February 6th, 2022
Kris:
My name is Kris Kirk, I’m from Huntington Beach. I grew up there, lived there until I was 26. Then I moved to LA for a job, and I’ve been here ever since.
MOTOR:
Can you tell me when you started taking photographs and what led to that?
Kris:
Yeah, I probably started taking photographs around 2006. And what led to that was when I went on my first tour with the band that I played in. Mostly just to document the places I went—places I’d never been. For example, I’d never been to the Pacific Northwest or the Bay Area, so just to document that.
I was actually going through some of my old photographs for another project, and there’s a point I can tell where I got more serious about it. Probably around 2010 where I started actually taking a lot, and I started focusing on taking pictures of stuff that I actually liked taking photographs of.
MOTOR:
How did the music influence your work?
Kris:
So I guess it just started off as me just documenting where I’m going and the shows I’m seeing. And that just led into a wormhole of discovering photographers from the early 80s and late 70s, like Glen Friedman and the more punk photographers. So a lot of it does stem from music and the whole doing-everything-yourself vibe that a lot of my photos have. And that goes along with being in punk bands and bands in general.
MOTOR:
What is your approach to taking photographs? When in the process do you assign a photo to a series? Or a blog post? When in the process are you thinking about how a photograph might be seen by a viewer?
Kris: I think initially when I started taking photos it was probably just to document stuff. Then, when I started, I did my fist zine with Nick from Nighted. That was my first actual zine, and that was just a collection of photos I had taken from around that time period.
MOTOR:
What year was that?
Kris:
I want to say that it was like 2009? Maybe 2010. And that all trailed down from Tumblr because I used to use Tumblr a lot. I actually met Nick through Tumblr. And on Tumblr it was different because I used to post every day. I shot so many photos every day. And once I started getting into more documentary style photography, that’s when I started going to specific events and catering my photos to that event. Like spring break, or a senior citizens beauty pageant, or whatever it is, I’d have a specific end goal of what the photos would be used for, and they’d be used just for that. But on top of that the other aspect is I’d be continuously taking photos regardless, so those other photos are kind of like filling in the gaps between other photos I might be working on or events I wanna go photograph.
MOTOR:
What draws you to those events? How do you select them?
Kris:
So basically I find them through the internet. Sometimes I think of something and I’ll just google this topic—there’s gotta be an event for it. There’s an event for everything. There’s an Abraham Lincoln impersonator event in Kansas. Sometimes a friend will know of an event and I’ll look it up, look into it. Then after that I just think of something to go to and I’ll photograph that.
MOTOR:
I saw some images on your Instagram of press passes for EDC—can you tell me about that project, and how you acquired them?
Kris:
Yeah, so I was with my friend Madison East who is also a photographer and we had this idea to go shoot EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival), and we had made press passes that had our names and photos on them and had the EDC logo and the date, holepunched em, put em on a lanyard. We drove from LA to Las Vegas, where the festival was with these press passes and we just tried every security evidence we could, gave em a sob story that we came from San Francisco to Las Vegas until someone eventually got tired of us enough and got us in. And we were able to shoot a full EDC event for a day. So the photos ended up in the EDC zine, which was just photos of people at EDC. It’s another subculture that I think is interesting. I think all subcultures are interesting. That’s kind of the basis for going to all of the events that I go to. Coming from a really niche punk scene, which is a subculture and a community in itself, there's a million other subcultures that exist, and with their own communities, and everyone works together for an end goal, whatever it might be. If it’s punk, it’d be to throw a show and put out a record. If it's EDC it's to go party and have a good time in the desert for a weekend with other like minded people. So I’m drawn to that kind of environment no matter what the event is.
MOTOR:
What is it like when you’re trying to document these events? Are you finding people who are trying to perform? Or are you trying to be more low key? And what is “acting natural” versus performing for the camera?
Kris:
I would say it’s half and half. The EDC thing, I was more of a voyeur and a spectator. I did a zine on spring break where I went on spring break three weekends in a row in Arizona. That crowd was very different and they definitely posed for the camera. There was really no way of being a fly on the wall in that situation. It was a very chaotic environment, I was just drinking on boats and doing whatever. I realized in that situation I had to ask if I could take someone’s photo, which I don’t usually prefer to do. I prefer a photo of someone in a natural setting, because I think that’s when it’s the most real. Because once people start posing, and smiling and changing the way they are posed in general, it changes the photo into something that they may want more, versus how they are just acting natural. That’s what drives me more to these things, just people doing what they do and not posing. The perfect example would be shooting a band. They’re just performing on stage. You don’t want them to stop every time you take a photo and make a cool looking gesture. It’s very unnatural and it doesn’t look good.
