We have been spending a lot of time here at Monaco Reps working on developing several portfolios. In fact, this is in large part what I spend my time doing, and thinking about, and I thought it might be a good idea to share some of those thoughts. I spoke in the past about creating a portfolio – but what happens when you have a preexisting portfolio that needs to be moved in a new direction? I’ve been hard at work on updating new portfolios for Cedric Angeles, and think this is the perfect opportunity to talk about that process.
When Cedric first joined our agency, it took a lot of time to get through his archive. We went to his studio, we sat down and looked through as much as we possibly could that he had filed. Nothing was scanned, it was all film at that point. So we put together what we could from what we saw that time around – all of which was from his assignment work. I didn’t see a lot of personal work at that point, nor did I even have a sense of what that was at the time. So we put together a lifestyle/environment book and it was the first attempt to show ad people what he did. Over time, as he started working digitally and as he was going through his own archive, more and more work came to us that I had never even seen before. I realized then that what we were showing was very thin, and that there was a much broader aspect to his work, and that it needed to be redone completely from the ground up.
In Cedric’s case, because he is an editorial photographer, and a well known one, that archive had not been addressed in any other way than stashing things away for the magazines, and his own idea of who he was as a photographer was not exactly meshing with that. We took a look and came up with an enormous amount of imagery and we realized that we needed to present his work in a whole new way. This meant that we had to create something that would tap into the personal side of his assignment work, and that would be channel to his personal work, namely the Milk + Blood series. So I developed something we are calling a Travelogue. The Travelogue is made from outtakes of his assignment work. It’s work that the assignment people wouldn’t use, but it has a connection to what he is doing personally, it is the bridge between his personal work and his assignment work.
Most great photographers never put their cameras down, and Cedric is melded to his camera, so there is a lot of this gap work – it doesn’t fulfill the assignment, but it’s something he is shooting anyway, and for a long time it had no audience. The Travelogue is what we created to address that.
We created three portfolios, all online now : his Lifestyle portfolio, which will go through yet another change by the end of the month, a Hotels & Resorts portfolio, which is almost entirely interiors and exteriors, and a Food portfolio. Those are the three books that are applicable commercially, and mostly clients only want to see what applies to them specifically. But then we created two more online galleries – the Travelogue and Milk+Blood. I laid those out to look like a facsimile of a book, so there is a gutter, and there is a break in between things, graphic elements such as color blocks scattered throughout. This sets these galleries apart from the other three; which are the straightforward, gorgeous, clean and easy. These other two have a little bit more character, a bit more edge. And you don’t need to access them, but you can, and you can see that there is more going on in the archives. My hope is to continue to build these up, and eventually design and publish a big, beautiful, gutsy Travelogue, and have that as another book to look at in addition to the regular portfolio.
Cedric does an incredible job of capturing people living. We talk about lifestyle, pretty girls and guys on the beach, but more importantly, when you look through his Travelogue, it’s really him catching people living. There is no judgment, because he doesn’t want to get across a message. It’s not a statement about who they are or where they are or what they are doing, it’s just a story of people living, and it’s done in the most respectful way. So you look at pictures from Mongolia to Tahiti, Ireland to the Philippines, all of his images are tremendously respectful and he finds great beauty in someone walking their yak, sheering their sheep, or holding a baby. And the same thing crosses into lifestyle, even his food photography also has that element of lifestyle, where you feel someone is just about to enter the frame. It’s all about living. And his interiors are less polished – they are accomplished, well-lit with gorgeous composition, but the sense is that someone just left and forgot to turn off the lights. As the viewer, you are never separated from the experience he is having, no matter what he is shooting, you have the sense that you are there and you are living it too.
This sense of “living” quality is we couldn’t really get across with the thin book that we had. It lacked depth, you couldn’t truly sense his intelligence with the first book.
