387: Koreaworld with Alex Lau

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I think it's hardest for me to shoot, like, a really sleek, modern place. If I'm shooting in a restaurant, generally people are like, oh, let me clean up. I'm like, no, please don't clean up. The way it is right now, it looks amazing, and that is who you are. Like, I guarantee you it'll look awesome. It won't look disgusting or dirty. Like, there's a story here to be told, and, like, the moment you start cleaning it up, it removes it.

0:53This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rothbard. Today we have Alex Lau in the studio. Alex is a food photographer who has shot covers and magazine spreads for some of the most interesting clients in the world. Alex also is the photographer and co-author of Korea World, a book I know you know all about. It's out next week. Alex spent four years working at Bon Appetit, and we get into his truly amazing journey from fashion closet intern to one of the most gifted shooters around. I loved catching up with Alex. I learned actually a lot about him having known him for years and traveled the globe with him, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:41Alex Lau, welcome. This is Taze. My friend, how are you? Good, good. I'm excited to be here. I'm so happy to see you. I haven't seen you. We were doing color proofs in this office a few months ago for the book, but I haven't seen you in the flesh in a while. How are you doing? We see each other sporadically once every like three to four months. I know. And most of the time, not in New York City. It's usually not. The last two years is we went to Korea twice. We traveled America a couple times. And, you know, I had such a great time just hanging out with you, buddy. And I came to know you through your work.

2:16You know, I didn't know you. I just knew your work at BA and some of your commercial work. And I was like, man, Alex got style. He clearly likes going out and eating at restaurants like me. And we're going to talk about Korea World, the book that you photographed and you're a co-author of. And we do, I think, consider you a co-author. Before we get to talking about your career and your history with cookbooks and editorial photography, where have you been eating these days? I think of you as such a restaurant fan. You really understand style and new restaurants. I always want to know where you're eating.

2:49Yeah. I mean, honestly, a lot of it has just been at home. Um, but I've, I've gone to a couple of places. I went to the, I went to Romans again. I was, man, that place just holds up. It's so good. And I live in, uh, the Fort Greene, Glen Hill area. So it really is to me just like the pinnacle of an amazing sit down neighborhood spot that just banger after banger every time. If you just want an amazing plate of pasta, it's, it's there for you. Is that still Dave? Is it Dave Gold, the chef there? Do you know? I'm not sure. Yeah. It's the same guy who must be the same guy who opened it yeah yeah and then went to sailor uh the other day um where else new york is is hard because the reservation scene is so i know insane and understatement century right like even with sailor uh you know everything's booked out i tried one one week got there at 4 30 open at five yeah we can see you at 9 30 and i was like i can't do this so i showed up the next week and i showed up at 345 stood outside first one seated but that's the name of the game so i feel like more often than not i i just end up eating at the restaurants outside of new york um which is cool it just it just built it it makes travel that much more special so when you're home and not working you travel a lot for your job uh you you cook a lot it sounds like you're making making food at home yeah but not to the level of you or any of the professionals you talk to and taste like listen man i i i've seen you have some nice skills i know you do buddy what did you make last night uh just very simple i just keep it like a shredded uh steamed chicken and vegetables and rice it's like super easy and i don't know it's like uh you guys make it look so nice and i i i feel like my whole thing is like oh yeah like i'm really really good at making food look good but i i don't have the skills for cooking i mean you believe me i'm the writer on this project Dookie is one of the skills.

4:47But had you ever cooked Korean food at home? Have you picked up by working on this project any recipes that you want to? No, but definitely I feel like our experience making this book was just like an entire crash course of grad school in Korean food. I had a very basic understanding of Korean food as a Chinese American, but we just went all in. And there were so many new dishes. names I can't even remember, but we were just like trying so many dishes and, and, and execute in such a high level. And it doesn't even matter if it was like high end fine dining or just like some grandma's, some ajumma's home, but it was like, we tasted the best of the best.

