Like Reese’s peanut butter cups, Jenny Gage & Tom Betterton are the two great tastes that taste great together. Enlisting this photography team’s services throughout the years for Base clients such as Loewe and Kiki de Montparnasse, we’ve had the chance to witness their unique working process. Tom & Jenny took a few moments to answer some questions from Base partner Geoff Cook, revealing that their thoughts on photography are as rich and refreshing as their work itself.
Base: You shoot a lot of celebrities. What do you think of as your most interesting/intriguing celebrity shoot?
Tom Betterton/Jenny Gage: The most spectacular by far has to be when we were shooting Salma Hayek. We were shooting at Pier 59, which is situated right on the Hudson River. Suddenly there was a huge commotion and everyone was rushing to the windows. It was the US Airways jet crashing into the river! Everyone’s heart just sank because who would have ever thought anyone would survive? What a great day when we heard that everyone was safe!
B: How do you define an “ideal job”?
TB/JG: Being lucky enough to work on a job where, because of a million separate reasons, all things align in such a way that you are able to make beautiful pictures that you will always be proud of.
B: You are shooting more and more video. How is this different for you from still photography?
TB/JG: It’s very much the same process. In fact it feels really good to come back around to film, which was really the inspiration for our photographic style.
B: How has the recession affected your work with magazines?
TB/JG: Now that magazines are dropping like flies there are certainly less editorial assignments. The upside is that the magazines we do work for have become more serious relationships and result in even more care put into each assignment.
B: Can you talk a bit about some of your personal projects over the years?
TB/JG: We have made several bodies of photographic work and films; most recently we have had a book of nude portraits that we made in and around our home. Its called Upstairs, Downstairs and Outside. It comes out in February 2010.
B: You were early pioneers in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood. What did you like about the neighborhood when you first moved in, and does this still hold true today?
TB/JG: It’s a beautiful neighborhood. Full of beautiful houses and great people. It certainly does not lack the edge that New York is famous for, and it feels very vibrant and real. We love it.
B: You have two kids that you home-school with a group of other parents. How did this decision come about and how has the experience been?
TB/JG: We came to it very naturally. Since having children, we had, without consciously thinking to, built a small community that was meant to teach and nurture our kids. When it became time to enroll our kids in school we realized that we already had just what we wanted for them in place. so we went ahead and formed a group of families in the neighborhood who share in a collective effort teach our kids by combining the best experiences of home, community and city. So far its been magical.
B: Where do you see yourselves in 10 years?
TB/JG: It’s actually very reassuring to us that we can say we have absolutely no idea.
To see more work by Gage/Betterton, click here.
Read part 1 of this interview here.
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