IT’S A RARE THING TO ACTUALLY GET OUT OF SCHOOL AND MAKE A LIVING DOING WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO. I ONLY KNOW OF A FEW PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING IT. B.M. IS ONE OF THEM. HE IS IN NEW YORK AND BUSTING HIS ASS TO MAKE A NAME FOR HIMSELF AS A PHOTOGRAPHER. B.M. HAS AMAZING SKILL WITH A CAMERA, SHOOTING EVERYTHING FROM UNKNOWN SKATEBOARDERS TO BIG TIME ROCK STARS, AND HE HAS THE BEST ATTITUDE IN THE WORLD. WHEN YOU HEAR SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT A “NICE GUY”, IT’S SAFE TO ASSUME THAT THEY MEAN B.M. SO, SIT RIGHT BACK AND LISTEN IN ON OUR CONVERSATION.
Neogeo: How was your New Year’s Eve?
B.M.: My New Year was brought in traditionally,.. as a sloppy drunken mess. I was so psyched to see people, but my communication skills were severely compromised. I would be like, \"Hey! What\'s up?\" which was followed by just a garbled mess of incoherent babble. Then, I\'d stumble off into another room to meet more people. I tried calling Jill (Gallenstein), but my friend Robert started playing a not-so-fun game of \"pee-pee chase\" with me, so I had to go. Pee-pee chase is an intoxicated game of Robert\'s where he giggles a lot and tries to pee on you, so you run away. I kind of deserved it, since I inadvertently got him punched in the face a few nights before.
N: How did you get Robert punched in the face?
B.M.: Oh man. Another Arkansas drinking story. I guess I sort of set up the segue for it, though. This is a stupid story, really. It\'s my first night back in town, so I go out with my friend Robert to celebrate the holidays and see some old friends. Beer is really cheap in Arkansas, but most bars close early, so we ended up at this after-hours, indie rock party at this weird little mansion. Robert is talking to this girl who is obviously a little desperate for attention; kind of flirting, but, whatever. He was talking to her for, I don\'t know maybe ten minutes, when out of nowhere this crazy dude comes charging at Robert yelling, \"That’s my wife!\" He was out of his mind on something; tequila or maybe cocaine. There\'s a few substances that can inspire behavior like that. Anyway, he comes across the room all wild bull style, and Robert puts him in this crazy strangle/submission hold. I was a little too out of it to really process what was going on. All I could think about was, “Fuck. I knew I shouldn\'t have left my camera in the truck.” They\'re struggling on the floor, and this dude\'s face is turning really red, but Robert\'s just holding him and saying shit in his ear, like he’s the fucking horse whisperer or something. He\'s saying, “Just chill out. It\'s not worth it.” I was spilling beer on them and laughing until I thought it was time to break it up. Some other guys thought so too, so we’re separating them, and the guy sucker punches Robert in the face while he\'s being held back by three people. Shameless opportunist. Here I went and saved this guy from a fight he was seriously losing and being embarrassed in front of his wife, and his thanks to me is a punch in the face to my friend. You\'re almost never going to win a fight if you start it yourself. Everybody knows that. The funny part is that he must\'ve not packed much of a punch, because Robert didn\'t have a scratch on him the next day. He was still kind of mad at me.
N: Well, I’m glad you got out of that okay. And now you’re back in New York, right? Tell the kids at home what you’re doing there.
B.M.: I\'m shooting a little of my own stuff (not enough), a little production, and I\'m still assisting some; whatever comes along. I\'m pretty tired of assisting. I\'ve been doing it too long, but it\'s quick money and, sometimes, it\'s kind of fun. You can end up in really weird situations. A few months ago I worked on this job shooting some metal band in an abandoned crack house in Baltimore. Two days later I was in this super fancy boutique in Soho helping my friend shoot Kate Spade. Socially two total polar opposites. The conversations went from how to successfully ignite a fart without burning yourself, to where the best furniture and accessory shops in are in Maztalan. Weird. Originally, I wanted to be shooting full-time by now, but it\'s been a little tougher than I expected. See, I moved here two weeks before September 11th, and that\'s really affected the economy here. Much more than people in the rest of the country realize. But whatever, you know? I hate complainers, and I have too much to be thankful for to sit here and whine about the economy. It\'s just that things were so booming in the late ‘90s that people just got spoiled. A friend of mine, Jaan Shenberger, and I were having this conversation a few months ago, because he lives up in San Francisco and it\'s totally the same story out there. So sometimes when money is tight I work as an exotic dancer at a club that caters to the needs of lonely Japanese businessmen.
N: I know you’ve been trying to do your own stuff lately instead of assisting, and I heard a rumor that you were somewhat responsible for the cover art on RJD2’s Deadringer album, but I didn’t see your name in the credits. What’s up with that?
B.M.: Corey Piehowicz and I did that as a little collaboration. We both shot some film and it was cool, but the label lost all my stuff. RJD2 thanked us both somewhere in there, but the credit should go to Corey. The photos they used were his. I just got kind of burned by the label with them losing my film, but I\'ve come to learn that comes with the territory. Some places are more organized than others. It\'s frustrating. You do something for free as a favor, and the thanks you get is lost film. It\'s not RJ\'s fault at all. I\'m not salty. That record is doing so well. I\'m pretty psyched for RJ. Cory is up here right now shooting a video for him.