5:26I love that you mentioned just the diversity. Cause that's a huge part of our book that we worked on for, you know, three years about the idea that, you know, Korean food is not just barbecue. It's not what you think. No, it's not just bibimbap. Bibimbap, yeah. Yeah, we'll sprinkle this conversation with some memories of our travels. But in Korea, where we went twice together and you've been many other times before. Let me ask you, was there a was there a couple of dishes, one dish that really stuck out when you're talking about high level, but maybe in an unexpected place? I mean, probably the one that was the most unsuspecting was when we shot in that older woman, that grandma's home that was literally in like a bunker.

6:11It was like we walked through like four alleyways to the backspace and it was just her home. And she prepared like a beautiful fish dish that I can't even begin to describe. But it was it was just insane. It was such a special moment because we were just sitting in our home and the living room and dining room and kitchen, everything was literally, it was a studio, essentially. And, you know, the TV's playing and she was sitting there and just made an incredible meal for us. I love that memory and I'm glad you brought that up. And that was our first trip to Korea, I believe. I mean, that was like kind of near Ujuro.

6:46It was in a neighborhood that was being rapidly gentrified and we were taken there. And it's one of the last remaining places like that in that area. and it was a big story about Korea is the gentrification. And that was like a, it was a tray. It was a whole fish. Yes. And it was steamed. It was a, it was a gym. It was a whole fish gym. And it had like amazing mushrooms. You remember the mushrooms? It was like, I think like woodier mushrooms. It was so good. So good. And it was very like lightly seasoned. It didn't have like a over the top sauce on it. Very, very light ganjan. So happy you mentioned that one.

7:20Yeah. And like, I feel like one thing that's so interesting to me about Korea And obviously it's so modern, so fast paced and it has an incredible modern cuisine scene. But I feel like there's this hard and fast line between in the Korean society where it's like, here's all the modern things. Here's the young contingency. And there's this very small pocket of like older folks that are making traditional food or might be more divey or is quote unquote, you know, not as Instagram friendly, but it's beautiful food. and finding the two different pockets and exploring both to like the extreme ends was so interesting to me interesting to me because it's you you don't get it all at once when you're in korea right it when you go to a neighborhood generally things are pretty polished very uh branded well and eventually if you walk around seoul if you walk around busan you'll find these smaller pockets where it's just all older folks and you it just seems so incredible that they're playing like Korean foxtrot uh everyone is like 75 and older yeah they're sitting outside smoking cigarettes and it's just uh it's incredible yeah I mean it's such a great point about this is a culture that's aging out of Korean society and culture and and this aging generation some are doing better than others and you know you did such a great job the way you work is you you're very it's this is reportage at its fullest you're in the you're up close you travel light and you you shoot quickly and I think that's a really um difficult skill Alex and I I just I think I commend you for being able to shoot how did you decide on your aesthetic because you do have an aesthetic I believe I don't know if you agree with me please like disagree I have such a hard time describing my aesthetic or describing my work yeah and it's still really interesting or strange or foreign to me to hear someone articulate their words or describe my work to me um but that's the name of the game right it's like i create work and people respond i don't know i i feel like the easiest way to describe my work is like earnest and natural um i'm not really good at creating moments i'm good at capturing moments like i'm not a the type of photographer like all right let's put this here and do that and that i'm like no that there's here's this cool old lady doing something incredible right now.

9:46And it's going to last three seconds. If we don't get it right now, we're going to lose it. And that kind of lends itself as to why my setup is pretty nimble. I work fast because moments are generally fast and I have to be able to keep it moving. And if something's not working, I move on. Or if we show up to a place, I'm like, this is kind of dead. We'll move on. And if we're in an amazing place, I'm like, this is an incredible 10 minutes. Let's focus and dial in on these 10 minutes, get it, and we'll move on and go to the next spot. But yeah, I feel like my work can generally be described as closer to photojournalism than food photography.

10:24It just happens to be food adjacent or involve food in many ways. Thank you for indulging our listeners. I know it can be not the easiest thing to talk about your craft because you just do it. I mean, it's truly, but I appreciate you doing that. And And I'd say approachable is something, a word that I use with your work. I think there's certain styles that are heavily stylized and heavily lit that feel very studio. And that's, you know, there's a place for that. I'm not against it. Huge respect to photographers like that. For sure. It's a very difficult skill to nail every time in a studio. But when you're doing photojournalism and photorealism, it feels real.

