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$6.99/lb: A lot of photographers go on assignments, take their pictures and leave. Your photographs, on the other hand, really show how much of a part of that particular subject you are. It seems like, for you to take a photograph of anything, you've got to be kind of a fan of it.
GEF: Well, in most of the situations, I'm more than just the photographer on the shoot. Most of the people I am friends with, and most of the time I'm a fan of the people I'm shooting. I may be friends with them, but think about it, your friends — aren't you kind of fans of theirs? You like what they're doing and you like talking to them about it. So, you're kind of a fan of your own friends. It just so happens that some of the people I happen to be friends with happen to be famous and people wanna see pictures of them, or I think they should be famous or people should know what they're doing. I like what they're doing so, in my own way, I want to help spread the ideas and the ideals of what they're doing along to other people.
Now, with skateboarding, it's not necessarily so political or obviously political to some people, but to me it was in the way people were skateboarding in a more aggressive, radical way. To expose that in a magazine and show it the way I wanna see it in itself was a political act. You know what I'm saying? It's more personal obviously. When I started hanging out and seeing bands, probably the first person I shot a music picture of was Ted Nugent. I just shot it because I was a fan. I shot it from the audience, you know, I didn't have a special pass or nothing. I just snuck up there with my camera and snapped a couple photos. It was just cool, 'cause I was a fan. Later on, it was kind of amazing, when I got into punk rock and you could go to a bar or a club to see a band and you're in the front row cause, like, everybody's in the front row. That's how it is in a club, but when you're 17 you don't realize such a thing is possible. It's kind of like a mind blower to me.
Sometimes when I was working for Skateboarder they would say "Can you shoot this band cause we want to do an article on them?", but before that, or even at the same time, there were bands I was seeing that I thought, "I love what these guys are saying, I love what they're doing, I want to shoot pictures of them and get them in the magazine so more people can find out about what incredible things they are doing and what incredible music there is."
You know, probably from the age of 9 years old I was calling radio stations requesting songs — why am I doing that? I probably own the record myself, but I wanted other people to hear songs that I liked. So, that's kind of what it's like taking pictures, I want other people to know about these things that I like and why I like them. If you photograph it, you get to show the person what it is you like about it. If I shot a picture of Henry Rollins' foot, it'd make people think I liked Henry Rollins' foot. If I take a picture of the whole band performing, Black Flag, and the intensity in it, and what's going on, and try to freeze the action to show you how radical the situation is — if you portray that, you show what you want to show, to relate the story to people the way you want them to see it.
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