My most important lesson for every creative
It's not the most common knowledge that I am in my 30's. It's also not very widely publicised, or at least I don't talk about it as much these days, but I ran a creative agency for much of my 20s, and that agency was quite successful. Vice sent me to NYC, Fashion TV gave me a contract in Shanghai, I shot posters for Coldplay, and after too many beers, did Peking Duk's first press shots.
And I mention it all here because my production experience allows me to say things and put things in perspective for other people I otherwise couldn't. Much of it was luck and timing. I can't repeat the magic again. I couldn't build something like that again because it was the people I was around. I made mistakes, and it didn’t work out, much of it, as I’ve come to understand was out of my control, and for legal reasons, much like things of this nature, there’s not much I can say, and the ambiguity I feel adds more intrigue to the story.
Being the flavour of the day, choice for a month, and kicking goals both real and imaginary lets you get clients and build relationships quickly. The style of work that I was known for has changed since then. The following I have is primarily because of the collaborations I have built with incredible talents like Ella Cervetto, Dominque Elissa, Emily Feld, and Emily Deyt-Aysage, to name a few.
But for the longest time, I worked in music; my agency was called Voena, and the name was derived from the Russian word for war as a fuck you to the fact people didn't want to pay creatives fairly.
I often share wisdom from that era here. Today, I want to talk about the two most important things I learnt from it.
First, collaboration is everything.
I want to say that again, and in a different way, working closely with people over a long period of time, on the same goal, and on the same vision, not a one-and-done project.
Finding people you love and working with them, Building each other up, reaching out to other artists, and being excited are the most important things you can possibly bring to the table. This was before we had influencers. These days, people treat things as transactional when there is so much more to offer each other.
Voena ended up with incredible clients, including Spotify, YouTube, Adidas, MTV, Smirnoff and many more. It is because we had firstly a team who were fucking awesome, but they weren't when they started; I was fucking terrible, and together we built each other up.
The second part of this collaboration equation is that we also reached out to many, many artists; it wasn’t a quick and easy overnight success before many of them were recognized for their incredible talent and before they sold out stadium tours. I photographed Rufus Du Sol when they played to 10 people… I met Flume at a uni party at his third-ever live show. I didn't jump on some fucking bandwagon. I was incredibly stoked to be around these people because they had electric energy and loved music like I did.
I was just very fortunate that they blew up, but many of the ones that didn't were still fucking awesome. I still love those artists. I love their work, like Elizabeth Rose, Oliver Tank, Panama, Moonbase Commander, Mazda, and Collarbones. I would love for you to listen to the playlist I put together with their tracks. In fact, if I get enough comments on this article, I'll do one ASAP.
But let's move aside from that and talk about the second part.
A rising tide lifts all boats; I wasn't competing against photographers for jobs. I wasn't trying to take money from artists who needed it. I wasn't trying to make a quick buck. I was trying to build.
Yes, I was interested in crushing some of the competition, but only those who were not interested in the art but seemed to chase the clout, anyone who was in for love, I left alone. And I’m still this way; I couldn’t be less interested in someone doing something purely for the likes, or the attention, or who can’t match me, and I’d say you should look for that too.
I didn't try to monetise quickly; yes, we took clients on early, but we continued to do stuff out of our love for it for a long fucking time. We did things for free for ourselves; where I could spare it or get access, I would push the team.
I built a platform, our website, to showcase what we could do. My team went to Burning Man; they toured with Mark Ronson, shot for Kings Of Leon, and had Drake steal photos (and post them on his IG, lol). They did this stuff and I can't take credit for it. I just had the platform to show off how fucking incredible these people are. You need to celebrate each other. You need to celebrate other people's work. And also, you don't need to undercut; in a way, we were fixing; we were telling people to fuck off when they told us to undercut each other. I had clients who would go to the team and ask them to discount rates; they would try to go around me and get us to compete against each other. But creatives shouldn't be competing with each other, not out of money, out of ambition. Of course, we should be challenging each other to do the best fucking work we can.
I know this week has been tough for a lot of people. It's easy to hate. I want to push you to inspire each other, to create work you're proud of, to leave comments on people's work you love, to reach out to others, and to organise to make things.
Find other terrible artists and be terrible together. We all need to grow, and ultimately, with my stupid little website, I was pushed to grow, learnt more about people than I ever thought I could, and was inspired by the incredible people I got to surround myself with. And all I want for you is that.
With love,
Oliver
