Bret Curry

Memento sat down with Bret Curry ahead of the release to discuss his background as a photographer & cinematographer. Bret shared stories from the production of A Ghost Story and discussed his view on fashion as an new medium of photography.

To start, could you share a bit about yourself and talk about how you became a photographer?

I started shooting both photos and video when I was a teenager primarily as a riff on the worlds of skateboarding and music that I was already into. I recognized that I wasn’t committed enough to either to try to make a career and life out of them, but that creating images around those worlds allowed me to tap into the same spirit and methods and apply those techniques to other subjects through a different medium. I continued shooting through college and ever since, and now it’s been two decades of having a camera in my hand every day in some form.

“It’s [now] been two decades of having a camera in my hand every day in some form”

Moving into today, what's the most rewarding or motivating aspect of your work? What would you say is the most challenging or least rewarding but necessary?

Traveling and collaborating with new people, trying to take their ideas and perspectives and attempting to translate them through various pieces of photographic equipment will never get old to me. I know that for certain, because it would have by now! Being away from home is the most difficult but necessary aspect of doing this, at least in the way I want to do it. I can’t honestly complain about the business side and administrative tasks. You’re doing what any other small business owner is doing, wearing a lot of hats, but at least with this it’s contained to yourself. You get to glimpse into the world of so many different professions through various projects and you see just how much more infinitely complex it can get. It’s a huge privilege to be able to make a career out of playing in sandbox with friends, however stressful that sandbox can sometimes get.

“It’s a huge privilege to be able to make a career out of playing in sandbox with friends, however stressful that sandbox can sometimes get."

The photo for this first release with Memento is from the A24 film A Ghost Story and was also featured in a photobook A Ghost Story: Photographs with Temper Books (now sold out). Can you share your experience with the film and this project?

In mid-2016 I was asked by director David Lowery and DP Andrew Droz Palermo to come on as Gaffer and 2nd Unit DP for A Ghost Story. I had known David for some years within the Texas film production scene and Andrew as an extension of that world, and was excited to be able to work with them in this particular capacity, as it also allowed for me to take stills of the production. I had just gotten a Leica Q, which had released earlier that year, and that camera in particular is extremely well suited to keeping on you while working and quickly whipping around when you see something to shoot. That camera and the RZ67 were the cameras I had with me on that project, and I ended up getting hundreds of images of the incredible work done by our production design and wardrobe team, and the iconic ghost that David envisioned. Those images eventually made their way into a book released through Temper in 2021.

This particular image was one of the first I took, during some initial pre-production visual tests. David Lowery is actually under the sheet in this photo, as costume designer Annell Brodeur and production designer Jade Healy were refining their approaches.

How do you think about balancing your work between commissioned work and personal photography?

Much of my personal work comes from the situations I am put in through professional projects that I am brought into and by always having cameras at the ready I am able to piggy back off these situations to collect personal work. I also tend to always be shooting on “off days”, which mostly means either using photography as an excuse to go drive around or take a day trip somewhere with my wife Joy or just having a camera with me as I go about completing various tasks. There really isn’t any sort of work/life balance for me when it comes to collecting images - it basically never stops and is a compulsion, but a good one I believe.

Building from the prior question, for your personal work do you have what you'd call a classic 'photographic style' or genre?

Much of what I am drawn to could be categorized as “environmental portraiture”. Basically images of people with context. That means I’m drawn to wider lenses, almost never shooting beyond a 35, and a fast 28 is probably all I would ever need if some of my professional work didn’t call for longer lenses. I have to execute many different styles of photography and love the process of reverse engineering and emulating other styles, but the way I see the world personally has really solidified into the 28mm Summilux lenses I use on the various Leica bodies I shoot.

What mistakes should a younger photographer look to avoid?

I think the worst mistake would be to be afraid of making mistakes as early and often as possible. However, making mistakes shouldn’t become your “style”, that may truly be the single worst mistake. If you do this a lot, you’ll have thousands of opportunities to learn from missteps so that you not only avoid repeating them but you fill your bag with techniques that you can call on when faced with a challenge. That is the core of doing this professionally. Getting to go through that process with other people who have been through that same journey is incredibly fulfilling.

Why do you think fashion can be a powerful medium for photography and how has Memento influenced that opinion?

“Memento is taking the experience of a gallery print and connecting it with the kinetic nature of fashion in a way that I think is going to thrill a lot of artists and appreciators.”

Fashion and photography cannot be separated. As long as the two have existed in the same time, they have been linked in the pursuit of capturing an ideal at a particular time and place. Photography has supported fashion in this way and helped frame an elevated sense of ourselves but photography can be incredibly ephemeral in the modern era. When you are accustomed to mostly seeing your images in digital form, the simple experience of seeing them printed is thrilling. Memento is taking the experience of a gallery print and connecting it with the kinetic nature of fashion in a way that I think is going to thrill a lot of artists and appreciators.

When getting your work out into the world, how do you think about the balance between offline and online mediums? Whether it be monographs, books, Memento, or classic prints. What do you think this balance will look like 50 years from now?

“Without intention everything turns to dust, so it is going to take cognizant individual effort as well as endeavors like Memento to keep physical representations of art alive going into the future”

Without intention everything turns to dust, so it is going to take cognizant individual effort as well as endeavors like Memento to keep physical representations of art alive going into the future. Maintaining the humanity in things, a large part of which is based on physical interaction, is going to be the most important fight of the coming century, and any small way in which we are moved in that direction is a very good thing. I think digital delivery can be a positive - it’s certainly a fact of our times, but I hope in 50 years it’s also considered common undisputed fact that it is in our nature to need physical representations of art.

A GHOST STORY | NOW AVAILABLE