Warwick Baker is a young photographer on the rise, with fashion and portrait work, as well as an increasing music folio with an impressive list of clients including Cut Copy, My Disco, Gotye, Sarah Blasko, Claire Bowditch and Powderfinger. Kate McCurdy spoke to Warwick about what goes on behind the lens.
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Warwick Baker is a young photographer on the rise, with fashion and portrait work, as well as an increasing music folio with an impressive list of clients including Cut Copy, My Disco, Gotye, Sarah Blasko, Claire Bowditch and Powderfinger. Kate McCurdy spoke to Warwick about what goes on behind the lens.
Why photography?
Warwick learned the social aspect, and the fun, of photography when he first studied it at Belconnon High School in Canberra, before moving to Melbourne to complete a BA in Photography at RMIT University. In addition to this, Warwick believes that he has learned more about photography from working part time at the Camera Exchange in Melbourne and from assisting Glasgow artist Paul Knight for two years.
Warwick recalls that he was first attracted to the camera because ‘it is like having a license or passport to anywhere you want to visit’. It also allows him to indulge his curiosity in human nature by allowing him to approach complete strangers on the street, who then consent to him photographing them in their home environment. ‘I could only do that being a photographer’, he acknowledges.
Film vs digital
Warwick shoots with both film and digital cameras, but will use them in different ways in different circumstances. When working for clients he says that he only shoots in digital because of its immediacy and its cost effectiveness. Alternatively, for his own projects he chooses film with a large format 5×4 inch camera ‘for its incredible detail and stillness’, as well as the nature of the photography itself.
‘I love the therapeutic process of using a large format camera and that every picture is considered. I also like the anticipation of waiting for the film to get processed,’ something that seems somewhat out of time in the digital age. Indeed, in the two weeks after Warwick bought a new digital camera he was astonished that he had pumped 10,000 frames through it; ‘I wouldn’t even do that in a year of shooting film.’
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
The shoot
When preparing for a photo shoot, Warwick explains that this is where most of the work takes place.
‘There is always heaps of preproduction. Taking pictures is probably one-tenth of the process.’
He prefers to have a preconceived concept and structure behind it, and makes sure that the ideas are accepted by everyone involved before anything happens. With that security in place, Warwick does enjoy having an element of spontaneity and improvisation in the shoot, such as what happened on the shoot for Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colours album, as the two-day duration of the shoot allowed him the time and the freedom to experiment more with his subjects.
Most often Warwick has creative freedom with regards to the concept of the shoot, although it is always subject to the client’s approval. When working with bands, his inspiration comes from extracting themes from the music, which was the case with My Disco’s album Paradise.
‘It is a very minimal, sparse and cinematic record so I wanted to have My Disco in the barren landscape looking very insignificant in contrast to the unforgiving landscape.’
The landscape, and indeed the whole environment in which he photographs someone, has a great effect on the atmosphere and mood of a shoot.
‘I’m really over the studio because it is a very lifeless and uninspiring place,’ he says. ‘It is so important that everyone is comfortable in the space where the pictures are being made.’
Introducing new characters
The concept for a series of promotional photographs for Belgian-Australian artist Gotye came from a discussion between Warwick and Wally de Backer (Gotye) about dream states in Where the Wild Things Are. Together they came up with the idea to include the darkly animated creatures from the Hearts a Mess video clip, by Brendan Cook, in the photos.
‘I was really excited because I am a great fan of Brendan’s clips and I have never added graphics before.’ The result is an exploration of a dreamscape, as the pajama-clad Gotye gives the photographs a sinister yet childlike quality.
While at this time not interested in venturing into the world of music video production, Warwick continues to create interesting artistic concepts for his work with musicians and bands, with a dream to one day photograph Nick Cave.
‘I would love to photograph [him] somewhere in the desert in South Australia or Western Australia,’ he describes. ‘I would like to present him as a lost, disillusioned and lonely explorer from the 1800s.’
Gotye
Creative influences
Warwick lists among his creative influences the work of Rineke Dijkstra, Alec South, Wolfgang Tillmans, Steven Shore, August Sander, Jacob Holdt, Robert Frank, Luc Delahaye and Paul Knight. ‘I also have a letter written to my grandfather by Max Dupain in 1939 in his Bond Street studio discussing surrealism that I find incredibly inspiring.’
While he doesn’t think that he has a particular style, Warwick says that he loves the ways in which the medium of photography allows him to explore new subjects, themes and aesthetics: ‘I look for subtlety and hidden elements when I am creating pictures.’
My Disco
Warwick has recently been involved in the I am Afraid exhibition at the Uber Gallery, portraits from which are currently hanging in Alter. He is currently working on a new body of work that will be published in a book by And Collective, Every place tells a story.
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Olivia Desianti has achieved quite a lot for someone in her early twenties. By the age of twenty-one she has graduated with a degree in design (Visual Communication), begun her own online music magazine Arcady, established herself in the music photography scene, and started work as junior designer for the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne.
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Caroline McCurdy
Olivia Desianti has achieved quite a lot for someone in her early twenties. By the age of twenty-one she has graduated with a degree in design (Visual Communication), begun her own online music magazine Arcady, established herself in the music photography scene, and started work as junior designer for the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne.
After growing up in Perth, Olivia found that Melbourne would prove to be a more inspiring place to work. ‘There’s so much culture in Melbourne, which is why I moved here in the first place’, she exclaims. Originally getting involved in design, she moved on to advertising at her step-brother’s agency but, after three months, lost interest. She says she found it to be a harsh eye opener and had the feeling that she wasn’t going to last long in that particular field.
Olivia explains, ‘At university, I veered off slightly and started writing and taking photos for various music publications in my spare time. I ended up falling in love with the constant flow of work and the uncertainty that is always present in mass media. Within university itself, we started focusing on publication design, and from the minute I started that project, I knew I had finally found what I want to do.’
During her time spent at university, Olivia was also finding her feet in the Melbourne music scene photographing live bands. Since 2005 she has been involved with an American online music magazine, Aced Magazine, by doing album reviews, then moving on to gig reviews. Following this, Olivia received a photographer’s pass to Bloc Party’s first Australian gig: ‘I ended up meeting heaps of people from that gig who helped me kickstart my career in band photography.’
From her university introduction to publication design, combined with experience on the music scene, Olivia began the online music magazine Arcady. Olivia started Arcady as a hobby to vent her design ideas and also to get a leg up in the music industry. She explains, ‘it began as a place to combine my two passions: music and design. I wanted a place where I can be within the music industry and still be visually creative. It started off as a bit of fun, a place where I can freely state my views on music.’
Being a young designer in Melbourne, Olivia says her advice to other young designers who are venturing into the design scene is to ‘network as much as you can. It doesn’t have to be with other designers; befriend people in the business, accounting, music, food, whatever industries. Explore how they think and find what you’re really interested in. Those contacts will come handy at some point.’ She is a designer who has a love of mass media, and that is her niche. ‘You have to find a niche that suits you, and the only way you can do that is to meet new people and find out what their world is like.’
Apart from networking and gaining the right experience, Olivia says another important aspect of finding work is to be able to work in different disciplines, as more and more employers are now asking for web design skills. Olivia believes that this is bad news for most designers. She’s a firm believer that one has to perfect the craft of your choice, but to gain a basic knowledge of other disciplines is also essential.
