FRANK W. OCKENFELS 3
INTERVIEW BY JUSTIN TYLER CLOSE
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As technology evolves, it’s made buying a decent camera easy and calling yourself a photographer even easier, but the ones who stand out amongst the millions of shooters are the artists that continue to create new ways of exploring life behind a lens. Frank Ockenfels is a straight up camera junkie and has an astonishing career, which started in New York City when he was hired to shoot Tracy Chapman for Rolling Stone Magazine. His out of the box thinking and dark intoxicating imagery has created a style that has attracted some of the most influential performers in our lifetime. Frank has recently released a limited edition self-published book with some of his journals to the world and has covered the pages with drawings, photos and people who have affected all of our lives, such as Tom Waits, David Bowie, David Fincher and Marlboro cigarettes. Being one of the last living portraiture photographers his methods involve throwing lenses against the wall, crumpling up photos and re-scanning them, drawing or painting on top of a photo, any way to break the boundaries of what makes photography boring these days. You would think for someone like him, who has shot everyone you could imagine, from Kurt Cobain to Natalie Portman, that he would have a huge egotistical attitude, but I shit you not: He is the exact opposite. Frank is not only one of the top photographers in the world, but is one of the nicest, most humble human beings I have ever interviewed and I feel so blessed that I got the opportunity to sit down with him and chat about life, inspirations and about the emotional day, when he had fifteen minutes to do a photoshoot with Barack Obama.
JUSTIN—So Frank, how are you?
FRANK—How am I? Freezing today, in sunny Los Angeles.
J—Yeah, what the hell? We flew in yesterday and it was raining. I thought our pilot went in a circle and took us back to Vancouver.
F—We even had frost this morning.
J—I didn’t even know that existed here?
F—We don’t like talking about the cold days, we like the sun. Anybody who ends up here on a cold day, they’re, like, “Uh, what’s going on?”
J—I’m so confused by the cold here. Anyways, let’s not talk about it then.
F—[laughs] Let’s make it go away.
J—How’d you sleep last night?
F—Good. I recently moved; we bought a smaller house but with a bigger piece of property. We’re renovating a building on the property, so we moved our 3000 square foot house into a 900 square foot house, so my sons are asking me what the hell have I done because they both used to have their own bedrooms.
J—That’s intimate. Brotherhood at its finest. Good and bad.
F—Yeah, they now share a bedroom that’s 8 x 8 with a bunk bed. We call it “Prison.”
J—You can make it a game. Playing Prison and you can play the gatekeeper. What did you eat for breakfast? Are you a breakfast guy?
F—No. No. I’m a dinner guy, which is weird because everyone says it’s the worst meal to eat a heavy one, but…my breakfast usually is four shots of espresso with a little bit of steamed milk in it. So, I kind of go for that jolt in the morning, that’s it. I mean, I might eat a banana or something like that. But, yeah, breakfast; it’s not my thing.
J—It’s actually the first thing I think of when I wake up.
F—When you wake up?
J—I’m a breakfast guy for sure, orange juice, eggs, bacon, all the time.
F—If I eat breakfast, I want to go back to bed.
J—Yeah, that’s true. I fight that feeling daily. Your gallery show (Clark Oshin Gallery at The Icon) looks great…
F—Yeah, it worked out well. It’s funny though, because a lot of people said to me, “Well, it would be nice to see you in a ‘real’ gallery.” And I mean, but a real gallery wouldn’t give them my nooks and crannies and in here it kind of makes people look at things in a different way.
J—Totally does that. Feels less forced.
F—I like it when you go someplace and you go back again and you see something you hadn’t seen or that you have a different experience each time you go. That’s kind of why I did it, so that each part of the room is presented in a different way.