FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER | ANDREW D MUSSON

BITE catches up with Brooklyn-based photographer Andrew Musson in this week’s feature:

Firstly, thanks for agreeing to the interview. I suppose it’s a broad question - but why photography as your vocation? My pleasure. Photography definitely wasn’t the first thing I’ve considered doing as something more than a hobby. Drawing was first from the very beginning, then music, then photography, and then filmmaking (when I realized it was a combination of all the arts I loved). I sort of fell back into photography as I was studying film and decided I wanted to pursue that before I went into filmmaking. 

Lets talk about the New Familiar series which captures ordinary objects. What does the oxymoronic title mean to you? New Familiar is more meant as a phrase, such as “This is my new familiar” or “this is my new home.” Even though the words are contradictory they aren’t meant to be opposing, but rather a sort of an open and honest title. I photographed this work when I first moved to New York and though the place was very new to me through exploring and photographing this work it became known. So the fact that the photographs of very domestic and everyday landscapes and scenes simply reflects what the title means. It’s not a very deep project in that regard, but it was important to my development as it was a huge undertaking when compared to how I photographed before.

What have been some of your favorite moments in your photography? Maybe this is supposed to be about my own experiences, but nothing I’ve done so far really holds steadfast against events that have happened in the past. Personally, I’d go with James C. Maxwell’s experiments with human perception of color and how that lead him to make the first permanent color photograph using the additive RGB process. That’s cool stuff. 

Your series Company features compositions of two images next to one another; how did you decide which images to juxtapose together? Company is sequenced like this because it was, quite simply, the easiest and cleanest way to show a multi-format project (both 120 and 35mm). The original idea was to have the 35mm photographs as sort of footnotes to the main content and were to be placed after 4 or so medium format images. But once the project was finished and I cut more and more photographs out of the main sequence it was clear it was going to be a smaller project than I initially thought. So the 35mm took a more equalized role in the order in the end and it was only recently that I decided to place two 35mm photographs in one slide (they were separate like the medium format was and still is). All in all, they really were sequenced in a rather normal way , i.e., what looks good next to each other, how a photo leads into the next one, and so on. 

I’m very much a tweaker and my edit of photographs, sequences, and the like is always an ongoing process. I have learned that there is always way to make something work better, even if it means taking away content from a project or reediting a photograph that has been out for a year or more. Nothing else is fixed in time so why should your work be?

What projects have you been working on recently? I’ve been working on a long term project called Broad Way since last year, which is to be a sort of modern pastoral fixated on the southern US (where I have lived most of my life). 

Also there are a couple small short term projects I am photographing at the moment. The most current is titled Umbra and it’s mostly inspired by the physics/transmission of light and camera tricks.

More of Andrew’s work can be found on his website and blog.

Text: Daniel Griffiths

Twitter | Sign up for our monthly newsletter | Facebook

BITE EDIT 032

Here are this week’s most interesting finds across the web, according to the BITE Team.

01 - The Impossible Project: Ryvan & Kasia
A selection of exclusive images from photographers Ruvan Wijesooriya and Kasia Bobula from their involvement with The Impossible Project celebrating the now defunct Polaroid format [Dazed Digital].

02 - Is Fashion Ready for a New Aesthetic?
BoF looks at the rise of the New Aesthetic and its influence on technological fashion. Well worth a read [BoF].

03 - Interview with Alexandre Plokhov
The fashion designer discusses his career trajectory from the now-defunct Cloak to his eponymous line [The Fader].

04 - Yasuaki Onishi by Mark & Angela Walley
Check out this video of Japanese artist Yasuaki Onishi, who explores the idea of gravity in a visual form [The 189].

05 - Junya Watanabe and the Death of the Author
“My ideas and feelings are strongly distilled into the collections and the garments I create. I believe that providing further detail and explanation in words would not lead to more profound insight, but rather, obscure the focus that should be placed on the garments themselves.” [Dapper Dan].

Text: Daniel Griffiths

Twitter | Sign up for our monthly newsletter | Facebook