A Scout's Gaze: David Graham Sees
Cinema in the Everyday
Veteran New York location manager/scout, street photographer,
and film school alum David Graham/LMGI's latest published
work of photography, Locations From a Movie I Never Made,
has just hit bookstores. This book marks the culmination of
more than 34 years of scouting for film, TV, commercials and
personal travel. Directors and photographers Graham has
worked with include Patrick Demarchelier, Paul Greengrass,
Steven Klein, Ang Lee (The Ice Storm), Christopher Nolan
(Oppenheimer), Michael Mann (The Insider), Gus Van Sant
(Finding Forrester), Todd Haynes and Steven Spielberg (The
Post and the upcoming Non-View). Graham's many commercial
and print clients include Coach, Nike, Thierry Mugler, Dior,
Converse, Tommy Hilfiger, Dolce & Gabbana, Columbia
Sportswear, Meta, Google, Cadillac and HP.
In selecting images for this book, Graham envisioned each
photograph as the first frame in an untold narrative. In a
recent interview with the blog About Photography (https://
aboutphotography.blog/blog/david-graham-interview),
Graham reflected: "I see everything as a setting for a movie,
basically. I cannot drive by the most picture-perfect farm
upstate where the split-rail fence does the perfect thing,
with the tree here and the farmhouse there, without thinking,
'there it is,' and taking a picture of it. I have the privilege of
accessing amazing locations that many people cannot—
whether it's a $50 million penthouse in the city or the base of
9/11 after the towers fell, for a public service announcement I
was hired to scout for. There are many fascinating, emotional,
wonderful things I get to look at that most people do not have
access to.
"I definitely try to be an opportunist, and that's basically
what's churned my creative mind to let me take advantage
of the fact that I have access that a lot of people don't have.
That's when I started to let people walk into a frame that
normally I would want clear for the director to put their
characters in. I started to let elements come into the frame—
people, pets. Suddenly there's a moment, and their story has
become my story."
Locations From a Movie I Never Made is available now at
davidgrahamlocations.com/book and at a bookstore near
you.
by Albert Chi/LMGI
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