Tag: port magazine

Radical Fragrance

For Geza Schoen, founder of the cult fragrance label Escentric Molecules, blurring the boundaries between art and chemistry is key to innovation

Geza Schoen, the 48-year-old German founder of the cult fragrance label Escentric Molecules, does not talk much like a traditional perfumer. He dispenses with the airy, time-worn Proustian associations when describing scents, preferring to talk about the molecular components instead, and sounding more like a chemist in the process. One in particular, an aroma chemical called Iso E Super – which was developed in a laboratory in 1973 and appears in the background of many great perfumes – would become the genesis of the minimalist Escentric 01 and Molecule 01: fragrances launched by Schoen in 2006. “When I smelled Iso E Super for the first time I noticed why I had preferences for certain fragrances: they all contained a big chunk of it,” exclaims Schoen, who recalls giving the scent to a friend to wear in the 1990s that resulted in women chasing him down the street. “That’s when I realised it had a super power.”

Schoen’s idea was to propose two fragrances in homage: one with an unprecedented 65 per cent of the molecule blended with a handful of other notes, and the second even more radical interpretation to contain only the molecule in its purest form. Though his unique proposition was initially met with resistance, it soon became a word-of-mouth phenomenon on account of its animalic, woody, velvety and sensual qualities. “Molecule 01 is to perfume what Bauhaus is to Baroque,” says Schoen of his decision to challenge the traditional scent paradigm of combining synthetics with natural products, by simplifying the process to just one ingredient. “I wanted something cleaner.” 

Schoen has made a habit of always thinking outside the box, saying, “For me it’s natural to do things differently.” Born and raised in Kassel to parents who were both teachers, Schoen’s fascination with smell began when he was a teenager; he would get samples of perfume in the post, writing to fragrance companies asking them to send him their wares. By the age of 16, he could identify hundreds of different perfumes. “The sense of smell is still the most important sense we have, and the most fascinating.” Starting out training and working at the international fragrance manufacturers Haarmann & Reimer (now Symrise) for 12 years, he left after becoming disillusioned with how corporate the industry had become. He moved to London in 2001 to create a scent, Wode, for the London design duo, Boudicca.

The fragrance came in two versions: Scent and Paint, with the latter packaged in a silver spray-paint can that doused the wearer in a deep blue pigment similar to that which the ancient British queen, Boudicca, wore into battle. This was the start of a number of esoteric projects Schoen has worked on that push the boundaries of what can be achieved with fragrance, like Paper Passion – a scent that smells like a Steidl book and comes packaged in one. He has also conceived a series of fragrances made in tribute to smart women called ‘The Beautiful Mind’, and worked with artists such as Wolfgang Georgsdorf, for whom he made 64 odours for Smeller – an ‘olfactory organ’ that spectators can play like a piano to make aromascapes. 

But it’s with Escentric Molecules that the fullest expression of his scent philosophy remains, that of stripping things back “so that it’s very plain and very linear but it still smells great”. With its minimal packaging and unisex fragrances, Escentric Molecules is a modern concept that resonates with the times. “I think gendered fragrances are outdated,” he declares. “These days, people are changing their fragrances as often as they would change their jeans or their sneakers.” While scent 02 starred ambroxan (a key ingredient of ambergris), and for 03 the centrepiece was vetiver, Schoen recently launched series 04 with the sheer sandalwood molecule Javanol at its heart. He speaks of its “psychedelic freshness, as if liquid metal grapefruit peel was poured over a bed of velvety cream-coloured roses.” He amplified the fizzy grapefruit top notes in Escentric 04 with pink pepper and juniper, for an extra shot of freshness with a rose core, and base notes of balsamic ingredients. According to Schoen, using Javanol was challenging because “more than any other chemical I’ve used before, it gave direction to where the fragrance had to develop into.”

More than 10 years since launching his brand, Schoen is still enjoying playing at the boundaries between art and chemistry. “It wasn’t really my goal to change the perfume world,” he says. “I just wanted to make a fragrance for myself and my friends to wear.”

The Escentric Molecules 04 collection launches 25 April 2017

This article is taken from Port issue 20. To subscribe, click here.

