Dan Martensen: The Fashion Photographer Who Learned to Fit In

28:46Dan Martensen:And he really loved doing that. I mean, that ultimately sort of lasted for a number of years. And he sold the farm and, you know, spend a number of the last, I guess, I don't know, 15 years or so trying to figure out what to do with himself, you know, as, as a lot of our parents do. It's tough. Definitely. And your

29:04Clare Richardson:mom?

29:05Dan Martensen:My mom. Wow. There's no, there's, there's, there's no verbal description that could really paint the full picture. My mom also born and raised in Los Angeles and met my dad, moved, moved to the east coast before i was born she i say reminds me because i've never met him i can't possibly be reminded of him but it reminds me of what i've heard of her father my grandfather uh so his name was sam my middle name is sam um and he had every job out of the sun like one day he worked in a he had a laundry service then he was an actor then he was like a I think he had an ice cream van at some point. Like he did everything.

29:51Dan Martensen:And my mom was very much like that. But really what my mom's sort of life's work has always really been the undercurrent of everything. I mean she had a children's clothing store when I was a kid in Pleasantville called Monkey Business. Every time I speak to my mom it seems like she brings up some job that she had. Oh, when you were three I used to work at this, you know, whatever, supermarket or this. And I'm like, what, really? As they say here, she's a grafter. Like, where I'm from, she's a hustler. And I mean that in, like, a really positive way. Like, my mom's always, like, she's always worked really hard, always trying to figure it out.

30:27Dan Martensen:But the two things, the sort of, the main jobs, like, for money that I can look back on was she had a clothing store, children's clothing store in Pleasantville. And then we moved to Armour. And she actually wound up becoming a pastry chef. she studied at like this local college i guess and learned how to she's always been a good cook and baker or whatever but she learned how to make cakes and she started a business and she suddenly was like making wedding cakes sometimes for really famous people the thing is she's also a full-time mom and amazing and so she'd be there for us during the day and my mom would work until two in the morning on thursday friday saturday nights stuff making cakes all by herself she's not good at managing people and she's terribly disorganized she's gonna hate me if she listens to this but but she she did it and she supported the family as well you know she was she always had two working parents in the house we didn't have a lot of money we didn't have no money we had we

31:21Clare Richardson:had like i said we always had enough i want to pivot now dan actually because i want to ask you about aesthetics so was it important in your family growing up what things looked like

31:35Dan Martensen:yeah yeah um certain things my parents are both artists um and my sister is an amazing artist um and i like to think you know i was always i chose photography but i literally kind of i knew i wanted to art school okay and so the way things looked was always kind of part of how it was connected to feelings. I wouldn't say my, you know, this aesthetic that, you know, you've just walked through isn't necessarily derived from, or I guess it has to be because they're my parents or missus, whatever. But like this isn't, my parents' house doesn't look like this. But like in terms of the way things are laid out or certainly with food, I mean, we're a big food family.

32:25Dan Martensen:So like the way things are presented spreads. I mean, come to my parents' house for a holiday like over the years anyway. They do less and less. My sister does it more and more and she's a brilliant cook. You know, aesthetics is definitely a huge, huge part. We've never, as you can probably tell, been that crazy into fashion. I think that comes more from like a financial standpoint. I mean like, you know, and also I'm a terrible mess. Like I cook in anything. like i'll cook in a saline shirt or i'll cook in in like you know my cause jumper that i've got holes in it and it doesn't matter like i just kind of just like do things i don't like being

33:04Clare Richardson:yeah i can see that from walking around the house you're not precious about it like you know i don't

33:07Dan Martensen:like to be precious about it i think i think when it's when the when the materials start to own you

33:11Clare Richardson:then you've lost the point you've actually got more dead flowers in here than the light ones

