An interview by Royce Deans.
For the last four years
Alexis Scherl has been sneaking off in between classes and exams to track
down and snap photos of some of the more elusive bands that have graced the
printed pages of Copper Press. Surviving broken cameras and putting
up with steep learning curves of new digital equipment, Alexis somehow managed
to find time during finals week to answer a few questions I conjoured up
for this the first interview of the Features section of the Daily Copper.
Always, game, and never at a loss for words...well, read on and you will
see what I mean.
Aquarius, baby.
What got you to where you are right now?
You mean, like my life story in a nutshell? Wow. Gotta narrow that one down, I think. But specifically, I came back to New York (in the) summer of ’99 to start an MD/PHD program at Einstein. Currently in year six. Oh my.
Where are you right now, geographically speaking?
In the Bronx, NY.
What came first, the camera or the test tube for you?
Well, that would be the test tube. I actually enrolled in my first photo class in high school, but as a recall, I dropped it for chemistry. So sad, but very telling about the kind of girl I was in high school. I took a few photo classes in college, but didn’t get into my groove until after college, in San Francisco, and by that time, I’d been biotech test-tubing for years.
What is your first recollection of photography?
Forgetting my first camera – a Vivitar - on the bus home from summer camp. It was very upsetting. I don’t think I really used it all that much, anyway. The first time I took a camera around with me on a regular basis was in highs school – when I was the historian for the drama club. I have some funny pictures from that period of my life.
Lomo
Superchunk @ Irving Plaza, NYC 1999
On the first day of my freshman year at college in Boston, I happened to sit next to this girl in my biological psychology class. She was an hipster punk rock skater chick and I was instantly smitten in a platonic girl-crush kinda way, and for some reason she sort of took me under her wing. I was pretty naïve and straight-laced back in those days; the only music I really grew up with was from musical theater – like Gershwin and Cole Porter. So it was a real eye-opener, following her around like a puppy dog to underground rock shows in Central Square three nights a week. I had no idea that rock music really even existed before that. It’s hard to imagine that I lived a whole life with no soundtrack. One of the first bands she turned me on to was Superchunk – the record On the Mouth. I remember being taken aback by the noise of the guitars and baffled by their frenetic energy, I had no idea how to listen or to hear was going on, musically. But when I did, when I could really tap into the joy, I felt like my head was going to explode. And that was pretty much that. By the end of college, I was spending most of my time listening to music, seeing music, or talking about it with all the burnouts in the back room of the local used record store.
How is school going?
Long. Slow. But I’m enjoying it. Academia suits me, at least in theory: The whole concept of being responsible for nurturing your development as an intelligent being, for me, in the context of doing scientific research. On a more tangible level, it means I get to sleep late. And while I’ll be happy to finish my PHD at some point in the next couple of years, I won’t be happy to be a busy little worker bee on the hospital wards. There’s very little about autonomy or intellectual development going on in that environment. And very little sleep. I am not a morning person.
Fortunately, at some point, the nitty-gritty brain-bending technical aspects of photography have become almost intuitive. There’s always a bit of a scramble to figure out what’s going on at a particular venue on a particular night, in terms of the lighting and whatnot, and once I wrestle with the setup for a bit, I’m generally good to go, in purely visual mode, with 90% of conscious thought engaged in hunting down whoever’s catching my eye and figuring how to capture what they’re about at that particular moment in time. How that ends up looking I think at this point is really just me, since I have invested a decade in figuring out, through trial and error, what I respond to visually – the images are intensely personal in that at their best, they reflect not only how I see what’s going on around me but how I react to it emotionally.
As you look back can you point to specific places in your photographic experience that are landmarks. Places and times that the proverbial light shone a little brighter for you?
Two moments really stick out for me.
It all really started when the idea to take pictures at rock shows first hit me. I’d already been a little bit obsessed with photography for a couple of years, but I hadn’t really found my subject matter. I wasn’t much of a street photographer, which is I think how most photo students start out. I just don’t have the disposition for it. For a number of years, all of my creative energy went into playing music, and when I drifted away from playing it left me with a huge void, because I wasn’t satisfied anymore emotionally and creatively just by the experience of watching bands play.