Lead photography by Giles Revell

Questions of Taste: Douglas McMaster

Meet the pioneering chef and restaurateur behind the UK’s first zero-waste restaurant 
 
Douglas McMaster has to think more creatively than many chefs today. With his Brighton restaurant Silo, the 27-year-old is leading the country’s zero-waste movement. From sourcing to serving, his mantra is: ‘Waste is a failure of the imagination.’ Everything arrives to the restaurant directly from the farmers, cutting out processing, packaging and food miles. Compost machines are used to turn scraps and trimmings into compost that is then used to support the growth of even more produce. Given his uncompromising approach, the finesse of his dishes is even more impressive.
 
McMaster dropped out of school and, for him, the kitchen was the only place to go. He found it an environment he could be himself. ‘It was liberating as I hated that school made me feel like I was just another brick in the wall,’ he says. Since then he has gone on to win BBC Young Chef of the year and has worked at a handful of high profile restaurants such as St. John Bread & Wine in Spitalfields, London. He also ran a pop-up restaurant called Wasted in Sydney and Melbourne where he trialled his zero-waste techniques before opening Silo in 2014. ‘I worked under the grandmaster of zero waste – Joost Bakker. It was his idea, I just made it happen from day one,’ he explains. ‘I believe it is my mission to continue carrying the flag and I love to see other innovators in the industry doing the same.’

McMaster’s menus are driven by season and the environment. ‘If there is a large crop of cucumbers, we put cucumbers on the menu. If the forager finds mushrooms, then mushrooms it is. We don’t dictate nature, nature dictates us.’ Recently, he collaborated with Patron Tequila for a Secret Dining Society event, and alongside Mr Lyan founder Iain Griffiths, presented a zero-waste cocktail pairing menu. ‘We even printed the menus on 100% recycled agave to save the agave fibres from tequila production going to waste,’ he says. 

The Nottinghamshire native is intent on spreading the zero-waste message and believes that even small actions can be effective in making a difference. ‘Start by looking at every purchase as a vote. If you buy fast food you are voting for fast food to exist, if you buy organic food you are voting for an organic future, if you buy something with no packaging you are voting for zero-waste.’ 
 
Silo is located in Brighton’s North Laines
 
Photography by Xavier Buendia 

Stories of Success: Oliver Jeffers

In the new issue of Printed Pages, It’s Nice That speaks to the illustrator and artist about his projects, paintings and picture books

Photography by Matthew Tammaro

“I grew up in Belfast, everyone is a storyteller there,” says Oliver Jeffers sat in the offices of Harper Collins, a corporate lump of a building sat next to the Shard in London. He’s visiting the UK from his home in Brooklyn to promote his storybook called Imaginary Fred, written in collaboration with author Eoin Colfer. There’s a common misconception that Jeffers is just a storybook maker. It’s easy to see why, when his books, that include Lost and Found, How To Catch A Star, The Moose Belongs to Me and The Day the Crayons Quit, have been translated into over 30 languages worldwide and have won countless awards. He is, first and foremost an artist. An artist with an acute sense of what makes a story, and an insatiable curiosity about the world.

 As he describes his career to date, Oliver explains how he began to understand his own art, and began to use painting and drawing as a way of exploring the world around him. “When I was looking back at early paintings of mine, they were suggesting a story. Maybe they were a beginning, middle or end,” he says. “You might be looking at something that is full of energy and about to happen, or the aftermath of an event. You are connecting the dots in your head. You can paint kinetic energy on a 2D surface that has momentum or movement. I thought that was really interesting because the viewer can decide where it goes in their head.”

It’s these fragments of stories that have helped Oliver develop his career along two parallel paths. He firmly believes that a successful story lies in its structure – there must be a beginning, a middle and an end, but the extent to which you supply all the ingredients depends on what you are trying to achieve. “It started when I was making these individual images of a physical impossibility. Which was trying to capture something as intangible as a star. I thought these are series of really interesting images that hint at bits of a story. At one point it occurred to me the images sit better together than alone, and that I was making a book,” he explains.