33:17Dan Martensen:they were live this morning i don't know um so yeah yeah uh but but aesthetics aesthetics in how it relates to creativity and like creating uh anything from like my dad's a brilliant painter my sister also amazing artist like really beautiful the cakes my mother would make like everything from like fake flowers she once made glenn close up cake for her dogs and like she created this huge rug with like dog poo and vomit and pee on it and it was like edible it was like it was very like pre is it cake um and she's such she's such a talented artist every everybody in the family is a good artist i'll say about myself i'd like everyone um and so aesthetics is definitely related to that for sure so when did you start taking pictures uh so my dad in tandem with his advertising career um used to do a lot of the still lives for his own advertising work and again another part of the sort of insular thing he'd rather like rather than go on set and have to tell a photographer what to do he just set it up in the basement or at one point he had um a photo studio actually i remember the photo studio in my head it's like it's probably nowhere near as beautiful and as like amazing maybe it was i don't know but like the memory is so beautiful um and uh so he always had these like four by five cameras nice beautiful like all this these this camera gear around and i mean i must have been even five or six when i started getting interested in it but it wasn't until i was say i was about 13 or 14 where i sort of started like realizing that i'd been round enough of it to like be kind of good at it or have an eye as they say and yeah in freshman year in high school so I was 14 years old is when I really like took my first photography class but at that point I learned a lot from my dad he was a great teacher actually and at that point it wasn't like I'm going to be a photographer when I grow up if anything it was like cool you know back then it was all film and I could like process the I learned how to process the film I learned how to print the photos and that meant going in the dark room and the dark room was like the coolest those chemicals and these lights and timers and all this gear and stuff and it's like i still love the idea of that i wish i could do that still now

35:44Clare Richardson:um i was going to ask you about this dan when you're photographing someone because you photograph people a lot of the time whether it's a fashion shoot where you know there's some fashion involved whether it's just an individual you've photographed some celebrities and so on how do you get the social part to work because you're often meeting someone for the first time um you've got to kind of you've got to surely generate some sort of intimacy with them or a connection with them to be able to make the energy work how does that bit work for you um

36:19Dan Martensen:it's funny because i've thought and i've thought about this before there's definitely a correlation between that and me being at a new school and having to kind of figure that out That's where it kind of incubated, I guess. But not unlike yourself. It's this. It's a conversation. And I think over time and somewhat inherently, I've always been curious, I guess. And it's amazing how willing people are to really give you more if you just show a little interest. And I think that for me has been how you get a good picture is you show people that you're not trying to take something from them and you're there to actually learn about them.

37:08Dan Martensen:And so oftentimes I'm doing like what you do. Where are you from? You have any siblings? Where are they? What's it like there? you know and suddenly they're giving you they're reaching into inside and pulling these facts out and ideas out and then you know you listen and that's it and when you listen you might hear something that interests you and if you express interest in people i think i mean i'm talking to an interviewer a great interviewer actually um you don't this is not telling you anything you don't already know um no but thank you for

37:46Clare Richardson:saying so but it's a different thing in that you're you know i'm here to do an interview with you but you're showing up to capture an image same thing so it's really interesting that same thing

37:55Dan Martensen:you're recording on audio i recorded on film yeah it's exactly the same thing yeah so i was looking

38:00Clare Richardson:at some of your pictures and i was thinking so you've got for example the actor josh o 'connor like serving a tennis ball in the middle of the road okay you've got ed sheeran letting off a fire extinguisher or like spitting water into the air stuff like that and so there's a sort of subversiveness there there's a kind of undercurrent of rule breaking somehow is that fair to say

38:27Dan Martensen:yeah i think particularly of someone like ed who like needed a studio that he can drive his car directly into so no one could see him getting out and walking into the studio because he's so famous and not just so famous but so like you know the paparazzi the fans everything part of that was like you know we had our setups and there are other portraits in the series which are very much like more traditional sort of you know look cool kind of portraits or like just be yourself kind of portraits but also like how great for someone who you know listen I'm not crying for Ed Sheeran at all but poor guy he can't he can't go on the street you know i would hate to have that kind of fame so like give him the kind of freedom or like you know like to where he not me i didn't tell him to do that okay i was like you know like i'm like let's do this let's do that whatever and he feels comfortable and we're talking and i broke him down to be just just ed just himself yeah and I think he felt liberated and we were posing by, we were posing him next to it sort of, or like it wasn't even in the frame and then suddenly he just grabs it and he's like, and I was like yeah, do it.

39:39Dan Martensen:The Josh O 'Connor thing was like specific idea where I was like, I just love the idea of him playing tennis in the street. There's actually this great old Nike commercial with Agassi and Sampras where they play tennis on Fifth Avenue and a bus winds up running the whole court over but it's this great moment. So I do like the idea particularly in in in fashion pictures where it's less about the fashion it's more about just like let's do something silly let's let go of the inhibitions and sometimes that doesn't mean anything sometimes that means like someone will just be more soft and sometimes in josh or ed's case they might do something silly like fire off a fire extinguisher or serve you know tennis balls like cars in the street and it's like it's fun yeah like i like fun yeah yeah yeah i get that

40:24Clare Richardson:I get that from you um one of the things we often talk about on the podcast is is a kind of sensitivity to environment so you're obviously a sensitive guy you've revealed that already but you spend a lot of your time using your sensors particularly your eyes you have to have a kind of viewpoint on the world and I just wondered how how sensitive are you to your environment because we're sitting in your home today are there certain things for you that are kind of non-negotiable about your environment there's certain things that you find triggering