So it was serendipitous that one of my good friends in SF, Dave Rosenheim, started an online music ‘zine called Inkblot. They had brilliant content, with blazing smart and charming writers, but they were packing them off to interviews with disposable cameras, and the results were pretty sad. So I offered my services as staff photographer, and it was equal parts ‘cool!’ and equal parts ‘oh shit’ because I had never taken a picture of a band before. It was a steep learning curve, and I was a mess to be sure, but I was coming at the task with a huge enthusiasm for music, so I think that translated right away into something compelling on the contact sheets despite my obvious lack of technical expertise.
I was also lucky in that I was friendly with Peter Ellenby, a well-established and accomplished music photographer, and he would talk shop with me at shows and let me muck about in his darkroom. It was really important to feel like I had a little bit of encouragement and support from someone who knew what they were talking about, because I am self-taught and have in general been pretty much been isolated from any kind of artistic community. It can get frustrating to operate in a vacuum, without any kind of feedback. So I think the whole situation was ideal fertile ground for me to figure out what the heck I was doing. Plus, working for a music magazine, I had the opportunity to shoot every band that came through town. Practice, practice, practice.
When I came to New York, I was equally lucky to run into someone I had previously met through a shoot for Inkblot right before I left SF. His name is Bob Green, and in addition to being the musician behind the grassy knoll, at the time he was also the photo editor for CMJ Monthly. At that point, I was trying to figure out how to make color photography look good, without much success. I remember launching into a long spiel about my frustration, and Bob just kind of gave me a funny look and said (like it was the most obvious thing in the world), “Why don’t you just turn your flash off?” With that little phrase, he opened my brain to a whole new world of seeing that had never even occurred to me – and I understood that I had been trying to treat color photography the same way as black and white, when in truth it’s about something completely different. Shooting low-light photography is incredibly technically demanding, and the truth of the matter is you have to relinquish most elements of control you would normally like to have when you’re trying to take a picture. But if you’re really patient, and really persistent, when it works, it’s utter magic. It launched me onto a new plane, because it is the perfect technique for the content I am interested in representing.
Mofo- Labor Day
@ Downtime, NYC 2003
When you go out to photograph an event or a show, what sort
of preconceived ideas might you have about final prints will hopefully
end up with as you hop in the cab on the way to show?
I don’t think at all about what the pictures may end up looking like. I
only think as far ahead as to what I know about the venue or the event in terms
of what equipment I’ll need - which lenses I want to bring along, and whether
I’ll need a flash unit. Everything else is pretty much a big question mark,
because it depends on what’s going on when I show up - that will dictate
how and what I shoot.
Lomo
Bis @ Bowery Ballroom, NYC May 2001
Is there any one thing that you hope to accomplish every time?
Well, at minimum, if the shoot is for a particular client, coming away with something I’m not embarrassed to hand over is my number one concern. Even in the best circumstances, there are too many variables to predict what you’ll come away with, and sometimes it’s a bitter struggle. I once showed up to shoot a party at a club where none of the lights on the dance floor were functional – all they had two harsh white spot lights on a couple of the go-go dancers. I was forced to shoot where there was a little light, and my only options were the either on the stairs by the bathrooms. I was miserable. But the circumstances forced me to look harder, for smaller moments and details that I would have otherwise missed, and I came away with some great images. Fortunately, I also happened to be shooting for a client who welcomes images that are far more abstract that what might come to mind when you think of traditional event photography.
