|
"IM GONNA SHOOT ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER" I am meeting Eric, a young Los Angeles based paparazzo, at Andrea Zittel's Eagle Rock A-Z house which I am renting for the month of February. Eric has no idea who Andrea Zittel is, nor Elmgreen & Dragset for that sake. Our names might be familiar to a very small group of people interested in contemporary art, but utterly unknown to the millions following the lives of the celebrities that Eric tails day in and day out, all year round. Admittedly, I've never heard of half of the presumably very famous people that Eric tells me about. I'm not so interested in them. I wanna hear about day to day paparazzi reality, what's it like to be this one link in the long chain that is celebrity-life mediation. ID: Eric, would you mind introducing yourself? EB: Well, I'm Eric Brogmus, B - R - O - G - M - U - S , I'm 22, I've got a little bit of college, not much, I haven't really had the need for it yet. ID: Do you think you will? EB: Yeah. I mean, if I find something I really, really, really want to do that I need a solid education for I might go through it, but as of right now I haven't really found anything. Taking pictures isn't that hard – it's just a lot of work – to get your name out there you know. ID: So you don't have an education as a photographer? EB: I have some training, but not like a degree. I have taken some classes, but nothing really focused. I've just been working, just shooting. I basically taught myself how to take photos, starting with point-and-shoot cameras and then this job has taught me so much. Shooting celebrities you have to shoot fast. You have to know what to do when the light is this way or the light is that way, you have to know how to change a camera instantly and so on. ID: Did you grow up here in LA? EB: Yeah, I was born here and then we moved to Massachusetts for four years or so and then we came back, so I've pretty much lived here my whole life. ID: I guess growing up in Los Angeles must have influenced your choice of work. After all it is the place to be in order to photograph celebrities. [...] Katalogauszug |