Kai Regan is a photographer, new media gangster, and overall creative hurricane. He’s photographed the grimiest of lower east side subjects to the most pristine iPod commercials. His portfolio is extremely broad. Behold THE PHOTO below which spawned a million conversations and shout-out’s… a proper time-capsule of downtown New Yorks artists, DJ’s, hoodlums, graffiti-heads, filmmakers, designers, graphic artists, cool chicks, skateboarders, blah blah blah. Now you can purchase the portrait for your bookshelf so you can pull it out one rainy day, look back, laugh, and think, “that was so 07!”.
(Click into this photo to see it bigger)
Jauretsi: This iconic group shot of NY’s creative community has traveled the world extensively thru several magazines and art shows. Explain the impetus of this one “money shot” — who came up with the idea and why?
Kai Regan: The idea of the photograph was about showing everyone — ourselves included — as the NYC DOWNTOWN COMMUNITY. It was documenting our history together. It was part of Aaron Bondaroff’s [aka A-ron's] grand master plan to let the world recognize what the wierdos do… and why it’s important. We tried to show the world the timeline of where we come from and how far we have come….Never not working, or not.
Explain the the co-creators and curators that helped breathe life into the book?
The book was a collection of photographs that I have been taking over the past 5 years of all the people I hang with, work with, and am inspired by. I was talking to A-Ron about the Off Off Bowery show at Colette a couple months ago, and he was like ‘you should do a book’…I said ‘sure’, so we bookended the book with 2 movie theatre shots — past and present. The cover image was from the set of the Rich Girls music video [by The Virgins] which had a natural tie-in. Aaron did the casting and got the community involved in that with us. Then Tony Arcabascio whom has always been there for me creatively said he would design it, and he actually found the theme of the book …. It was truly a friends and family project through and through.
Any special events to launch the book where we can see the large portrait in its full glory? How can one purchase the book?
Colette in Paris has the full scale portrait in its store now…Otherwise you have to wait for the next Off Bowery Productions Event. But you can buy it at Oh-Wow.com
($32 at oh-wow.com/loveable)
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