But practical matters and performance anxiety issues aside, in terms of my personal manifesto, it’s to come up with an image that transcends the specifics of the subject matter and becomes more universal. You shouldn’t have to recognize the band or know what they sound like to understand or care about the image. And ideally it should reflect the experience of being present in that moment, at that club, on that night. A good photograph should hit you viscerally, first, and intellectually, second. That’s one reason working without a flash is so vital for me visually. I have to be in touch with what’s going on second-to-second, because I can only make something out of what’s given me, rather than what I provide, in terms of light and the visual experience. So it’s very satisfying when I can look at a picture months or years later and be instantly transported back to the moment it was created. Those end up being the shots I care about the most.
A recurring obsession. Keeps me sane. Or, drives me insane.
Correct me if i am wrong, though you are quite obviously serious about your fun, and as serious as you might be, it is still serious, at the very least it is intense. Maybe seriously intense. All the while, it appears that you are able to use the same vehicle to relax as you do to get serious. Your Lomo photos are a prime example. And maybe the comment on your website that goes along with your Lomos says it all. "Don't think. Just shoot." Am I anywhere near to close here?
Right on the button, there. I’ve experienced some brutal photography burnouts. I think it’s easy to burn out on music photography, where the process is linked to so much bullshit – photo-passes and bouncers and crowds and lousy bands. After the 2002 CMJ Marathon I didn’t pick up a camera for four months. I totally lost the urge. I was going through a similar phase in 2000 when I was given my Lomo as a birthday gift. I hadn’t heard about it or ever seen one before that. But it was a revelation - it had a huge impact on me, in the way I saw things on a daily basis, and especially for my sense of spontaneity and composition, and redefining what makes a worthy subject for a photograph – which suddenly became anything and everything. It allowed me to have fun again with a camera, reconnecting with the simple joy of taking a picture, allowing me to completely turn off my brain and recharge my creative batteries. It’s pocket sized, there are no controls except ISO and rudimentary focus (close, near, medium, far). No aperture. No shutter speed. No stress. Every day with my Lomo became a sort of a scavenger hunt, and there’s something fantastic about being an active participant in the visual world like that, making art everyday, in the most relaxed way possible - and taking the concept of ‘work’ completely out of the equation. I shot with nothing else for months, and I think it’s had a lasting impact on the way I shoot.
The Oranges Band @ N6, Brooklyn May 2003
Lomo
The Lomo is a compact metal Russian camera that was rediscovered some time ago by a Viennese art collective. They built a whole philosophy around the simple, charming object that is the Lomo – they penned the phrase, ‘Don’t think. Just shoot,’ so I can’t take credit for that. It’s their mission statement, and their way of life. The idea is that you always have it with you, to capture the magic of everyday moments, the microcosm of everyday life, that there is beauty in the quirky edges of our consciousness, tiny things that don’t usually merit our photographic attention. They encourage literally shooting from the hip – why bother looking through the viewfinder? What’s the point? Just take the picture, see what you get later, every packet of pictures is like a gift from yourself to yourself, or from the universe. The whole philosophy is engaging and joyful – they even sponsor international events and competitions and cooperative exhibitions that are astoundingly clever and fascinating in their inventiveness. The website is inspirational. It really is an international art collective of a species known as the Lomographer.
The best things about it are its size, its solid metal construction, ease of use, and witty design. It only shoots up to 400 ISO, so you usually use low-speed film and long exposure times, which gives you amazing color saturation and movement. The lens is slightly wide angle, and distorted around the edges, and makes everything look great. I think the Lomo really hooked me on color for the first time. For a long time, the whole Lomo philosophy was pretty anti-flash, even though it has a hot shoe, but I started seeing more and more Lomos out and about with tiny Vivitar flash units. Lomo finally got wise and ran with it - they came up with little flash units that have rotating color gels so you can paint with colored light. The possibilities are endless. It’s amazing that you can do so much with so little. I highly recommend browsing through some of the Lomohomes, which are Lomo user homepages linked to the main website. The website really kills me, because I always feel like I’m a slacker, that I should be shooting more. Plus, they sell about fifty other cool cameras and accessories I want to own and just can’t afford – they are all quirky and adorable and take unique images. If I had a million dollars, I would have a million cameras, to be sure.
