Involvement - Non-Profit + Political - Leave No Footprint
Phillip Wong Productions
Non-Profit/Political
Involvement – Non-Profit+Political – Leave No Footprint
As fundraisers have become more and more important to the various issues and causes, the need for bringing people together, crafting messages, and raising money has become integral in society.
I have believed that we are fortunate to be able to do the jobs we do, and we should all use the opportunities we have to try to make more of an impact, lend our skills, and use our deep knowledge and experience to help worthwhile contributions at every level.
I have taken jobs that have budgets that are too small and ideas that are too big, but the projects can do much, much more, with knowledge, thought, experience, a cross-pollination of production platforms and unique perspective.
I worked on the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 in Pennsylvania, setting up field offices and helping to organize ground games – and while I thought Barack Obama was talented and intelligent, I chose that involvement because I understood Chicago politics, and what their priorities were. Unlike corporate or government programs – we had to work with motivating people who were not being paid. Getting consistency, clarity, simplicity, and visible success while only having patience and calm as tools, was a different production form.
My attending and shooting the 2008 inauguration was a vindication of my belief that “process” can often overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.
The Guggenheim’s annual gala, was an opportunity in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. They had to continue raising money, but had to cut costs and still bring in contributions.
They had chosen to have Peter Hoffman, the owner of Soho’s Savoy restaurant , cater the event and Savoy’s had never produced an event of over 400 before.
We closed all gaps, melding staff, for both service and kitchen, while producing with numerous constraints, and on the fly. Working on a loading dock was a different experience for Savoy, but a normal one for our team.
A friend had been working with New York Times publishing as they launched a book tour for two books: The Essential NYTimes Cookbook, and In the Kitchen with Food You Love, with both Amanda Hesser and Melissa Clark.
An event was planned at Chelsea Market with a tasting that would highlight a program to feed children at New York City schools. Amanda Hesser’s book had interviewed and published the recipes of dozens of chefs and 20 of them offered to do a tasting.
But their budget was FAR off. I agreed to helping with this project because of the School Food Program aspect, but accepted helping them, only if I could re-design the entire structure of the event.
It became an unusual event, but highly successful for both the chefs, the authors, the program directors, and the audience.
Food and Wine Magazine bestowed annual awards to new and emerging chefs, that was part of an overall program to support the restaurant industry’s growth. At this event, established restauranteurs provided tasting tables that I covered with photographed food elements that the restaurants were reknown for.
Another jewelry designer from London was launching a line in New York. The launch was sponsored and calculated to draw attention to new focus in the mining industry on responsible and sustainable mining techniques.
We pulled everything together including the security service and designing and constructing the design cases to showcase and internally light the jewels.
Working seamlessly with countless other companies on the launching of films, awarding Elton John for his service to fundraising to combat HIV/AIDS at iconic New York buildings as varied as the Public Library and the cathedral of St. John The Divine, we have sought to utilize our experience with the need to raise funds for worthwhile causes.
Faces - Emerging, Evolving, Establishing
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography
Faces – Emerging, Evolving, Establishing
Faces reflect the perceptions and experiences behind eyes. Without knowing it, we read character, heart, thought, memories and spirit, as well as emptiness, behind every expression.
I’ve photographed people for various reasons, some for myself, some for them, some because of a magazine and a project . . . often, people want to “look like . . . ” but because they have their own journey, their own experiences and the thoughts they’ve learned, merge with experiences they’ve had, the camera captures each face differently.
I am intrigued by the urgency of today, but the timelessness of where we exist. We believe that we are different than anyone else, and we are . . . . but we are also very much the same, as others who came before us. I look for that in faces.
A History of Event Production
Phillip Wong Productions
Events
A History In Events
My interest in production has always been the creation of an idea into something real. I had worked with some production of fashion shows, lighting and stage build outs, and some film productions before 9/11, but after we began to recover, I worked on thousands of productions and began to see events as a way, in a changing, splintered world, that people connect.
An event is a multi-layered process that weaves visual, audio, oratorical, historical, gastronomical, social, aspects of human connectivity together into short-form messaging.
The great event productions, like every other production, seeks to control everything.It funnels the senses into positions of awareness of gratitude, celebration, adulation and appreciation. It notifies and satiates and piques the interest of a captive audience at multiple levels.
Caushun
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Publishing
Caushun
Caushun is a gay rapper who wanted to come out, when the Hip Hop community wasn’t receptive to gay rappers.
