David Brandon Geeting

0:06 Hi everyone thanks for coming on a Tuesday damn my name is David Brandon ging and I'm a photographer based here in New York City yeah.

0:22 I wanted to talk a bit about what I've been making for the past 15 years and how I got to this point my career has been filled with twists and turns throughout my time in the industry I've relied more on my gut than my brain I've been hired to shoot everything from Bernie Sanders for the cover of Time Magazine to still lives of bar soap for Vogue to a giant shoe sculpted out of sand on the beach for beta Vanetta to the invasive species of Southern Florida for National Geographic to Nike kids campaigns to fashion editorials for boutique British magazines like Buffalo Zen and modern matter but the way I arrived there was a bit unconventional or so it seemed in the beginning I wasn't working on getting hired I was working on my personal practice the one thing. That's remained constant throughout all of this is my approach to image making I try to remain totally open to chance and possibility before I even knew sorry before I even knew there was a term for it I was utilizing what is often referred to as beginner's mindset the internet describes beginner's mindset as having an attitude of openness eagerness and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject even when studying at an advanced level just as a beginner in that subject would for years I was ashamed to admit that I never did any research I would never mood board sorry I would never mood board a a shoot beforehand or go to the library or watch films for inspiration I didn't even have a Pinterest account until this year somehow it feels more embarrassing to admit that I have one now I just knew that I was good at responding to the world itself at responding to a room or an object or a person's expression or the afternoon light on a discarded piece of fruit I embraced a phrase that my teacher Joe maida had taught us in his Junior seminar class right here at SVA and the phrase is no surprise for the writer no surprise for the reader which is to say if you aren't surprised making something if if there is no light bulb moment then you can't expect that moment of surprise to translate to the audience and I still live by those words to this day throughout my time at SVA I mostly walked around with a 35mm camera and shot photos of scenes I stumbled upon out in the world I was always interested but interested in things that looked set up or uncanny or too good or too bad to be true I remember senior year bringing in work to class one day and while my thesis teacher was looking at my photo of a crumpled leaf on top of a golden banister he said to me I think you're actually interested in still life I had never really experimented with setting up my own images and I didn't know much about Still Life photography instead of researching still life photographers or even still life painting I thought to myself why don't I use the same sorts of mundane and household objects I'm finding on the street but set up my own scenes around the apartment Instead This was is like 2010 and then yeah 2011 I graduated I tried to make a new still life around my house every single day as a creative challenge immediately posting them to Tumblr afterwards 3 years of those household experiments eventually eventually led to my first book infinite power and here are some of those photographs dating back to the early 2010s it's a lighter and a statue with white bread some blinds thanks bro two lamps intertwined I don't have to describe all these but it's like a up glove and power strips yeah this is what the book looked like came in a pla in a screen printed plastic bag cuz I thought it was sort of related to the throwaway content inside like sort of trying to make something nice out of plastic yeah some spreads from the book from this work I landed my first few commissions I was flown to South Carolina to photograph the inside of a 3D printer Factory for Bloomberg Business Week shout out Emily Keegan yeah she used to work there whatever she liked my Tumblr and she like called me.

5:13 And it was my birthday it was very and I like worked at a juice bar I was like what do you mean you want me to go to South Carolina yeah this was that shoot this my first shoot ever 2012 that's 12 years ago. That's crazy that's my face they like made a 3D model in my head when I was at the factory whatever I would also be to shoot still lives of Couture accessories for nylon each month I remember I went to Barnes & Noble and like looked at the back of a bunch of magazines and wrote down people's names and then damn and then yeah like Googled or not even Googled just like typed in to Gmail like different combos of first and last names until I got emails that didn't bounce back you know is there a better way to do that. Now is there still you go to somebody's LinkedIn you can't even find their email address that's crazy anyway so nylon worked out and the guy emailed me back.

6:16 And then they didn't pay me ever.

6:18 But that was fine because I was able to sort of like build this stuff for my portfolio I shot a few events for vice magazine around that time this was the LA art book fair in 2014 it looks very 2014 I remember ax body spray saw my Tumblr and like wanted to work with me which was so funny to me at the time because I was thinking about how I was just kind of screwing around in my apartment with like trash and kitchen utensils and everything seemed a bit random and everyone seemed to have like a different idea of what my work was and what to hire me for and yeah up until that point I was working part-time at a juice bar and trying to figure out how to pay off my student loan debt so I was open to anything anyone wanted me to shoot but yeah eventually I quit my job and decided to embrace all of these opportunities and while I continued to shoot commissions I was still making personal work to keep me saying this is my second sort of bigger personal project it's called amusement park aesthetically pretty similar to the first but the concept was a bit more considered I remember showing an early edit of the work to a colleague of mine and they said your work reminds me of an amusement park and it was kind of lazy but I thought it would be a good title for the book.