Well, for one, it’s Russian. And stuff just breaks. It’s pretty much guaranteed that your Lomo will malfunction at some point – they need TLC. As for mine, the lens cover doesn’t really close anymore and the shutter doesn’t fire all the time. I need to bring it to the store in Brooklyn and have it ministered to. It’s been too long and I miss it.
Not specifically. I respect them as tools, but I don’t particularly get attached to a specific camera per se, if it’s replaceable.
Is that why the need to repair rather than replace?
No, starving student over here. I’d have no problem with a new Lomo, if you were to offer me one. There’s just never enough money to replace.
What about other inanimate objects? Any unhealthy relations going on there?
Yeah, my worst attachments are formed to vintage clothing - as evidenced by closets overly full of gowns from my grandmothers. I tend to think that clothes have their own personalities and lives, that I’m providing not storage but a good home. It’s my worst packrat issue for sure. I have no room for anything.
Lomo
Aqui @ Lit, NYC September 2004
Well, in the scope of my professional career, I think it much more likely that I will become an established scientist than a famous photographer - I mean, that’s just so beyond the scope of my experience. But as a student in the sciences, you get to meet pretty famous scientists from time to time; there’s just more access to them, so in that respect, I get the science guy on a very basic level, in know a little about what his life is like, while a luminary like Cartier-Bresson might as well be a mutant living on Mars. But on a less tangible, more philosophical level, if you mean do I consider myself more of an artist than a scientist, I would have to answer that they are two sides of the same coin, and that they’re just part of the fabric of who I am. I don’t think I could be a functional human being if I had to do only one of them for the rest of my life. They keep me in balance. Photography is so much about instant gratification: I take a picture and I have something tangible to happy about for my efforts. So it could not be more different from science, which is a slog and very unsatisfying in the short term, because nothing you do ever works – you need to be incredibly process-oriented. You know, yin and yang.
I’m pretty ignorant of the world of photography, which is kind of embarrassing, actually. I pay a lot of attention to photographs in the media, if I’m reading the times or the New Yorker, or I’m looking at websites or pop culture magazines. But I’m not necessarily looking at a body of work from a single artist. But I’m probably most drawn to styles that are different from mine, because I like to see how other people view the world. I also like to look at people shooting things I don’t usually – like portraits, which I love but haven’t really done. I find that I only get annoyed when I look at coverage of live shows – either I get frustrated that I think I could do a better job (like the photos of the Pixies today in the NY Times, which I thought were totally mediocre), or bummed out that I think they’re better than me. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Does any visual art play a part in your influences?
Not that comes to mind, really.
What are you listening to these days? Is it bending your work in new directions?
I feel like I’m out of the loop, kind of, with music at the moment. I’m not really thinking about music photography at the moment, and I’m not going to shows as much.
Lomo
Dan Friel @ Asterisk, Brooklyn November 2004
Well, the new one is actually the D20. The D30 was the first digital SLR Canon came out with three years ago. I was a little conflicted about the switch from film to digital, and in particular, I missed shooting black and white. But as a freelance photographer, it allowed me to shoot more when no one was footing the bill for film and processing. I don’t think I could have afforded to learn low-light photography with film, because there’s just so much sloppiness about it. But suddenly, I could go out and shoot 600 images in a night if I wanted to, and that’s hugely liberating. Pretty much all the images on my website were shot with the d30; it could do a lot, but it had some serious design flaws that were really hurting my work. For one, the low-light auto-focus sucked. So I had to manually focus all the time, and there was no way to tell if you had achieved good focus before you actually took the shot. In normal shooting conditions, I was about two for ten, because I’m usually shooting at f/1.4, so you have no depth of field at all. So that really blew. The color balance was pretty crappy, and they didn’t think to put a light on the LCD either, so it was pretty hard to see the camera settings. Not to mention that the flash metering was a disaster, so I couldn’t shoot flash even if I wanted to, because it looked like total crap.
