Communication Arts

Jody Dole by Larry Frascella Communication Arts A photographer known for his technical expertise, Jody Dole has never been afraid to step up to the plate when it comes to the acquisition of new technology whether that includes G3 Macs, photo tweaking software, digital cameras or amazingly enough, his own Iris printer. (He was one of the first private individuals the country to purchase an Iris printer for his studio) His technological mettle. along with what he calls " dedication to his subject," often leads to images of startling luminosity and veracity. And it's garnered him an ever lengthening client list featuring such prestigious names as American Express, 3M, DuPont, Seagrams, Time Warner, AT&T, The New York Times and more.. Surprisingly, the 41 year old Dole does not consider himself a tech - head first and formost. "Its all about the development of the senses," he says. "On one level, my son calls me the George Jetson of photography because I have a Nikon digital camera where the pictures pop up on the camera screen as your taking them. But at the same time, I work from a very primitive instinct and get more inspiration sitting in Indian ruins in Arizona than sitting down with a computer manual. My divine inspiration, if you want to call it that does not come from the computer era." Dole is a speed talker and a man of immense energy. He works from an extra apartment converted for his studio in Greenwich Village overlooking the Hudson River and lives several floors above with his wife Abbe and two children. His studio is very basic - white walls, wood floors - and filled with stuff. He has a huge library filled with ten thousand volumes of vintage photography and design books (including the classic Steichen the Photographer with text and a signature by Steichen and Carl Sandburg). He has piles of containers holding "fossils, stones and bones" and other objects he's brought back from the Southwest and around the world to photograph. And of course he has the equipment: cameras, lights, computers, monitors, optical drives, scanners, laptops, and even, yes, his own Iris printer. By Dole's own admission, he is acquisitive - although he feels, lately, that things are changing. "I have tons of equipment," he says "and God knows I can get more. But I don't want more. I want less. and more free time to use it." Dole has been on an incredible roll for the past five or six years: Not only because of his vast client base but because of the way he's leapfrogged from one electronic level to another. The Dole studio is always state-of-the-art. And he doesn't keep a huge staff - two people, although the ranks can swell to 30 or more for a tv project requiring set building and styling, etc. Dole is a cross between a an artist and a mechanic: Steichen meets "Home Improvement. "He operates much of the machinery himself. He's the one who's up at 6am on Saturday mornings cleaning his high-maintenance Iris printer. In fact, when he first purchased it, he went through a brief period where he ran prints for other friends. "But then, I had to stop," he says, "I reached a point where I wasn't getting enough of my own work done. "As he states, his own work - and his family - have become the main concerns. Unlike a number of commercial photographers, Dole is a photo-buff born and bred. Raised in upstate New York, he began taking pictures with his fathers camera when he was ten, He still has the camera, a mint condition Brownie Starflash. "Then, for my 13th birthday, my dad brought me to Peerless Willoughby in Manhattan and bought a Hasselblad, Which is still my favorite camera. I became the youngest member of the high school yearbook team, even though I was five years away from graduating. Other kids were out playing baseball and I was down in the basement darkroom perfecting my own zone system - developing thousands of prints in those years. I'm not exactly sure where the intense interest came from." Eventually he ended up at New York's at School of Visual Arts and began his long climb up the ladder. He toiled for years as a film production assistant ("pushing a broom and being yelled at") and eventually moved to Pratt Institute ("where I learned form & space") "My evolution was very step by step." During this time at Pratt, he met celebrated pop artist Robert Indiana who would go on to change his life. "I worked for him as a photographer," Dole says, " taking pictures of his studio, his artwork, his projects and events. He was a fantastic influence. When you went to dinner at Bob's studio and home, Gian Carlo Menotti was there discussing opera. Or Jasper Johns or Louise Nevelson. I hardly knew who any of these people were. Then when I was around 21, Bob designed the scenery and costumes for Gertrude Stein's opera Mother of Us All. He invited me to Santa Fe to photograph the production. And during that summer, I was introduced to an amazing group of interesting people. The person who made the deepest impression on me was Georgia O'Keefe. Something about the whole experience moved me. Steigleitz became my favorite photographer and I started understanding something about art and being an artist. It