11:01Right. Real is the word I think about. Was there an early shoot when you were starting your career that you kind of figured out this is something you really like doing? I never planned to be a photographer and I kind of just ended up as one. And I ended up as a staff photographer. Bon Appetit. Where quite honestly, myself personally feeling like I not necessarily not necessarily floundering, but more like I was really just finding my voice. and I think it was maybe my third year in and I got an assignment to go shoot an assignment for Mission Burritos in San Francisco which sounds cool and it's amazing.

11:39But for my food photographer friends out there or those that have tried shooting food, shooting a burrito is pretty difficult and I was assigned nine different burrito spots. They look like little babies in blankets. I mean, unless you're doing cross sections and those become boring. You're so right. It's not an easy thing to shoot. And this far in, it's still quite a challenging food to shoot. But anyways, I think that was really where I was given the opportunity to have free reign to just, like, go. And I think it was because maybe it was kind of a one-off assignment where they were like, this is low stakes.

12:13Let's give Alex an opportunity to do what he can, see what he comes back with. And I'm from San Francisco. The Mission Burrito is very important to me. San Francisco is very important to me. So I felt like this incredible pulse of like, all right, you just have to dial in and perform and just come back with something. And I think back then, maybe, maybe even now, but a lot of my creativity is like fear based. If I feel like I'm in a place where the stakes are high and I have to perform, that's generally where my creativity comes out. um but yeah i think that was my first opportunity where like some semblance of my voice came out and i think the core of my aesthetic or like what interests me in photography is like i love fine dining but like more old school spots or divy spots or or communities that people might look over or like aren't as like slick and cool i love finding the detail and the beauty in that and like shooting beautiful portraits or shooting food that might seem everyday or a layman's food, but finding ways to make that look incredible and beautiful.

13:13Let me ask you about the mission story. I feel, did you end up shooting a lot of portraiture during that piece? Because I feel that is a real strength of yours because you're a food photographer because you shoot cookbooks and work at BA, but portraiture is like your strength. I mean, we have so much portraiture in this book. I feel so incredibly blessed and lucky that you were with us side by side and we were able to shoot these faces. Because when Duki and I conceived the idea before you joined the project, we were like, we wanted Career World to be about people. We knew the decades since we wrote the first book, it wasn't necessarily about the instruction of how to make stuff.

13:49We wanted community in our book. And the fact that you were able to shoot so many people and capture emotion was just, it's just phenomenal, Alex. And so when you're on this mission shoot and you're like stressed out, because nine places, that's rough, bro. I mean, that's rough. And this is for the magazine, I would imagine. So like, how are you, are you just like, you're like, hey, like hanging out and working back at house and getting portraits? What's, how did this develop the story? I mean, it's also, it's just challenging in general. A lot of these like, I mean, you know, like doing career world, but like the travel itineraries, it's a double-edged sword because on one hand, that's where you make your greatest work.

14:27On the other hand, it's very difficult. You know, you're going in to a restaurant usually during service you have a shot list sometimes front of house or the manager doesn't even want you there they're just doing it because they're like oh we know this is good media but we don't want here because we're running a business and you're getting in our way so you have there's fine line of like coming to someone's house being respectful but at the same time you're there for a job you don't want to take over and like be like oh these are my lights these are my this is my photography let me like ruin the entire experience of of the diners and and the employees um but yeah you go in and you you have a shot list like all right i gotta shoot this burrito uh you have to shoot the food and you have to make it look beautiful but for me food photography at least my version of food photography isn't just limited to food um it's it's all encompassing i want to tell a narrative and that that boils down to like we have to make the food beautiful but who makes the food and how do we capture their soul and essence fully agree and like help have it translate and make it look cohesive with the food?

