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BRIAN WECHT OF NINJA SEX PARTY FOR WSJ

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Last week I had the pleasure of leaving the house other than for groceries or alcohol to photograph Brian Wecht of Ninja Sex Party for WSJ. Shooting during this pandemic has obviously created a lot of new obstacles, limitations and opportunities for growth. With that said, we were limited to only shoot in Brian’s backyard which wasn’t ideal, but we made it work (although he had a great little studio space I wanted to shoot in, but for safety reasons we couldn’t). But I gotta say, I’m becoming a fan of AstroTurf, don’t judge me.

If you don’t know, Brian was a theoretical physicist professor at MIT who had left his tenured professorship to pursue his music as half the duo Ninja Sex Party. With the story being about transitions, Ronnie at WSJ asked for us to have options of him in and out of character. At the end of the day, he feels like he made the right choice.

I knew I wanted something tight on Ninja Brian’s face to show the intensity that he brings to the stage. It’s the same that he gives if he sees someone not wearing a mask in public.

JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT CAMP SURVIVORS - NEW PERSONAL PROJECT

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At the end of December 2018 I started working on a new project documenting the survivors of Executive Order 9066. This is when the American government locked up over 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent after the attacks on Pearl Harbor during WWII. In these past few months, I’ve sat with several of these people as they have shared their stories with me, and I’m very excited to share them with you. As part of this project I’ve asked all that are participating to write about their experiences in the camps and how that shaped their sense of belonging and identifying themselves within a journal that I have especially for this project.

Last month I had the pleasure of photographing Paul Imahara at the Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Downtown LA. Paul was 3 when he and his family were evacuated from their home and forced into the camp. For him, he doesn’t recall as much as some of the others I’ve worked with on this project being he was so young. When we shot, he spoke more to me about Buddhism and what it means to him. He has been a Buddhist Minister for quite sometime. I’m looking forward to sitting down with him again soon to see what he adds to the journal.

Here are a couple of images from this shoot.

Keep an eye out for more stories and images to follow. You can always see what I’m up to via Instagram as well at @matthewscottgranger

HBO'S NOHO HANK, ANTHONY CARRIGAN FOR OBSERVER

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A couple of weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of photographing up and coming star, Anthony Carrigan for Observer. If you’re a fan of HBO’s “Barry” you may recognize him as NoHo Hank. Anthony has such an amazing presence about him when he walks into a room which made my job all that much easier on that brisk May morning.

For our first set up, we were staged up in his PR’s office (which was small so we were gonna be tight). We put up a 3’ gridded octa to camera left and here is what we got.

For a seamless option, we decided to set up in the driveway so we could all stretch our legs a little bit…Same set up as indoors, 3’ gridded octa, this time to camera right. We were blessed to have such an overcast day that it provided a beautiful flat fill. And the results!

NEW PERSONAL PROJECT

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For a long time, I’ve wanted to work on a project in some sort of form about the Japanese-American Internment during WWII. Over the past 3 years I’ve been working on the idea of how I could do this. Since I moved to LA a few months ago, I’ve been thinking about how I could make this project be impactful, intriguing, and give the people who were affected by this atrocity a voice, and to put a face with their story.

The most challenging part of this project is to find people that are still alive that were in these concentration camps and willing to share their stories and be photographed. There are many who would rather not relive the pain and haven’t even shared their experiences with their kids. I was fortunate enough to meet a couple, Yukio and Kiko Matsumoto, who in conversation had brought up the fact that they had both been in the camps while they were very young and met shortly in Chicago after being released. I immediately told them about this project and asked if they would be interested in being a part of it. Thankfully, they were on board.

I can’t wait to share some of the images soon. You can see the final image from these behind the scenes photos on Instagram @matthewscottgranger

Feel free to reach out or leave a comment below if you’d like to hear more or have any questions about this project.