THOMAS CAMPBELL INTERVIEW

Thomas Campbell was in Copenhagen, at the old slaughterhouse place or something, both for the première of his new surf movie “The Present” and for the opening of an exhibition at V1 gallery… Both events where extremely fine and musically illustrated by the amazing Ray Barbee and the Mattson 2 (with Aakaash on double bass). We were lucky enough to be able to hang out with all of them, chat, have food, chat some more, etc. At the end, we could hook up with Thomas after he pulled out at least three all-nighters to finish up the exhibition on time for the opening.
The following talk happened while Thomas was finishing some painting in the basement of V1, armed with painting equipment and a hair dryer, good for painting, not good for microphones…
All photos: Hern42.

Hern42 – So I did my homework and read some biography… It’s pretty extensive: movies, painting, sculpture… Is there some sort of a path?

Thomas Campbell – (uses a hair-drier to dry stuff and it makes a lot of noise…) Well, all my creative processes started from skateboarding. I’ve been skateboarding since 1974, in the first movement of skateboarding, when I was very small, like at 5. And then in the early 80s, like in 1983 or 1982… I was basically skateboarding the whole time because I was living at the top of a hill and when I was very young I worked in a fishing place at the bottom and I was just (wooosh, makes the movement of bombing the hill) everyday. But I started skateboarding ramps and parks again in 82 or 83 until now. I was involved
in that time of skateboarding, which was a very creative period, not really only in skateboarding but more creativity for the creativity sake. Because it was a time in America when skateboarding was pretty small, people like Todd Swank and Neil Blender were very influential for me and to a lot of my friends because they were painting, drawing, making music, making fanzines, taking pictures, writing stories, you know, whatever! And since it was not really thinking “I could do this and then I’m going to make money out of it”, we were not really thinking like that because it didn’t seem possible. So it was more “oh that looks really fun I want to do that”. So I think that from being a skateboarder and growing during that time period we just tried a lot of things. “Oh I’m going to try to take some pictures” or “I’ll try to draw”, whatever… It wasn’t so pretentious, it was “that looks fun let’s try it” and we had really good example like those guys. They did it, we can do it. And from being a skateboarder you know that it takes work to do anything. If you want to succeed in skateboarding you have to slam, you have to try and it’s not easy to get tricks. You have to pay that price. That work ethic is something that me and a lot of my contemporaries who come from that period, we embrace. I think it was cool, it was cool to come from a time when it was about doing the thing, not really about making money from it.
I grew up in Southern California, Dana Point in between Los Angeles and San Diego. We had a good skate scene there. We’d go skate Del Mar skatepark during all that period. Me and my friends were at all the Del Mar contest when Hosoï was battling Tony. It was fucking awesome.

H42 -What was the first arty thing you tried, graphical things then Photography..? How did it all come about?

TC – I think I tried to work for my friend who was doing a fanzine “Ground Beef”
and I drew comics in it. And it was really shitty. So bad, incredibly bad, like the worst ever. But I kept trying and then I took art classes at school. I just kept trying. I wasn’t very good at it to start with but a lot of it is just persistence so I kept going and things eventually worked out. I eventually got my own style. I used to work for fanzines and make my own fanzine and do different stuff when I was a kid. I think that when I was 17 the guys at Transworld, Grant Britain and Todd Swank, they would give pictures to me. And then they told me I should write some stuff for Transworld. Then I pretty much stopped doing fanzine and started to work for Transworld, Big Brother and Powerage skateboarding magazine.
Then for 4 years I was a writer for Transworld, I was very poor, so so poor. You don’t make any money from writing in a skateboard magazine. At the same time I was doing interviews with people like Julian Stranger and Alan Peterson and Tim Braunch, all these people. And I was with them all the time, skating. I was watching them doing insane shit and then I would interview them at night but I didn’t really shoot photos. I have been shooting some kind of arty photos… But then, I was actually in Spain, working with the skateboard magazine and they had all the equipment so I said “fuck it” and I called Spike Jones, on the phone. “Ok Spike tell me what I do, tell me how it’s set with the flash and all” “Ok you set that one, right on 5.6 and then that one, one stop higher…” He just told me all the things. And I went out that day and that night and I shot totally professional photos. I had all the right equipment, I never had it before because I couldn’t afford it. I just did what he said because he was one of my favourite photographers at that time in skateboarding. Shortly after that I took the money I made from shooting the photos and I bought some equipment and then I was not so poor any more. I started to learn more about composition, etc.

