Tag: Kurt Markus

  • Kurt Markus – The Portrait: Finding Your Voice

    Kurt Markus – The Portrait: Finding Your Voice – A Photo Editor

    Montana-based photographer Kurt Markus has spent the last half-century photographing for magazines like Vanity Fair, GQ, and Outside. Though he’s shot fashion, sports, and celebrities, he’s probably best known for his iconic black-and-white photos of Cowb

    via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2012/06/11/kurt-markus-the-portrait-finding-your-voice/

    The digital age was really kicking in, and I didn’t feel like I had anything to offer a beginning photographer because everyone wanted to know about histograms and pixels and I had no language, no experience for that. So I said, let’s not do this again. But I got talked into it again last year. What I found was that no one in the workshop really cared if it was digital or not, and figured “OK, I can do this. I’ve got something to say and it’s worth saying.” I’m believer in workshops. It’s a very energizing and valuable experience that you can’t really get any other way. You go home and sift through the wreckage of the week and pick and choose. And it’s good to know there are others out there trying to be the best photographers they can be.

  • Kurt Markus Interview – Part 2

    Kurt Markus Interview – Part 2 – A Photo Editor

    [Part 1 is here] Rob: The book “After Barbed Wire” came out and your phone started ringing with a few assignments, then you had a gallery show in New York and more assignments, so did your career take off like a rocket after that? Kurt: It was a great tim

    via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/07/28/kurt-markus-interview-part-2/

    Well there’s the other thing. I’ve never thought of photography as a competition. They hired me because they wanted me, not because I’m the best photographer, but I’m a photographer that they wanted. And they could just as easily picked someone else, but they made individual choices where I’m not interchangeable with someone else. That’s why I don’t think of it as a competition.

  • Kurt Markus Interview – Part 1

    Kurt Markus Interview – Part 1 – A Photo Editor

    Rob: I want to start at the beginning. When and where did you start making pictures? Kurt: I got out of the army in the early ’70s and I knew one thing, that whatever it was that I was going to do with my life, I wanted to love it and believe in it. That

    via A Photo Editor: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/07/27/kurt-markus-interview-part-1/

    You know that great classic quote, “F8 and be there”? You do have to be there. Being there is half and you can do that half. And I figure sweat is part of the equation. If you can be really cool and persistent, that’s great, but I was more like sweaty and persistent. I figured that I could maybe outmuscle it.