MOTOR:
Throughout Two Dogs I noticed a contrast of images that shared the same spread, images that have a sense of immediacy, and others that seem to be taken with permission.
Kris:
I’d say specifically for the Two Dogs project that I’ve been doing, it’s definitely a different approach than what I would do for an event. So I started this project in 2020 where I was going to do a zine every month with risograph cover, stapled. Then everything happened with the pandemic, everything shut down. I barely took any photos in 2020. I wanted to continue that… project because I liked it. It was originally called something else, I think it was just the dates for the 2020 zines. I was talking to Nick about it. I wanted to continue that vibe. But more realistic would be doing every half a year instead of every month. It definitely is more photo diary, versus going to an event. It’s actually really inspired by this guy Daidō Moriyama who’s this Japanese photographer. He does a thing where it’s just like a photo diary and he’s on number 55 or so, and it’s just photos of his daily life, bars, friends. So it’s highly inspired by that. And it’s a lot easier to take photos of friends because they know that you take photos and they trust you on what you’re shooting. Their guard is really down and it lets me shoot them without them even questioning it. It works out in that regard, versus doing an event thing. But there is event stuff in there next to photos, so maybe that’s your next question about how I put them next to each other?
MOTOR: Well maybe not events specifically but you are going to specific locations to take photos, right?
Kris: Yeah, for sure. I guess the main locations for Two Dogs are Los Angeles and Huntington Beach, because I go down there often to visit my parents and walk on the beach and take photos. But yeah, especially in book form when I put them next to each other, it’s just how the photos feel next to each other. And there are some photos in Two Dogs that play off each other. There are specific photos I put next to each other for a specific reason because it creates a bigger picture.
MOTOR:
Can you tell me about your publication, Arazi.
Kris:
Yeah, Arazi is a magazine that I do. It definitely stems from inspiration from Big Brother. Magazines like the old skateboard magazine, and the early Vice magazine. But it’s definitely a subculture magazine which means interviews, stories, fliers, art pieces of everyone that I work with in the community as an artist. It’s an open platform for a creative person to do what they want and a huge collection of just a random assortment of stories and stuff like that. We did… two issues. We’re trying to work on the third one but it’s kinda difficult after the whole pandemic to try and get people to actually do stuff. It is a free magazine, a full-color, 8.5 x 11 magazine. Usually we’ll hold a party for each release, and release it, and just move on to the next one.
MOTOR:
I wanted to ask you to present the book in exhibition format. What inspired that?
Kris:
I don’t know, I think I just had this idea that I wanted to do a show. And I’m not a big fan of very sparse shows, of maybe 10 or 15 photos. I like chaos a lot in shows, and that kind of comes across in my photos. There’s a lot of stuff going on. I like a large quantity of stuff. And I think for the deconstructed part that’s just another part of it. It’s an overload, an information photo overload. And the billboard thing, I think, I don’t know, I think it is when talking to you guys about a specific photo I wanted blown up, and that just got wheels turning about how I could display that the most cost-effective way but still have it be something that looks interesting. And that’s also something that’s a big part of my art and photos is making them as cost-effective as I possibly can. I like really temporary stuff, that’s why I like using xeroxs so much. They’re so cheap, if they rip or tear I can just buy another one. It’s not this fine art item. Someone mentioned they wanted to see a really big photo so that just got the wheels turning off, ‘oh I could just make a huge wooden billboard and just adhesive the photo to it, and display that as well.’
MOTOR:
It’s interesting that at your day job you have access to xerox machines, so it’s sort of like this utility, in a way. I start to think about the decisions to use xerox versus actually making prints and putting them into a frame. I wanted to ask you what you think about your work in the context of the artworld and what you think about the white-cube.