We have not yet put together a printed book for this, and we’ve been putting a lot of thought into what that will entail. With portfolio development, (which means you are reviewing the idea you’ve started with and moving it along, changing the way you are perceived into a different, or better direction, a new direction), every photographer’s portfolio is different. Everything you do when you develop a book is different for each individual photographer. In Cedric’s case, I’m kind of intrigued by the idea of including a little bit of everything in one portfolio. That may not work, because everyone needs to see only what they need to see. But I think it might be really interesting. If that doesn’t work, putting together a portfolio that is separate and much smaller, that is the Travelogue and Milk+Blood combined, so that you can see- it doesn’t matter what he is shooting, it’s all about being alive, being on the planet – being a part of something bigger. As he develops and begins to better understand himself as a photographer, we are looking at the entire body of work, where it’s been and where it is going. Sometimes these moments make you realize that you need to scrape at everything. In Cedric’s case, we really went back through the archive, and it doesn’t matter because his approach to everything has always been the same.
Cedric has a very beautiful nuance. When you flip through a travel book or lifestyle magazine of any sort, it can be hard to tell photographers apart. That’s is not because the photographers don’t have originality, but because the magazines have their own brand identity. The more access I had to Cedric’s work, the more I was able to see through the editorial work into the deeper personal archives. He’s very comfortable with people, wherever he is. People allow them into his life, he’s traveled extensively, he’s unbelievably charming and sweet, and he disappears easily behind his camera. Cedric doesn’t take anything for granted, and I think his life has been a bit different from the average lifestyle photographer. Because of that, he documents and he understands how people live, and he takes that idea, and he applies that to his more commercially applicable work. There is no artifice here. That’s what sets him apart. He’s coming to it with his own personal awe for all kinds of living, and that comes through in his work. And it took me a bit of time to figure this out clearly, and now it has crystallized, we are so excited to get this put together. And I can already see the next version of Cedric’s presentations. But we take one step at a time.
It’s not everyday you see a pig swim freestyle…unless you live on the beautiful Bahamian island chain of the Exumas.
Claudia’s Commentary : Portfolio Development
We have been spending a lot of time here at Monaco Reps working on developing several portfolios. In fact, this is in large part what I spend my time doing, and thinking about, and I thought it might be a good idea to share some of those thoughts. I spoke in the past about creating a portfolio – but what happens when you have a preexisting portfolio that needs to be moved in a new direction? I’ve been hard at work on updating new portfolios for Cedric Angeles, and think this is the perfect opportunity to talk about that process.
When Cedric first joined our agency, it took a lot of time to get through his archive. We went to his studio, we sat down and looked through as much as we possibly could that he had filed. Nothing was scanned, it was all film at that point. So we put together what we could from what we saw that time around – all of which was from his assignment work. I didn’t see a lot of personal work at that point, nor did I even have a sense of what that was at the time. So we put together a lifestyle/environment book and it was the first attempt to show ad people what he did. Over time, as he started working digitally and as he was going through his own archive, more and more work came to us that I had never even seen before. I realized then that what we were showing was very thin, and that there was a much broader aspect to his work, and that it needed to be redone completely from the ground up.
In Cedric’s case, because he is an editorial photographer, and a well known one, that archive had not been addressed in any other way than stashing things away for the magazines, and his own idea of who he was as a photographer was not exactly meshing with that. We took a look and came up with an enormous amount of imagery and we realized that we needed to present his work in a whole new way. This meant that we had to create something that would tap into the personal side of his assignment work, and that would be channel to his personal work, namely the Milk + Blood series. So I developed something we are calling a Travelogue. The Travelogue is made from outtakes of his assignment work. It’s work that the assignment people wouldn’t use, but it has a connection to what he is doing personally, it is the bridge between his personal work and his assignment work.
Most great photographers never put their cameras down, and Cedric is melded to his camera, so there is a lot of this gap work – it doesn’t fulfill the assignment, but it’s something he is shooting anyway, and for a long time it had no audience. The Travelogue is what we created to address that.
