I have worked with Noah Kalina for several years now, beginning at Supreme, and now at Women. He is a master at manipulating natural light and augmenting it to make Women look beautiful.
Yesterday he emailed me about shooting a model, and we spoke a for a bit. He casually mentioned his YouTube Video.
Every day, Noah take a self portrait to document the day, and passage of time. These daily self portraits can be seen at: Every Day Noah Kalina. I was aware of the stills he had shot, and admired his dedication to pursuing this project as part of his everyday life.
I had no idea of how this project has gone from a private passion to become a phenomenon!
Noah is extremely modest.
He compiled YouTube video of images from January 11, 2000 - July 31, 2006. This video has been watched 12,122,954 times. That is amazing!!!!!!!! I feel so ignorant that literally millions of people had seen this film before me.
This project has been written about in New York Times, The Washington Post, inspired a Simpsons episode, exhibited at an exhibition at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne and been featured on VH1 Big in '06 awards.
I am happy to see Noah's work recognized by pop culture, and celebrated by the art community.
Noah is amongst the first photographers to recognize the beauty in models such as Valeria Dmitrienko, Heloise Guerin, Lisa Gregusson, Daiane Conterato and Cecilia Mendez
Valeria Dmitrienko, photographed January 24, 2008
Heloise Guerin, photographed October 26, 2007
Heloise Guerin, photographed October 26, 2007
Heloise Guerin, photographed October 26, 2007
Heloise Guerin, photographed October 26, 2007
Lisa Gregusson/Supreme, photographed June 2nd, 2007.
Daiane Conterato/Supreme, photographed May 27th, 2006
Cecilia Mendez/Supreme, photographed May 4th, 2006
Cecilia Mendez/Supreme, photographed May 4th, 2006.
The Simpons did a parody of Noah's project, featuring the life of Homer Simpson:
From the Washington Post:
He Oughta Be in Pictures
If you watched VH1's "Big in '06" awards show earlier this month, you might have noticed the random photos of stars leading into and out of commercial breaks. From Paris Hilton to Flavor Flav to Danny Bonaduce, they all had one thing in common: Noah Kalina. Who is Noah Kalina? He's the mastermind behind the Web site Noah K. Everyday -- a six-year (so far) archive of self-portraits -- and the viral video hit based on the project. VH1 asked Kalina to slightly modify his project for the awards show and the result is now compiled on Kalina's flickr stream.
Yesterday, Kalina and I e-mailed about what it's like being an Internet sensation, which stars played nice and why Will.i.am was kind of annoying:
Liz: Although you're probably sick of it, can you briefly describe the premise behind Noah K. Everyday?
Noah Kalina: I have been taking a photograph of myself every day since January 2000. It was originally just a photo project but about five months ago I saw a project done by a woman name Ahree Lee where she had taken a photo of herself every day for three years. It inspired me to do the same, so I put my photos together into a time-lapse and put it on YouTube. Within three weeks it became somewhat of an international internet sensation.
Liz: The flickr pix with celebrities -- how did you get them to pose with you? Were the pictures snapped over time or all at one event?
NK: That project was done backstage at the VH1 Big in '06 awards. I got a call from one of the producers of the show and they invited me to come out to Los Angeles and do this project backstage. A little hesitant, I asked if any of the celebrities would even know who I was. They assured me that my video was so big and such a huge part of popular culture everyone would know who I was. Of course that was not the case.
The concept was pretty straightforward. I would basically take my photo in the same fashion that I have done my everyday project, just with the celebrities in the frame. All of the photos would run as a time-lapse during the credits. I even sent them photos of my bedroom which they put as the background. I had a lot of creative control as to how it was to go down, so I was satisfied.
If you watch the show you basically see me between every commercial break, and then they run about eight seconds of the project at the end.
The funny thing is that they never explain it or even make mention of it during the show. If you never saw my video you would probably be scratching your head wondering who the hell I am. I think that was the best part.
Liz: How did you convince them to pose with you or were they already familiar with the phenomenon that is Noah K.?
NK: I just sat there while the producers wrangled all of the celebrities once they got off stage. It was funny hearing the producers trying to explain the project to the different celebrities. They should have had a TV playing my video so they could see what it was all about, but instead they had a black and white printout the front page of my everyday Web site. It was impossible to get the idea of who I was just by looking at this piece of paper. I wouldn't have even understood what they were talking about.
Just about everybody was a good sport since it was actually a legitimate part of the show. I only witnessed two stars decline the offer. They were Dominic Monaghan and Megan Mullally. The former was a disappointment because I am a big fan of "Lost," the latter, well, no big deal...
