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Street artist Jules Muck

Earlier this summer I got a chance to photograph local street artist and designer Jules Muck at 1320Main Studios in Venice. I had invited her to shoot for a personal project I’m working on on local artists and thought it would be a great opportunity to shoot some portraits using a couple of large Kino Flo lights that the studio had available. In this instance, I gave Jules very little direction other than where to stand. I didn’t want to do anything too contrived and I thought it would be best to just let her be herself. She showed up wearing a slip and carrying a chihuahua, so that’s what we went with. Other than lighting, the other thing that was important to me was that the background was green, as it’s probably the most common color in her recent work, which can be seen on walls throughout Venice. If you’ve been to Venice lately, the piece you might recognize most is her portrait of Lindsay Lohan with the words “Welcome to Venice” scrawled above her head. I photographed people walking by the piece several months before I had actually met Jules. Anyway, the studio happens to have a large green screen that is used most commonly for video work, so I thought it was the perfect spot to shoot. The shoot was fun, but brief, as Jules managed to fit me in just before running off to catch a flight to NYC. The life of a street artist is changing! Between formal recognition by major museums, such as the current Art in the Streets exhibit at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, to an increasing number of commissioned works on everything from local buildings to major ad campaigns, not to mention the Banksy-directed film “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” street artists are increasing coming out of the shadows and into the limelight. As much of the work is still considered illegal, however, I think the rebelliousness that made it so exciting in the beginning still exists. It will be interesting to see how it evolves from here.