Studio Photography & Design

JODY DOLE: ANIMATING OBJECTS WITH ONE OF THE MOST ACTIVE STILL LIFE SHOOTERS AROUND by Dan Havlik / Studio Photography & Design. Jody Dole loves objects and collecting stuff. “Having a lot of stuff is actually distracting because I don’t have room for it all,” he says. “I compensate by keeping things in order. Consequently, I have spent a great deal of time organizing.” But don’t mistake Dole, one of the hottest still life photographers around with a client list that would make most commercial photographer’s jaw drop, for a shallow materialist. You’re much more likely to catch him wandering through a Maine flea market picking through a box of one of a kind arrow heads or children’s action figure toys then strolling Fifth Avenue looking for a new Rolex. Drop by Dole’s studio in New York’s West Village and it won’t take much prompting to get him to haul out a few artifacts for you to look at: a collection of spindly tumbleweeds he picked up in northern Arizona or how about his array of radiantly-colored African beetles, preserved for perpetuity in glass covered trays. If that doesn’t suit your fancy there are boxes and boxes of bones tucked away, a batch of give a ways from McDonald’s that his son has been collecting; and lining the walls of Dole’s studio library are thousands of rare photography and design books. “ I store hundreds of cartons of stuff in an outside warehouse and the place still looks full” he says with a leisurely sigh. But Dole’s interests aren’t restricted to the archaic. Over the years he has also amassed an incredible arsenal of high tech imaging gear from computers to drum scanners to high res digital cameras and backs to his very own Iris printer making him one of the first private individuals to own one purchased in 1993. Despite all this stuff, which at times can make his studio seem like an aisle at a computer expo or the archives of a museum depending on the day, Dole doesn’t consider what he has a collection. “It’s more like an accumulation” he explains. “Some of it’s not worth a lot of money but it is all valuable to me.” Dole’s objects also serve a purpose: They’re the subjects of many of his artfully crafted still life’s and a breeding ground for ideas for his distinctive commercial product shots. Oftentimes, the one affects the other in interesting ways. A delightful dole image of a blue Gumby (his son’s) being plunked into a pool of water (shown on page 11) emerged while he was doing a series of product drop shots for Bath & Body Works. A new series of grid like repeated images (grapes, eyeballs, globes, etc. see page 12) is clearly inspired by his work photographing trays of colorful insects. While the subjects of Dole’s images are inanimate objects, to him they are full of life. “I like to think of the images I’m creating as portraits of my interests so in a sense, these still life’s become self-portraits, a way to express myself through the objects.” So then, in a sense, Dole’s face (via his distinctive product shots) has been turning up everywhere. His client list continues to be a veritable smorgasbord of advertising, corporate,editorial and promotional markets with such notable companies as Johnson & Johnson, Estee Lauder, Time Warner, Lego,3M, Seagrams, Dow Jones, Federal Express and others, and magazines including Time, GQ,Esquire, Fortune, and The New York Times Magazine all calling for his work. You could say Dole has been riding high of late but that would be an understatement. Considering that he has become one of The most sought after product photographers and table top TV directors in the business since emerging from an antique Long Island barn in relative obscurity 13 years ago with a hand full of still life’s, his career is more like a wave that hasn’t crested. While Dole’s story is one that has been well documented in various publications over the years, it’s worth telling again. Prior to becoming a full time professional shooter, he was an art student who studied at New York’s School Of Visual Arts and Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, worked dozens of jobs including a TV commercial production assistant and a photographer’s rep; and dreamed of making a living behind a lens. During this time, he also began working for renowned pop artist Robert Indiana, famous for creating the ubiquitous LOVE paintings and sculptures in the 1960’s. Working with Indiana would end up providing the inspiration the inspiration Dole needed to strike out on his own. Exhausted by the Rat Race of city life and itching to create his own images, Dole leased a renovated antique barn in Amagansett, Long Island in 1988, and started creating a new body of work. Spurred on by the stunning natural light his barn received, he began photographing still lifes of various objects that interested him in the designer shops in East Hampton. When he wasn’t shooting flowers or fish bones in the barn, Dole was borrowing time at those very same high end tchotchke shops for use as make shift studios. Because of their large glass front windows, the stores provided great natural light. He was shooting everything from beautiful bronze urns to chive grass he remembers. “Then I made the mistake of starting to buy some of this stuff and that’s when the collection started.” Out of economic necessity Dole shot all his Long Island images on the not obsolete 1000 speed 3M film he bought at Caldors for .99 cents a roll. The discounted high speed film gave his work a grainy edge that set it apart from other commercial shooters at the time. Ironically. it would also help land him his first major job. Armed with slides and a projector, Dole took his work to McCann Erickson Advertising in Manhattan, only to find that the firms art buyer became unavailable at the last minute for their appointment. Thinking fast on his feet, Dole got hold of an art director’s list and tracked down Art Director Bob Cole and presented him with an impromptu slide show in the company’s broom closet. Cole loved the grainy feel of Dole’s images and asked the photographer to give him the same look for a major Smirnoff Vodka campaign. Dole complied with outstanding results and the rest is advertising history. Dole’s Smirnoff work is now an oft-imitated benchmark of product photography. But while other photographers still shamelessly cop his 1990’s style, Dole has moved on, creating sharp, silhouetted images on stark white backgrounds with Fuji Velvia film for maximum color saturation. More recently, he’s been enjoying the flexibility of shooting digitally, using the Phase One LightPhase and Nikon D1X digital cameras. “There are as many different reasons for shooting with digital as there are jobs,” he says. It’s hard for the energetic Dole to stop moving both figuratively and literally. He’s one of the fastest and informative talkers you’re likely to ever meet. He is also an energetic listener, which goes well in his line of work where being able to hustle while communicating is practically a job requirement. And Dole hustles a lot, a heck of a lot. Last year he prepped and shot an impressive 240 days with no sign of slowing down in 2001. Perhaps more importantly, Dole is always hustling to keep his work fresh. “My style is just seat of the pants,” he says, beginning to launch into a rapid- fire monologue that would leave most humans gasping for air. “My portfolio doesn’t have tow images that are alike. Other than the silhouettes shot on white to isolate what is being shown, it’s always changing. One day a collection of diamond watches in 8X10, the next day a collection of plastic Mexican boxing figures brought over by my son’s friend from Brooklyn for digital photography. Seems that if I’m shooting on white one season, then that’s what I’m known for, but in the beginning of my career it was grain. Then I switched to Velvia for super saturated color and of late it’s been mostly digital capture. So really, the Jody Dole style is what the viewer makes of it, it’s strictly about what you see.” After pausing for a few seconds to collect his thoughts, Dole’s suddenly off again, comparing the virtues of digital versus traditional photography; stressing the importance of keeping one’s work subject driven and discussing his latest forays into shooting TV commercials. And the rest of us? We’d be struggling to keep up. Jody Dole’s gear box includes The Nikon F5 and D1X for 35. Mamiya RZ & 645 and Hasselblad 553ELX systems for medium format along with the Phase One LightPhase digital back. Other digital gear includes the Howtek 4500 drum scanner, Iris and Epson printers, Apple G4 Mac workstations with DVD back up.