Ed Zipco

Ed Zipco carries his camera everywhere he goes.  But that's not to say preparation is his secret.  Lord only knows how he captures some of these images, from Brooklyn to Hong Kong and most places in between.


Is Ed Zipco your real name?

Yep. Anywhere you see the name Zipco, you can damn well assume some relation. I've got a lot of family out there. Most are into some pretty bad news shit, which makes for a fine time for most involved.

So you grew up in Florida? What's that like?

Life in Florida started off pretty boring, kind of like living on the suburban outskirts of a swamp, the kind that holds its breath til the broke-down carnie comes back to town. It's half inhabited by swamp dwellers who gave up them injun/cajun roots to go mall walking and the beach bums that sell propane they steal from the boatyard. And these were the people who decided how we'd spend our daylight. That is, until a group of us decided to change all that.

At 12 years old, we were fueled by equal parts modern chemistry, older bothers who carved SLAYER into their chests and the kind of sticky fingered rebellion that came from zero fear of exile. So we started building weapons in our garages and practicing to become young arsonists. We were violent, strange and creative, hopelessly naive and primarily dependant on, and my apologies for repeating myself, modern chemistry. And speed metal.

I think a great deal of freedom came from the ability to rebel against the environment itself. I hated Florida. I wanted nothing more than to take the people I loved and the pills that got me through the day and start over in the desert. Or in a major city. Or to go and live in that strange combination of both, that city in the desert, ether binging until my eyes turned sour and we all bloated like lizards in the sun, our child brides beside us, long dead from exposure. That was the dream. But I was just a kid then. I was just learning how to dream. Dreams at that age are always start off weird and off putting.

At it's center, it was the feeling that the worst anyone could do was kick us out of school, or the house, or the state. And we didn't really want to be in any of those things, so the threats became meaningless. Like suspending a student because he skips school too often. "Because you broke the rules and stole, here it is for free." and so on. Watching friends walk in and out of juvie, certainly helped the feeling that there were no consequences to our actions.

I think what made it so powerful, was that there were so many of us thinking the same thing. The end result of all of this was the local high school was forced to the brink of having to close its doors to public students.

We became a "Tier 2" school seemingly overnight. Armed police officers at the end of every hallway. They appropriated a large office, then a classroom, then a wing of the school for In-School-Suspensions. An In-School-Suspension is when a student is removed from the regular class schedule and is essentially jailed on campus until the end of the day. No one thinks for a second that you should be taught a thing in there. So they'd lock us all in the same room, where we could hang out and do drugs whenever the teacher turned his back. And all I had to do to get there was push a kid down the stairs or start a fire. It was an exciting time.

In the four years I spent getting kicked out of and into the 3 local high schools, the death count spiked in my graduating high school from 5 deaths my freshman year to low double digits throughout, finally peaking my senior year to a death count in the twenties.

Florida seemed like the end. That's an exciting kind of birth any way you slice it. I was happy to leave, but I visit.

Clearly you survived Florida, whats the secret? 

Loyalty. The kind that signs me up for your problems and signs you up for mine. With enough brothers, you're unstoppable. Thanks to my parents messing around, I have 5 brothers that share blood. The way I live my life has given me another 10 or so. I'd bleed all over the street for those son's of bitches.

I'd say the secret to surviving anywhere worth a damn is maintaining loyal friends. Get that through your head as soon as possible in life.

Anyone that isn't loyal to the end should be put down like an animal. (Things have calmed down a lot in my life, but loyalty is still the only thing that matters.)

My other secret to survival was blind, dumb, self serving luck. Superstition. If two kids die Friday night and everyone wants to go out again on Saturday and stir up some of the same shit, I would usually opt my ass out of that nonsense and over to a girl's house.

Bad things come in threes. And other such utterances.

You’ve been around the block a bit, right? Traveling here and there, whats the most indispensable item to have when tromping through Asia or Europe or the USA? And don’t say rubbers.

I'll break it down by continent.

USA?
A full beard. People trust a man who wears a beard. it reminds them of what men used to look like when America was made out of hammered shit and riveted steel and we weren’t all completely numb to the touch. Their dads might have beards. Their father's father damn well has one. And that bastard's a survivor. Hell you might even get to meet him. And that guy's got a drunken story to tell, if he’s worth a damn.

A beard is almost always a good idea in the USA.

Asia?
American dollars. You can buy a good man's god damn soul for a pile of American dollars. The amount you would normally find stuffed into a purple g-string could buy you some poor bastard's car in Asia.