40:57Dan Martensen:how do you respond to the world around you um yeah i think as i get older i realize how sensitive i am and in what ways i guess um i've always been light sensitive and that may or may not have something to do with why i'm a photographer it doesn't really matter frankly i'm sure it has something but i've always like i don't like bare bulbs i don't like being around bare bulbs it like you know some people can't stand like white noise or constant noise or loud noises or whatever loud light like loud sharp hard lights like in my face um really sensitive to things like that because it affects my mood i feel i feel tight i feel like and that could be because you know i had to sit in some room when i was you know eight years old and the bear bulb and i was getting bit by mosquitoes or somebody was punching me in a leg or something i don't know um who knows but like i guess the point is like i'm light light's number one i think for me cleanliness is more like it has to do with because i actually like chaos and somebody saw my shelf upstairs like i like sort of like bits and pieces i don't mind the sort of chaos in control if that makes sense I don't like dirt yeah just don't like dirty surfaces things like that what about ugliness ugliness bugs me you know I mean not like not so much of like I don't mean that about people no I actually find like people are generally really beautiful no no I mean environmentally But like environmentally, yeah.

42:36Dan Martensen:Ugliness, yeah. When things are like tragically wrong or uneven, like if this actually even now that I say it now, I'm like, oh, there's not the right amount of chairs at this table. Like I think weirdly, ugliness is when it's out of balance to me. Do you know what I mean? Like out of whack. Like it doesn't hold itself. I actually think mismatching and taking something that's like on its own really ugly and placing it next to something else can create something totally beautiful.

43:09Clare Richardson:Yeah.

43:10Dan Martensen:Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And it's just like depending on how much of that and in what shape it is and where it sits in relationship to the other thing can dictate how beautiful or ugly it is. You know, so it's all relativity, I think. I don't particularly like mass-produced plastic things in general. Like I found these down at, where were we? What's that? What's that nursery down in West Ham? Petersham, yes. Found these. I was like, that's beautiful. That's like glass. Like there's no question that someone's hand touched that made it, made these, and it holds about like two sips of fucking water and it's kind of useless.

43:50Dan Martensen:And like it's fine, but it's beautiful. and I'll I leave them here and they're great you know yeah um yeah I don't like I don't like

43:57Clare Richardson:ugliness in that way so as a photographer of interest when you're at home what do you photograph at home do you do you ever photograph it so I mean it's my kids or my food really yeah

44:13Dan Martensen:those are like the vast majority of things that I actually photograph at home so you wouldn't ever

44:19Clare Richardson:take your phone out and like photograph the way the light's falling across it or something oh sure yeah yeah yeah yeah i think that's probably third on the list um if it's you know especially

44:30Dan Martensen:like when you just move in or if you just hang a picture you know photograph on the wall or something and you actually stop and look at the space um sure yeah totally uh if the garden is looking particularly good that day um yeah 100 100 hi folks a quick interlude to remind you that

44:50Clare Richardson:alongside the podcast we also film house tours for our members over on patreon they're a chance to come with me inside the homes of some of my guests and to have a look at the rooms and the objects that we talk about in these conversations members get access to the full archive so that's more than 20 long-form tours, and there's new ones being added every week. So far, we've gathered around the kitchen table with chefs like Margot Henderson and Anna Jones. We've loitered in gardens with Chris Packham and Dan Pearson. There's been studio visits with artists like David Shrigley and Sue Webster, and also lots of designers such as Max Rollett and Matilda Goad.

45:34Clare Richardson:Becoming a member but also helps me make more episodes. So if you enjoy the podcast and want to support it in some way, joining over on Patreon would be hugely appreciated. There's a link in the show notes or just search for Homing with Matt on the Patreon website or app. If you haven't come across Patreon, it's P-A-T-R-E-O-N. Thanks for listening and back to the conversation. I'm really interested by this because I know a lot of photographers I find photographers really fascinating but what do you think about this if if if you as a professional and several other people as non-professionals were to go to a place each with a camera or a phone and just shoot what you see respond to it visually if I can put it like that how how different or similar do you think those would be like how much you know I I suppose I'm trying to get to the nub of like how instinctive is it?

46:36Clare Richardson:How much of a skill is it? Because we all think we're photographers now. Because we've all got like we can do it all day. Yes. Yeah.

46:42Dan Martensen:I talk about this all the time.

46:44Clare Richardson:Yeah.