was an absolute fantasy. And it had a positive effect on me." But Dole had a few more stages to move through before he struck out on his own. He returned to New York and became a production assistant for a video studio that made commercials for a food chain. "I polished the apples," he says. Then he became a location scout, a prop guy, worked the bull pen in various ad agencies, a film director's production coordinator and finally, a successful photo rep. This whirl of changing positions went on for a decade or more. Eventually and probably from some measure of exhaustion - although given his energy level, its hard to imagine - he left the city and rented a barn near the beach in Amagansett, Long Island. It was then, during what was supposed to be down time, that his entire future career fell into place. "There I was: 1989, this kid from the country playing 'Beverly Hills 90210,' hanging out by the ocean, living in this amazing antique barn. And there was this beautiful old,old glass window in the barn. And at eleven o'clock every morning the sun would cast a beam of light that was magic. I would take photographs of stuff that I found, vegetables, flowers, bones, whatever. I used this film purchased at the local Caldor's in East Hampton. They had a whole barrel of 3M film on special for 99 cents a roll - but it was thousand-speed and no one wanted it. Eventually, I bought every roll they had. "I was just experimenting with photography, but was encouraged by friends who came out to Amagansett for the weekends, design professionals from the city. So this encouraged me to show the work in Manhattan. I knew there was an industry there from my days as a rep so I put together a carousel of slides." The very first ad agency he tried was McCann-Erickson and - lo and behold - he landed his breakthrough campaign for Smirnoff Vodka. Ironically, for a photographer known for his technical proclivities, his first major portfolio was a result of luck and the most rudimentary technique. The discounted Caldor's film gave his images the graininess that blurred the distinction between photography and illustration, something Dole would continue to do as he became more and more proficient at using photo related software and his Iris printer. The campaign, which continued for two years, garnered him an incredible amount of press. And he was off and running. As it turned out, this was a turning point for Dole in more ways than one. Carrying a huge stack of mounted Smirnoff comps through a store in Soho, he drew the attention of his future wife Abbe. Over the years, Dole has called on his wide ranging art, production and people training to create work that stands out not only for its photography but for its design, its printing and its ability to cleanly fulfill a client's needs. "When I first started out," he says, "the best thing that happened to me was that I didn't understand what it could do. So I found my own way, drawing on all my experience." And although his work has become far more technical, he doesn't think it's changed the basic way he approaches photography. For him, software like Adobe Photoshop "is just another hammer and chisel with an engine on it." Although he moves through various technological incarnations, Dole likes to revisit his old photographs and improve them, seeking what he calls "increased fidelity." It's like a Holy Grail with him. Four years ago, he found his best tool yet when he began to infiltrate the world of digital imagery. "Now I'm taking pictures without film that are as good as pictures with film," he says. "The film companies will tell you that's not true. But we've done it. The digital shot can have more fidelity than the silver depending on the image. The Phase One digital camera back is capable of recording resolutions that are greater than what a lens is capable of perceiving. If that doesn't say all, I don't know what does. It may sound sacrilegious, even to me, but it's true. "More has happened to photography in the past five years than in the last one hundred," Dole continues. "But I don't think things will keep changing as fast as they have been. Besides, what we do with it doesn't change as much as how we do it. And how we do it isn't anywhere near as important as why we do it." Turning philosophical, Dole admits that these days he's been dreaming less about success and more about, of all things, the American Southwest, where he spends free time with his family, a subject that's come up over and over during the day of this interview. "Believe it or not," he says, "landscape is a big factor for me. Here in New York, I literally never go outside and I love the outdoors. So I am considering a new studio in the high desert of Northern Arizona. How does a Jewish kid from the Catskills come to live in an Adobe structure in Arizona? I don't know. But it gives me a tremendous sense of ease. And I love the shapes and form of everything on the ground - the grasses, the rocks. Whenever we go out there, I bring back cartons of sticks and stones and bones." So what's in the future for him and his work? "Photographing ruins," he says, "in my own way of course. Probably electronically."