And by Asia, I don’t mean Japan. I mean poor, like we don’t know poor, third world, "what’s a computer?" Asia. So more specifically... like Laos. Basically Laos. Or Cambodia. Or parts of Thailand. Vietnam seems to be doing pretty damn well to be honest. Jesus, its like an Asian Paris back-lit through a damp silk fog. I love Vietnam. So many bullet holes. It’s  beautiful there. And the women look like melancholy angels in their white silk gowns, coasting by effortlessly in bicycle packs that run in the hundreds. Stunning.

Japan?
Shave that beard you foreign jackal, you look like you're 45. And they don’t give a shit about your American dollars. Carry a camera. And a flask. To be honest you should just bring along an extra liver. They drink like god damn fish.

Europe?
Hash. Just carry hash. The international language of hash doubles as a language of love. Papers. Always have papers. And a bottle of wine. And a lighter. And a nice jacket might help get you laid a little bit. They want you to be the crazy American. Play the part, its more fun anyways. Dance for the organ grinder, dance.

Cuba?
Right back to American dollars. CARRY SOME OF THAT. Hide some in your socks. Hide some in your human pocket if you have to. Also, just as habit, always carry your own booze. They have two prices for everything , and the amount they charge rich white scum is completely appropriate.

Don’t think for a second that you should pay it.

Befriend a local as soon as possible. A dude your age is the way to go. Let's say you have 600 dollars to last 2 weeks. That’s like coming to New York with 60,000 and you have to spend it in three hours. If you put that money in your buddy’s hand and have him buy booze and food, it costs literally fractions of pennies on the dollar. Don’t give it to him all at once or you won't have money for bribes once he takes off. You'll need money for bribes. It's just like anywhere else.


On your website, you got pictures of musicians, friends, animals, landscapes, and the homeless, what gets you off the most?

I like it when a face has character.  Or when you really capture who someone is at that point in time. It's hard to see it when you see them in person, you get a feeling and you know so much makes up who they are, to you, to other people, to themselves. So it's really exciting when you can capture that in a frame of their life. Like you just summed a part of them up in a look. That shit bugs me out when it happens.

I like portraits. I like the temporary. I like catching things in a shot that are literally or figuratively in the air. Like a moment. I thought for a while that I would really like to photograph people really beating each other badly with sticks or bats, like if i could sneak in and watch some "Kumite" but I think that might have its own challenges.

I’ve taken to photographing women lately. Something about that feels good. It feels positive and good, which isn’t something I photograph a lot. It's new to me and I’m really starting to like it. The intimacy of that is pretty alluring.

Mind you, I still love the "true grit" of photographing bizarre animals, road kill, one eyed dogs, gunfire, scumbags and so on. Fun is fun.


About that naked man with elephantitis of the balls is that just New York or is that something else entirely? He looks like a mannequin.

Yeah, he looks like a melting wax figure. He goes around to certain openings, always asking permission before he arrives. He feels he helps to make the scene. And he does. He helps to make the scene absolutely fucking disgusting. He drips.

Some of your captions are down right mean and dirty. Hilarious, but callous and borderline-racist. Has anyone ever told you that?

Actually one of my friends who I’ve grown really close to, Joey Royale, took me aside after meeting me for the first time and asked if I was Anti-Semitic. He had seen my website and I had said some inflammatory things about the Hassidic problem as I think I referred to it on the site. I told him that I wasn’t and we eventually laughed it off. We’ve become really good friends, the man is a damn genius. The Lonesome Doves is one of the best bands I’ve ever seen. So at the end of the day, luckily, he bought my death bed recant.

Also, for a little while I was dating a girl who was offended on multiple levels by some of the things I wrote, so upset that she threatened to break up with me over them. I was so upset with her over her over that, I almost broke up with her. Recently she told me I'll die alone. So clearly her sense of humor has improved drastically.

What are you up to these days?

I got a book deal with Thames and Hudson, to write The Adventures of Darius and Downey, a book of short stories from the past of the two street artists. They're brilliant.

Also I have a Cartoon in development called HAWKTOWN! which will be premiering some short 2-3 minute animations on YouTube.com sometime in 2008.

I shoot for Vice, and I provide a fair amount of their Dos and Dont's.

Thats all the legit stuff for now, the rest all falls under Zipco Industries. Which should be starting up in early 2007. Exciting, exciting.

If I gave you a round-trip ticket to anywhere airplanes fly, where would you go?

The Island of Macao. Its an island off the coast of China. I may be mistaken but its either that island or another one off the coast of Korea, that is the international home of Horse Fighting, the final frontier of animal abuse and gambling shenanigans. Some things you have to see to believe. I would sell street dick a quarter inch at a time to get over there.

As far as that last sentence... I have no idea what the hell that means, but it sounds pretty damn serious, which, allow me to assure you, I am.

Website

http://www.edzipco.com
www.ZipcoIndustries.com

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