Street photography was my first love and it is something I've always done. In my early twenties, I moved from my childhood home in Kilkenny, Ireland to Paris, France. I was a post grad science student in Paris, devouring the humanistic work of Cartier Bresson, Eugene Smith & Andre Kertesz. Through a series of serendipitous events, my unearthed passion for photography evolved into a career as a commercial photographer. All of my commercial work is informed by my attraction to street photography, in that I've always tried to make photos that had the spontaneity of a reportage photo despite their construction. It is not always easy but the instincts built up by constantly shooting for myself help. In 2011, I took a sabbatical from commercial photography and went on a year-long journey around the world with my wife and four children. It was a priceless experience to share authentically new experiences with my family, as well a time to submerge myself in creating photo-essays of our travels; I was free from the confines of a working schedule. By the summer of 2012, with my year abroad coming to an end, I was excited to get back to work. My travel journeys initiated the debut of a collection of images and stories titled, "Wanderings." The lines between personal and commercial work are blurred as I commit with each photograph to tell the story. Vincent Dixon
I am excited to announce the opening of Studio, my latest solo show at Noba Art Spaces. The show opens on Saturday 5/12 and will run through June 2nd.
The show features photographs and moving image works from multiple studio productions over the last few years. I am also going to be transforming the gallery space into a working studio so that viewers can participate in the experience by having their portraits taken and viewing the printing process on site.
Here is a selection of some of the works that will be shown:
Six years ago I went to the town of Pushkar with my family during their annual Camel festival, held every November at the time of the Kartic Purnima full moon. Villagers, traders and farmers come from all over Rajasthan to trade thousands of camels and horse. The town is also one of the five Dhrams or pilgrimage sites held in high esteem by Hindus. They come to pray at the most sacred of the scant four temples to Brahma in all of India (a long story why such an important God has such few temples, suffice to say he upset his wife!). This was one of our first stops in India and I was completely blown away by the exoticism of it all. It is a photographer’s dream, which in itself can become a problem. You are quickly exhausted by the intensity of the colors, the crowds, the endless possibilities. Strange as it might seem, because there is so much to process, your brain can lock down. I think that it took me a year to absorb all I had seen.
Returning a year later, I needed to try something different. The year prior I travelled light with just small cameras. The second time, I brought bigger cameras and lights. There were a number of reasons for this. First, I am fascinated by how the camera itself affects the photo we take. How, for example, bigger cameras can slow us down and perhaps force us to take a more studied photo. The Rajasthani people are incredibly handsome, the detail of their clothes and jewelry are incredible, they have an eye for color and form that few possess. I wanted my portraits to reflect this. On a photographic level I needed the precision and care that these tools bring to try to capture the subject.
Inspired by Irving Penn’s, “World In A Small Room,” I set up a small studio at the camel fair. On Monday when I got to Pushkar, I found a large tent and rented it for two days. It wasn't ideal, it had green netting on the sides and the roof was full of holes. I had some cotton cloth died black overnight. It took most of Tuesday morning to get things set up.
I shot with both a medium format back and a Nikon. The medium format is 80 million pixels and really only works at 100 iso which makes for long exposures. It slows you down which can be a good thing. Here are some of the photos that I took with the medium format Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday.
Back in early 2016, Jonathan Orenstein, my lighting director, and I travelled to Ethiopia on our way to a shoot in South Africa for Asics. While looking for a flight from NYC to Capetown we saw that one stopped in Addis Ababa so we decided to go to Ethiopia because of the simple fact that we had never been there before. We didn’t know a lot about the country which also inspired our visit.
Something that was unique about Ethiopia is that it has never been a colony, unlike many African nations. When we were there we never felt like we experienced the weight of history that often exist in many other places we’ve visited. Interestingly Ethiopia is also a Christian nation; in fact, it has been a Christian nation since the 1st Century. They have their own church and recently their own patriarch; they also keep many traditions from Judaism. Visiting churches I was moved by how faithful they were, the respect they had for holy places and icons. They always seemed to be happy and made you feel welcome in their country. Walking around Addis Ababa, the capital city, which is not a very wealthy place, we always felt very safe. We didn’t see a lot of tourists. I have a theory about tourism, it clearly brings economic benefits but when you get above a certain amount it is increasingly hard to meet people, all interactions become economic transactions.
The first thing I often do when taking shots like these is just to approach with a smile. I try to show respect and not take pics without permission. I travel a lot, and when I take shots in other countries, I rarely find language a barrier. There is so much that we can communicate by simply never using language. However, since most of Ethiopia speaks english, we had little difficulty interacting with the locals. I let my subjects pose naturally and shoot whenever the interactions occur; I don’t get distracted by trying to find the perfect time of day for lighting.
