Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Kovar.
Joseph, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Grew up in Detroit worked at the Auto plant one summer and knew this was not for me even though the money was great. Off to Art School. Graduated from The Center for Creative Studies BFA in Photography, Detroit. Hired by a major studio photographing national car ad campaigns traveling around the country and mostly California. Then moved to Chicago photographing ad campaigns for Maytag, Sony, Kraft foods, people and products in studio. After eight blistering winters, I packed up and moved to Santa Monica to enjoy a different lifestyle and photographing landscapes and small towns. I freelanced for explore.org foundation photographing and filming documentaries around the country.
It was an Americana theme such as The Coal Mines in W Virginia, The Cotton Fields and Blues Music in Clarksdale Mississippi, The Auto Industry in Detroit and Tornado Alley in Moore Oklahoma a documentary short I shot entirely myself for explore.org about the devastion of an F5 Tornado. Still shooting some commercial ads, I wanted to reinvent and be more creative and started to create abstract fine art photography. I call them abstract pano-scapes. The use of several images sometimes or maybe just one image stretched. The pano_scapes are up to 72″ in length. Hopefully doing galleries soon. ‘I love getting lost off the beaten road and find things’. That said, I think that openness to the magic and the mystery of the moment applies as much to my personal life as it does to my photography.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Being an artist and a commercial photographer there are always peaks and valleys. That’s the nature of the game. How do you fill that void? For some reason, I always start creating more or reinvent at those valleys. You are only good as your last photograph. Keep shooting keep creating.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
Graduating from CCS the bar was set very high. At the end of each year, students were graduated to the next year or for lack of talent were not allowed to return. Only seven of us finished after four years. Then advertising photography was even more demanding shooting for billion dollar ad agencies. Make it look great or you won’t shoot again for them. Back then, it was all 8X10 film with the View Camera. It was the highest quality camera ever invented. The cost was incredible for the film and processing but the image was sculpted like a Rembrandt. It was all about lighting, technique and design. Quality. The 8X10 View camera taught me how to do everything in Camera. Make it flawless, no retouching. Now most photographers think everything is done in photoshop. Good Luck. Lol.
Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania East Africa filming for a documentary had to be the most exciting craziest shoot I ever done. 20,000 feet and never trained for it but made it. Iceland was one of the most pristine countries I photographed. South Dakota, traveling through the Lakota Indian Reservation was very inspirational Meeting Morgan Freeman on our shoot in Mississippi. Photographing the Only Basketball game ever on The USS CARL VINSON Battleship on the date 11-11-11.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Become a Doctor? No, the art was always in me, studied music at a young age, there was no other choice.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kovar.net
- Phone: 310.451.3990
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: kovar34n
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kovarphoto
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