Maybe 4 or 5 years later, I was living in NewYork and I thought that I wanted to document the skateboard culture that was there at the time, in 1996. I went to Supreme, the shop as I knew the dudes there, and told them I wanted to do a little movie with John Coltrane’s “Love Supreme” as the song. They gave me a little bit of money to help so I could by some black and white film. The first day I started to shoot that movie was the first day I actually touched a 16mm camera. And actually a lot of that movie I shot without being able to see thought the viewfinder. It had a thing on the side but you didn’t really look through the lens… And then I just kind of evolved from there.

Oh and, do you know that band: Unsane? Have you ever seen that video which is all skateboard crashes? I made that video, which was more a compiling. I shot them live and then I had my friends, such as Jamie Thomas and different people, that gave me all their bails and wild crashing.

H42 -For sure! Here it is right there.

Besides, I have been surfing since I was 10. Not a lot when I was younger and it got more as I grew older. I was in California, riding traditional single fin longboards which I had done all my life. No one really does that, they take their old surf boards and ride their old surf boards. There wasn’t really much happening but then there was kind of a resurgence and I met some of the main people. Joel Tudor asked me to make a film with him because he knew my work in skateboarding as he was a skateboarder also. And that’s when we made the movie “The Seedling”. That was all on film and it took about a year and a half and was mainly based in California. A little bit in France but mainly in California…

I kind of slowly kept going… always at the same time making art and taking photographs. It was between 1996 and 2001 I was doing a lot of work for the company Nixon. I shot a lot of their ad campaigns. Always doing a lot of things at the same time to keep it fresh!

H42 -And then the photography is what puts money in the bag, more or less?

TC – Actually no. What brings the money in is art, really. The surf movies are a fantastic way to lose money, it’s so expensive.

H42 -There´s something I’d like to know, at the beginning of the movie (The Present) there is that speech about keeping earth well and all… Doing that at the opening of a movie such as this one, isn’t it kind of preaching to the choir?

TC – Actually I’m not sure you understood what it’s saying… (Note from Hern: bad bad me…). It’s basically saying in general how lucky we are to be here on this functional planet. Because a lot of people completely don’t even think about how crazy it is that we live on that planet which creates oxygen and is covered in water. It’s just so weird. And people just take it for granted. The fact that it is functioning and that we have these strange activities like riding on these moving pieces of water, to me, that’s the mainthing. It’s called “The Present”, to be thankful for what we have. And taking care of it is just part of it.

If I wanted people to understand something that’s what: this is crazy, this is really cool… I think that, being a skateboarder you are not really in touch with the natural cycles as much as being a surfer. Being a surfer, being in the ocean, at sunset, or very early… And also being at all those places that I go to make the movies… It’s just really crazy. Sometimes, going on some boat trips in Indonesia, I told myself it couldn’t be more beautiful. It is sort of a miracle, if you look at every other planets that we know of, we are not looking in a telescope at another forest on another planet with people walking around. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, I find it very fascinating and that’s the idea of the movie.

Actually, my friend Dan has a more ecological slant on. He is involved, working with that company Patagonia and they are involved in a lot of different projects and things. So in his part, when he starts speaking about the people that he works with, he describes their movement towards trying to make more sustainable surf boards. But who knows who’s coming to see a surf movie! Who knows what anyone’s thinking…
But that’s not my main agenda, my main agenda is just present those beautiful images for people to be amazed. Most of the people don’t pay attention. Nobody wakes up in the morning and looks at the clouds and thinks it’s beautiful. I think it’s a pretty surreal place to be there and interact with nature…

H42 -To me it’s so obvious. I watch the coulds and the light in the morning! And I shoot a picture almost every morning in Denmark during the winter. The light, when there is some, is so golden and beautiful.

TC – Well I don’t think you’re normal.[Laughs]
I think a lot of people are just so caught up in their day to day existence. That’s a pretty normal occurrence. But anyway I think all my movies have that message. It’s more or less a recurring theme. And it’s like that, (Thomas points at the little thing he is painting, some sort of a bubble that goes on top of a painting saying “fuck yeah”…) it’s an assertion; be thankful for what is. That’s the message.

H42 -And what about this label you have… The music in the movie is very omnipresent and obviously part of the whole art process. This Galaxia label, is it just a hobby on the side?

TC – It is a hobby, I don’t really get paid. I’ve had this label for almost 17 years, since 1992. We put out 2 to 3 records a year and some of them I’m really involved with, like the Ray Barbee and the Mattson I produced every single note. And some others I more from the outside, saying things such as “this songs maybe needs more bass” or whatever. For some people like Tommy [Note from Hern: T. Guerrero of DeluxeSF and other things...], they just makes the record and that’s that! I’m more or less the artistic director so I can get together with the people who are going to be on the label and take care of covers, design covers… I work with a few other designers but generally it’s my ideas and design. Try to get it all together

H42 -Thanks for the talk, it was very inspirational!

TC – Cool!