Spencer my assistant who is with me this summer thinks it’s important to note that we can find beauty in the places we know little about. :)
Excited to share that I have been included in For Love, the first publication of arts and culture blog My Modern Met. Traditionally featuring inspiring projects across photography, art, design and architecture, My Modern Met continues this tradition with For Love: Heartwarming Celebrations of Humanity, released this week. I’m honored to have been included as one of the 25 featured photographers with a series “If Only For a Second,” that I shot for The Mimi Foundation in which I captured the moments of carefree surprise and joy of twenty cancer patients that were given outrageous and unexpected makeovers. They were able to forget about their illness, if only for a second.
For Love is now available on Amazon and among it’s many stories features Batkid's mission to save San Francisco, the husband who wore a pink tutu all over the country to bring his sick wife joy, and a collection of portraits of people happy at 100. I thank My Modern Met founders Alice Yoo and Eugene Kim for including me in such a special project.
Sometimes complex projects begin in a beautiful location, free of crew and lights, capturing background plates. For the 2016 Toyota RAV4 campaign, "How Far Will You Take It," I had just this opportunity. We needed location images of the California desert to represent the surface of Mars and also a wide open desert where people just happen to ride ostriches.
“I loved working on this campaign, especially the four days I spent wandering about the California desert shooting background plates from sunrise to sunset. One of the great things about this job is the occasional chance to go off and be by yourself.”
We then immediately jumped right into a busy schedule that involved shooting cars, extras, stand-ins, miniatures, and ostriches. We managed to capture James in a soundstage early Saturday morning before he headed off to a day of motion. Having already finished the post on the rest of the images, we buffed him up, dropped him in, and delivered final images to the agency (Saatchi & Saatchi LA) that day. And of course there was time for a selfie of myself and James.
Sharing a behind the scenes look at making the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition Snickers campaign “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” Such a fun campaign and shoot. And fortunately for my incredible crew, we had plenty of Snickers on hand to keep them well fed and happy. Talent Mathilda Jansson & Monica Piccirillo did an especially amazing job, thanks you two!
Shooting dogs can be unpredictable and hectic, but its well worth it when they are this adorable. It was a wonderful time working with Ogilvy and Mather and CD Ricard Valero on such a wonderful campaign. Please contact Sugar Mutts if your interested in adopting these dogs.
Excited to see these Snickers ads for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition on newsstands this week. Snicker’s ran two ads in the iconic issue—”Retoucher” on the back cover and “Wind Machine” on the inside back cover. “Retoucher” depicts a disastrously Photoshopped swimsuit model and “Wind Machine,” a model being blasted by a wind machine run by a hungry operator. The ads are the latest in the six-year-old Snickers campaign “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.” The idea was to demonstrate what happens when one works while hungry. “Retoucher” contains 11 retouching errors and readers are asked to Tweet the mistakes to Snickers.
This is such a great campaign to work on—amazing creatives (ECD Gianfranco Arena, ECD Peter Kain, Senior AD Florian Marquardt, and Senior Copywriter Rodrigo Linhares) and brilliant concepts. The collaboration started at the concept stage and continued through post-production as we continued to come up with new ideas for retouching mistakes.
Big thanks to the entire team at BBDO for the opportunity to join forces on such an ingenious campaign.
There are somethings I love about Paris, staying with Jeremy and his family, un grand creme in the morning, it still has bookshops everywhere, and pretty much every time you go there is a new museum to visit . This time it was the Frank Gehry designed Foundation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne. A cross between the Sydney Opera house and a blimp ? Not sure but it was pretty empty on Sunday evening as the crowds lined up for a Kanye West concert in the auditorium. Wolfgang Tillman works great in books but he felt lost in the immense gallery space. The Bowie exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris was smaller than I expected but still fantastic. I loved the videos with him and Mick Ronson from the early seventies. I didn't get to the recently re-opened Picasso Museum, next time ...I walked miles every day and here is some of what I saw. Click on the photos to see them without cropping.
Sometimes the best stories just happen. With no particular reason I went to Marrakech for a long weekend. That weekend there was a sheep market close to Djemma el-Fna. I had both a Pentax 6*7 and a Mamiya7 rangefinder and lots of Tri-X. The Pentax made way too much noise so I shot most of these with the Mamiya which is wonderfully discrete.
This is a “behind the scenes” from a recent shoot for the 2015 Toyota Camry which we shot for Burrell Chicago at Paramount studios in Los Angeles with music from the very incredible” The Milky Way “. It was a perfect day.
annaxmalina
germansingergirl
vaporwave
izzy806
origamiaround
dededos
romaincrisis
snowghoul