Geek of the Week: Photographer Kyle Cassidy

Kyle Cassidy is a fantastic photographer, who has traveled the world taking pictures of a wide-array of subjects. His work has covered punks to politicians, homeless kids in Romania to archeologists in Giza and has been featured in the New York Times, Vanity Fair (DE), the Sunday Times of London, Marie Claire, Photographers Forum and numerous other publications. He has written several books on technology and a book of photographs of gun owners in their homes, in addition to several other photography projects.

Also, he lives in Philly!

Kyle took the time to chat with me and answer a few questions about his life as a photographer.

What made you first pick up a camera?

I grew up in a time where journalists were very heroic figures. They were tumultuous days and a time before the press had caved into the government and started accepting all sorts of restrictions about how they’d cover wars. You had people like Larry Burroughs who would find some helicopter pilot at a bar somewhere in Saigon and say “Can you take me out with you next time and drop me off?”

At the same time you had Woodward and Bernstein being played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in the movies – how much more dashing does it have to be? I had this great desire to experience everything – or at least as many things as I practically could, and journalists always got the front row seats. That’s what started it, but the thing that kept it going is that I realized that parts of my life were just vanishing.

You know, ask me what I was doing on October 16, 1998 – I’m sure it was something, it might have been a great day, but it’s been completely erased from my memory – I don’t know who I saw, who I talked to, but having a photographic record makes it feel like it’s not so ephemeral.

What type of cameras and lenses do you shoot with?

I have a bunch of stuff. My main camera is a Nikon d700, my favorite lens is the 85 1.8 which I call the “rock star lens.”

Everybody looks great in it. I also shoot an awful lot with my iPhone. I am a big gear fetishist but really the camera is one of the least important parts of the equation. You can buy a camera, but you can’t buy a good idea or the work to see something through. That’s the tough part.

Sometimes the gear is inspiration. I’d bought these lousy digital cameras from 2008 that have a quarter of the resolution of my phone and shot this gallery show called “Leaving Dakota” that’s currently traveling all over the world. The limitations were inspiring. I hear people complain all the time and blame their bad photos on equipment. I’ve got lots of great equipment, so this was one of those “I’m going to chop down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring” kind of things and it worked out really well. I’m a firm believer in talismans — that if you give something power in your mind then you can get something back from it. This sort of thinking has filled my closets with stuff I really don’t need, including decade old digital point and shoots.

Longer answer here on my LiveJournal.

You’ve photographed a wide range of sub cultures across the globe. What is it like to travel between these groups and immerse yourself in them for a time?

It’s almost like reward without investment. You get to see all these things, meet all of these people and experience all of these events, without investing your whole life to get there. I sat in tombs on the Giza plateau and photographed archaeologists opening them for the first time and I got to see that without having to devote my life to archaeology. I spent a week photographing homeless kids living in the storm sewers in Romania without being a missionary or a relief worker.

In a lot of ways it’s like a gold pass to butt to the front of the line. Which isn’t to say you haven’t spent your whole life getting good at something and it’s not to say that you’re not working your tail off while you’re doing it, but the scenery changes all the time and you get to meet people you’d never have met before. Occasionally you’ll find yourself on top of a mountain in the desert 25 miles from the nearest human being, or on a boat in a lake at midnight with a famous actor and a Pulitzer prize winning novelist, or in a canyon in Kentucky with some guy who’s going to let you shoot at a tub of explosives with his machine gun. You’ll think to yourself, “This is a pretty amazing life.”

Do you have any favorite groups or people that you like to photograph?

That’s a good question. I have this tendency to believe that any group of people is really interesting if you approach it properly. Just last week I was on the subway thinking I’d love to do a formal portrait of everybody on the subway wearing headphones and ask them what they were listening to and what kind of headphones they had on. Just a hundred portraits of random people from the subway who were listening to music. To me that’s at least as interesting as photographing Air Force Generals.

I tend to look at society from the fringes, but sometimes it’s fun to just bore right through the center. I’m terribly interested in people who have interesting stories that have been buried by time. I’d like to photograph flappers, or civil rights activists from the 1960’s, or radio actors, or people who come to the 50th reunion of their ballet school. I’d love to photograph cowboys, or farmers, or everyone who buys a candy bar from a particular vending machine over the course of a day. The ideas are easy, it’s the time to make it happen that’s so hard.

Dresden Dolls, Photo by Kyle Cassidy

You collaborated with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman on a book of photographs and stories. How did you get connected with them?

I realized a few years back – and it may sound obvious, but it wasn’t to me at the time – that the only people who get bitten by sharks are people who are in the water. And if you’re “doing stuff” creatively, then you’re in the water with other people who are creating and you’re more likely to interact with one another.

I’d met Amanda Palmer in 2001 or 2002. I was on tour with a band that was playing in Boston with the Dresden Dolls. Amanda offered to let everybody stay at her house, which is how indy bands stay alive. A few months later I got a phone call from her saying they were coming through Philly and could they crash at my place?

Amanda began work on a solo album and we hatched on this idea that there would be a 16-page booklet that came with the CD. Each page would have a beautiful photo on it with a little clue and if you found and followed all the clues by the time you got to the end of the booklet you’d figure out Who Killed Amanda Palmer.

We were terribly excited about the whole thing and her record company listened politely to the pitch and said, “No, you get a four panel digi-pack like everybody else.” I thought it was the end of the world, but Amanda mentioned it to Neil and he knew that what I’d seen as a wall was really only a hurdle – when you can’t go forward, you just go up. He said “Well, let’s just do a book then, I’ll write little stories about the photos.” And that was that. We made a book and it was fun and was a lot cooler than a sixteen page booklet. (I wrote about a lot of it in my blog, here)

You’ve traveled the globe, but call our fair city home. What are your favorite geeky things about Philly?

I think my favorite geeky thing about Philly is Locust Moon Comics. For years I’d been wishing there was some bar in West Philly where I’d walk in and everybody would go “Hey Kyle!” and I’d call my wife and say “Hey! I’m down at the awesome bar where everybody knows us and we’re having great conversations! Come on down!” I realize now that’s really what Locust Moon is. I’ll walk past it and stop in for no reason and everybody will yell “Hey Kyle!” and they’ll be having some conversation about what comics have heroes without rippling muscles or skimpy outfits, or they’ll be huddled around the table making their own comic book, or some world famous artist will be standing around gnawing on a sandwich and minding the register while everybody who actually works at the store is off buying ice or something.

I also like the fact that you can walk into the Engineering building on the Penn campus and see ENIAC sitting there; the Edgar Allan Poe house; the Franklin Institute (I love its Omnimax theater, and the fact that you can touch a meteorite – something that’s from SPACE). Then there’s the USS Becuna, the submarine at the Seaport museum and the Philadelphia Orchestra – being in the Kimmel Center just gives me the feeling that I’m part of something wonderful.

I like that you can find a confluence of co-conspirators to aid and abet in creative projects without going more than a few blocks. We have all these theaters where you can see new plays, classic plays, and plays written by Philadelphians. It’s a great town.