When we first decided on putting together a Polaroid Week, there were lots of fun stories to pursue and pictures to find, but there was only one slam-dunk no-brainer: a feature on polaroid_billy had to kick the whole thing off. There were the obvious reasons: PB has posted thousands of photos over four years, 99.8% of them Polaroids; and he founded and still administers the group log polaroids_only. But the less obvious ones were even more compelling. In mid-2003, when Fotolog membership was still in the thousands, some people started to get really well-known, and polaroid_billy became a kind of Fotolog legend. Partly for his really cool, unique photographic style, of course, but also for the witty, offbeat, sometimes crazy-sounding comments he’d leave in guestbooks all over the place. He was one of many folks who really looked at everybody’s stuff, and had good, and often seriously perceptive things to say about it. For one stretch of several months, whenever PB was surfing Fotolog, he’d greet nearly every single new member that appeared with their very first guestbook comment, “Welcome to Fotolog!” He was a self-appointed ambassador of Fotolog. In short, polaroid_billy was The Man.
So recently I visited via e-mail with the man behind polaroid_billy, and it turns out he is a mensch, too. Mike Miller is his name: early fifties, native Californian, lapsed hippie, loving husband and father, Polaroid fa-na-tic. Mike took me aback with just how into the conversation and forthcoming he was. In fact, I’ve never interviewed anyone else who had so much fun doing it. Maybe his gregariousness has something to do with his job: he’s an Administrative Services Officer with the County of Sacramento Planning and Community Development Department. And he loves it. His entire office goes out for lunch every Friday. But I think it probably has more to do with family—his wife, Cindy Jo, and daughter, Rachael, who turns 19 next week. When you browse through his Polaroid album of eerie domestic tableaux, multiple exposures, and holiday snaps, it quickly becomes very clear how much family means to Mike. And to polaroid_billy. We’re happy they’re both such a big part of the Fotolog family. —along
AL: So OK Mike, let me ask you about how it all began. Very early in your Fotolog, you posted the first Polaroid you ever took:
02/01/03
the first polariod i ever took. christmas day 1968
and then you posted the story as a comment, under one of your several alter egos, billy_ruben:
billy_ruben @ 2003-02-02 12:09 said:
all i wanted that year was a polariod “swinger” camera. and i got it. i ripped the film out, shoved it in and shot the first thing i saw…my dad at mom’s electric chord organ. of course, i didn’t waste time reading the instructions and peeled the picture before it was developed. my polaroid career was downhill from there.
That’s totally classic. I think we all beg to differ about the subsequent trajectory of your Polaroid career. Do you still have that Swinger? Have you kept all the photos you made with it?
MM: No, I don’t have that Swinger anymore. Chucked it out with a lot of other stuff in my late teen years.
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Lovefoxxx, by Beebs.
Cansei de Ser Sexy—or simply CSS—took the Internet and the world by storm last year with two cheeky, irresistible singles, “Meeting Paris Hilton” and “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above,” and an over-the-top brand of fun, shameless, smart, ecstatic music and live shows. CSS is five girls and a guy, who all met and became friends in 2003 in the clubs of São Paulo—and on Fotolog. Ira plays bass, ana plays guitar and keyboards, and lovefoxxx is lead vocalist, front-woman extraordinaire. (There’s also a CSS Fotolog page.)
Beebs and Lovefoxxx are also longtime Fotolog friends (and they got to hang out for a day when CSS was in Vancouver last summer), so as the band’s world tour continued, we asked her to check in and find out how Lovefoxxx was doing, what life on the road is like, and what was up for her and CSS this year.
(no Português, abaixo)
Beebs: Where are you right now (city, and if you’re on a bus or in a hotel room or whatever) and what did you do today?
Lovefoxxx: Right now I’m in Wembley Arena in London. We are supporting Basement Jaxx in England and so far it’s being weird. Weird is good. We played today for 12 thousand people… Christina Aguilera just played two days ago… hahahaha… Pretty amazing.
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Native New Yorker Jen Bekman does many things well: in the past ten years she’s founded a design blog (Unbeige), worked as a jewelry designer, and led creative and development operations at several Internet companies. But Jen is best known for her eponymous New York City gallery, founded in 2003, where she shows photography, works on paper, paintings, and mixed-media works by emerging artists and previously unknown talents. Her quarterly Hey, Hot Shot! competition, which debuts several photos by 10 new winners each season in a group showcase, has developed a certain buzz. (Full disclosure: I was included last winter… on my third try. :) The deadline for entering the 2006 Fall Showcase has just been extended, to next Tuesday, November 14. If you’re interested in getting your work seen offline, or actively working toward exhibitions and gallery representation, Jen Bekman is one of the top professionals you may want to get to know.
Someone who already knows Jen well is her good friend Jenni Holder, aka jkh_22, an esteemed photography professional herself, having most recently been director (1998-2003) of the Edwynn Houk Gallery, in New York City. Last month we asked Jenni, who now lives across the Atlantic in Lyon, to devote some of her frequent IM sessions with Jen to a wide-ranging conversation on Fotolog, photo competitions, the current photography scene, and anything else they wanted to chat about. The interview follows, after the jump. —along
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For the inaugural Fotolog Interview, we were delighted to take palmea up on her idea to have an in-depth conversation with virgorama about her ongoing series of photographs taken on the trains of the London Underground. Virgorama’s alter ego is Deborah Ripley, a graphic designer and lifelong Londoner. The piece is in two parts: the Interview, below, and a Portfolio of favorites chosen, and with commentary, by each of them. -Eds.
The Interview
I joined the Fotolog community in May 2004 and shortly thereafter discovered Virgorama’s London Underground pictures. I was struck by how the space in her photographs seemed so quiet and private–not unlike a portrait studio. I’ve thought about how curious it feels to sit on a train facing a stranger and how we avert our gaze when that person sees us looking at them. Also, how close we sit to strangers in this closed, but public environment. And I’ve thought about how we make the train our reading room. These musings become stories in Virgorama’s photographs. She calls this series “Travellers,” labeling the people in the pictures simply, and clearly, what they are. —palmea
palmea: I just spent some time going through your Fotolog looking at your London Underground pictures in the sequence that they were posted and I am struck by the evolution of your approach. The first picture seems so tentative that it is quite amazing to me that you continued using your camera in this way on the train. What compelled you to take that first photograph?
virgorama: New York photographer and artist Lucien Samaha (lucien), the person who introduced me to Fotolog, encouraged me to tackle taking shots of people in the early days of my Fotologging. I’d always found this challenging, unless I was around friends or family. In June 2004, I was travelling regularly on London Underground and snapped that shot for fun. Another followed, of a woman, a day or so later. I posted them on Fotolog as a matter of course and enjoyed the comments. I felt tentatively happy with the results although at that stage I didn’t realize how important the series would become for me. I began to notice interesting characters seated next to one another, each highlighting the differences in the other. My journeys assumed a greater significance. I looked forward to seeing who would enter my travelling “studio.”
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