So the last 10 months have been focused on working closer to home, hence the title of this column, in preparation of the birth of my son Finn Maddox. My first real time away came last week when LUCEO held their biannual meeting in NYC. It was nothing if not a wild ride.
I was a little nervous about the trip, as I was leaving my wife to take care of herself and Finn alone. All of our family had left, and we had to rely on the good graces of our friends to help her out. I was also nervous about meeting everyone for the first time. When Eich called me back in November to tell me that I had been selected to join Luceo, at first I did not believe him. I thought, surely there must be some mistake. Then I had a sort of Woody Allen moment – in Annie Hall he quips (attributing Groucho Marx and Freud) “I would never want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” I began to doubt the reasoning and overall sanity of the members. Then I spoke with them individually by phone and collectively during our regular meetings via Skype, and I slowly began to see how I fit. But meeting everyone for these meetings was a different beast.
When I arrived to the loft late on Thursday, I was greeted with hugs and immediately I felt as though I had been with group for years. It was indeed a wonderful feeling. The first four days were very intense, but also very exciting. We discussed our plans for the year, met with a lot of people and covered a lot of ground.
Hours and hours of planning and brainstorming were broken up with meals out with friends and colleagues and moments of levity – which was essential in balancing out the immense difficulty of our task.
One of the best things we did was to spend a few hours at the end of each day reviewing the past year of each photographer. We each filled out a few page analysis of what we did, projects started and/or finished, things accomplished, things failed and then we showed a presentation of the past years body of work.
It was a time for critique, for sharing, for growth. It was also a time for looking at how we as a group could help one another with our own personal goals for the year. It was the best part of each day. Well except for the mornings when Slaby woke up early, went for a walk and brought back coffee for everyone.
On Saturday Finn had his one month birthday and on Wednesday my wife had her 34th birthday. Everyone helped me sing happy birthday to them.
Later in the week we made new portraits for the coming year and spent the final four days beating the pavement meeting with editors. It was such a new process for me meeting with clients as a group – and also really interesting listening to how we pitched one another’s projects: Banks discussing German’s project on the changes in Vietnam or Eich discussing Slaby’s project on the West as an idea that people appropriate and make their own. I really began to see how the idea of the group became so much more than the sum of its parts. And this idea seemed to really be catching on with editors.
We capped the week off with a group show titled “Make Do” with fellow collective MJR, at the gallery 25CPW on Central Park West. The show was beautifully curated by Gillian Tozer. In addition to the show, we had 200 limited edition saddle-stitched catalogues printed which were given away free to the first 200 people who arrived.
Our final evening was spent having dinner with multimedia talent, Brad Horn, followed by drinks with all our friends at a bar across the street.
It was an exhausting, but productive week-and-a-half. I was left tired, yet very grateful to be a part of such an amazing and thoughtful group of people. I am both deeply inspired and very hopeful for the coming year. Stay tuned for further wanderings, but a little closer to home.
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Daryl Peveto is a photographer who lives and works in Southern California. His column, “My Backyard” appears every other Monday. He is an Associate Member of LUCEO Images.
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