46:44Dan Martensen:Everyone's a photographer. Yeah. And I have to say that I feel almost obligated to say that I don't think that's a bad thing.

46:53Clare Richardson:Yeah.

46:54Dan Martensen:A lot of photographers that I know are like everyone's a photographer. Yeah. You know. Oh, everybody's a photographer now. You know. look what you did on your iphone congratulations i went to four years at rizdy you know um first of all anything to like bring more attention to image making is great you know i think there we're at an age where like certain crafts are just flat out dying out you know what i mean um like a shoemaker or something you know these things just die out depending on the situation you know if we let you know five photographers walk around this house and back art and gave them each you know like 10 rolls of film or whatever what would that look like i mean i love that kind of stuff like it would it would all look totally different i mean some someone looked the same but i think it would be i mean that's what makes that's what makes it interesting right like yeah that we all have different perspectives yeah and different ways of looking at the same thing yeah i mean it's it underscores like the again i guess i'm in the mood for getting grandiose today because we're on a podcast but like how what a beautiful metaphor for how we should really be like looking at the world looking at our own forget the cameras and the phones like these are our own eyes how do you see the world how do you see the world like does it make the world different because you see it one way and I see it another no why are we bombing each other you know what I mean like why are we fighting why are you calling me that or killing me because I'm this and not that just because you see it your way and i see it mine like um doesn't change anything

48:35Clare Richardson:yeah you know so it sounds to me like your success your skill as a photographer i'm going to say this on your behalf i i suspect it's because of your ability to connect with human beings on a certain level because actually the technical qualities of being a photographer you know there's something you can learn but surely when you're when you're in a moment and it's you're on a set or you're out in the street with an actor whatever it is you're doing you're bringing out a moment of humanity somehow do you think that's right i think that's right i I think, first of all, I take that as like a massive compliment

49:27Dan Martensen:because that's what you hope you're doing. I can speak for a lot of photographers, certainly commercial photographers, that make work personal and not that they really hope that they're just not, as we call it, like a gun for hire. You like to think that like your perspective, it matters to the photograph and to the people who are either paying you or commissioning you or whatever and the people that see it um so that's that's great that's great to hear i love i love that that's the impression i'm leaving i think what's also interesting without delving too far into the photography what is photography and why is it good and all that conversation is that like oftentimes in the bigger kind of like you know conversations amongst photographers or uh or whatnot the conversation about photography becomes way more interesting when you realize that actually what's in the picture is one thing and that actually the photographer's ability to edit everything all the rest of it out um is equally if not more so there's more of that than there is of this right that's interesting And so when you start to think about that and how much power the photographer has in image making and what it says, you know, depending on what the image, because images can be very powerful.

50:52Dan Martensen:Not just like transcendent, like personal standing in a gallery, like, you know, oh my God, that's such a powerful image. But like powerful in that like it can end regimes or like, you know, or change people's minds. You know, thinking about how much they're not shooting. uh is is equally kind of as interesting and i sometimes like to think you know anyone any photographer has been on a set before especially on a location sometimes you get there and you're like this place is shithole how are we going to do this yeah you know we have to we can't look there you probably did that a little bit in this house yourself can't look over there can't look there it has to be here and you know i mean like yeah suddenly you're taking things out yeah you know know to make something uh which is you know what it's addition by subtraction i guess uh which i don't know why i bring it up but it's but it's but it's something that i find

51:46Clare Richardson:i'm constantly thinking about yeah uh when i'm shooting i really like that i agree with that and i also think that applies to a lot of creative pursuits if you think about art as well i think you know the the kind of spare nature of a line that captures so much and so little yeah yeah Yeah, and architecture as well.

52:05Dan Martensen:Yeah, especially architecture. In fact, I think architects are probably the greatest masters of minimalism in any art form, right? There are so many schools of thought, I guess, around minimalism, right? Yeah. And living space. Like, what's the absolute most necessary thing in here and nothing else? Yeah. You've seen the houses, you've seen the spaces and stuff. Yeah. Where's the toilet? Yeah.

52:28Clare Richardson:Going to see John Paulson quite soon at his house in London on that front. So that's going to be good. Oh, cool. Amazing. Amazing. I want to ask you about the process of refurbishing this because I've read in interviews you've given that you started your bagels business, It's Bagels, at the same time as this house came into your lives, right? Yeah. So what? Just describe that period for me.