Kris:
I think it’s mainly me liking really temporary, limited things. Like a good reference point would be collecting records. I don’t collect as much as I used to but I really like limited runs of records, or like a really limited version. Just from being in bands and making a version of a record that only has 10 copies. And it becomes a game and I hunt to get that copy. And I’ve been at the consumer end of it, trying to find some record or something, and it’s a fleeting thing and it’s very limited but only a certain number of people can enjoy that version of it. Just the whole collector mentality. And buying xeroxed zines, coming from that world of being able to make them so cheap and so fast to anyone who wants them. Versus a big photo book that is gonna cost someone like 80 bucks. But I’m also on that end where I do buy photo books that cost more than what I would charge for a book. So it’s a weird juxtaposition, going back and forth between making something accessible, cheap, and affordable versus making something high quality. In terms of the art world and where I fit in, I’ve just kind of done what I feel comfortable with and.. what I want to do and what I want to see. It’s kind of just a very self-serving thing. Like—I wanna see this trailer filled with xeroxes. That’s kind of where it stems from and where it goes.
MOTOR:
I remember going to zine fairs when I was younger, I would make a zine just for that fair, I’d make 15 or 20 copies, so I could trade with other people. In a way you’re able to give what you can, and take what you need.
Kris:
Yeah, you can treat it like currency in a way—like ‘oh, this zine cost me like 5 dollars to make.’ So I could trade someone for a similar zine that might’ve cost them the same amount of money. But it's also an easy way to connect with someone. A perfect example would be my friend Eleanor, who I met through Tumblr. She was coming to LA and I’ve never met her, and she hit me up and said ‘I’m coming in to LA,’— I think I’d already bought a zine from her—and she goes, ‘I know we don’t each other, but my flight lands at so and so time, can you pick me up from the airport, we can hang out?’ And it was great! We’ve been friends ever since, and she’s such an amazing person. The whole Tumblr thing, and zines and stuff, it’s just a way to build relationships with people who have similar interests. It’s the same as going to a show. You go to a punk show to meet someone who’s interested in punk.
MOTOR:
It’s interesting to think how much viewing and sharing images on the has changed. Flickr and tumblr weren't in our pockets 24/7.
Kris:
I personally think it’s totally different. Because Instagram is a lot more social, and a lot more immediate. Even though Tumblr was, it was a web-based platform and you had to sit down at a computer to look at it. You took your time and looked at it versus just going through your phone on a bus ride, or on your lunch break. It sounds similar but it’s not. The mentality is a lot different. There were two blogs that me and my friends would check all the time. There was Patrick O’Dell, who was like a skate photographer, and then the Toy Machine blog, we’d check that all the time. That was pre-Instagram, and right around Tumblr time. But it was just knowing to actively sit down and take the time out to do something versus it just being a passive thing you do. And I think the community is a lot different. Today it’s not as connected, even though everyone is connected to everyone. There’s a mental aspect that’s kind of gone, you’re not actually part of a community. Everyone takes photos now which has its pluses and minuses. It’s a whole different subject. I think the whole Tumblr community was a time and a place that doesn’t exist anymore. I even tried posting on my old Tumblr like a couple of weeks ago and nothing happened. It’s just dead. And Instagram is so hyper, so much information all the time. So I don’t think connected communities exist that much. I mean I’m sure it does, in some way, shape or form. But for me in the photo department I haven’t found the same thing since Tumblr?
MOTOR:
Instagram has a clear mechanic of either creating or consuming. What’s that experience like for you? Do you ever see a future where people retract from instagram and just want to view in print?
Kris:
I have a feeling that people will revert to a blog form or a website maybe? Because I think people are at the point where they're fed up with Instagram, beside whatever photo or art stuff happens. Just the politics of it, the way you’re not able to see your friends posts because of algorithms, or them switching over to more video-based stuff. If people would start trading zines again, and I think that’d be sick, but it’s also a lot of effort that also doesn’t exist that much anymore because it’s so immediate on Instagram. Some people won’t wanna take the time to sit there and staple. There’s definitely people that do, that still do, for sure. I think the overall arc of the photo world is different. Tumblr was what, only 12, 10 years ago?
MOTOR:
Why document using photographs?
Kris:
I just found interest in the photos because it’s such a small snippet of time. If you even go technically by the shutter speed, that’s like nothing. But in that small snippet you can make a grand statement that could change the world, from like a 500th of a second. The time is almost nothing. But it could be interpreted, and used in this grand scale of something way bigger—that could last for years. This one half of a second could last for years. And then it’s also the collector and slight hoarder in me documenting everything. Cause I collect records and books and zines. I just like clippings from stuff I’ve done in my life. Movie ticket stubs, or whatever it is, I just collect stuff. I think that’s why photos work for me. I just like collecting these little time-snippets.