7/31/2019 Phil Dawson Case Study Assignment

1/1

t first glance you would not picture

Andrew Zuckerman as a bandphotographer, but that is exactlywhere he started out at the age

of 14. Four years later he was enrolling atSVA (New Yorks School of Visual Arts) andin 1999 he received his Bachelors degree in

Fine Arts.After leaving SVA he assisted artist

Christopher Astley before setting-up his own

studio apartment to focus solely on photog-raphy. My first job was working for Vogue. Iwould shoot still lifes of bags and shoes. The

Vogue art directors were really specific. Wehad to have a perfectly white backgroundand it had to be beautifully done. Clearly

that experience stuck with Zuckerman andhad a profound effect on what i s now histrademark style - a subject emphasised bya stark white background.

He continued his work in advertising

by working with Adidas, IBM, Puma andAmerican Express. Andrew went on to form

production company Late Night & Week-ends with good friend and creative partnerAlex Vlack, later working on spots and stills

for brands Puma and Gap. The duo alsoproduced High Falls- an award-winningshort-film starring Mag gie Gyllenhaal and

Peter Sarsgaard - and Still Bill- the 2009documentary film about soul singer Bill With-ers.

Apple were next in line for Zucker-mans talents, and his ultra simplisticlook worked perfectly with the

Apple brand. He has workedon campaigns for the iPad,iPhone, Mac Bo ok Air, iPad

2 and hugely a successfulshort promoting FaceTimefor the iPhone 4.

Throughout his

career he has pickedup numerous awards,including the British

Design an d Art Direction (D&AD) YellowPencil for photography, which h e regards

as his proudest. This was awarded for workon his Expansion series, which explores thebig bang theory. The series features eggs,

oysters, water balloons and flowers all beingshot with a high-powered air rifle. Zucker-mans Hasselblad H2 with Leaf Aptus 75S

digital back would capture the action at itsmost explosive, by freezing the scene withhigh-speed flash at 1/6000th of a second.

The sound of the gun is actually whattakes the image, he explains. With the gunmounted 6ft from the object and the pellet

travelling at 1000ft/sec achieving a goodshot would take a fair amount of patienceand a lot of trial and error.

In addition to his studio work, A ndrewalso has a strikingly beautiful array of archi-tectural, landscape and industrial images.

He has photographed Kenya, Japan, Chinaand Johannesburg, portraying and definingeach place in a way that still boasts his love

for isolating the subject. Despite the clear

quality of these pho-tographs,

Zucker-man

will be forever famed for the sleek and styl-ish studio aesthetic found in his books Crea-ture, Wisdom, Bird and Music. Andrew has

discussed his unique style in the past, saying

I try to create an arena th ats really clean

and clear so that my subject or my collec-tive subjects are easily understood and notclouded by style or extraneous information. I

tend to elevate my subjects by reducing theelements around them. Im interested in thebare essence of the subject.

The first project that saw this conceptin action came in 2007 and was titled

Creature. It features 175 different

species from all over the world,from lions to parrots, and bears togeckos, all in breath-taking detail.

This remains his largest projectto date, spanning five years f rom

inception to publication, and contin-ues to grow, even now. In his epilogue

to the book, he gives an indication ofwhat makes him so passionate and whathe looks to portray when photographing

creatures, The resulting portraitsexplore not just the forms,

textures, and move-

ments of the creatures,

but, more importantly,their characters. These

images are an attemptto reveal an underly-ing consciousness that

all living things share.Despite the

beautiful simplicity of every imagein the Creature series, a great

deal of time and hard workwas spent on bring-ing the project to

fruition. Many ofthe images showrare, protected and

dangerous species,which required pho-tographing as close to

home as possible. A totalof 13 cases of equipmentwere transported across the

globe by Zuckermans fourman team, something whichthey are now quite accustomed to

after the packed schedule they tackledwhen working on Wisdom, Zuckermanssecond large project.

During the print process for Crea-ture, Andrew was contacted and askedto contribute a photograph and interviewto a book featuring elders talking about

their experiences. He recalls I thou ght about

it and I wasnt really interested in doingone. I wanted to do the whole book. Theidea had spiked his curiosity and he was

addicted to the idea of completing thewhole project. Talking about what driveshim when working on projects, like Wisdom,

Zuckerman believes he needs two keyelements for success - curiosity and

rigour. When they get together,something happens. hesays.

An-drews team

were pushedhard in the nine

months it took to pho-

tograph and film the 51participants of the Wisdom

project, who included the likes

of Chuck Close, Frank Gehry, JudiDench, Clint Eastwood and DesmondTutu. We had trips where we did eight

shoots in eight days in five countries. Itwas an insane project. he recalls. Theyeven flew to South Africa to meet withMandela for three minutes, but were

not allowed to use lights. Somehow,Andrew and his team managed to getthe image, make it seamlessly fit the

series and wind up on the cover of

Timemagazine for Mandelas 90thbirthday.

Following the success of Wis-

dom, Zuckerman began work on Bird, whichwas to be another hyper-detailed series

of 2D taxidermy. The project, released in2009, featured over 70 species of birdsand once again gave us an insight into a

world we are rarely able to appreciate.Andrew spends a lot of time researchinghis subjects and approached Birdwith the

idea of revealing thprovide an experie

time looking at the bird. he suggests. Han homage to the w

thologist John Jameand Zuckerman matrue magnificence o

respective eras.The most rec

from Zuckermans N

- a project followingWisdom, featuring aOsbourne, Lenny K

Shankar sharing the

jects of performanction and success. Th

in 2010 as a book, The portraits were tnot an instrument in

surprise given the cZuckerman likes to phe wanted to brea

musicians have in aprocess and createof the medium., ess

fine what music is toit. Yet again he succpersonalities and sh

through a simple poLooking to th

from Zuckerman wo

2012 release of Floject featuring photoworlds most interes

Find more at www.a

A

PROFILE: ANDREW ZUCKERMAN PROFILE: ANDREW ZUCKERMAN

Words:

Phil Dawson

Photographs:Andrew Zuckerman

[ 1 5 ] WWW. PHOTOGR

We had trips where we

did eight shoots in eight

days in five countries. It

was an insane project

These images are an attempt to reveal an underly-

ing consciousness that all living things share

Flower / 2012

Iggy Pop / Music/ 2010 Esther Mahlangu / Wisdom / 2008

Water Balloon / Expansion

Chimpanzee / Creature/ 2007

Macaw/Bird

/2009