The only celebs that were actually familiar with the phenomenon that is Noah K were Weird Al Yankovic and Paris Hilton. How perfect is that?
Liz: Who was your favorite subject?
NK: I would have to say the Hulk Hogan and family. I think it's one of the best photos and they were all really nice people. It's too bad mom got cut out of the shot. After we took our shots, The Hulkster asked me "What made you start to do this project" And I said, "I don't know, I just thought it was a good idea." (That is my short answer, when I don't have a lot of time to get into it.) The Hulk shook his head and said, "It was a good idea... I think I am going to start doing that."
Liz: Any interesting stories/anecdotes from the photo shoot?
NK: After I did the photos with Fergie and Will.i.am, Fergie turned to me and started asking me questions about my project. She seemed genuinely interested which I thought was really cool, most of the other stars immediately walked away after we were done. But there is Will.i.am stepping over my answers not letting me speak. Apparently he just wanted to hear his own voice. So Fergie ends up walking away, and Will stood next to me and started talking to me for about five minutes about how we gotta "tax" the man and that YouTube is stealing all our money. I tried to explain to him that it was never about the money, but he wasn't buying it. He just kept saying "We gotta tax the man." I just shook my head and agreed. He finally had to go do something and let me alone.
Liz: Was it difficult to keep your trademark catatonic look in the pictures with the celebrities? I'd imagine it'd be a little more distracting than your normal solo self-portraits.
NK: I don't know if I would call it a catatonic look, I just consider it a blank emotionless stare. It really wasn't that difficult. I was really focused on what I was trying to do so I was able to block out all the distractions.
Liz: What is David Hasselhoff doing to you in the photo?
NK: I would like to think that he is calling KITT to come pick us up.
Liz: What's your day job?
NK: I am an artist and freelance photographer. I do a variety of work from portraits to landscapes to interiors. My work is often seen on Web sites and magazines. You can check out more of my work at http://www.noahkalina.com/ and http://www.interiors.noahkalina.com/.
Mario Lopez with Noah Kalina
Joey Lawrence with Noah Kalina
David Hasselhoff with Noah Kalina
Flava Flav with Noah Kalina
Danny Bonaduce with Noah Kalina
Dennis DeYoung with Noah Kalina
From the New York Times:
Look at Me, World! Self-Portraits Morph Into Internet Movies
By KEITH SCHNEIDER
NOAH KALINA flew to Switzerland last month to attend the opening of “We’re All Photographers Now,” an exhibition at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. The show is a survey of trends in digital photography, particularly portraiture, and Mr. Kalina produced its foremost example of how technology is changing the genre. His globally popular video “everyday” is composed of 2,356 daily self-portraits shot from Jan. 11, 2000, to July 31, 2006.
Mr. Kalina, 26, lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and earns his living photographing the interiors of Manhattan bars and restaurants. Ever since he posted “everyday” to YouTube in August, this six-minute film has generated a low-level conversation in photographic circles about its artistic merits.
But what makes “everyday” truly exceptional is how easy it was to make and how quickly it attracted a huge audience, said William A. Ewing, director of the Musée de l’Elysée, who selected it for the exhibition.
“Noah’s video represents a phenomenal amplification not just in what he produced and how he did it, but how many people the piece touched in such a short period of time,” said Mr. Ewing, the author of “Face: The New Photographic Portrait” (Thames & Hudson). “There is nothing comparable in the history of photography.”
“Digital technology, computers, software and the Internet multiply the number of people with access to taking and viewing pictures,” he added. “Once you buy the camera, there are almost no other costs. That is increasing the variety and creativity in how people take pictures, and what they do with them.”
“We’re All Photographers Now” (http://www.allphotographersnow.ch/) continues through May 30.
Mr. Kalina, like other photographers in the show, many of them amateurs, used a combination of digital tools and technical know-how that has become routine for his generation. By adroitly joining digital still photography, computer software and the Internet, he turned a student art project characterized principally by self-absorption into a global phenomenon.
“Everyday” succeeds in large part because it adheres to all three of the new principles of digital media, said Jonathan Lipkin, a professor of digital media at Ramapo College in New Jersey and the author of “Photography Reborn” (Abrams).
“The hallmarks of the new age of digital imagery are distribution, combination and manipulation,” Mr. Lipkin said. “The use of digital technology is especially revealing in portraiture. The digital camera has changed the genre. Before now it was just about impossible to do what Noah Kalina has done.”