That book was How to Catch A Star and the pursuit of the impossible, the drive to try and make sense of this sometimes nonsensical world, is apparent in his artwork. “There was a paradigm shift for me. My wife went to university to study engineering. When we first met and were discussing our university experiences she was just really bemused by the fact there is no right or wrong answer at art school. ‘Who says your work is right?’ she asked. ‘It’s all subjective, it’s all about the bullshit you come up with to back it up. There is no right or wrong answer.’ It just didn’t make sense to her,” he says, chuckling. “I realised there are two equally valid, but entirely opposing ways of viewing the world. Logic or emotion. Science or art. I started going off on a tangent to see if you could look at one aspect of life using both filters at the same time.”
Inspired by the perceived tension between unbridled creativity and art, Oliver started to place mathematical equations into his paintings, effectively telling a story or conveying an idea using emotion and logic on the same canvas. “I decided to make a still life painting of something that is very typical of Renaissance-style figurative painting. A picture that people would say effectively communicates emotion. Then, for logic, I thought let’s use a mathematical equation – because gestural brush strokes on a painting mixed with cold, clinical, precise numbers and mathematical symbols are the absolute opposite of each other,” he explains. “Rather than choosing something random, I decided to use an equation that would fit somewhat. Except, I don’t know anything about maths, I failed maths at school, I was an illogical thinker. So I went through an old set of encyclopedias that I had. I looked under light, and found an equation that represents light then chose an equation about the refraction of light going through glass.”
 
The painting was subsequently bought by a quantum physicist who assumed the painting was about Bell’s string theory. Oliver met with the buyer and his foray into philosophy and mathematics stepped up a notch. “The process of creating is helping me to understand. Otherwise the artworks wouldn’t be about questions, they would be about answers. I enjoy making objects that aesthetically pleasing – it’s not exactly the most efficient way of finding out things, but it’s enjoyable.” Ultimately, this understanding led to Oliver’s most ambitious and intriguing works to date: his dipped paintings.
 
Read the full article in Printed Pages SS17, out now.
 

Port Issue 20: Out Now

The New York issue is now on sale, featuring artist Julian Schnabel, the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, Olympic fencer Peter Westbrook and more

Issue 20 of Port is our tribute to New York – a city that looms large in politics and popular opinion and larger still throughout style, culture and design. In it, we have gathered people and portrayals as big as the Big Apple itself.

Mounting a successful return to New York, our cover star for issue 20 is Brooklyn-born artist Julian Schnabel, who speaks to Kyle Chayka about his reputation as “the carnival man of contemporary art”, his recent exhibition at Pace Gallery and a film in the works. 

In the style section, we include our favourite looks from the Spring Summer 2017 Collections, and an editorial styled by Alex Petsetakis captures the colourful spirit of David Hockney’s poolside paintings with stripes and soft focus. Elsewhere, a design still-life shoot sees New York-native birds from the Wild Bird Fund photographed with organic designs including an Eames mobile for Vitra and a silver branch broach from Louis Vuitton.   

In the feature well, our design editor Will Wiles and photographer Robin Broadbent explore New York’s architectural motifs – from water towers to fire escapes – in a sprawling 38-page photo essay. Next, Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for the New Yorker for over 30 years, invites us into his home and shares an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, At the Stranger’s Gate. We also meet Peter Westbrook, the first black fencer to win an Olympic medal and founder of the Peter Westbrook Foundation.

Highlights from the Porter include a intimate guide to New York, with recommendations and anecdotes from Port readers and contributors including designer Philippe Starck, writer Will Self and restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone. Also in this section, Studio 54 legend Giorgio Moroder shares his experience producing Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, Matthew Combs considers the city’s relationship with rats, and architect Daniel Libeskind muses on the drama and energy of the subway. 

Port Issue 20 is available from 12 April. To subscribe, click here

Samba City: The Blocos of Rio

  As Brazil gears up to celebrate Carnival, photographer Fran Petersson recalls hitting the streets of Rio de Janeiro to discover the city’s notorious street parties Famed for its annual televised Sambadrome parade, the heart of Rio de Janeiro’s carnival success lies with the ‘Bloco’ – the legendary parties that flood the city’s streets. In 2017, there will be 462 officially recognised Blocos taking place in the city, attracting nearly 5 million attendees. Open to all and following a set route for a duration of a few hours, the biggest blocos draw crowds of up to one million people. Those held in the once crumbling neighbourhoods of Lapa and Santa Teresa are the latest locations to lure in Rio’s thrill-seeking tourists. Inland from the popular seaside attractions of Ipanema and Copacabana, the historic Santa Teresa district  is one of the oldest in the city, dating back to the construction of a convent of the same name in 1750. Despite it’s cultural significance, Lapa was, for many years, known for its insalubrious characters and seedy nightlife. That was until 1990, when Chilean artist Jorge Selarón began his now iconic tiled staircase artwork outside his house: the catalyst perhaps to one of the most drastic urban transformations to have ever taken place in Rio. Street art now cheers many of the fractured walls, and tourists flock for selfies on the colourful steps, taking shade under the radiant aqueduct arches Lapa takes its name from, helping local businesses to flourish.