7:40 So I took it and ran with it. And I decided to explore some of the street photography aspects from my time at school and thought it would be funny if I actually went to an amusement park on Long Island to document some scenery over there to mix in this is like some of that stuff I also decided to add some portraits into the mix as my goal was never to just be a still life photographer but to be able to bridge genres and make everything work under the same umbrella for me it's more of like a mindset thing than a genre thing I like how it feels when disperate images come together and speak to one another the chaotic still lives mixed with the photos from the actual amusement park mixed with the studio portraiture would eventually lead to my next book amusement park this is what it looked like or does look like bro you guys know bralo yeah thank you man here are some spreads from it this was like the the balloon sword the background picture was from an ad job. Basically at the end of the job I was like can I take all this stuff home like I was like you know my early 20s or something and just like loaded all the backdrops into a van and then repurposed them over the years I think I still have some but you know nothing's trash also the balloon I like posted an ad on Craigslist and some lady that does balloon animals for birthday parties like hit me up I was like yeah sure I can come come buy your studio she made a bunch of stuff clean Apple Play-Doh on a 1960s cookbook pizza after the release of that book.

9:42 I had my first solo Exhibition at Janet bordon which is a photo gallery that's been in New York since 1988 and who also shows some of my favorite artists like Martin par Jan Grover and Neil Wier here some install photos my third book was a bit of a departure from from the first two it was shot entirely on the street absent from the studio basically whenever I would hit a wall I would walk around my neighborhood of Greenpoint at the time with my camera searching for inspiration searching for interesting compositions to sort of pull out of thin air it was originally meant to be a kind of diary of images that I would look back on to use for ideas when I was in the studio however once I had accumulated enough of these images it became clear that these pictures were not just inspiration they were the actual thing 3 years of taking walks in my neighborhood then resulted in the book neighborhood stroll which was again followed by a solo Exhibition at the same Gallery this is what the book looks like I wanted the thing on the front to sort of look like a grocery store the thing that no one wants in their door but they always get one circular circular and it unfolds into a poster but also I like that people don't know if they're supposed to throw it out or not here are some spreads happy little cone or maybe angry lasagna I like the one on the left it looks like a painting or something here's some photos from the show this show was in January 2020 when Co hit in March of 2020 I had been so bogged down with work that winter that I welcomed the long break my partner Lena and I were living together in our railroad apartment surrounded by trinkets antiques old books Furniture a refrigerator full of odds and ends and closets full of our clothes it seemed like the perfect opportunity to return to my roots and make images of around the house again sort of like I I was doing right when I graduated I had wanted to collab with Lena for a while because she's also an artist who works at the intersection of sculpture installation and fashion though our busy schedules never allowed us to but this was finally the perfect opportunity similarly to when I was working on my first book we gave ourselves the assignment of making pictures almost every day sometimes we would even put ourselves in the work. That's me looking like Jesus or something. That's Lena as a chef we were doing what we could with what we had and trying to make some magic in the process the final result was a book called A spell too far followed by an exhibition at commun in Tokyo this is what the book looks like furniture you guys like Furniture here's some spreads that's my leg Ducks bows we got it all here are some insult shots cool I'm almost done it was important for me to talk to you about my personal work because that is the reason that I do all of this I think most people in the industry know me for my commercial and editorial work. And I feel very lucky to shoot that stuff for a living but the number one reason I do it is defund my personal work sorry to any clients in the audience that's what keeps me going and gives me purpose that said I'd love to show you some of my commissions over the years because they were a blast to make they were learning experience in their own way and they all relate back to my personal practice in the end because I've built such a strong Foundation to base my commission work off of I now get hired to do me and that feeling is extremely rewarding here are some things I've been hired to make over the past decade it's for British GQ still life fashion accessories bacon egg and cheese a watch with some mushrooms Vivian Westwood bag this is for glossier this is more recent capsule it's like an Italian design magazine by the people that do collidoscope this is the first fashion editorial shot with or with someone wearing the Apple Vision Pro John malovich John malovich eating an apple Crocs post Malone Crocs actually benefit makeup San Francisco stand up you know Dev Hines Bernie Sanders and a cool dog Caroline Pol this what wasn't a commission.

16:28 But I didn't know where else to put it Jin it's like Japanese eyewear my friend Pat's band called sandart Lena helped me with these too thank you wherever you are there she is here's the shoe away luggage they're like can you make it messy apartamento Katherine burnhard who a painter her house is insane it's her house Pikachu fashion editorial for Mo whoa modern ♪

17:38 matter the cornflakes box is so good look at that thing just that alone it's like the best graphic design I've ever seen Nike kids John meany he looks better now right he's got his hairs all nice and they stuck me with him back when he looked like this guy can't even drink a glass of water look at that just kidding this is my Comedy Hour sorry guys I'm almost done bags on the street for a New York Magazine you know you give the guy at the pretzel stand like five bucks and he's like hell yeah or maybe probably more probably it was probably like 20 anyway.

18:37 That's the end thank you for sitting through this thank you