Wednesday, April 1, 2009








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Ari Marcopoulos. From Andy Warhol to Art to Hip Hop to Skateboarding to documenting everything. I've always liked Ari's stuff. The opening line of this article, which was my introduction to Ari has always stuck with me...."Beauty comes in 7,469,248 different forms....." Ari's work has always had an aesthetic which appealed to me. Not necessarily a "skate photographer" but his skate photos are every bit as iconic as Tobin Yelland's (at least to me). His use of black and white (and even his color photographs) and natural light led me to what I like to see in my own photos. I would have to say that Ari probably has the biggest influence on my own work (with the exception of maybe Joe Brook) and is probably the reason that I have recently abandoned my backpack full of lights (i.e. the ghetto studio) and shot mainly Tri-X in natural light. Anyway, back to Ari....check out the photos of Ryan Hickey and the late great Harold Hunter, as well as the photo of Julien Stranger reading a Bukowski novel. Ari is an "outsider" to skateboarding but is a great example of someone who became an "insider". And every photographer secretly wants to be involved in the situation like that. It's called intimacy. Look it up.