Stop the presses! A phrase that is now as outdated as rollerblades, I suppose, but I bring you great tidings of joy: Dimitry Elyashkevich is having a "grand re-opening" of his photo show at the Door Gallery (next door to the world famous Burgundy Room) in Hollywood, California. So, if you read the review earlier this week (unlikely) then here's a bonus interview with Dimitry on what exactly constitutes a "grand re-opening," as conducted by Rick Kosick, who, incidentally and technically, was Dimitry's boss while the two worked at Big Brother skateboard magazine back in the way back (or at least until Dimitry came up with his own job title: Executive Director of Photography). So come along… and enjoy! —Sean Cliver
Kosick: What made you want to do a photography show?
Dimitry: I’ve got a lot of stuff, and people always bug me about it. I have photos that no one has seen or someone has only seen once. What’s the point of taking a photo if you can’t share it?
Is this your first show?
This is my first show ever.
How many years have you been a photographer?
Well, I got my first camera back in 1989 or something… I think I was 14. I had one before that, but I broke it. I ran with a SLR, tripped, and smashed the camera. Then my cousin’s husband gave me a camera and I started taking pictures of my friends skating. I just followed them around on my 10-speed bike. Then I started skating and put the camera down. I wasn’t good enough to go any further on my board, but it was fun and I liked it so much that I still wanted to be a part of it, so I started shooting photos again.
When did your photography really start to take off for you?
They had a contest at the Brooklyn Banks in 1993. All the pros from LA came out. I didn’t know how it worked back then, so I shot a bunch of photos, printed them at school, and wrote “proof “ on the contact sheet with a Sharpie. I sent it toSlap, TransWorld, and Thrasher. I never heard shit from anyone then a couple months later an article comes out in Thrasherand there’s a photo that I shot of Tim Brauch—rest in peace—doing an inward heel-flip and it’s got Adam Wallacavage’s name on it. I was like, “What the fuck?! I know that’s my photo, I have the negatives.” I thought they scanned the photo and removed the word “proof” in Photoshop. But when I started getting my photos back, if you just rubbed your thumb across it would come right off. So I wrote a two-page letter to Bryce [Kanights], and sure enough, the next issue there was a little paragraph with an apology. I was like, “Damn, I’m the shit!” because I thought they jacked my photos. So that was the moment I realized I could make a living and see the best skateboarding and travel the world on someone else’s dime.
Did you have more fun taking pictures of the skating or the lifestyle that revolves around it?
It’s all one, dude. Skating is a lifestyle. But everyone has seen my skate photos. Everyone has seen the Peter Bici ollie at the World Trade Center… the Joey Alvarez switch heel at the banks. Everyone has seen that shit, but no one has seen these [in the show].
So lets talk about your show.
It opened last Friday. It’s connected to the Burgundy Room in Hollywood, which is a bar. The show is running every day until the end of the month from 8pm–2am. This Friday—because I’m still finding photos—there’s going to be a grand re-opening with at least a hundred more point-and-shoots. All of these photos are just prints that I already have, because I’d already committed to doing a show there and it was a matter of convenience. At first I was trying to figure out what to do and I was picking negatives thinking, “Oh, I’m going to get this printed and this printed… ,” like every other show, which is cool, you know, to see a print that’s big, but that’s expensive. Plus the show was supposed to be up the Friday before it opened, but I just couldn’t figure out what to do. So I was said, “Will, you have to push it.” Poor guy had taken down all of the art from the previous show and had to put it all back up—sorry, Will. I love you. Anyway, so I’m going through the point-and-shoots and I was like, “These are hilarious, they’re already printed, and there’s thousands of them. I can cut this down and put them on the wall with Sharpies hanging next to them and people can leave an Insta-comment.
So what were some of the comments that people left that you really liked?
There were a lot of good ones. Then there was some when people got mean, I would take it down. I’m pretty sure Mike Kassak is responsible for a lot of them. But there was one with Johnny Knoxville in a picture with Avril Lavigne from a time when all of us were in Miami for some MTV awards. Someone wrote, “He was a skater boy, blah blah blah, a skater boy, but oh, he doesn’t skate.” And there was one with Pontius as an old man smoking cigarette. Someone wrote, “Best man at my first wedding, solid dude.”
I had to take down a bunch of other stuff, because the first night it was open I had a spread of—and I’m not going to say his name—but it was like six photos of his dick. Some girls were like, “That’s too much dick,” and I was like, “You know what, you’re right.” So the show keeps changing and evolving.
So why do you keep changing your show?
Because I keep finding new shit. I’m still going through my shit.
But I feel like you’re still adding things during your show.
So what? Am I not allowed to do that? I’m trying to make it the best show possible. There’s more shit. I have ten-times the amount of shit that’s already up on the wall now, so why not? Do you want to see the best shit or what I was just rushing to put up? So it’s up until the end of June. If you don’t what me to do that then I won’t. Rick doesn’t want me to make the show better, everybody! Well, I don’t care. I’m making it better. So everyone come through this Friday for the grand re-opening and it’ll keep changing so you can come by and check it out any night.
Have thought about putting a book together?
For what?
So your friends can buy it.
My friends can go to the show.
But what if they want a nice coffee table book?
Well, they can print the photos and make their own damn book.
Don’t you think it would be cool to have a photography book, though?
Maybe later, but right now, what I really want is to hit up some of these corporate skate companies. This show would be so fun to take around the world to see what skaters in New York think of it, or London, or Brazil, or Australia, and have new mounting boards put up at each show so people can leave comments in their native language. It would be so sick!
So you’re seeing a vision of taking this show around the world to different countries?
Yeah, what up Nike, what up Adidas, what up corporate skate America?
Wouldn’t it be fun to do the show in Russia?
Yeah, everywhere. Tokyo, Russia, everywhere. I would rather do it in Minsk… that’s where I was born. I just went there for the first time since I left when I was 4-and-a-half-years-old. For me it was awesome. Shit was cheap, it was super clean, there were no fat people. There’s a bunch of shit to skate. If a book happens, it happens. I’m not worried about that. Right now, I’m just dealing with point-and-shoot film, but I also have slides. I want to do a show with slides, and then I have digital shit, like all of the Wildboyz shit is digital. Plus, there’s video for years that nobody has seen that’s in the vault because it’s incriminating. It’s endless.
So this is basically “Dimitry’s Last Call”?
What do you mean?
Like how we did in Big Brother magazine, the “Last Call” section, but this is “Dimitry’s Last Call.”
No, they’re art photos, and this is definitely not my last call.
(Portrait of the artist by Rick Kosick; 2018)
This is like the 3rd time I did something like this and I hated it each time. Me and my Friends are making a TV show . We are attempting to get funding for said show . It is a Documentary Format.
https://www.gofundme.com/memesworld-documentary-tv-show
If you know anybody that can help or would be interested in hearing us out please let me know .
Meme Team
Posted by: Memes World | 07/10/2018 at 09:56 PM