Freekmagnet is a collection of black and white images I published as a book of the same name. The images were mostly staged costume portraits arranged as tableaux with mythological, fictional and pop culture references. Some of them were constructions of my own using found objects. The props and stare structures I made and constructed myself, and the backgrounds were painted by friends. The models were friends and various acquaintances I’d met. I worked on the series for about 2 or 3 years and collected them into the book.

At the time, small printing set ups the produced one-off books were still prohibitively expensive, and the print quality was not all that. Freekmagnet was printed on an inkjet printer and spiral bound with the help of my friend at [link] . We printed up 40 initial copies and all of them sold. I hosted a book release party at the Auto 3321 Gallery in Oakland, California where all of the pieces and the writing were exhibited. Some of the images made it up to a juried show in Portland, Oregon, and I had a small showing in Ventura, California the following year.

Currently, I am been prepping for the printing of the second edition which I will probably do through Blurb books. The second edition will include some of the out takes from the first edition. Since I seem to have misplaced the original scans from the first edition, I have had to rescan the negatives. This is just as well, because my Photoshop skills have improved since I last scanned and processed them.

There’s a part of me that misses working on this series. At the time, I worked almost part time, came home and made props and did photo shoots with my old Speed Graphic. Now, my work on Freekmagnet’s descendent, La Loteria, is done digitally. I use a digital SLR and the backgrounds are often painted in afterwards on the computer. I guess times change and life moves on, but when I look back at these, they bring back good memories. I hope that I will have the opportunity to work on this series again in the future.

The first edition of Freekmagnet can be viewed at my website. [link]