15:31How do we capture the beautiful nuances of the space? If I see this awesome mural in the restaurant, let's capture that. If I see an employee that just looks so awesome, they might not even know it. It's like some 17-year-old kid, but they look so punk. In a way that's not even punk, right? They're just like some... They're like next-gen punk. Next-gen things. They're doing something, yeah. I remember I shot this awesome kid. They were like 17 years old, and it was their first week on the job, And I was like, I need to get a shot of you just working the line because you look awesome. And it's just like finding nuances in a restaurant and finding things that just don't appear that interesting when you walk into space.

16:13But if you take a closer look, you're like, oh, this is amazing. I think one thing I really loved when we were going over the selects when you shot for our book was objects. Right. And especially in Korea, which has such a patina of the 1960s and 70s in many spaces. It's like you can't replicate this. It's like stuff that's like 40, 50 years old. So you're capturing that in America when the last third of the book is all in the new Koreatown. And, you know, we were at Peter Cho's restaurant Hanok. And we had just an amazing array of objects that you found because you're just like interested in.

16:45I think you're a very curious person, obviously, but you're also interested in back of house objects. Oh, totally. Like I think it's hardest for me to shoot like a really sleek modern place because everything's just so edited and clean. Yeah. And like void of any personality. Whereas like anything that's like if I'm shooting in a restaurant, generally people are like, oh, let me clean up. No, please don't clean up. The way it is right now looks amazing. And that is who you are. Like I guarantee you it'll look awesome. It won't look disgusting or dirty. Like there's a story here to be told. and like the moment you start cleaning it up it removes it yeah and you do a really tight select when you send uh photos or even to you know dookie and i you know i love that you you really want the point of view to be clear because you and that's like big big art you know form there that's a big art moment is like your edit like when you deliver photos some photographers will send you like 1800 photos like you're sending like maybe 200 photos right i mean every i think every time we went to korea i came back with 10 000 12 000 photos and i probably sent you a hundred yeah yeah yeah um yeah i'm pretty which was frustrating at parts i must say alex no okay you know we we got a lot of great stuff but you you are very tight with your edit yeah i i think for photographers the control and the vision is in the edit um and that really is where your voice shows um Um, and less is more.

18:15Yeah. Yeah. When did you first pick up a camera? I've never asked you this because I know your, your, your career and your trajectory to photography is non-traditional. You didn't study it in school, right? No, I never planned to be a photographer. I never, it's not that I didn't have a desire, but I had many other desires. Um, I picked up a camera probably when I was 15 or 16. My older brother, uh, had a film camera and, you know, being a younger brother, you just want to touch everything your older brother owns. and I was like this film camera is awesome and I'm just going to pick it up and throw a roll of film in and start shooting uh that kind of gravitated into my me buying my own digital camera um and I did a lot of stuff for the high school newspaper oh cool I did a lot of like high school sports and all that there was never a point where I felt like I am going to be a photographer I'm going to be a professional I'm gonna get paid to do this I I always assumed like that's not in the books for me um so i really wanted to be a jazz musician so i i mean i played the saxophone for 12 15 years and that was my goal i got in a bunch of music schools uh senior high school it's like all right i'm gonna go to berkeley school of music and you know study saxophone performance like you lester young right i got i got you i mean i could see it alex yeah i had no idea by the way we've hung out a lot i no idea that you played it's it's definitely uh an old part of my life i love it um but yeah so that was my goal and uh uh i visited all the schools after i got in and i was like i am not meant for this yeah they're just monster players and i think i had an epiphany right then and there that i think was pretty helpful for myself even in retrospect that i was like i was really good at replicating but i wasn't necessarily good at creating as a musician um so So I was like, all right, I'm good.

20:04I'm going to go to a normal school and figure out what I want to do. So I went to school in Boston at Emerson College, and I studied print journalism, which is funny because I was like, oh, yeah, I can't cut it in music. Let's do something really promising and stable like print journalism. Oh, absolutely. You were getting it right at the right time, too, because print was thriving. Yeah, massive. When you were in college, yeah. Oh, my God. But I did an internship at the Legislative Affairs Office at the Massachusetts Statehouse. And I thought maybe I could get into politics. It was one of the most boring internships of my life.