But I just got the D20, and it’s 1000 times improved over the D20 for all the reasons I just mentioned. I’ve only done a couple of shoots with it, but I’m really impressed. To a certain extent, you are really at the mercy of the technology - I don’t think I’m a better photographer this month as opposed to last month, but my pictures suddenly look a lot better. The flash looks fantastic, so I might be exploring that in the immediate future, which will give me a lot of new territory to work with in certain shooting situations.
Well, in a way, I suppose. In theory, I like the idea that the masses are roaming around with cameras, and that they’re maybe using them more now that they’re so portable. But then you think about what they’re using them for, and I’m not so excited by snapshot photography – by definition nothing you’d be interested in if you didn’t know them personally. And while we’re on the subject, I think nothing irks me more than camera phones. I’m sort of offended by them. I’m really not interested in looking at a picture that doesn’t look good. I want it to look good, OK? I have a consumer Sony digital I was given a while back, and sometimes I take it out as a point-and-shoot, but I just can’t get excited about it. I’d rather everyone had a $70 Kodak Advantix camera (remember Advantix film? What a great idea.). That was my only camera for a couple of years, and boy did that plastic sucker take amazing pictures. Really, really fantastic.
People get too wrapped up in technology just for the love of gadgetry and not for the love of what it can do for you. Plus, the average Lomographer has a different idea of what to do with a camera than your average digital camera user. But you know, if they’re happy, who am I to judge?
Where did the handle Flybutter come from?
It was a childhood word-inversion of butterfly. I’m not sure why I remembered it. I think I also called pickles ‘goobies’ but that didn’t seem quite so appealing as a moniker. Anyway, back when I got my first email account (hotmail - I think it was 1998, I was a little behind the curve with the whole internet thing), I was racking my brain for some sort of non-name handle, and it just popped into my head. As I started using more and internet sites, to keep it simple I just kept flybutter for all my user names. So over the years, I started identifying with it – I even answer to flybutter as a nickname. So for the record, it’s not fly+butter because that’s a pretty gross concept, but actually butter/fly. But, whatever. I’m sort of stuck with it now.
Pinback @ The Knitting Factory, NYC March 2001
Cake @ The Gypsy Tea Room, NYC December 2004
Cake is an organization founded by a couple of women with backgrounds in the study of human sexuality, and the concept is to create a forum where women are comfortable to express themselves sexually. As a woman, I’m not so convinced that I need a special forum to do that, but apparently they’ve found a niche. So once a month, they throw events that are free to members, and women can pay to get in, but men supposedly have to come as guests. So I guess the idea is to reduce the random sleaze factor. They usually have go-go and lap dancers, and it gets pretty rowdy. I’ve been on the mailing list for a long time, and I saw they had an event coming up, so I sent a link to my website, and they hired me. It’s the kind of thing where I wouldn’t really feel the need to attend a party like that, but it sure is fun to document.
But yes, this is a new direction in a sense. I’ve sort of stumbled around party photography for the past couple of years and I really enjoy it. I think it’s a logical outgrowth of music photography, in the sense that it’s candid and you’re trying to capture the energy of what’s taking place, but you can move in more dimensions – there’s no fourth wall to deal with. You get to roam around a party, looking for the interesting moments, never knowing what to expect. I love that. I started doing that kind of shooting on a more regular basis when I began working for the Motherfucker Party in NYC – its’ a big rock-and-roll dance party, and it’s such a hipster scene, everyone looks great, there’s a big crazy-costumed tranny contingent, and the music is fantastic. It keeps me totally entertained. And they give me money. And drink tickets. What’s not to like? I’d love to get more involved with shooting events like that.
Or is it all rock and roll to you?
In the spiritual sense, yeah. Just make it interesting, and I’m happy to take pictures.
How important is color to you?
Some things wouldn’t be worth shooting in black and white, as far as I’m concerned. But it’s subjective. Black and white can be striking and powerful, and in some ways, because it’s reducing the information to the most vital elements. In some ways, I think I was a stronger photographer when I shot b&w. So I guess I’ll dodge that question and just say that when I’m shooting color, it’s really important to me.