Just one facet of the film project took real devotion: Mr. Kalina’s daily routine of snapping his own picture for nearly six years. The other part — transforming portraits that individually had attracted no attention into a film that is riveting — was almost too easy.
One afternoon in late August, prompted by a similar film of time-lapse portraiture made that month by the California graphic designer Ahree Lee, Mr. Kalina collected the digital self- portraits he had taken since he was a 19-year-old student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He downloaded them into the Windows Movie Maker software program on his desktop computer, spaced the portraits at an interval of six images per second, set the film to a shadowy and insistent piano soundtrack (composed and performed by Carly Comando, his girlfriend at the time) and wrote the credits and title.
Making the film took four hours. That’s all. Then Mr. Kalina, like millions of others of his generation for whom stylized digital self-portraits are an important personal message and a form of self-actualization, posted it on Aug. 28 to YouTube. (It can also be found on noahkalina.com.) The response, he said, was instantaneous and unnerving. Thousands of young people, who regard the Internet as a vast digital campfire, found “everyday,” shared links with their friends and built an audience that has reached 5.3 million and is growing by 10,000 per day.
“Until that moment it was always a still-photography project,” Mr. Kalina said. “A friend suggested that it could be a movie. I was never convinced it would really work until I saw Ahree Lee’s movie. Now there’s a whole group of people making these kind of films and posting them on the Internet.”
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the new age of digital portraiture is the ease with which photographers, professional or amateur, can so easily produce images, videos, sequences and other projects that are dramatic, fresh and interesting. “Digital technology has changed what portraits look like,” Mr. Lipkin said. “If you pay attention to Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and the other social Internet sites, you see right away how stylized the portraits are. How they are taken from odd angles and with interesting lighting. It’s the angle of the hand-held digital camera.”
Jonathan Keller, a 31-year-old multimedia graphic artist studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art outside Detroit, turned eight years of daily self-portraits into a video titled “Living My Life Faster” and posted it to his Web site (c71123.com/daily_photo). But his more significant contribution to the new form is his online archive of what he calls “passage of time” and “obsessive” photo projects.
Among the 40 projects on the site is Ms. Lee’s “me,” composed of more than 1,000 self-portraits taken from November 2001 to November 2004 and regarded as the first digital video portrait. Ms. Lee said she used a Nikon digital camera that had a flip screen so she could see herself while snapping the image. She used Photoshop software to align her eyes and After Effects software to create the animation. It took her 200 to 300 hours, she said, and on Aug. 8 “me” was posted on AtomFilms (me.atomfilms.com), an Internet site for independent filmmakers. She also posted it on YouTube, where it has attracted more than three million viewers.
“It would be possible to do this without digital technology, but it would be so much more difficult and expensive,” said Ms. Lee, 35, who lives in San Francisco (ahreelee.com). “If you use a film camera, you would have to buy rolls of film and get them processed, and do whatever you would need to do — and I don’t know what that is — to turn it into a film.”
Whether “me” or “everyday” or any of the other projects archived on Mr. Keller’s site qualify as art is in dispute in some quarters of the photography world. Richard Benson, a photographer, printer and professor of photography at Yale University since 1979, called them “a complete waste of time.”
“They are people who don’t know what they are doing and who celebrate themselves,” Mr. Benson said. “I find it completely boring.”
But Mr. Ewing and Mr. Lipkin say such views may reflect generational insecurity, prompted by the old-guard notion that good work that isn’t laborious isn’t worth much. Mr. Kalina’s “everyday” is a dramatic challenge to those conventions, Mr. Ewing said, because it breaks barriers, has helped to establish a new form of portraiture and sets a new standard of audience interest.
Mr. Kalina’s instinct for narrative makes the film work. The background is the room in which he’s living at the time. It changes episodically, producing visual interest and adding information. Ms. Comando’s soundtrack, which she now sells on the Internet, is appropriately portentous. Mr. Kalina doesn’t age, though at times he looks worn, and his haircut evolves through phases of short, long and unkempt. His gaze also doesn’t waver.
“He hypnotizes you with those eyes,” Mr. Ewing said. “The changing background and the changing hairstyle enhances a frenetic pace, the feeling of hurtling through space. But there is also a sense of a kind of dispassionate distance, the feeling of being the observer. Unlike a single digital image, the kind that appears on Flickr, in this film there is a sense of rapidity and infinite possibility.
“It’s a remarkable piece,” Mr. Ewing continued. “That’s why we ask in our show: Is this a revolution or just an evolution? The answer is it’s a revolution.”