20:39Yeah, what were you doing that made you feel like it was numbing you? I don't even know. It's like I wore a suit every day, which was like cool for the first two weeks. And then after a while, I'm like. It's like the dry cleaning bills alone. You just don't want to deal with that shit. Exactly. I'm sitting there in a suit, but, you know, filling out spreadsheets or pulling zip codes for individual voters that are registered to a certain county and having them reach out to certain congressmen, you know, it got old pretty quick. And I think if it really didn't interest me, I would have stuck with it.

21:12And I don't know. I could have had maybe a burgeoning career in politics. Your bro works in politics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My brother, Roger, he works in politics. but it wasn't for me. So I did that and I was like, great, got that settled. And the summer after my freshman year of college, I was like, I can either go home, work at Safeway, work at the supermarket, get a job for two months or I have to do something. And ever since I was a kid, I really was into magazines. I loved magazines. And I have this specific memory of reading, I love the long form in GQ and Esquire. And I remember reading this story about this 14-year-old paparazzi kid.

21:56I think it was in GQ. It was like this paparazzi wonderkind. And it just followed him. They followed him for like three weeks. I'm like, that's incredible. And maybe on some level, that was kind of formative. I love long form. And seeing somebody thrive and succeed in photography was really appealing to me. I did an internship. There must be internships for magazines. In magazines, yeah. So what's that magazine job listing site that used to exist? There was like Media Bistro. Or Ed... Ed 2010. Ed 2010. Oh, man. Back in the day. Does that still exist? I mean, the hilarious part was that it was founded in the early 2000s and it was called Ed 2010 because the editors wanted to run magazines by 2010.

22:40Right. I don't think it exists anymore. All right. So I was on Ed 2010 all the time. Oh, yeah. And I was just like looking up every single internship listing that I could do. where it was either, I don't know. I think I applied to maybe 50 internships. Yeah. Copy and paste cover letter, copy and paste, you know, resume, which had nothing. It said I was a lifeguard at the YMCA. I was a tutor and I worked at the Massachusetts Statehouse. Yeah, it doesn't scream like food media. No. It doesn't scream that, yeah. No. You know, I applied to like Oprah Magazine, Time Magazine, like literally every publication.

23:17nowhere got back to me except for one and after getting rejected after all of these from all these publications i was like a week out from the summer and i saw a posting for uh fashion closet uh intern at esquire magazine oh sick and whoa i was really into menswear i mean i'm sure you remember the era of like tumblr and like men's oh so you were into like like uh back like the complex yes yes like throwing fits guys yes exactly yeah throwing fits for throwing fits even before four pins you know yeah four pins um i was always on menswear tumblr uh and that was something that was like i was obsessed with and i was i know menswear uh i like magazines and this is a huge reach but i'm gonna shoot my shot so i sent out a cover letter i'm like hey like i love menswear i don't have much on my resume i would love to be a fashion closet intern and I just sent it out and I'm like, I'm not going to hear back.

24:15I can email back instantly from, I don't even know if he's still there, Michael Stefanoff who was the assistant fashion editor at Esquire at the time. He's like, great, can you come in tomorrow for an interview? I'm like, okay. And you're in, I'm in Boston. Oh, you're in Boston at the time. And I was like, yeah, no problem. So, at the time there were these Chinatown buses that were like$5 to get from Boston. Dude, legendary Chinatown bus. Incredible. I probably rode those hundreds of times. Yeah. I put together You know My shitty uniclo suit Oh you suited up You suited Oh I suit up For every internship interview I treat it like A real job interview I think that's a That's a wise move Yeah I put on a suit And I got all my stuff Took Took the bus From Boston New York Took it up to Grand Central Station Went to the New York Public Library And I took all Like my bag All my extra stuff Stuffed it underneath The toilet Like the Underneath like a Bathroom stall so because i didn't want to show with all my stuff i didn't want them to know that like hey i'm coming in so i hid in underneath the the bathroom in the toilet and i would go i went for my interview you know with my resume and everything we sat down he talked to me it's like what are your favorite blogs who do you love i'm like i love scott schumann uh i love uh josh pestilence yeah exactly like the street etiquette guys and i i think he was aware that i was familiar with the world and uh he was like all right when can you start and i was like great i'm in like Like, let's do it.

