 10-year-old would do. How long does it take you to complete a project? It varies, but I would say that the typewriter was the longest process at around three days: A day to a day and a half to take apart and the same to lay out. I’m currently working on a book with a publisher in the UK and have since refined the process. I have gained an eye for how I want these to be laid out. It really comes together now, which is kinda weird. I compare it to a person who does the Rubik’s Cube over and over.
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How do you choose which objects to disassemble? With my original series I collected them from the street curbs on garbage day, thrift shops and personal items that were no longer used. Could you share with us a bit about the book you’re working on? With the original series it was exploring the mechanical objects. It was an exploration of how they worked and were put together. You could really see how these things functioned. With the book that I’m working on it’s an expansion of that into objects from the mechanical to the latest technology. Although there is a technological gap between a tablet and a typewriter, the way that they are designed to function are still really amazing. This book will explore that design and function in the way objects come apart. Favorite drink? A good rum & coke always hits the spot after a great week.
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art music film photography design fashion life global notes --
vhcle magazine | www.vhcle.com