Photography

Phillip Wong Productions

Photography/Media

Pellice Moda – Young Love

          The focus of this editorial story for Pellice Moda was a new generation of young fashionistas. I always had issues with the fur industry, and there was always a conflict between my moral values and what I was good at.

           Often, the values and content of what we believed in, did not converge with what we were commissioned for.

           Producing on location and raw empty space, focusing on subject matter, and directing attention of an audience was what I was good at.

          Young Love was used both in the Italian and Chinese media (as Simply Elegant). But it shows the value of visual imagery in crossing cultural and linguistic boundaries.

           The stylist was Persian, the models were British but of Asian descent and Italian, the make-up artist was Italian, the hair stylist was American, the photographer was American of Asian descent, and the media platforms were Italian and Chinese.

Phillip Wong Productions

Photography/Media

Blitz Magazine – Brands

          While I have worked for established publications and designers, I have also sought to work with smaller, newer, developing and potentially influential magazines.

          In London, The Face, ID, and Blitz came from the street to make influential statements in graphic design, photography and styling. The editors and graphic designers at the emerging publications shaped the publishing of France, Italy and New York as their work was recognized.

         Neville Brody, at The Face, commented on my choice of framing and composition, as editors from all three publications called when I went back to Milan, and they wanted content from the Continent.

              Branded was conceived by Blitz in London, but as all these publications were constantly on a tight schedule, they gave me a day to plan, shoot and send the material back to London.

           I was given a handful of branded items, booked friends who were available that night, shot everything on black and white Polaroid film, turned everything around in hours and had it going back to London by morning.  It reminded me of spot news photography in speed and production.

        The graphics on the vertical page sides echoed the the extreme sharpness of lighting and starkness of the black and white but was done in London.

Phillip Wong Productions

Photography/Publishing

Pellice Moda – Rail Yard

      In working with luxury goods, and in luxury environments, I’ve always been aware of contrasts between the most valuable of items, the people who wear them, the people who create them, and what creates the idea of “luxury.”

           Contrasting the luxury of furs and the Old World that embraced that idea of luxury, with the age and romanticism of that world – I convinced my editors at Pellice Moda, that the editorial story would have beauty, interest and appeal. They introduced me to Nadya Khamnipour, a stylist who’s work I loved – lush, whimsical, contrary, resisting cliche,  her combinations of accessories with textured clothing created a balance with my need to focus on the evocation of emotion, or a stark, textural landscape.

Phillip Wong Productions

Media/Magazine/Photography

Gold Richtig

I worked with a number of publications from Italy, Britain, Germany, China, Japan and the United States, when I was in another country.

Editorial work has to be coordinated and have the communications necessary to balance the copy being written, the direction of a written piece, and the image creation.  Depending on the publication, the overall budget, coordinating models, make-up, hair, stylists, transportation, location, studio, lighting, assistance all contribute, or dictate the simplicity, or complexity of a project.

Understanding of production from concept to print was crucial in my being able to coordinate and delegate multiple stories on location for entire issues of publication.
We would plan four or six articles, sometimes for a single issue, or for multiple issues, around the production schedule of a week or several weeks.

Relying on my understanding of manipulating visual imagery around theme, or story, rather than an artistic sameness, and on location, understanding the need for transporting an audience to “place” as well as a “threaded” theme, allowed me to compose different shoots of coherence within short turnarounds.  (This is similar to how film productions are constructed dependent on weather, time, actor availability, location availability etc.).

Phillip Wong Productions

Photography/Editorial

Franco Moschino

             ID Magazine’s Iain Webb contacted me from London when they were planning on doing a profile on Italian fashion designer Franco Moschino. ID was one of a series of influential British publications that rose through “street style” to showcase the irreverent designers that would put a huge stamp on fashion through the first 20 years of the 21st century.

          Iain sent me a number of questions he wanted me to touch on in an interview I was conducting, but my discussion expanded into Franco Moschino’s views on designing, the growing direction of fashion into name branding, the diminishing of designers as labels ascended, and the pricing and commercialism of fashion.

          Franco Moschino was the son of an Italian ironworker, and he approached designing from the perspective of craftwork, but he was overseeing 27 labels when we spoke.His expression to described how he approached his fame.