A man reclines by the roadside in Santa Teresa

A combination of this creative regeneration along with cheap rents for ballroom-scaled real estate, and a series of elevated walkways thronging the main street level have unexpectedly created the perfect destination for Rio’s young and beautiful fans to live out their carnival dreams in the balmy sunshine of new bohemia. Offering a completely different kind of experience from the beach party crowds, Lapa and Santa Teresa’s Blocos draw in the artistically minded to it’s samba-spiked celebrations, and has quickly become the place to be seen and stay during carnival season. The winding streets of Santa Teresa are filled with free spirited, iconoclastic creatures who have been drawn from all over Brazil, mingling happily to the sounds of street corner drummers, laughing samba first-timers, and excited chatter. Being an old pro at throwing a party, when the fun is done, Rio’s cheerful and unanimously good looking clean-up crews sweep up behind the masses. Every trace of the foot stamping soiree that minutes before caroused through its cobbled streets vanishses, leaving Bohemia to wake up from yet another great party in peace.

Photography Fran Petersson

Interviewed by Drew Whittam

Lifting the Lid on Trump

Author and staff writer at The New Yorker, Mark Singer, considers the reality of national life and death under President Trump

Illustration – Louise Pomeroy
Illustration – Louise Pomeroy

To try to understand how and why one of America’s two major political parties managed to nominate a presidential candidate so self-absorbed, defiantly ignorant, intellectually vapid, impulsively combative, compulsively mendacious and recklessly erratic as to jeopardise the United States’ strategic international alliances, national security and standing as a rational guardian of the world order, begin with the inanity of our electoral protocols. Our national anthem brightly declares us “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Politically, though, we are the land of the easily amused and the home of the readily fooled.

The 2016 campaign got underway the afternoon of January 20, 2013. Earlier that day, President Barack Obama had taken the oath of office marking the inauguration of his second – and final – term. Officially, this meant four more years to command the armed forces, steer the world’s largest national economy through its recovery from the most dire crisis since the Great Depression, and fulfil the duties and responsibilities designated by the Constitution. The Republican Party leadership, however, was having none of it. Throughout Obama’s first term, the opposition had embraced a content-free agenda of resolute obstructionism, a strategy still in effect. Obama would be the lamest of lame ducks. Other than the ceremonial formalities, they vowed, his presidency was kaput. In this regard, they were enabled by a political punditocracy that had already turned its attention to the next election. Focus conscientiously upon the arduous work of governance? For the possibility of transcending partisan differences for the common good? For the redress of stark social and economic inequalities? Please! Only the horse race, it seemed, mattered.

When, in June 2015, Donald Trump formally declared his candidacy, he had already spent four decades clamouring for public attention. New Yorkers knew him as a rough-edged rich kid from the outer boroughs – son of a developer who amassed a fortune building rental housing in middle-class Queens – who had crossed the river into Manhattan and ingeniously succeeded, as no one previously had dared, at branding real estate. Depending upon one’s perspective, Donald was either a self-parodying parvenu or an aspirational figure. He developed residential high-rises plastered with the ‘TRUMP’ moniker, then diversified in Atlantic City, where he built casino hotels slathered with blinding ornamentation, the goal being to titillate suckers with the fantasy that a Trump-like life was a lifelike life – to distract from the fact that he had lured them inside to pick their pockets. The odds favouring the house notwithstanding, the casinos would in time fail, a saga of serial bankruptcies (six!) that would correlate with Trump’s nastiest habits, his cruel pleasure in stiffing creditors and his hair-trigger litigiousness.

