I'D TIP MY FORTY BUT HE'S NOT DEAD :: Dylan Chorneau
Dylan Chorneau is one of my oldest and best friends in the world, and about as close as you can get to a brother without being one, speaking as someone with two actual "real" brothers. I have a pretty tremendous group of friends, not only for just being sweet people, but for being ridiculously talented. But even in this impressive group, Dylan stands out as a guy who's just DRIPPING with raw talent. Dylan's the kind of guy who just has a lot of talent lying around in little piles on the floor, and occasionally will decide he wants to pick some of it up and shape it into something. And so he does.
Case in point: I'm not even mentioning the fact that Dylan is an incredible painter who works in pretty much any medium he can find, and can talk to you without blinking about the various methods of the Dutch masters or Velazquez, for hours. Okay, so I just mentioned it; but the point is that I'm ONLY focusing on his photography here, and I think he's only been taking pictures in an applied way for the last year or so, give or take.
The one at the top is a portrait he recently took of another friend of ours' children. I mean, look at it. Jeez Louise. Especially if you knew these kids--the idea that they stood this still for ANYthing is pretty extraordinary. But even better is the looks on their faces. These kids have some pretty magic DNA running in their veins already, and Dylan caught some of it here. He's the kind of guy who approaches a portrait as a PORTRAIT, which I don't think many people do anymore.
So for the last several months, Dylan's been carrying this medium-format camera around with him, and he'll just stand around and quietly snap pictures of people. The camera itself is a curiosity not only because of its shape and deceptive "old-timiness", but because it lacks something that every other camera and phone in the world, or at least in most bars, etc., lacks: a digital screen on the back where the subject can IMMEDIATELY check out how they look. And/or criticize the picture: "Oh, you gotta delete that one, you gotta delete it. Let me try again."
So it makes it even more remarkable when, a couple of weeks later (after he's actually DEVELOPED THE FILM [???!!???]), one of these little photos will appear on Flickr. The fellow above is named Keith; Dylan and I talked to him at a New Year's Eve party, and when Dylan took his picture, he made that face. It takes a certain kind of dude to wear that expression for a picture at a New Year's Eve party, and I only point that out because Keith was super friendly, and Dylan and I talked to him for awhile. But the weird thing is, Dylan took ONE picture. ONE! And it came out. That's the kind of dude Dylan is, maybe (that's him, below). Dylan Chorneau is a one-click dude.
So anyway, Dylan is, in the words of Charles Bukowski, "my buddy out of nowhere," and I thought I'd sing his praises a little bit. It's certainly more fun to talk nice about my friends than most other things I could write about. Check out his Flickr stream for dozens more pictures, most of which are just as nice as these. And if you snoop around a little, or just click this link, you'll come across some of his paintings, which are equally if not more amazing. You may thank me below.