52:57Dan Martensen:Well, I lost a lot of weight. No time for eating. It's all the bagels. They're so healthy, you see? talk about why not to only eat bagels because the only thing i was even using as sustenance i just like grab one i didn't have time to leave the bagel shop to do anything when i came here i didn't have time to do it it was just like i was running 24 hours a day it was just endless um really yeah you know what taking in its parts renovating a house can be very stressful you've

53:31Clare Richardson:heard those stories you've probably i've done it i've done it myself yeah very stressful particularly

53:36Dan Martensen:with the family uh financially um logistically so the kids were starting a new school year in a new school wow so like that that as you also know in and of itself in a vacuum is stressful and then we were also renovating the house which because i was building the bagel shop the first bagel shop I flew back we go back to New York over the summer uh stay up in the Catskills and we're there for six seven weeks every every summer for the last seven years and because we were there uh and I wasn't here for the bagel shop being built I needed to get back periodically I think I came back twice I can't or I left late and then I came back during the summer to check on the bagel shop and the house and we told them you know at the onset of the building that we would be coming back and we need we're going to move in because we're going to give up our rental which is like you know five minutes away from here we were renting a house and you know it occurred to us like why would we pay rent all summer in a house we're not living in which was already the case every summer which is annoying but whatever it's just what it is and then come back and then have to pack that house and then move in here and unpack the house let's move out of that house in july completely pack it up put it in storage and then have the moving company bring us in great talk to the builders great yeah we'll have you in september so i come mid august and i come in here check on the bagel and then i walk in here and i was like what the like what this place is not how it's not gonna be ready in two or three weeks and then build it just squarely and i actually i really like him i mean we have had our moments and beyond but i he just looked at me in the face he's like no you won't be advice and i was like well funny because um in two weeks we come back uh like Like I have children and they start school.

55:48Dan Martensen:Like when were you going to tell me? Like what the fuck are you talking about? So it was like a mad day. It was crazy because not only am I stressing about getting the shop built, but then I have to like find, I don't know if you've ever had to find a four or five week long Airbnb. It's really hard. Not to mention like, I mean, I can't imagine you'd be looking in this area if you were. like i wanted to find something like near where we lived so we didn't you know so we were like kind of i don't want to like the school we're going to go to school i mean like there's so much i like i couldn't believe it he just like looked at me he's like yeah nope anyway wound up doing that also again stressful like trying to find it there maybe i was like doing it in like two days that i was here found something got it paid like way too much for it also also but beyond all this like the financial aspect of this i'm hemorrhaging money finishing a house you're saying yes to things you never would say yes to just to get it done yeah and then the bagel shop opens and i'm thinking like once the bagel shop is open we'll be fine i can get back to like sorting this out and the fucking bagel shop opens and there's lines down the block i'm like viral what like what what's happening are you kidding we're running out of bagels at like 11 o 'clock in the morning And next day we make twice as many.

57:08Dan Martensen:We run out at noon. Next day we make twice as many. We're running out at one. Like it's endless. And there's lines on the block. And there's people like influencers contacting me on Instagram. Like there's newspaper articles. There's fucking this and that. It's an endless amount of chaos. And I'm, I mean, I have vivid memories of me like walking down the aisles of like the third or fourth Waitrose and Sainsbury's and Tesco and Coho. and like just buying all the bacon I couldn't find. Because like we couldn't, we didn't have accounts with like the right, like we were totally unprepared to be successful.

57:46Dan Martensen:Let alone, I mean, I guess we were prepared to be unsuccessful. Like I only ordered a thousand coffee cups, like full stop. To put that in perspective, like we get them delivered in the 30 ,000 like size box. I ordered a thousand. I was like, yeah, well, a thousand. Who's that? We're never going to sell a thousand coffees. Sold that in like less than a week. It's like a six-week lead dying to get more. So I'm just like getting generic coffee cups. I mean, it was like absolute chaos. And then so for me, how that made me feel, like I already had like a certain level of like sort of imposter syndrome.

58:24Dan Martensen:Like just a photographer opening a bagel shop. and then to be really like all eyes on you successful at it suddenly I was like this is all gonna come crashing down I'm just you know not sleeping because of stress I'm getting up at like three in the morning well I was getting up three in the morning anyway because I had to go in and roll bagels because like I had a baker who like didn't show up one day or like the little walk-in is broken I'm like on my hands and knees like I actually stopped watching the bear that month i really love that show had a buddy in the show and i couldn't watch it because it's too triggering and it was like being in like a combination of like the twilight zone because it was all so surreal and the bear which was like i mean if you've seen the show it's just like all you know with the tickets coming out in the chaos and like you know this person cuts their hand and like that person's sick and like the cops are here you know it was like the neighbors are shouting at me like they hate the neighbors hated us at first some of them still do i mean yeah it's pretty