He was as bold and brash and “in-your-face” and talented, and this was his voice was black, street and gay.
Red Shoes Diary - Brigitte Bako
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Publishing
Red Shoes Diary
Brigitte Bako
Brigitte Bako was in Red Shoes Diary which was being directed by Zalman King. I was being asked to shoot with some of the female stars by their publicity unit and get them into multiple publications. I met her at one of New York’s boutique hotels as she was doing a promotional tour.
Our team of stylist, makeup artist and hair stylist prepped her so that we would be able to release multiple sets for multiple publications – but the look had to be cool, sexy, elegant, and reflect the character she had been playing in this new series.
Javier Bardem
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Publishing
Javier Bardem
I worked for a number of small independent publications that were writing about films and music that were new, ambitious, under-explored.Their focus converged with my own interest in newly discovered or emerging artists.
Javier Bardem was in Before Night Falls when I was asked to photograph him to support the interview which was being written.
Charlize Theron
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Publishing
Charlize Theron
When I originally photographed Charlize Theron in Milan, I was introduced to her by the make-up artist I was working and traveling with at that time Christan Burran, who wanted me to meet and shoot with Charlize.
We spent the next day shooting, and when I got back to New York, Gear Magazine recognized her as an emerging artist.
I later was asked to produce a short book based on that shoot which I designed, laid out, and produced.
Blues Musicians
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Media
Blues Musicians
When I was in Italy, I proposed a overview story of Blues Musicians to editors at Italian Vogue. I didn’t necessarily think that it would have an angle at Italian Vogue, but L’Uomo Vogue, Vanity or one of their smaller publications might have an interest.They turned it down, because they didn’t see how it could be produced.
Believing that this niche story had value, I flew back to Chicago, where my family was still living, and for three weeks, photographed and interviewed Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Lefty Dizz, Junior Wells, Sugar Blue, Lonnie Brooks, Son Seals, Sunnyland Slim, and then back in Italy, as I was finishing the writing, Albert Collins and B.B. King in Pistoia. My interviews were wide-ranging and free-flowing touching on how their music and the musicians they met, guided their lives, framed their views on race, and war, and society and relationships.
Producing the finished interviews and photographic story, Conde Nast picked it up as they tried to decide which one of their publications would run with it.
Gear Magazine
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Media
Gear Magazine
Gear Magazine was a publication that emerged when Maxim and FHM made their way over from Britain and their explosive success revealed latent markets in America.
Gear was different, but couldn’t brand itself differently. Gear was started by Bob Guccione, Jr. who had launched Spin Magazine earlier, and who’s father had brought Penthouse to America from Britain.
Edgy, offbeat, but serious about a new crop of artists, actors, musicians, emerging and defining a new culture, Gear recognized my informal, direct and honest approach matched their perspective with my photographs of Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron, and brought me onboard. They asked me to pitch personalities and story proposals.
As I saw how they developed layouts, graphics and content, I quickly saw the potential in his vision.
But they couldn’t keep up the financing, marketing, or production necessary to continue competing with Maxim, FHM, GQ or Esquire at the same time, technology was changing digital publishing.
German Playboy - Jeff Koons - Martina Moculescu
Phillip Wong Productions
Photography/Media
German Playboy – Jeff Koons – Martina Moculescu
The first time I returned from Europe, I was contacted in New York by German Playboy to shoot a scene with the Playmate of the Year and work with Jeff Koons.
I had been in Europe when Koons was becoming notorious for his work with his wife, Ilona Stadler.
He had a studio in a building on Broadway and Houston, and I agreed to work with him and a crew of people German Playboy had assembled. Koons had pitched an idea to the editors who wanted his name involved based on postcards of two paintings: Jean Honore Fragonard’s Girl Playing With A Dog, and Francois Boucher’s Resting Girl. He loved the lushness of the 1700s ambiance, and I was looking at focusing on Martina Moculescu, whom I had just met, but as a Playmate of the Year, I thought the qualities that made her special, should be brought out.
I loosely followed Koon’s desire for lushness, and the framework of the artwork on these postcards, and produced the three images here. (She was also shot by two other photographers in other countries.)
A number of years later, Jeff Koons came out with his “Gazing Ball” collection which used the Boucher painting, and then a collection which featured “Pot Rack” in which my photograph of Martina, based on Fragonard’s painting, was the foundation behind the Koons painting.
I thought the dog was lost behind a flurry of pans.
