View Slideshow, reFramed article: In conversation with Brian Finke.
Brian Finke is a photographer living and working in Brooklyn. He wrote "2-4-6-8: American Cheerleaders and Football Players," "Flight Attendants" and "Construction."
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How did you get started in photography?
It started back in the day with high school photo classes, with the idealistic motivations of social awareness and from reading about the amazing life and work of photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. While my projects are still documentary in approach, I'm much more interested in making a social comment about my own culture.
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Your "Flight Attendants" series was born out of two years of crisscrossing the globe on assignment. Can you tell me how and why this project came to be?
When I started working for magazines and traveling a bunch is when the project presented itself, the flight attendants were right there in front of me. My previous body of work was about cheerleaders and football players. From that I started becoming interested in costuming and uniforms. I was also interested in the challenge of photographing on planes in a post-9/11 world. But for me photography is so much about the process, I love the experience of making images, being out in the world, and making pictures at 40,000 feet.
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I love that you not only capture the high-flying profession in the air but you also capture behind the scenes of flight attendants' daily life. Can you tell me about getting such well-rounded access?
I pitched various fashion and travel stories to editorial clients I shoot for, then we'd approach the airlines together and they'd either be totally into the idea or want nothing to do with it. With flight attendants we're used of course to seeing them on planes, but I wanted to also take them out of that context and show them in the everyday, at home, in the store, picking up their kid after school.
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Your most recent series, "Construction," explores building sites in New York City. Again, you have a wonderful way of visually championing the ordinary.
I first approached the contractors but without any success. Then I started contacting the architects, them being the creatives, they got my project, and that's how I began gaining access to the various sites. It had been a long process gaining access, the toughest of any of my projects.