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I grew up outside of Rochester, New York, home of the Eastman Kodak Company. The local PBS station played an amazing array of movies including films from the silent era and the works of Jean Cocteau. Seeing The Thief of Bagdad (1925) and Orpheus (1948) at the age of six opened my childhood psyche to the amazing possibilities of the film medium. I studied filmmaking at Ithaca College (B.S. 1987) and I received a Full Merit Scholarship to School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA in 1989).
In the 1990’s I became a certified Steadicam Operator gaining diverse production experience shooting everything from Buick commercials shot on 35mm film, Corporate projects for Caterpillar tractors, music videos replete with booty dancers, and feature length films. While working as a freelance camera operator I have sporadically created short, experimental films My 1999 project: A Primer for Dental Extraction was screened at over 20 festivals for experimental and underground films.
ENTER FIG:
In early 2001 James Gustin was curating the Around the Coyote Arts Festival’s film screening for which he selected Dental Extraction for presentation. Based upon viewing this film he recruited me for event videography work. Only James would have the insight and initiative to view a film, which has been reviewed as: “wildly neurotic” and "a visually striking rumination on dentistry as a metaphor for psychological pain", and see the possibility of enlisting the creator as a wedding videographer.
Since July 2001 I’ve been shooting weddings, corporate videos, personality profiles and documentary films with fig. Highlights have been: documenting the world’s first Segway convention, shooting body-sculpting surgery, flying to Baton Rogue to shoot time-lapse videography of housing construction, shooting building demolition footage for the National Demolition Association, doing a “personality piece” on Ted Beattie - president of the Shedd Aquarium, and going to Brian Urlacher’s Lake Bluff home to record to the linebacker doing a promo for Vitamin Water.
I’ve documented upwards of 80 weddings with fig. Venues I’ve worked at include: the Peninsula, Sofitel, both W Hotels, Palmer House, Park Hyatt, Knickerbocker, Hotel Intercontinental, Newberry Library, South Shore Cultural Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Germania Place, River East Art Center, Salvatore’s, A New Leaf, Evanston Women’s Club, Lake Forest Academy, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago Fine Arts Exchange, Galleria Marchetti, Prairie Productions, the Grove, Chevy Chase Country Club, Illinois Beach Resort, Lisle Arboretum, Café Brauer, Mid-day Club, University Club, Union League Club, The Chicago Club, the Museum of Science and Industry, Saddle and Cycle Club, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Adler Planetarium, the MCA, and the Sears Tower.
I pride myself on approaching each wedding document as a unique event and and having flexible strategies for getting the best coverage. On the job I am agile and attentive without being intrusive, striving to be “everywhere and nowhere”, crafting a visually diverse record of the places and personalities of the day. In 2006 I began doing digital photography with Fig and am very enthusiastic about applying my in depth knowledge of event documentation and aesthetic skills to this medium.
OTHER INTERESTS:
For the past 5 years I’ve been collaborating personally and professionally with Atalee Judy, artistic director of Breakbone DanceCo. Together we’ve made numerous, visceral dance films and intense performance documents. I’m an aficionado of the musical stylings the post-punk era (Throbbing Gristle, PIL, Devo, Crass, Einsturzende Neubauten). I love brooding fiction (James Ellroy, Dostoyevsky) and brutal examinations of human dilemmas in non-fiction(Thomas Szasz, Susan Griffin, Camille Paglia). Within the Enneagram paradigm of personality types I’m a Type 5 with a 4 Wing - which basically means I default to analyzing the world from a distance and would rather find aesthetic solutions than practical ones. This puts me in the fine company of Stanley Kubrick, Trent Reznor, David Lynch, Emily Dickenson and the fictional, yet archetypal, Edward Scissorhands. I suspect the more Jungian reasons for my substantial immersion in event videography and photography, and my long term alliance with the fig Team, is to balance out my tendency toward fulfilling myself as a recluse.
SOME OF CARL’S FAVORITE FILMS:
Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
La Belle et La Bete (1945)
Scarlet Street (1946)
Rope (1948)
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)
La Jetee (1962)
The Thing (1982)
Videodrome (1983)
Angel Heart (1987)
Spoorloos (1988)
Crumb (1994)
Seul Contre Tous (1998)
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