25:40And this was over at the Hearst building, like, two blocks away. Yeah, yeah. And being 19 years old and walking into the lobby of the Hearst building, having no semblance of any interaction with the editorial world was one of the most, like, defining moments of my life. It's escalators. It's glass. It's, like, it's a very secure office. Yeah, it's a very— It looks like Blade Runner in there. It does. And I'm like, wow, like, I've made it. So I started off my summer 2011 doing that. And it was incredible. it was kind of like devil wears Prada yeah in a way like i remember watching that like game day film the day before i started i'm like all right like this is the closest i have to like understanding this world let's watch devil wears Prada and it kind of was that um like i was basically in charge of the most disorganized and dysfunctional like fashion closet i've ever seen it just was it because stuff was just not being tagged correctly and like being called in and just thrown in a corner right so the system basically works like for magazines everything's on loan for photo shoots so like tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothing hundreds of thousands worth of clothing or jewelry is all on loan in the fashion closet and pr companies lend it out let it get use it to get shot in on photo shoots and they send it back the thing is a lot of times these things don't get sent back you know and and uh i was in charge of either pulling from pr company it's like hey we need this like xenia suit yeah sent out immediately for this shoot with you know ryan gosling here sign all these papers and you know get it back to us within a week um but it was me fielding a lot of emails like we are missing this 30 000 louis vuitton yeah this like new mew this piece from like 93 is like gone yeah yeah this like handbag and michael stefanov would like talk to me he's like you need to find this jacket right now and i'm like oh my My God.

27:36But it was incredible. It taught me a lot about the world of editorial and fashion. I mean, you broke in with Hearst, which is one of the big three. One of the luckiest breaks I've had in my entire life. Breaks are a relative thing. You prepare for them, and you obviously showed up for the job and did a good job. But getting into Hearst and getting that name brand and resume must have really helped. That was the sole reason I was able to continue to do that. But yeah, it was like I spent my summer like doing a shoot with Ryan Gosling and like I showed up. I showed up in like a nice Oxford button down in pants, like nice socks and like Oxfords just to do that.

28:16Like I was just great, like grateful to be there. I'm like, I didn't even do anything on that shoot. Like I sat with his dog and fed him apples. He's like, my dog George loves apples and with peanut butter on it, you know. But like seeing that was or being adjacent to all that, which is incredible. well it's getting everything just by proxy or or you know we need you to get an entire ice block um or like 10 ice blocks for quest love uh don't ask why but he's gonna you know he's eating food off of a giant ice block and it was it was really really incredible and i think that moment uh whether i knew or not i was like i want to be in the magazine world i don't care how i just want to be you were also involved in editorial meetings and i think that's i worked at magazines as well and really when you start seeing all the superheroes come together from the magazine for an editorial meeting, where it's like the art department, the fashion department, the editorial department, the boss is at the front of the table.

29:07There's something very special about that moment. Also, like being 19 and being literally bottom of the totem pole, I was unpaid also too. So I was doing everything for free. So I was like broke. But like being 19 and seeing like senior editors, like creative directors, editor machine, These are walking gods like these guys. It's just like walk watching like Athena and Zeus Sit at a table with and you're rather I'm sitting in the corner watching them talk. Yeah But it was so so formative. It was like a drug just being in that world and I was like I couldn't let go So let's get to Condé you must have Done other work and was fast forward to the Condé right interview at Bon Appétit So you you you end up there Adam Rappaport interviews you I'm sure at some point Once again, I didn't plan to be a photographer.

