03
thehappycorp talks to Brian Duck, co-founder Atelier Management
| by your friend
Brian Duck, co-founder of Atelier Management for high-end fashion & celebrity photographers, works out of a desk at thehappycorp once every few months. He spends most of his time under California’s native sun in the Silver Lake part of Los Angeles.
Brian studied fashion at UC Berkeley; afterwards he came to New York to work with Alvin Ailey Dance. He’s lived all over the city, but ultimately decided LA was a better environment to launch a startup.
“About 60% of our clients live and work out of NYC, but we had much better luck from a business standpoint getting started in LA and then expanding to New York once we had a solid foundation. New York is inspiring, but LA is just cheaper. Since everything is going more youth, more amateur, it’s more possible than ever for a boutique agency like us to compete in the market.”
Atelier does a big online business in online shoots; Brian feels that photography overall is headed towards an online fusion of motion graphics and stills.
“Were essentially moving towards a place where photography is providing assets for flash. Photography is a jump-off point for all different kinds of art.”
Brian pointed out recent advancements in paper-thin screen technology:
“It’s exactly like Harry Potter. The moving pictures on the newspapers. Not a film and not photography. Pretty soon we’re going to see screens on the back of cereal boxes.”
He makes a good point: In order to escape the fate of newspapers photography is melding with the visual language of the internet, a kind of looping narratives made of flash and animated gifs.
Just before Brian ready to leave for a flight back to LA we pulled him into our front room and Doug shot some pictures.
“If we came to Silver Lake to hang out where would you take us?” we asked.
Brian strung out about 7 places in one breath, several of which he prefixed with, “As an alternative to Starbucks.”
“Ivanhoe Books is a great art & design bookstore. Lawson Fenning for furniture. Inteligentsia and La Mill for coffee. Malo for Mexican food.”
“Doesn’t Malo mean bad in Spanish?”
“Yeah, I guess it does.”
“I bet you get your portrait taken by a lot of great photographers all the time,” said Doug.
“Actually, people always take my picture when I’m a shoot, so I’m all sweaty and stressed. This is a nice change.”
