Polaroids, Papke and Paris
Polaroid are putting on a photo exhibition and zine release with a handful of the world’s preeminent skate photographers in Paris tomorrow. It sounds like a damn fun time. So to really fuel the jealousy, I jumped on the phone with man-about-town and one of the exhibiting photographers, Alex Papke, to get a firsthand account of Paris during Fashion Week and the photo project he’s been working on.
Hey Alex - how’s your day going?
It’s good - I slept in, waited in line for 45 minutes to get a Pastrami sandwich for breakfast, which was a terrible choice.
Cool! Tell us about this show you’re about to have?
This show is with Polaroid, it’s basically a bunch of different skate photographers from all over the world capturing skateboarding in their city. It’s cool because everyone was shooting pretty different and their individual style really comes out. There’s Cris Bravo from Barcelona, Sirus Gahan from London, Nobuo Iseki and Tokyo, Paris has 3 photographers and our friend Magda has some photos from her new book Fulfill the Dream - plug her in there! It’s cool to showcase skateboarding in Paris right now in a different way than how the Olympics portrays it. In 2024 skateboarding is this thing that you see on tv, between street league and the Olympics and all these contests… it's very popularized… I'm standing outside a cafe right now and in every direction you look you can see some kind of skate shoes or skate t-shirt or a hoodie, so you know that shit's popping... it's just so heavily popularized but nobody knows the first thing about skateboarding. I can't even give these kids the benefit of the doubt of a mall grab, I don't even think a lot of these kids have ever held a skateboard. So it's cool to see a company as big as Polaroid be interested in the core demographic of skateboarding - they gave me full creative control to kind of do whatever I want, the only thing that they said they really wanted photographed was some backyard pools or some Hollywood High - you know, the shit that’s shaped skateboarding more or less. It’s cool to go off a creative brief that is a bit vague - you can do your own thing with it. I was able to photograph so many of my 17 year old childhood heroes and it felt really special to me.
How did this thing start?
I cold emailed Polaroid because I was trying to get a free camera and free film because I love shooting Polaroid. That conversation turned from them sending me a camera to us trying to figure out a project to work on together and then this all came about. I was so excited when Anna reached out to me about this because we’d been Instagram friends for so long - they had an agency working on it where everybody are skateboarders so they have a good grasp of everything - you’re not working with the dude that waited 5 hours in line to buy a shit pair of Nike Dunks. They had an idea of what they wanted and they sent me 30 packs of film in the mail and I was just able to creatively go for it. I just cold called a bunch of people that I haven’t had much interaction with in the past - one of the first people I shot was Guy Mariano and I was trying to get on as many crazy LA legends as I could. We met up one morning - he was super easy to work with - so receptive to shooting photos and then 5 minutes later you could show him the polaroid - he was tripping out on the photos cause he doesn’t always get to see the product. Time takes such a toll on a photo but if you shoot a photo and it’s fresh and in the present you get stoked. That gave me the confidence to keep hitting people up for the project and from there I’d just continue to shoot a bunch of legends.
“As a photographer there’s projects you might not want your name attached to because you’re not super passionate about that one, so it was really fun to have full creative control for a company like Polaroid - it’s fun to work on something you’re stoked on.”
Who did you shoot photos of?
I really wanted to get people that either had their hand in making LA such a great skate city or are from LA and are attached to LA. It started out with Guy, Stefan and went to PRod, Malto, Louie Lopez, Ryan Lee, Mason Silva, Ishod Wair - I went out scoping pools with Grant Taylor one day. LA has such a wide variety of skaters - it’s really hard to even touch the surface cause there’s so many groups of guys. Oh I got a shot of Anthony Acosta in there and he’s a fuckin’ LA legend - he shot some of my favourite skate photos over the years - i’m so stoked to have someone like Acosta in there because he’s such a sick photographer that has documented so many cool moments around LA.
I got Stefan Janoski’s details from Malto after I shot him for this project… we’d never met in person before but he responded immediately saying I’m down, let me know what you want to do it and let’s do it. - I went over to his house and we ended up hanging out for a couple of hours. I’d seen in his Epicly Later’d that he makes those Crucifloats and after the shoot Polaroid really wanted a prop for the empty space in the gallery so Stefan gave us a Crucifloat for the exhibition which is right next to my wall in the show. He was so cool to work with on this, everyone was from him to P-Rod to Louie Lopez - all these guys i’m friends with but also big fans of - they were all so down to just help out and spend some time to get a creative project going.
Talk to us about this photo of Guy?
That one was really cool - I was trying to figure out ways to reinvent a normal Polaroid photo. I heated them up with a blowdryer and cut the bottoms out and peeled them apart so the backing seperates from the emulsion so you’re left with a really sticky emulsion. While it was still wet i put it directly on the scanner which gave it this really crazy texture. When I scanned it in I was like “Holy shit this is not what I expected it to look like at all”. It was all melted pretty much. It’s fun to shoot Polaroids the way their intended to but you can throw some creative process in. I shot one with Louie Lopez where I shot three separate photos of him looking 3 different ways and then cut the Polaroids up and turned them into a weird panorama and the way that it all lines up has a really interesting look to it. It’s something that’s been done before but something that i’ve never done, which has been fun.
Do you shoot Polaroid outside of this project?
Yeah but I go back and forth - before they sent me their new I-2 camera I had an old SX-70 camera that I would take a lot of photos on. I’d go through the phases and you could tell whether I had a lot of money or not because I’d either be shooting a lot of Polaroids or I couldn’t afford film. I had a large archive of Polaroid photos already but this new camera has so much new technology like auto-focus which is just so cool. Being able to shoot in full manual mode and being able to light meter is crazy - it feels like you’re shooting a photo on a traditional film camera except you get the results in 5 minutes.
“Instant gratification is always nice, especially in a world where we thrive off it. You shoot a photo, you’re not sure how it’s going to come out but then the one you didn’t nail ends up being the most mental photo - you just look at it in a few minutes and you’re like damn how did I get that from that? ”
What’s it like in Paris right now?
While i’ve been on this interview there’s been so many attractive people walk past me that look so much better than I do - it’s fashion week in Paris baby. Everyone’s dripped to the core - they’ve got the coolest pants… motherfuckers. And so many people that were part of this project are out here. I was getting hit up last night while I was in bed, people being like “what you saying for tonight” and I just had to turn my phone on do not disturb because there’s so much shit going on.
If you’re one of those lucky fuckers that are in Paris right now, go check out Alex’s work in the Polaroid L’Habitat show on Thursday 6/20 at Gallery Bête.