His personal life was no tidier. During the first of his three marriages, he had committed blatant adultery (along the way snookering the New York Post, a tabloid, into publishing a headline with a putative quote from his mistress and future second-ex-wife: “BEST SEX I’VE EVER HAD”). Equally promiscuous had been the bankers credulous enough to lend Trump billions. No longer creditworthy, he possessed only one remaining exploitable resource – his brand. Going forward, moneyed partners would assume all the risks and, in exchange for having his name on their buildings, Trump would earn back-end equity when a project succeeded. Such details were hidden from a public for whom the Trump illusion survived. For more than a decade preceding his candidacy, Trump’s day job had been reality television star. No longer – and perhaps not ever – an actual billionaire, he now impersonated one on TV. Trump’s role on ‘The Apprentice’ and ‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ constituted his political capital, an asset he would leverage to seduce millions of voters suspended in their own collective fog of make-believe. 

America’s first-ever reality TV presidential campaign began infamously, of course, with Trump’s slander of Mexicans as rapists and drug smugglers. Islamophobia followed. The bigotry extended his four-year run as the nation’s birther-in-chief, promoter of the racist lie that Obama had been born not in Hawaii but in Kenya, rendering his presidency illegitimate. Birtherism – stirred with economic populism, fear and nativism – begat Trumpism, a brew concocted by a narcissist, drunk on his metamorphosis into demagogue. 

Eventually, 16 other horses joined the race, among them senators, governors, former senators and governors, one in-way-over-his-head retired neurosurgeon, and one erstwhile corporate chief executive. The latter two, in particular, hoped to trade upon their outsider status with an electorate disgusted by the political status quo and especially by Washington. Any of the contenders seemed as likely to prevail as Trump, whose candidacy for far too long was treated by the press, the public and the Republican establishment as a relatively harmless novelty. Trump win the nomination? Get outa here. The general election? – beyond ludicrous. 

Cable news doted upon Trump because, regardless of one’s politics, he provided entertainment, which meant bigger ratings, which meant bigger revenue. The digital and print media, while perhaps less cynical, knew that Trump delivered good copy. Still, subject him to labour-intensive investigation? We’re busy.

By the time the first primary votes were cast, in early February, his candidacy was seven-and-a-half months old. The monster had long since risen from the laboratory table and run amok. There had been 13 debates and ‘candidate forums’, and Trump had dominated virtually all of them – bullying, interrupting, taunting and lying about his opponents. One by one, short of votes, short of money, they gave up. Each retreat seemed inevitable and each seemed to embolden him. When challenged, he attacked the moderators. During campaign rallies, he incited his supporters to spew venom at the hapless journalists assigned to cover him.

Throughout, Trump’s sordid history – racial discrimination against would-be tenants; dealings with organised crime; employment of undocumented immigrants; deeply ingrained misogyny; unconscionable fleecing of desperate enrollees in his fraudulent get-rich-quick real-estate seminars; refusal to pay contractors whose businesses then failed – hid in plain sight, accessible with a few keystrokes, thanks to years of exertions by superb journalists (Wayne Barrett, David Cay Johnston, Timothy O’Brien, Tom Robbins et al.).

With laudable exceptions – Politifact.com (a project of the Tampa Bay Times), Fact Checker (ditto, Washington Post), Factcheck.org (Annenberg Public Policy Center) – not until Trump had clinched the nomination did most news organisations subject him to the scrutiny they could have and should have from the get-go.

By the time of the first debate (of three) with Hillary Clinton, the election was six weeks away and the race was perilously close. Arrogant as ever, Trump showed up unprepared. Clinton did decidedly the opposite. Not long into the proceedings, Trump was reduced to petulant defensiveness. At the end, both his feet were perforated with multiple bullet holes – a historically awful performance.

How awful? One of his most pugnacious partisans, Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, showed up in the spin room to cry foul. The debate moderator, an equable, self-restrained network anchorman, had had the temerity to correct one of Trump’s more flagrant lies by citing widely documented data. “If I were Donald Trump,” Giuliani said, “I wouldn’t participate in another debate unless I was promised that the journalist would act like a journalist and not an incorrect, ignorant fact-checker.” Goddam facts!

Twenty years ago, while preparing a profile of Trump for the New Yorker, I spent a great deal of time with him across several months. Early on, I decided not to take personally the transparent distortions that constantly burbled from his lips – or, if you will, his reflexive lying – telling myself, ‘That’s just the way the man talks.’ Trump said many things that I found baffling, such as when he described the apartments he sold as belonging to three categories: “luxury, super luxury and super-super luxury.” This taxonomy led to my conclusion that he “had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.”