29:57And after like four years of interning for a bunch of places that Esquire allowed me to work at, I was like, I want to work either as an assistant editor or like a PA or like as a production assistant, anything. I'll be there. And my last New York internship was at Bon Appetit, which is very fortunate. And it was as a photo intern. turn this is like 2014 2015 2013 um and i was like i i can't be a photographer but i love photography and my time at one empty was incredible and i love food and this is the perfect compromise for that this is how i get this is how i have get my foot in the door um i was in senior year of high school or senior year of college and i was getting ready and all right let's just explore options i was interning at boston magazine i'm like maybe i can continue and just like be sort of a fellow and just do that or i was applying to with atlantic is also as a media fellow and it's like whatever like any form of structured program um to do i'll do that but you still had your eye in new york i still had my eye in new york you wanted to live here i feel like you knew instinctually that this is where the magazines right happen i was like being realistic and like let's just get paid right there and good instinct to have right so teach for america approached me like three a month out from from college and um i was like well this is cool i mean i tutored kids like this is a job and they described it all to me and i did like five rounds of interviews um talked them through that and they're like all right like formulate a teaching plan and like they were discussing like all right like these are places you could go you could go to like north carolina you could go to louisiana you go to florida and and just teach like biology or or math or anything and i was like the their structure here and their safety here and that's amazing and like but on some level you're pretty bummed out in some level because you knew you want to have a feature in magazines because you love them so much i don't know if i was necessarily bummed out but i was like no shade to teach for america no but i immediately realized like hey i'm 19 i'm 18 like or whatever age I was and like the structure of teacher America was like me an inexperienced kid is being sent to teach at an underfunded school yeah uh to teach in classrooms where experienced teachers couldn't even handle and I was like I don't know if this is for me so at this point I had two options it was that or to work as a production assistant at food and wine so I got an interview there and I was like this is amazing I remember sitting down at that interview and they're like all right so um this we can do it's a lot of clerical work it's a lot of this you're like you're you're shipping out you know um magazines and all that and and remember like that sounds great um so if i do all aspects of my job is there any room for me to like do photography or do design like for the magazine and they were like no at this point i'm like all right it's probably still going to be work as an assistant in the production department at food and wine that's how I get it I get a call literally at like maybe two hours after I accept the job from Alex Pollack the photo director of Bon Appetit and I had sent her a bunch of emails in the past just checking in like I was like hey if you're any of your photo assistants leave or any openings come up please let me know here's work I've been shooting like I just want you get a look oh cool so you sent him to stop and I'm sure it was you know it was fine it was fine but no response no I probably sent like it felt like throwing a bottle into the ocean I probably I sent like 20 emails, nothing.

33:32I called whenever I was in town. I'm like, hey, look, I just want to see you guys again. No response. I showed up to the old condo office. I'm like, I'm downstairs. And the security guard was like, no one's answering the phone. I love it, Alex. This is like straight talk about how you get jobs here. I mean, it never felt like I was like hustling, if that makes sense. I was just like, I just want to keep doing it. No, and you like liked the people there. Yeah. And they're cool people there. So two hours after accepting the job, I get a call from Alex Polley. And she's like, hey, I am so sorry. Like, we've been so busy.

34:05And I've gotten all your emails. I've seen everything you've sent. Like, everything looks so good. We just made a new job. And it's a very junior role. It's new. It doesn't pay a lot. But are you interested? And she was like, it's staff photographer. And I was like, oh, my God. She's like, it's a staff photographer role. We just kind of want someone young to do all the smaller things for the website or little small subsets in the magazine, product shots. And someone to do video work. I'm like, sure, absolutely. On the spot. You're like, yes, I'll be there. Yeah. And it's very much a thing. Everyone living in New York Times, great, can you come in tomorrow?

34:49And I'm like, I'm in Boston. Yeah. And I was maybe a week out from graduating and I had no idea what I was going to do post-graduation. So I was like, this is it. So it's like I jump on another Fung Wa bus, you know, stuff all my stuff at the New York Public Library, go to the Condé. You know the move. It's like your own locker there. Yeah. Do the interview. And they're like, all right, we'll talk. You know how hiring processes are. Like, all right, this was a good one. We'll get back to you in like, you know, a month or so. And I was like, here's the thing. I just agreed to a job with food and wine.

