Brad Troemel isn't just another photographer who's been inspired by babes and skateboarding (although Soulja Boy and celebrities' vaginas do it for him too).  He's into rethinking art-space, recontextualizing, and the "Blink 182 effect." We're proud to be speaking with him, he's damn well been doing his homework.


Chief Magazine: How did you get interested in photography?

Brad Tromel: My sophomore year of high school I was trying to take all the classes I could with this girl who I had a crush on at the time and photography was one of them. I copied her assignments and failed the class, then I found out that most people don't use the plastic wrap filter. I also found out that art could be ugly and cool and about things I was interested in at the time-babes and skateboarding. The next photo teacher I had put me in a back room with an old Mac computer by myself for two years. It was good because I could look at all the Larry Clark or Joel Peter-Witkin pictures I wanted to without having to look over my shoulder. That "loner in a dark room hunched over a computer all day" production style continues on to this very day.

How would you classify the photographs you make?

Bob, are you rock or folk?

Would you talk about your inclination towards multiple styles?

I just try to reproduce whatever the original idea is as faithfully as possible. I think a lot of artists, especially photographers, try to make all their wildly different thoughts fit the same aesthetic. I call it the "Blink 182 effect."

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Is the era of the photographic print over? Has it been replaced by the photographic image?

The print isn't over, but it could be. Ali G interviewed Noam Chomsky and asked "Why don't we just invent a new language and use that?". Museum walls could be 100 ft digital screens presenting photos for a month at a time, then the screen would change and show the next exhibit. Museums and galleries are built on objects. They allow for minimal viewership and ownership, two things that keep value high. The physical embodiment of these images are what lets them retain control over art(ists). Image ownership on the internet is like trying to claim a snowflake in the ocean.  Switching from the print being the incarnation of a photograph as art to the image as the incarnation would also mark the end of photography as property. All those $60,000 Rineke Djikstras collectors own wouldn't be worth much if museums started saying they were only going to project or digitally display photos from now on. It would mean liquidating every photographic print collection everywhere. I'd imagine there'd be some resistance to that. That kind of sounded super "the man is keeping us down!". Sorry. It's not a one way street. Artists are also reliant on limited ownership and objects. All that money galleries would no longer be making would be the same money artists would no longer be making. The era of the print as the primary entry point for people to find out about someone is over, though. Everyone finding art goes on the internet now which is great because it gives everyone an equal place to start- both the artist and the viewer. After that, maybe the validators we have aren't so bad.

What do you mean?

A little bit of the right bureaucracy is better than anarchy. If who was the best artist was just based on number of viewers or who had the loudest site, Cobrasnake would be the greatest artist of our generation.

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Where do projects start?

Random songs or images haunt me for a while. I go through extreme obsessions. I had Soulja Boy stuck in my head for two months. I'd waking up saying "Youuuuuuuuuu." I was reading about Juggalos for half a year then I had to go live with them and find out what they were like. When I space out I murmur Jesus over and over to myself. Usually they're about purging myself of random obsessions.
 

Do you think they are keeping up with the amount of images produced? Are they able to actually consume them?

James Brown put out 40 albums in the 60's and people could still juke to that. When I'm old and wrinkly I can think about these things, for now I just need to make everything I can think of.

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