59:23Clare Richardson:Rose Hill I mean yeah yeah you know wow this is so interesting I mean as a as a New Yorker opening a New York bagel shop in London the obvious question I think given the theme of the podcast is is was that an attempt to feel at home in some way yeah oh it was literally an

59:49Dan Martensen:attempt I mean it wasn't the bagel shop was an extension of the attempt to feel at home the the kernel of the idea was I woke up during lockdown and I think we can all remember these days where you know for us lockdown you know thankfully nobody got sick really no one died that we knew like you know close to us so we were kind of like okay but then there were those days where you wake up in the morning and you're like just for fuck's sake can I not just like go get a pint with a friend you know what I mean can I just not go like can't we just someone cook for me you know something like that there was like these moments I know for sure like everyone everyone listening yourself we all had those moments mine was like I woke up I just moved here six months earlier

1:00:40Clare Richardson:and I was like I just want a fucking bagel

1:00:43Dan Martensen:I just want to walk down the block and pick up a really delicious New York bagel the same one of like the same type of bagel I grew up with I tried to find it here, couldn't find it here I'd cycle around London looking for bagel shops, that's what I did for exercise and to keep myself sane, cycle I got really into cycling over lockdown, it was great still like it and I would go looking I'd like Google bagel shops and I'd get there they'd be like sold beef and I'm like no yeah all right i'll take one they're delicious i love salty bagels but i was looking for my new york bagel you know if you've been in new york you know what i'm talking about it's like it's a

1:01:18Clare Richardson:thing which is which is what for those who don't know which is like a bigger more like crusted with

1:01:23Dan Martensen:like all kinds of fluffier crusty covered in different toppings you know not just you know poppy and sesame but like they put way too much cream cheese on you know they come with bacon egg and cheese just streaky bacon american cheese um you know there's different toppings different combinations different things it's just it's just i should be better at describing them

1:01:43Clare Richardson:but just they're just like a thing they're more abundant than we used to hear i think there's just a lot more inside it there's as you say there's more seeds there's yeah it's a meal yeah and it's

1:01:52Dan Martensen:also it's also something that as a new yorker and it doesn't matter it's funny because when i came here and opened the shop i had all these like random people walk in and start speaking in hebrew to me and hugging me and stuff and i'm like what and i realized like it's a very it's a Bagels are a Jewish thing here.

1:02:06Clare Richardson:That's so interesting.

1:02:07Dan Martensen:And it's not not Jewish in New York, but everybody eats bagels in New York. And everybody has their favorite bagel shop. And you can stand in line at a bagel shop. And in front of you is a Jamaican construction worker. And behind you is, you know, Mike Bloomberg. And we're all ordering the same bagel. And we're all, like, when we all have our favorite bagel shops. It's like a pub here. Where's your favorite sausage roll? You know, like, instantly, like, and to that end, like, I can ask you where your favorite pub was. But I could also ask you, if you're not in that neighborhood and you're, say, in this neighborhood, where's the closest favorite pub?

1:02:40Dan Martensen:And you know. Probably the cow, obviously. But, like, in Islington, great pubs in Islington, right? Like, you have, like, two or three that you love. This is my first. If I'm going to eat, if I'm with my wife, I'm watching football. You know what I mean? Like, that's what bagel shops are to us. And same thing with pizzerias. So that was just it. And I just, I was locked down. I missed it. And then I decided I was going to try and make it myself because I couldn't find it here. And that kind of turned into me sharing it with neighbors, which kind of turned into me doing a little bit of a pop-up, which I couldn't do because all my neighbors wanted them.

1:03:16Dan Martensen:And I needed to make 200. I sent it out on WhatsApp and like everybody wanted a fucking bagel. So I called my friend Chris who owns him and his wife, the founders of Caravan Restaurants. And I knew Chris had this big bakery and a coffee roastery over on Caledonian Road. and I was like, mind if I use a bakery this weekend?

1:03:36Clare Richardson:He was like, yeah, go ahead.

1:03:36Dan Martensen:I don't know what the hell. Chris is nuts to say yes to me. I don't even know why he did it. But he said yes. And so he introduced me to this guy who works for this baker and we made a bunch of bagels and I passed them out to all my neighbors. They were like, this is great. Do it next weekend. So that was kind of the impetus for it. But it was definitely 100 % because I missed home. Like that was it.

1:03:57Clare Richardson:I missed that thing. It was a connection for me.

1:03:59Dan Martensen:And it still is. I'm proud. I walk in those shops and I'm like, it feels like New York. It's like it's home. Yeah, it's lovely.