Do you manipulate it when you can?
Not really. I usually only tweak color balance and contrast. I’m not interested in post-production. The further from the act of creation, the more tedious I find it.
When you go to shoot a show or event, do you travel light? What are the essentials?
Ideally, just my camera with a fixed 50mm f/1.4. Extra battery and memory card. Keys. Phone. Wallet. Lipstick. Maybe something to read.
Cake @ The Gypsy Tea Room, NYC December 2004
Lomo
Never. At least not at rock shows. Parties I think are a little different, because I’m interacting more with the crowd. I got propositioned a couple of times at the cake party (by both women and men), but that was pretty much inevitable, given the nature of the party. But at rock shows, it’s a weird dynamic, and I don’t know why that is. There’s an element of performance in shooting a band, because you know people are watching you (or at the very least, you think they’re looking at your ass when your up by the stage). It takes a bit of bravery for me to step into the dead space (no man’s land) in between the crowd and the stage and do my thing. So maybe steeling myself against that self-consciousness gives me an air of unapproachability. I don’t really know why, but I could go to four shows in a week and not have a single person talk to me. Maybe I just look mean. You’d have to tell me.
When I used to shoot bigger venues, it could get pretty hairy up by the stage. The fans are usually polite, but sometimes other photographers can be super obnoxious and aggressive. But there was one memorable moment at a Guided by Voices show, when I was shooting on the lip of the stage. Their followers are notorious for the intensity of their bond with Rob Pollard, and I remember seeing this scraggly hippy dude with pupils totally blown out make his way through the crowd. I could tell he was very intent on getting up on the stage, and for some reason he had decided that climbing up on me would be the way to go. I literally had to beat him on the head with my camera to get him off me. The bouncers grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him through the crowd, but the whole time the guy never took his eyes off me. It was pretty surreal, like the whole thing happened in slow motion, and I remember being most upset that I didn’t have the presence of mind to take a couple of frames it going down.
As a photographer, do you think of your self as more artist or photojournalist?
I don’t think I’ve really gotten past calling myself a photographer - that seemed a big enough leap adding that noun to the resume. Another copout answer on this one: Photojournalistic subject matter, artistic perspective? I think they have very different connotations, I’m not sure if either one feels right. I just think of myself mostly as a photographer specializing in candids.
Guided By Voices @ Bimbo's, San Francisco April 1999
Crooked Fingers @ N6, Brooklyn November 2003
When
you think back about bands that you have seen and shot, who was the
most fun?
I think that it’s more about the whole experience, both as
an audience member and a photographer. The first time I saw Crooked
Fingers, that was a special
show for me, because all the elements came together. It was at my favorite
club in New York, Brownies (which is no more, but it was my home
away from home).
The crowd was friendly and enthusiastic, and musically the show was fantastic.
I had brought my brother with me, I remember periodically looking over at him,
and his mouth was hanging open the whole time. It was just one of those special
nights, and I was in the thick of it, up there with my camera. I was just so
happy.
Who did you get you favorite photos from?
One of my favorite pictures ever is the one I have up of Superchunk – it
pretty much says everything I have ever wanted say about that band in particular,
and even about rock music in general.
Who would you love to photograph that you have not had the opportunity yet?
I’ve never really thought about it, I don’t
have that sort of list in my head.
Does every picture really tell a story?
Nope. Only some are meant to.
Are there some photos you take that no one ever sees?
The bad ones. Otherwise if it’s a good shot I’m going to have the impulse to send it to everyone I know. Pictures are meant to be seen. That’s sort of the point.
What ever happened to your career as a secret spy?
That’s classified.
The images found accompaning this interview are the copyrighted property
of Alexis Scherl, and were used by permission.
To see more of the photography of Alexis Scherl visit flybutterphoto.com.
Mofo- Good Friday @ Centrofly, NYC 2004