Henry Hargreaves is one of my favourite New Zealand success stories. The Christchurch-native was backpacking around Thailand in 2001 when he was scouted for a one-off modeling job, which turned into a full-blown career (counting Prada, Givenchy, Hermes, Kenzo, Jil Sander, YSL, Marc Jacobs and Lacoste campaigns among his wins), then in 2004, when he felt that the modeling work was drying up, he transitioned to photography.
Henry has now made a huge name for himself creating fine art from food, ranging from the comedic (deep fried electronic gadgets, and art galleries made from gingerbread) to the tragic (death row inmates’ final meal requests). His latest exhibition, Power Hungry, showcases the extreme disparity between the haves and have-nots throughout the ages using food as the metaphor. I sat down with Henry recently to chat about how to make a success of yourself in this modern world, and here’s what he had to say.
Talk me through the modeling trajectory.
Growing up in New Zealand we were never exposed to what was happening in high fashion in Europe, and the desirable male aesthetic was All Blacks and square jaws and big guys, so I was kinda surprised when I got scouted in Thailand because I was quite androgynous and wiry, but I checked it out and it seemed legit and I ended up doing a few jobs there and it paid for another month in Bangkok so I wasn’t complaining.
After that I flew to London and got a job in a pub paying £4.50 an hour, and the Thai guy sent through my pictures and encouraged me to take them round to agents. I visited some, got signed, and was sent to Milan a couple of weeks later for fashion week.
I literally thought that was going to be my only time in Continental Europe because I was so broke by this point but I got to Milan and booked all the big shows out there that first season: Gucci, Prada, Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana, then got flown to Paris to do Louis Vuitton and Kenzo, and then I booked the Prada campaign off the back of that, so it was over to New York to shoot that with Steven Meisel, and that was how it all started.
Then it was three years of the circuit and Tokyo and then ultimately I could sense that I was no longer opening the shows, I was no longer being booked exclusive, there was no longer a bidding war for me. I was a lot older than everybody coming up and I ultimately wanted to be the one taking the pictures, because I wanted to do something where I had control of my destiny as opposed to just hoping I was the right look at the right time.
Had being a photographer ever crossed your mind when you were back in New Zealand?
I did it at high school and I used to get the girls who worked in the restaurants to come and pose for me (laughs), but a photographer in New Zealand, to me, was someone who comes and takes portraits of a classroom of kids at a school, I didn’t really realise there was another realm. Then when I got involved in this I saw that it looked like an awesome job.
How much were modeling campaigns paying back then?
Between 10 and 30 thousand dollars, but after 9/11 it was less, and then when America invaded Iraq in 2003 it was less once again, and then it was like, ‘Oh, before the recession the money was so much better, etc etc.’ As with all things, the mentality was that there was always more money a few years earlier than when you were around.
What was your big break as a photographer?
We had a snowstorm in Williamsburg and as I went walking around there was nobody on the streets and it reminded me of that scene in The Empire Strikes Back in Hoth, and I thought wouldn’t it be funny to see Star Wars characters in the snow, so I did this thing called The Hipster Strikes Back, and had Boba Fett standing at the busstop and Luke in front of a gas station and ridiculous things like that, and I sent them into Gothamist and it went viral, and from that I remember seeing 20,000 hits the next day on my site and suddenly I started getting all these emails from people being like, ‘Hey totally unrelated to Star Wars, but I see you’re a photographer, can you shoot our cellphone cases?
And it showed me that I’d been waiting for the interesting things to fall into my lap rather than going out and creating them myself, and realizing that the internet is the best launchpad for all this. So I just decided to do things that interested me, and that was kinda how it began.
And then you got into food?
The food thing basically came about because I decided that I wanted to be a still life photographer — that’s where I could make money, I felt like I was better at it, and the supermarket just became the cheapest supply store because I could go in there and buy anything and do interesting things with it.
I started doing kinda lame stuff like trying to recreate Cezannes out of food, and then I did a few things that were a bit off beat and they got a lot of attention — like the prisoners’ last meals — and it was such a talking point, and I realized that food is such a great common denominator between people. Knowing how people relate to food, you can relate to them.
Also as a photographer you have to put yourself in a little bit of a corner, you have to be known for something and I just decided to be the guy who does crazy things with food. It was a bit of an untapped genre.
Let’s talk about your new exhibition.
Well I was really interested in how dictators and conquerors ate throughout the ages — I wanted to see how Genghis Khan ate compared with Hitler compared with Caesar compared with John Key (laughs), but as I was doing that I felt like I was humanizing these people, and it’s one thing to humanize someone who’s on death row, but another thing entirely to make the audience feel sympathetic with somebody who committed genocide.
And also as I researched I found that a lot of their food wasn’t that interesting, and I thought it would be more interesting to showcase these people as the symbol of power and juxtapose them with the have-nots. I did this in collaboration with Caitlin Levin, and we came up with the idea of doing it as a table for two.
She came up with the idea of shooting it low as if you’re at the table, so then if you’re at the poor side of the table you’re looking up at all that food, and if you’re at the privileged side, you can’t even see the poor side because you’ve got so much food.
Food was always such a technique of war and it still is with Hassad refusing international food aid, as is Kim Jung Il, basically these dictators will starve the people so they’re so weak that they can’t change the power balance. Even here in the States it’s not necessarily the lack of food but the lack of good, healthy food. So that’s what it was about.
What advice would you give to young artists?
I can really only say the things that have worked for me, like staying true to what you like. Then the other thing that was a real lesson for me modeling was that every model was a filmmaker or an actor or a writer, and there was always some grandiose thing they were doing, but nobody was ever doing anything. You realise that literally 99% of anything is actually being able to execute it. That’s where one of my strengths is, to actually be able to do something.
And I also saw Nick Cave play recently and afterwards there was a Q&A and somebody said to him, “You’re so prolific, how do you come up with your ideas?” And he said, “You never know if it’s a good or a bad idea until you do it. I’m just obsessed with doing things and then if it’s a bad idea I’ll try and distance myself from it, and if it’s a great idea I’ll embrace it.”
I also see my value as my next thing and not my last thing. People get so hung up on their portfolio and their track record, but I always think my next thing is going to be more interesting than any of this here, so stick with me.
And finally, don’t underestimate the power of just being a nice person.
Good call!
Check out Henry’s work, including his latest exhibition, Power Hungry, here!
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The post #2671 The Henry Hargreaves Q&A appeared first on Isaac Likes.