N: Is the stuff you shot for RJD2 pretty typical of the stuff you’ve been shooting, or are you just doing all kinds of different stuff?
B.M.: The stuff for RJ was typical, I guess. I really like environmental portraiture. I like doing too much. That is sort of my problem. I have trouble focusing on one thing and one style. I still do some skateboarding and BMX work. I still like doing portraits, location portraiture, still life, and I like doing some things that could be seen as fashion. But each one of those things, for me, has a different look and style. I need to just concentrate on one and go with it 100% instead of spreading myself so thin. People want to be comfortable with what to expect from you when they give you a job. I just get bored easily, you know?
N: I know what you mean. You definitely don’t want to get pigeonholed. But at the same time you want to develop your own specific style. But hey, you’re in New York, doing what you love, and you haven’t starved to death yet. What kind of advice can you give to other kids who want to try to make it as a photographer?
B.M.: I think anything really worth doing is worth suffering a little for. It makes you a more well-rounded person. I was talking to my mom the other day and she was like, \"Your little sister just hasn\'t suffered enough. She\'s been too spoiled. She doesn\'t know what it\'s like to be hungry.\" As far as advice goes, I would tell them to try and meet people. This sucks for kids that are shy, but just knowing people, getting around, and working for lots of people is so important. Especially in New York. I\'ve learned as much, if not more, from working with other people than I did in school. Everyone has something to offer, whether you recognize it or not. It doesn\'t even have to be within exactly what you want to end up doing. It might even be an example of what not to do in some cases, but that\'s all important. You\'re getting paid to learn. Just be careful not to get taken advantage of. For example, putting up drywall for free is not a valuable learning experience. There\'s stuff I\'ve picked up working on catalog jobs that I\'ll use with shooting skateboarding or people. You might be into doing erotic koala portraits on your own, but get totally inspired assisting on a boring corporate portrait job. It\'s all photography. One of the main things is being really resourceful, because, essentially, you\'re running a business alone.
N: I\'m going to ask you to do something that I think is totally out of character for you, but I think the people reading this may get a kick out of hearing you drop some names. Who are some of the people you’ve got to work with in New York?
B.M.: Oh no. Name dropping. Well, as far as photographers go I haven\'t worked with anyone really big since I\'ve been back. When I was interning at the Polaroid 20x24 studio I worked for lots of big names: William Wegman, Jose Picayo, David Levinthal, Joyce Tenneson, Jill Gallenstein, Karen Kuehne, Timothy Greenfield Sanders. That dude is a dick. Everyone else was really cool. Chuck Close. He makes his paintings from 20x24 Polaroids. He is amazing. I love that guy. I met this dude Mick Rock the other day in an elevator. He prints at the same place I do. He shot a lot in the ‘70s and ‘80s, like the early glam rock and ‘80s art scene: David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Andy Warhol, people like that. He has a book that came out a few years ago called Blood and Glitter. It\'s a retrospective of his work. I met Mary Ellen Mark last month. As far as music people go, I\'ve worked on stuff with Busta Rhymes, the Gza and Mathematics from Wu Tang, lots of hip hop stuff. I shot that dude from Nirvana-- Krist Novoselic-- and this kid Jeremy from Jets to Brazil. I guess people that aren\'t really celebrities are cool to me. Jill and I were out to dinner a couple of months ago and across the room from us was Glen E. Friedman and Russell Simmons. I thought, \"Wow. Those two guys were both really, really influential in the way I grew up (as in what I was listening to and what I was looking at) and here they are eating supper.\" Those two aren\'t really celebrities, but I was kind of star struck. I think that making interesting pictures is a lot more important to me than shooting famous people. America\'s culture is so centered around celebrity. It\'s pretty scary. I mean, my man Muhammad down at the corner store is probably a lot more interesting a person than, say, David Schwimmer. It\'s funny how everyone in New York has their little celebrity references. Like, \"Hey, man. I really want you to meet my friend Javier. He makes smoothies for Q-Tip.\" I guess that\'s cool, but who gives a shit?
N: It’s so cool that you have the attitude that you do about making pictures, because it really is about loving what you do. There are a lot of people who have started off with the same attitude as you, and then wind up becoming assholes once their names get thrown around a little. I know that this probably won’t ever happen to you, because everyone who knows you knows that you’re seriously the nicest guy in the world. But anyway, what do you plan on doing next?
B.M.: Such flattery. I\'m blushing. I don\'t really have any concrete plans as far as the future. I never have. Maybe that\'s bad. I just plan on finding more projects that interest me to photograph. I get all kinds of dumb, impossible-to-finance ideas. Today I was thinking it would be cool to get a little house boat, travel down the Mississippi for a few months, and document the people that live on it. There\'s people that build houses on old barges. They avoid paying property tax by moving up and down the river. That type of isolated subculture is fascinating to me. I think that making good pictures is a big part of what keeps me happy. It\'s a fulfilling feeling.
N: Well, speaking of your photos, I want to wrap this up now so I can have some space to show them. Now I know you want to thank the wonderful Jill Gallenstein, but are there any other last words you’d like to put in?
B.M.: To really name them all would take up more space than the whole interview. There\'s so many. I\'ve been so lucky to have come across so many generous and supportive people. This sounds lame, I feel like I\'m on stage at the Oscars. Thank you all. You know who you are.