We created three portfolios, all online now : his Lifestyle portfolio, which will go through yet another change by the end of the month, a Hotels & Resorts portfolio, which is almost entirely interiors and exteriors, and a Food portfolio. Those are the three books that are applicable commercially, and mostly clients only want to see what applies to them specifically. But then we created two more online galleries – the Travelogue and Milk+Blood. I laid those out to look like a facsimile of a book, so there is a gutter, and there is a break in between things, graphic elements such as color blocks scattered throughout. This sets these galleries apart from the other three; which are the straightforward, gorgeous, clean and easy. These other two have a little bit more character, a bit more edge. And you don’t need to access them, but you can, and you can see that there is more going on in the archives. My hope is to continue to build these up, and eventually design and publish a big, beautiful, gutsy Travelogue, and have that as another book to look at in addition to the regular portfolio.
Cedric does an incredible job of capturing people living. We talk about lifestyle, pretty girls and guys on the beach, but more importantly, when you look through his Travelogue, it’s really him catching people living. There is no judgment, because he doesn’t want to get across a message. It’s not a statement about who they are or where they are or what they are doing, it’s just a story of people living, and it’s done in the most respectful way. So you look at pictures from Mongolia to Tahiti, Ireland to the Philippines, all of his images are tremendously respectful and he finds great beauty in someone walking their yak, sheering their sheep, or holding a baby. And the same thing crosses into lifestyle, even his food photography also has that element of lifestyle, where you feel someone is just about to enter the frame. It’s all about living. And his interiors are less polished – they are accomplished, well-lit with gorgeous composition, but the sense is that someone just left and forgot to turn off the lights. As the viewer, you are never separated from the experience he is having, no matter what he is shooting, you have the sense that you are there and you are living it too.
This sense of “living” quality is we couldn’t really get across with the thin book that we had. It lacked depth, you couldn’t truly sense his intelligence with the first book.
We have not yet put together a printed book for this, and we’ve been putting a lot of thought into what that will entail. With portfolio development, (which means you are reviewing the idea you’ve started with and moving it along, changing the way you are perceived into a different, or better direction, a new direction), every photographer’s portfolio is different. Everything you do when you develop a book is different for each individual photographer. In Cedric’s case, I’m kind of intrigued by the idea of including a little bit of everything in one portfolio. That may not work, because everyone needs to see only what they need to see. But I think it might be really interesting. If that doesn’t work, putting together a portfolio that is separate and much smaller, that is the Travelogue and Milk+Blood combined, so that you can see- it doesn’t matter what he is shooting, it’s all about being alive, being on the planet – being a part of something bigger. As he develops and begins to better understand himself as a photographer, we are looking at the entire body of work, where it’s been and where it is going. Sometimes these moments make you realize that you need to scrape at everything. In Cedric’s case, we really went back through the archive, and it doesn’t matter because his approach to everything has always been the same.
Cedric has a very beautiful nuance. When you flip through a travel book or lifestyle magazine of any sort, it can be hard to tell photographers apart. That’s is not because the photographers don’t have originality, but because the magazines have their own brand identity. The more access I had to Cedric’s work, the more I was able to see through the editorial work into the deeper personal archives. He’s very comfortable with people, wherever he is. People allow them into his life, he’s traveled extensively, he’s unbelievably charming and sweet, and he disappears easily behind his camera. Cedric doesn’t take anything for granted, and I think his life has been a bit different from the average lifestyle photographer. Because of that, he documents and he understands how people live, and he takes that idea, and he applies that to his more commercially applicable work. There is no artifice here. That’s what sets him apart. He’s coming to it with his own personal awe for all kinds of living, and that comes through in his work. And it took me a bit of time to figure this out clearly, and now it has crystallized, we are so excited to get this put together. And I can already see the next version of Cedric’s presentations. But we take one step at a time.