“I was 8 or so when I began to take an interest in magazines. Namely, my father’s Playboys and Penthouses, along with my mother’s Vogues. Oddly enough, they weren’t that different from one another. The 70s provided an aeuthestic bonanza. Freedom, innocence, art, creativity. . .the hippie-love generation clearly had worked its way into the arts and more specifically, photography. Symbolizing much of this was my mother, Bambi. Or at least that was her nickname, what everyone called her. Nobody ever bought the fact that she was my mother. Big, bad, brown bed head. . .huge doe eyes. . .she was a darker, sexier version of a young Bridgette Bardot. The fact that she had a closet full of mini skirts that didn’t even cover her ***, standard attire as she would walk me to school most days, certainly didn’t help to convince anyone that we were related. And if we were, she would have obviously had to have been my sister. . .hell, half the time I didn’t even buy the fact that she was my mother. So, my earliest vision and understanding of beauty was a kinda soft-focused, brown-haired, doe-eyed, hippie-love child. . .Bambi. A term I would often use later in life as a way to sum up a culture, a time when photography rocked. Rocked with beauty, sex and creativity.
Let’s jump ahead a bit. In and around 2000, after one wild ride from the 70s through the 90s, two planes crash into two buildings and nothing is ever the same again. The stock market crashes. Couture buyers disappear. Supermodels are all too expensive. The internet takes off, along with digital photography. . .and people like Terry Richardson are actually celebrated and websites such as Facebook and MySpace create a forum for a million knockoffs. Add the fact that Avedon, Newton, Ritts etc. etc. all passed away around the same time. . . well, all this guaranteed us a bleak and visually ugly moment in history. Essentially, the last decade.
So, here it is, 2008 and Terry Richardson is actually taking the odd decent picture. Flashy-trashy is dying. American Vogue is no longer the bible of fashion but Italian Vogue, Numero and Visionare are. Quality is coming back. It’s gonna be a good time for photography. A good time for me. Bambi seems to be coming back.”
There is no need me to tell you where to locate Chad Muller but, if you insist, do check
CHADMULLER
http://chadmuller.com
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