Jeff Luker has one of those portfolios that make you truly appreciate the dog days of summer. His photos feel like someone has come up behind you and splashed a cold bucket of water onto your slightly sunburned skin, shocking your senses but making you feel alive in more ways than you could have imagined. If you’ll noticed, his style is reminiscent of the kind of free spirit photos that Ryan McGinley often takes – they’re all about love, freedom, youth and dreams. In fact, after growing up on a small farm in rural Massachusetts and studying filmmaking and photography at Emerson College in Boston, he moved to New York and became Ryan McGinley’s first assistant. There’s a great interview about Luker over at Positive Magazine where Luker talks about his background, his subjects and his style. This was my favorite bit: Q: What was the best bit of advice you got at Emerson college? A: The best advice was probably in terms of media consumption. The idea that the media you absorb, like films, books, photos, art etc. should be viewed as a diet of sorts, if you feed yourself junk (i.e. sitcoms, bad romantic comedies, empty paperbacks, etc) it affects your mind the same way a bad food diet would your body. It may be easy to consume and readily available but the stuff that will make you feel and work better is the media that will challenge your way of thinking.
Jeff Luker Related: Smells Like Teen Spirit Ryan McGinley’s Levi’s Go Forth Teenage Girls Live Life “In Between” Lone Wolf by Nirrimi Joy