1:04:09Clare Richardson:Family life in this home, this actual home of yours. So you're here with your two kids, your wife, Claire. How did you guys meet out of interest?

1:04:19Dan Martensen:We have a mutual friend. His name is Duffy. He's a hairstylist. He'd be an interesting interview for you as well, actually. They was our hairstylist.

1:04:29Clare Richardson:Yeah, yeah. They meet a lot of people.

1:04:31Dan Martensen:Yeah, heritage is special. I love to talk. I mean, Duffy's one of my dearest, dearest friends. It was his birthday. He had just moved to New York. His girlfriend was still living here in London. He's British. And so it was his birthday and his girlfriend flew over to surprise him in New York. And he had just bought this like small plot of land with like a shed on it, upstate New York. This is Duffy. He's like, great, you're here. I want to take you upstate. Let's go. It's the countryside, like summer day. It was July, July 17th, 2010. So they all drove upstate, checked out to go see the shack in this field that Duffy bought.

1:05:14Dan Martensen:And it was a hot day. I was, I mean, I was a single guy. I was living up there pretty much for the summer on my own. and rang me up said hey can I come by oh by the way he and my wife Claire and his girlfriend at the time now wife Lucy and another girl called Clarabin they all drove up together they were like it's hot I'm gonna jump in the pool called Dan called me and they showed up come hang out and jump in the pool I was like yeah of course you're gonna bring three girls over to my house in the summer um and you know I bought the house with an ex-girlfriend that didn't work out I wound having to buy it off of her it was not expensive but it was it was hard for me to cobble the money together but i managed and it was kind of like my first summer of freedom i had paid off my ex i was like good this is the house and it was it was always a dream for me to have that house uh not always a dream but this the second i light eyes on it i was like obsessed with it and yeah she came she came by with duffy and the two girls and we all met and hung out uh i had a dog jake up there uh jake at the time and claire and jake just bonded claire now i know claire bonds with all animals uh and they loved each other and they were played and kind of like jake was the kind of icebreaker i guess and she she mentions kind of casually she's gonna be upstate a little bit this summer with a friend and uh the rest is kind of history i just i sort of stalked her a little bit and uh we had a great summer it's like the most beautiful summer of love you know like young romance and it was kind of like yeah it was a beautiful summer and how would you explain

1:06:55Clare Richardson:the dynamic between the two of you and why it works because i'm always so interested in couples

1:07:01Dan Martensen:and oh my god the kind of flow of energy well all the reasons i love claire of all the reasons i of clear one of the things i love most is how sort of independent and fiery and like passionate she is which in my case makes for a lot of in our case i should say it makes for a lot of clashes for us because we're both that way okay and in many ways our dynamic is like on the one hand really amazing because we're like we'll never be bored of each other never she's always concocting something or like heard something on a podcast or the radio or whatever read something somewhere and like honey we got to go try this or we have to do this or do like let's do that we also collaborate together as photographer and stylist which at first was a disaster because we were both like these like alpha dogs like kind of like you know kind of jockeying for creative control and we just fought the whole time on set and it was kind of awkward for our assistants the models and stuff but eventually we figured it out because we realized like we can travel together we initially didn't want to work together at all we're like okay you know a bit weird like we met socially we don't like make this about work but eventually we did work together and we figured it out and my favorite person to work with is my wife uh so we work really well together she's an amazing mother um she challenges the hell out of me sometimes to the point where like i am exhausted but at the same time like being sort of witness to different relationships that different friends and family and people that I know have had that have lasted through the years and seeing where things get sticky and things get really hard.

1:08:37Dan Martensen:A lot of those things have to do with people kind of like settling into who they are and growing apart, like just becoming strangers to one another. And in our case, I think both of us have parents that are still together. And I think there's like a real level of dedication to one another and to the relationship that naturally as time goes on when things get hard when things get sticky we really kind of like dig in and work shit out and i mean i couldn't pick a better partner for that i'm really grateful for that yeah it's great yeah it's tough sometimes marriage is hard yeah of course you know i think people always like oh yeah it's best my best friend i'm married my best friend it's not like the movies is it oh oh it's hard and parenting and my two careers and she had at one point two careers okay four careers two kids fucking new house all this shit like what are we doing like and we definitely both have the same problem which is like sometimes taking on too much so you're quite relentless too yeah it can be uh but then we just had this summer just now where like we fully we actually like checked out yeah when we were upstate we were cooking hosting friends traveling you know going to the beach going to the mountains going like everything and it was just beautiful and we really weren't you know we weren't on our phones we were like we're really present and it was brilliant and you know that might be summer 2026 go down as the best summer and 2027 might be shit and who knows but like we're in it you know what i mean we're really in it together and and and i think you know like you said it's not the movies it's it's hard and all this like life is hard but i'm lucky i got a great partner it's brilliant how would you