35:23And she was like, oh, okay. And they were like, we really got to expedite this. So I'm on the bus back to Boston. And I was like, all right, they'll figure it out. She's like, I got you a meeting with Adam Rapport. All right. Now we're cooking. I mean, it was instinctually spot on. You got to tell them what's up. Yeah. You weren't even like leveraging it. You just like, this is a straight story. Yeah. I was like, I'm not trying to gain anything. I'm just telling you that I committed to a job. it's like you have a meeting with editor-in-chief tomorrow and i was on the bus back to boston yeah somewhere upstate new york or whatever yeah right and and i and they're like you need to be here tomorrow i'm like okay so i have to beg i had to beg the bus off bus driver to like please pull over please pull over like i know you cannot stop but please pull over i need to go back to new york city and he pulled over and like you know i'm in the middle of like westchester yeah and and i get off and like you know get my way back to new york um and i have a meeting with adam uh i have a meeting with scott to simon oh shout out right right love scott throwback yeah and uh it kind of started there those guys know what they're doing i mean i i really do uh respect that era b.a and the fact that your photos ended up in an inbox i'm certain i mean you were probably a great co-worker and intern but the the work you were producing at the time you call it average it's probably very good yeah i mean it was a it was an incredible time to be there it really felt like the brightest minds were all there at that time um that semblance of like old school editorial magazine energy was like still it had like a firm grasp and like again seeing like all the editors and creative directors walk around i'm like these are gods i mean conde nasta that point still had it shine and we won't even comment on what's happening right now which is a fucking shame but really you got like you know people like carlo la li music you've got al chosman you've got alison roman in there in the mix right alison roman before she was even famous or even like a senior editor she was just a recipe developer recipe developer alison roman right but clearly one of the sharpest minds in recipe development absolutely like i i think she she's always had that talent and like seeing her execute even back then was incredible but i was just surrounded by talent and I never went to photo school um it was never the plan but like or grad school but like BA was my grad school like and I was just like thrown into it so tell me about those first couple years because you mentioned the story previously three years in your shooting mission burritos and trying to figure out this repertoire story but to get to that point you must have been doing some pretty basic things and and how are you how are you integrating with the magazine what are you shooting I'm shooting a lot of like you know web recipes yeah uh I was shooting with uh Matt Gross.

38:10Yeah. I know a few of them. Of course. Yeah. Web editor, web director at the time. And I was doing basically all of the very, very low tier things that people needed. Like I was either shooting sponsored events with Bon Appetit and, you know, a client or shooting products on white, shooting web recipes on white. So a little e-com, a little bit of web. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Not particularly stimulating things. but are you ever thinking about moving on and trading up and calling back food and wine being like hey man i i would love to shoot more or were you pretty committed to ba no there was a lot of self-doubt i was like what am i what am i doing here like and it really felt like i was like the bench warmer on jv except all the directors were like you know college coaches i'm like i'm never gonna get the call up you know like i'm seeing all these hard hitters these incredible food photographers on set you know like gentile hires and yeah nicole harriet mark marks nielsen like seeing them on set i'm like i'm staff but like they're just on another level yeah i'm like i'm just a bystander too and i was still in awe i was like i was just grateful to be there but like seeing that i'm like how do i break and go into that next level i don't know um but it was a lot of like uh identity crisis i'm like also like quite frankly i didn't know how to light yeah i didn't know how to shoot i kind of just like had a very very basic understanding of food photography but I spent all that time and I was very fortunate to be like to give an opportunity to develop that.

39:39How did you come up with the single strobe? Your style, I'd call it iconic Alec Lau because it really, and if you shoot with you or just we were, I remember I was working at Punch and I'm sitting out with Tali and Lizzie and we're like trying to figure out how does that look like? Because we're like talking about it and then I meet you and we end up shooting a book but you have the single strobe your single strobe is like what you're about. Right. I mean, the single strobe look kind of came out of necessity because it's like one, even though I was on staff, I wasn't really given a lot of resources.