24:
A few years ago, I got a great assignment from Metro.Pop Magazine in Los Angeles. The job was to shoot Nicky Katt in Hollywood and the art direction I received was to just “show up and do what you do.” It’s rare to get that kind of freedom shooting editorial, especially since I am a black and white, natural light shooter.
And plus I knew Nicky Katt’s work. It was only after recently talking to a friend about him that I realized Nicky is a cinemaphile’s actor. You really have to be a nerd about American cinema to know who he is. I know that he’s been on TV but I’ve always known him for his small but memorable roles in independent films. Think about it. You might know him as:
- the smart ass hit man in The Limey
- the Nazi in a 50s greaser uniform in Dazed and Confused
- the guy with the tongue boil in Planet Terror
- one of them cops in Insomnia
- the rocker dude in the van in School of Rock
- the tough in the bar inSecondhand Lions
- the cynical tough in SubUria
I showed up at the house on Fairfax and we got along instantly because we somehow started chatting about Monte Hellman films. It turns out Nicky was collaborating with Monte on a screenplay. Much to the annoyance of the writer, we wouldn’t stop talking about Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter.
The challenge for this shoot was the fact that Nicky was obsessed with Sam Peckinpah and recently saw this interview with him where he wore his sunglasses the entire time. So I sat Nicky in this big chair by the fireplace with the dog and his sunglasses and his glass of bourbon and I started taking meter readings. The room was so dark that I had to push my meager 400 speed film to 1600 just to shoot wide open. I couldn’t even focus as the viewfinder for the Mamiya is pretty dark. I literally had to lock in on the wall of the fireplace behind him and walk my camera backwards to put him in the focal plane.
After suffering some anxiety about pushing my film three stops and my inability to focus, I picked up my film a couple of days later from the lab and it all turned out fine. Not stellar images but I really enjoyed that afternoon.
Nicky Katt, shot with a Mamiya Pro II, 85mm, Agfa APX 400, for Metro.Pop Magazine © Doug Kim
Nicky Katt, shot with a Leica M6 TTL 0.58, 50mm summicron, Agfa APX 400, for Metro.Pop Magazine © Doug Kim
Nicky Katt, shot with a Leica M6 TTL 0.58, 50mm summicron, Agfa APX 400, for Metro.Pop Magazine © Doug Kim
22:
Grace, Leica M6 TTL 0.58, 50mm summicron, Kodak Tri-X
01:
One of the great landmarks in Prague is the Olšanské hřbitovy graveyard in Praha 3. It boasts a million people buried within its borders though there were not as many gravestones, suggesting some mass graves perhaps, which I confess I did not see. Heroes and martyrs of the Prague Spring are buried here. It also has its own police station within its fences which is impressive.
Walking around the dark, worn paths even on a bright day feels like walking through a succession of Black Sabbath album covers. It is a fantastic, beautiful, serene, sad and spooky world in the shade of massive Brothers Grimm trees.
Olšanské hřbitovy is in a busy, gentrified part of Praha 3 with traffic and bustle and noise and light. Step inside the gates and the world becomes muffled, dark and furtive and you will feel the need in the back of your head to mark your path so that you can safely find your way out.
As much as I tried, I did not produce successful work there, as perhaps it is one of those places that does lend itself to be easily captured. Here are some of those images. Go there. Take the A line Metro to the Flora station and it is right next to the Palac Flora shopping mall.
Olšanské hřbitovy, Leica M6, 50mm summicron, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim
This woman was distributing walnuts around the graveyard, placing them on key headstones and grave markers. It was mid-October and the winter was on its way and could already be tasted on the air. She was concerned about the squirrels that lived in the graveyard and wanted to insure that they had enough to eat before the snows came.
She was a marvel. There was a little trough between the walkway and these particular headstones and she could not reach them because of her cane and roller cart. So myself and these two other visitors assisted. She and I talked for a while though my Czech was extremely limited and her English was good, but she kept slipping into French anyways. She told me about her son, whom she had buried years ago though not in this graveyard.
Olšanské hřbitovy, Leica M6, 50mm summicron, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim
Olšanské hřbitovy, Leica M6, 50mm summicron, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim
Olšanské hřbitovy, Leica M6, 50mm summicron, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim
26:
Leica camera owners are the worst of the gear fetishists in the photography world. I count myself among them…to a certain extent. Obsessing over serial numbers, special alligator skin models and collapsible lens hoods is small talk for us.
The use of Leicas in movies is something I count as a geeky guilty pleasure, though nothing will take me out of a movie quicker than when I spot an M8 or a screw mount lens.
What has to be the coolest movie sighting of a Leica so far is the appearance of one in the stop-motion animated film of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. Only a camera fetishist would go to the lengths required to construct a miniature M3. And a true Leica fetishist would make sure that when Coraline looks through the viewfinder, the POV through the viewfinder had the single M3 50mm frame line exactly where it should be.
I cannot take credit for the identification of the model nor of the frame lines’ accuracy. That came from the Leica Users Group.
Coraline 2009
The camera strap and the specific way it folds under above the rings is dead on. Coraline 2009
the frame lines for the 50mm in the M3
See, rent or buy Coraline now. It is a wonderful film and is so far the closest Neil Gaiman has come to having a film successfully convey his singular magic and imagination.
01:
This is Sarah.
Sarah, Leica M6 TTL, 50mm summicron, Agfa APX 400 © Doug Kim
08:
A local woman in Prague who understood that I was not interested in seeing castles and shopping, told me to go to Žižkov to see the baby tower. This was one of the final projects of the communist era, a massive radio tower meant to block Radio Free Europe and provide communications for the Warsaw Pact. The tower was resented by the locals as it destroyed the beautiful skyline of the western hills in Prague and was a megalomaniac eyesore. It was finished just as the wall fell and never went into operation to fulfill its original purpose.
In 2000, David Černý was commissioned for an installation and he created these large, faceless babies crawling on its surface. The local woman told me that when she was growing up, they believed the tower was over a radioactive spot and the neighborhood kids shunned the location because of the disturbing faceless mutant babies.
Žižkov Television Tower Babies by David Černý, Leica M6, 50mm summicron © Doug Kim
07:
I lived a block away from the old Tower Records on Sunset Blvd where this was taken.
Sometimes the really LA part of LA would collected in some slow moving eddy away from the faster, cleaner currents, curdling and fermenting to the point where shit like this would emerge. It is not a great shot, but I’m still convinced that God made film for moments like these.
David Lynch, et al, Leica M6 TTL, 50mm summicron, Agfa APX 400 © Doug Kim
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