1:10:20Clare Richardson:summarize this house and its position in your life and and its importance and what it means to you out of interest it's really funny um you know when we moved here i told claire

1:10:33Dan Martensen:i kind of offered it up we were living in new york and in brooklyn and we just finished doing up a house there about a year prior and she just wasn't happy there's some family stuff going on for her but more so it was also she was just she said it to me but she didn't have to say she was just like she was she was struggling having a young kid in in bed stye is i wouldn't i wouldn't like choose it we we we wound up there um and we made the best of it and the house where we renovated there was beautiful and wonderful and like i couldn't imagine i felt like i had climbed a mountain as a kid who like you know at one point was living in a basement with no window and, you know, rats and whatever when I was in my 20s to like owning a brownstone and saying like I made it.

1:11:22Dan Martensen:You know, it was like a huge accomplishment. But then to see my wife unhappy and realizing how unhappy she really was. And now I see it more having lived here, like how fast-paced and how hectic New York can be and how expensive it can be. And also just like the senses are constantly attacked. It's like it's loud. it's you know dirty and all the things i mean listen i it's my favorite city in the world but it's all those things and every new yorker there's there's there's every new yorker say the same um but i really realized how much it was affecting her and so i casually said why don't we go to london i'll live in london for a year it's like i don't know what the fuck i was thinking and this is in like late 2018 so She's like, really?

1:12:10Clare Richardson:I'm like, yeah, let's just go.

1:12:12Dan Martensen:Freelance. We can do anything. I work in London all the time. I love London. You know, we have friends there. So we've been staying in Kenzo Rise at our friend Flora and Andy's house, like, constantly. Like, we would come all the time because they were just dear friends and they had this great house. We stayed there and our kids were friends and everything. So the natural choice was to look for something in this area to rent. And we found something down like closer to like basically on Queens Park. And that was great. And it lasted for four and a half years or something like that. Oh, by the way, it wasn't a year in case you couldn't tell.

1:12:49First of all, we got pregnant with my son.

1:12:53Dan Martensen:And then the pandemic hit. You know, we had my son in October of 2019, which is like sort of a natural quarantine. You know, you sort of don't go to work, stay at home all the time, not sleeping, you know, odd hours whatever and we're just kind of like doing that and then the pandemic hit and then it was like okay it's not going to be a year maybe it'll be a couple years and then just life you know we just went up here but the reason i say all that is because in all that time and including when i with the bagel shop and everything all the stuff i was doing it took me a while everybody that I told back home was shocked I was moving okay like you're the last person leaving New York that's crazy but um so for me I was like it took me a while to adjust to London as much as I loved it and I do um it took me a long while and it wasn't until we actually settled into this house and even that took a while because even you know you move into a house you just fixed up there's random snagging things there's not even just the materialistic stuff it's more just like to make it at home didn't feel like home yet you could have some dead flowers you know i love my dead flowers i'm not gonna keep them because of you um i think now i don't think i could i don't want to live i don't want to go like this is a home it's really home um and there's memories and the patina you know there's like it's become part of our family this house in a way that like you can only hope for you know and even if once in a while we go look around and right move like maybe i'll sell the bagel shop someday for a bunch of money and move to hampstead or something and i'm like oh i like this house i'm good here you know um dan it's been such a joy yeah i really appreciate your openness i appreciate you

1:14:52Clare Richardson:inviting us in it's very intimate thing to do beautiful house um but actually more memorable

1:14:58Dan Martensen:conversation so i've really enjoyed it me too i had no idea how much i'd get out of this actually

1:15:04Clare Richardson:i'm glad we did it thanks very much for listening folks i really appreciate it and huge thanks to Dan as well and his family actually for letting us invade their family home. It was a really fun day. I really enjoyed getting to know Dan a bit better. As I said in the intro, I think he's one of the good guys. I really, really like him and I hope you enjoyed that too.

1:15:26Dan Martensen:As always, our members

1:15:27Clare Richardson:will get access to the house tour of Dan's house. So that'll be up there along with, we've now got more than 20 house tours up on Patreon. So if you're interested in watching those, you can join as a member and the URL for that is patreon.com slash homing with Matt. If not, very, very happy to have you here, of course. This episode was produced by Podshop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks again and talk to you very soon. Bye for now.