Most of my restaurant coworkers now know that I am an artist; but during my first months at Scarpetta many did not. When I revealed a large drawing of coworker Svetlana in May, 2018 it became more widely known. Michael Allan Gallego a food runner coworker is also a professional DJ. I know him as Michael. Many of our latin colleagues simply call him Gallego; but the DJ world knows him as Allan. He approached me in the summer of 2018 about maybe producing some kind of an image that he and others in his music community might use at some of their events during the coming Art Basel. At the time I was overwhelmed at the prospect. I recall saying I might consider trying to create some kind of an image but I did not want to commit to an actual commission. I liked the idea of maybe capturing a DJ’s face in some kind of heavy shadow. There is something about the idea of focus on controls in the posture of DJs that does fit into my wheelhouse. There are often headphones, and opportunities to show someone wired into a control board might also arise.

 

Michael and I would discuss it in passing from time to time but it took awhile before I got serious. When I happened to overhear that he was going to be doing a local show at the club Treehouse, In decided that this might be the place have a go at it. Once upon a time I used to be heavily outfitted with all manor of analog/film camera equipment; however, I was in hiatus during the time when photography transitioned to digital. I have almost no equipment. And working in this low light was going require some specialized tools. I put questions to long time friend Jim Forni about what he would use. I began to look into equipment rental. I also started to chat up another work colleague Raul Marques, who is also a photographer. Eventually Raul and I decided we would go to Treehouse and work the shoot together with his equipment. There is no way I could have done this without Raul.

 

Anyway, the environment was a lighting nightmare. Whenever I thought I had a shot, some strobe light would go off - or the spot which had been lighting up the subject would suddenly cut out. Focus was hard. Plus I am really not much of a photographer. Deep focus tends to be my preference and this club environment was not the place to achieve that. We took over 800 shots and to my surprise many came out well composed. Michael has a unique haircut; however, in his opinion he had been having a bad hair day so his cap almost never came off. This meant that there was almost always too much shadow on the face. Columbian DJ Kriss Salas was with Michael that evening; and there were moments I almost considered making her the subject. Raul certainly did. But ultimately it was a brief moment of Michael in a less well lit pose that appealed to me. I had been working through the draft for Helen 1964: Picture Books at the time of this shoot so an outstretched arm was bound to catch my attention.

 

But the photo I chose did not have everything I wanted. I had to manufacture a composition with wiring that would complement this pose. The chaos of wiring (it’s like hair or grass) is a hard thing to capture in my medium so I did struggle with this for a while. Another problem was the way that Michael’s face dissolved into the blackness of the club background in the source photo. Plus there was a plant in the way. I wound up taking several photos of him in profile in the kitchen of Scarpetta to try to figure this out. Eventually I just kind of winged it by “feel” using that Ralph King peripheral vision skill that I often reference.

 

The low light values look great in the photo; but I realized eventually that I would need to bring them up at least 2 steps for the drawing. Even so the definition of these fields of value wound up kind of muddy. Thank heaven for some of the extreme highlights.

 

I never did finish this for that Art Basel deadline. The texture of the Chanel suit in Picture Books kept me chasing my own shadow for months. Plus I had Dialeysi, an actual paid commission from another coworker. The initial camera work was sized in a way I eventually realized would be unworkable (it was to small to get the wiring) Of Whom Hyam was something I started as the camera work was redone in my mistaken belief that it would be a quick project. But nothing is ever quick with me. Then I seriously injured my back. In short, it took over a year to finally finish. By the time I was done I had already completed another quick color portrait of Michael in his restaurant uniform that I gave to fellow coworker Everson Joseph as a going away present to remember the restaurant by.

 

I do think the result is successful at rendering what I had hoped. But I also think that on the page or on a computer screen the extreme horizontal dimension diminishes the left half of the composition. My experience of it is far more satisfying face to face.