NIGHTED Life Presents: The Heavy Collective
If you’re up on The Heavy Collective, you know these dudes consistently feature next level photographers, and ask the best questions. What else do they do? Find out:
For the don’t knows, what is The Heavy Collective?
The Heavy Collective is a platform for the young, the old, the emerging and the established to showcase their work along side one another. We wanted to give voice to the personalities behind the camera, learn more about the individuals, their life and their approach to photography. We also work closely with photographers far and wide on creative projects, exhibitions and publications.
What are your individual roles within The Heavy Collective?
The heavy collective started with Jack Harries and Tommy Thoms. We manage and curate the site, interviews, features and projects. Our good friend James McComb put together and continues to add to our probing questionnaire and we also have a small group of folks who contribute their skills to graphics and articles. Honorable mentions Dom Legrand and Geordie Cargill.
Do you guys work day jobs?
Absolutely, We’re spread across retail, photography assisting, videography, bars, construction. You name it we do it.
What else are you guys into? Where can we catch you in your spare time?
Skateboarding. Laksa.
I personally spend hours looking at the features you guys post on photographers. How do you choose the photographs/ people?
We look for photographers that can show us something we haven’t seen yet, or change the perspective of something we have. We are also strong admirers of film photography and that definitely plays into our selection. We spend a lot of time online, you don’t have to look hard to find and reach great photographers. We also receive a lot of awesome submissions, get out to a lot of exhibitions and poke our faces in magazines and publications. The net is a great tool but you can’t beat the real deal.
What’s next for The Heavy Collective?
This year we launched a project called POV which involves sending cameras around the world, photographers document two weeks of their lives and send the camera and the film back undeveloped. We also have a stall coming up at the MCA zine fair, a stack of new publications to add to our recently launched online store and hope to get another project or exhibition up and running before the years out.
Where did the idea originally come from?
For sometime we had been following other collectives and projects and realized there wasn’t really anything like that in Sydney despite there being a lot of photographic talent here. We were looking for new and interesting ways to present photographers and at the time had started work on a couple of different project ideas. I think that was when we felt the push to work on something more permanent, going online seemed like the obvious choice so we interviewed a bunch of local photographers put together the heavy collective and it has grown from there.
Let’s end it with one of my favorite questions from your features: Last words before death?
“Bury me standing, so when i meet the devil i can punch him in the guts” - Stone.
Go check out The Heavy Collective site to see what’s up!