AFG

David Sherry - Group Show Invitation

David Sherry/ 032c "The Rocks"

David Sherry@afgmanagement

David Sherry/ 032c "WEIMAR, NY"

David Sherry@afgmanagement

W Magazine/Editor's Blog

Photographer Ari Marcopoulos's portraits have added the visual dimension to many a W feature—he's shot James McAvoy, Robert Downey, Jr. and John Travolta, among others for us—so we were intrigued to learn about his latest project, a nine-minute film for the Natural Resources Defense Counsel about saving the world's oceans, featuring legendary big wave surfers such as Twiggy Baker, Brian Conley and Greg Long.

We caught up with Marcopoulos (above), a dedicated surfer himself who makes his home in Sonoma, CA, to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on his film, Seventy-One Percent of Earth.

That dramatic voiceover sounded awfully familiar. How did you get Peter Coyote to narrate the film?
Peter is a friend of a friend; when he heard about the film he said that he'd do it right away. We sent the narration to the studio and he just read it straight for the first time ever and then he left it like that. It's unbelievable. Apparently he does that with every narration, even if the script is much longer. It's really something.

What are your favorite moments in the film?
I love the aerial shots. We used a remote-controlled air balloon and made a contraption so that the camera could hang from it. I'm pretty proud of those shots.

As a surfer yourself, have you noticed environmental changes in the ocean?
When it rains, you can't get into the water because of the runoff from pesticides- the water is pretty toxic. The tricky part with the ocean is that sometimes it's hard to notice that there's anything wrong because it's such a large body of water. The surfers notice it. They see the changes.

After you shot Liev Schreiber for W last year, you two went surfing together near his place in Montauk. Was he a good surfer?
I don't know, I can't say that I was really was paying attention—I was struggling too much myself!

Photographer David Sims also surfs—do you see any connection between surfing and photography?
I don't know David Sims, but I know a lot of artists who surf. Surfing is a creative, improvisational endeavor, which I think art is too.

W Magazine

Ari Markopoulos/Legocalypse now

LEGOCALYPSE NOW

by Ari Marcopoulos

Marilyn Minter/Green Pink Caviar

"I was shooting stills of models with long tongues swirling and sucking bakery products from under a pane of glass. I wanted to make enamel paintings along the idea of 'painting with my tongue'. My makeup artist shot some short videos during the shoot just to see how it would look. The low definition videos looked so good that we made plans to do a professional high definition video. This made sense to me as I have made both billboards and produced a commercial advertising a painting show in 1989."

- Marilyn Minter

Check out Marilyn's "Green Pink Caviar" here

David Sherry/V Magazine

For the last six years or so, David Benjamin Sherry's photographs have been making quite a splash in the art world. And for the last year and a half he's been making waves in the fashion world as well. And now thanks to Neville Wakefield and Shea Spencer of AFG Management (an agency known for helping art photographers into the commercial world), you can see David’s work in the pages of the world's premiere fashion magazines, such as Vogue Hommes International, i-D, VMAN, GQ Style, and New York magazine. Now in the process of putting together his first book of photographs, the artist reflects on the dualities of artwork and commercial work, and the source of his inspiration.
Read more here

Ari Marcopoulos/NRDC

HELP THE NRDC PROTECT OUR OCEANS

Check out the full film Ari did for the NRDC

Ari Marcopoulos/Arena Homme

Ari Marcopoulos,
documenter of west Coast youth
- a journey through his life and work
Photographs by Ari Marcopoulos

TAR Magazine

TAR Magazine new issue is out now!