1 Devendra Banhart and Lauren Dukoff
photo by Autumn De Wilde
Lauren Dukoff
Issue #34
The L.A. photographer lens support to bands when documenting honest moments
By Michele Koury
Published: December 1st, 2007 | 1:53pm
At just 23, up-and-coming shutterbug Lauren Dukoff has already established her role as the “official photographer” within freak folk messiah Devendra Banhart’s tight-knit posse of Los Angeles musicians and has published some of the standout atmospheric shots in magazines including Spin and NYLON.
Banhart says Dukoff struck him with her “crystal-clear certainty” that photography was exactly what she wanted to be doing; additional, he says being around someone so sure at such a young age impacted him. “I knew I was a painter and a songwriter thanks to her,” he says. The fact that her photographs flatter her subjects doesn’t hurt either. “She’s managed to make a ratty creaker like me look somewhat elegant and poised, a feat of great magnitude.”
Preferring to photograph people in their natural settings, Dukoff has covered a number of musicians — including Beck, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Jenny Lewis — on the road, in recording studios, backstage, and onstage. “I look for moments of honesty,” she says. “When your subject forgets that you’re taking his or her photo and just relaxes, that’s when you get a great picture.”
Though she can’t pinpoint the exact moment when photography transitioned from a hobby to a professional endeavor, she became interested in the medium at an early age. Her father a director and cinematographer, Dukoff grew up around cameras, and when her dad gave her a camera at 13, she’s been shooting ever since. Now she works almost exclusively with a Mamiya 645. “I think film captures depth and character in a way digital can’t,” Dukoff says. “I like to stick to what’s on the negative, and I try to avoid computer manipulation.”
After dropping out of Brooks Institute (“A step toward my career because I spent less time in a classroom and more time actually shooting”), Dukoff landed a job working for photographer Autumn de Wilde — first as her studio manager and then as her producer — which has aided her career as well. “Autumn’s work has been a big influence,” Dukoff says. “Working for her was a huge learning experience.”
It’s no surprise that De Wilde — renowned for her stylistic shots of Elliott Smith, the White Stripes, Pavement, and many other musicians — realized Dukoff’s talent. “Lauren fiercely protects the environment that an artist wants to create and at the same time finds her place inside of it,” De Wilde says. “This is a rare quality, and I see it in her photographs. It will be very exciting to see what she chooses to capture and share with us.”
Though it’s impossible to deny that her photographs exude “artiness,” Dukoff also considers herself a photojournalist of sorts, managing to mesh two divisions of photography with her signature style. Calling herself a “collaborative photographer,” when she goes on tour with her musician buddies, she describes her responsibility as “documenting.” “I don’t think of myself as part of the ‘art world’ per se, but I guess it is art,” Dukoff says. “For my documentary work, I’m trying to capture the emotion of an actual moment in time.”
For more information or to purchase prints, visit laurendukoff.com.
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