When Cameron Pagett started his photo project “Girls and Summer,” he set out to capture pictures of women that would dig deeper than the standard male-gaze-y photos we normally think of connected to that phrase. He didn’t want more vacant, carefree images of women in bikinis. He longed to delve beneath the surface.
The women Pagett encountered lived in a world which he wasn’t a party to, and he found himself endlessly intrigued by their lives. Eventually, he realized that through photography he could get to know his subjects and maybe even capture some bit of the spark that made them glow. Through pairing interviews with his pictures, he began to create a more rounded narrative experience.
As Pagett photographed more and more women, he began to see how special the series was, and an exhibition started forming in his mind. Blending music (one of Pagett’s huge influences) with his photos, he created an immersive experience that captured the feelings of youth, our concept of femininity, and the impermanence of summer. An original score by Nick Rattigan tied the hybrid photography show / concert together.
Pagett’s images catch a fleeting glimpse of his subjects inner workings. His photographs invoke the vibrancy of the season, but also present us with a sense of loss — a longing for the warmth, the carefree days, and the vague sense that youth is forever slipping out of reach.
I spoke with Pagett recently and he shared his excitement over the buzz about his show. As a finalist in the Copenhagen Photo Festival, he hopes he will be chosen to remount the experience in Denmark this summer.
I just heard you’re one of the finalists for the Copenhagen International Photo Festival! Do you know how many finalists there are?
They’ve narrowed it down to 16. I believe that they’re taking ten, so I should find out in the next week. This was my first time ever applying to a major festival, so it’s really an honor.
Your exhibit is called “Girls and Summer.” What your inspiration was behind that?
In Copenhagen, summer is literally when people have fun. It’s freezing cold the rest of the year. So, it’s something that’s looked forward to but has an expiration date. That’s what summer is to many people. So what I wanted was to get the coffee shop girl, and talk to her and find out what is actually going on with her, what’s going on in her life, and sort of journalistically get the full story. And then take pictures that reflect how she relates to not only being a woman but also within the summer season.
Music goes hand in hand with the photos in your show. Can you talk a little about that?
Music inspired the work and pretty much fuels everything that I do with my visual artwork. (At the show) we had four really cool bands play and all of them had a part in the whole entire journey.
Then my exhibit was left, and my exhibit actually also functions as a musical set. It’s a trip for sure. There are three different transitions. The first three minutes is the opening stage. Then the middle part is kind of a party atmosphere, and then the ending is very nostalgic especially in regards to the finale. I stack all portraits at the end because I wanted to leave everyone with this wonderful wave of different feelings, but also very beautiful feelings.
How many subjects did you have?
Eighty-seven. (Within the show) there’s still life, there is portraiture, and then there are shoots.
So there was one big shoot that I did at a summer cottage right before I left to Denmark. With that shoot, I went through (and recreated) different pictures of summertime from the 1920’s. I was trying to find those scenes that rest in your mind, that you’ve seen over and over but you don’t actually take the time to really enjoy or to appreciate.
But actually more often than not, some of my best subjects came from meeting people at music festivals, and interviewing them afterwards. Some really cool friendships actually have arisen through that.
What quality about the subjects you met at music festivals drew you in?
I like people who have a very natural confidence and subtlety about them. People that, they don’t have to try to be the light of the room, they are just by virtue of being themselves. I am really really really inspired by authenticity and by truthfulness. It’s actually one of the major themes (in the show).
I was always looking for those people that I could feel that vibe from. Like this one Polish girl, Alex Warchol. I met her at a rave. This girl is so fantastic, she had her own style, she had her own way of dancing. She was not interested in being the center of the room, but everything she touched was like light, it was amazing. And then I actually got to sit down and talk to her and I ended up learning some wonderful things about her, so why not get her portrait?
It was kind of like finding that person who I felt already fit the scope of what I was looking for artistically. And then just getting to know them and understanding their memories and putting those together into a cohesive work.
With each subject, you interviewed them and then had those interviews inform the pictures you took. Do you have any examples of how an interview inspired a specific picture?
Yeah, the two are inseparable. Like with Lea Tolstrup, I met her at a coffee shop. She was wearing this really cool tiger print sweater, and she had her hands behind her head and she was taking a drink of beer. I got this really cool picture of her in the back. Then I talked to her. She had been through some breakups and so we were actually able to go through places in the city that were the places she goes for refuge, and shoot in those really tiny areas.
It was always like, “Where was the place that you feel comfortable?” and let’s do what works best.
Why did you shoot in both Los Angeles and Copenhagen? What made you fall in love with Copenhagen?
Well, I am half Danish for one. I think that people who are a little bit Danish always have a real drive for Copenhagen. It’s a wonderful place, it’s a neat place to be young. Kind of a wonderful country. Denmark will ruin your life. You should never go, because if you do, leaving is always really difficult. You get like anxiety, like oh my god, I’m going to have to drive a car. I won’t be able to ride my bicycle everywhere. What am I going to do with myself? I can’t drink ten beers at lunch.
I think that the main thing with Denmark for me is the visual art. I love, love Scandinavian design. The simplicity with the tiny little touches that make things so beautiful. Taking care of things and the beauty that comes from things that are fading away. It’s actually something that you get a lot from Copenhagen. It’s very charming, it’s very clean, but if there is like nick in the door or if there is like a little hole in the sculpture or something that adds to the character of the city, it’s never taken away. There is not going to be someone out there painting the door the next day. Charm is allowed to exist.
And then in LA, it’s the vibrancy of the people. And our music scene here is unlike anything you can get anywhere else. And it’s literally what keeps me alive in LA, the music scene. It pretty much influences me with all of my visual art.
What got you into the music scene? Have you always been a huge music fan? Or did that sort of happen along the way?
As a kid, I grew up at the beach, so we had live bands, like Pennywise was around back then. They were kind of like our local band. But I really got into music when I was eighteen-nineteen. I played keys in a band. But then I was gone for like four years because we had like a scene, but it kind of faded, as music scenes do. Then Hedi Slimane came and started revising the underground music scene on like a big level. I love Hedi Slimane designs. I’ve been following him since he was in Berlin.
There were these clips of bands that keep doing these visual campaigns, and I’m like man this is really good. I’m like oh crap they’re going to play at the Echo. I haven’t been there in like three years, there is good music back around. So, I started looking and looking and I took a picture of Staz Lindes, the head singer of The Paranoids, and it got like three thousand likes, and then after that all of the sudden people were asking me to come shoot their stuff. And then sooner or later, I was shooting all the time and making really, really good friends. There is a really good camaraderie within the scene. It’s kind of morphed this whole entire thing, I could never ever have foreseen.
There’s a feeling of a DIY thing here like just get on it and if you have an idea do it. Pursue it. And stop thinking about it. If you want to shoot pictures, get a camera. If you want to be a musician, get a guitar. Go for it. Don’t look back.
You can check out more of Cameron’s work at his website: www.sklauridsen.com