Naturally, Trump hated what I wrote and my reward was his undying enmity. But I knew that my verdict was accurate, evidence of which the electorate has now been exposed to for more than a year. Still, I am resisting presumptuous optimism. This is a matter of national life or death. Trump, soulless or not, might yet be the next occupant of the White House. Should that come to pass, dear Lord, please save ours.

Mark Singer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1974.  He is also the author of Trump & Me, published by Penguin Books.

This article is taken from PORT issue 19, out now.

 

Eytys: A Genius

Max Schiller, co-founder and creative director of footwear label Eytys, explains why the late Keith Haring is a constant source of inspiration

Courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation
Courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation

From scribbling his iconic motifs in the subways of New York, Keith Haring quickly became one of the most recognised and influential artists-cum-activists of the 20th century. To this day, his legacy continues to inspire and help millions of people from across world, in particular, Max Schiller, co-founder and creative director of minimalist Scandinavian label Eytys.

As a homage to the late artist, Schiller and his Stockholm brand have collaborated with with Ukrainian artist Sasha Kurmaz to create a Haring-inspired shoe. Here, Schiller tells us about one of his heroes.

“Most kids worship one or two big idols when growing up. When I was 11, the girls in my class were obsessed with Backstreet Boys or Peter Andre, while the boys idolised hockey superstar like Wanye Gretzky or Peter Forsberg. I tried to fit in by pretending to be a hockey fan, however, being a chubby kid with glasses and bleached hair, often seen wearing pink trousers, I usually failed at my charade; my biggest idols weren’t boy bands or sport stars.

“I’ve always worshipped Keith Haring. While other children collected hockey cards or had their rooms wallpapered with pictures of pop stars, mine was covered in Haring posters and merchandise. At school, I held lectures about Haring’s legacy and grabbed every chance I could get to scribble his figures on test papers and in notebooks.

“To my teachers’ dismay, my favourite motif was ‘Debbie Dick’: the phallic cartoon character Keith Haring created during the AIDS epidemic, to promote safe sex.

“Looking back, I suppose this might’ve been a bit odd, but Keith Haring is still one of my biggest inspirations. I have had many different sources of inspiration since those days, but Haring’s ability to communicate his political views and values through humorous and powerful art has had a huge impact on me.

“Haring’s way of reacting against racial inequality, LGBT rights, environmental degradation and other political issues, has subconsciously affected the way I sometimes choose to be political in my work with Eytys. During the Ukrainian turmoil, we collaborated with Kiev-based artist Sasha Kurmaz to create Keith Haring-inspired prints with graffiti slogans from the revolution. The artwork featured everything from anti-Putin curses to pro-LGBT rights messages, as well as one or two penises… I hope Mr Haring would have been proud.”

eytys.com

Ways of Seeing: Edward Holcroft

In the first of our Ways of Seeing film series featuring six influential creatives, Edward Holcroft tells PORT what motivates him to be an actor

Edward Holcroft shot to prominence with appearances in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, and in critically acclaimed British TV series Wolf Hall, and London Spy where he co-starred alongside Ben Whishaw. He has shared the stage with Mark Rylance and Dominic West and later this year he’s set to appear in The Sense of an Ending, the big-screen adaptation of Julian Barnes’ Booker Prize-winning novel. Here, as the first instalment in PORT‘s Ways of Seeing series, where six creatives give an insight into their practice and reflect on the impact of eyewear in their daily lives, Holcroft, wearing the Ray-Ban Clubround opticals, discusses what motivates him as an actor.

Edward wears Clubround opticals RAY-BAN at DAVID CLULOW, Washed horse hide bomber jacket and crew-neck cotton sweatshirt PRESIDENT’S, T-Shirt SUNSPEL, Brut Knut dry selvage jeans NUDIE JEANS

Film Credits

Director Dean G Moore
Producer Anthony Le Breton
Director of Photography Chris Ferguson
Editor Tom Sweetland
Creative Direction Black Sheep Studios
Styling Alex Petsetakis
Styling Assistant Amii Mcintosh
Grooming Liz Daxauer at Caren using Tom Ford Grooming
Port Production Director Nick Rainsford

Dunhill x PORT issue 18 launch dinner

  

 

Fergus Henderson, Tom Cullen, Jamie Campbell Bower and more, attend an intimate dinner at Dunhill’s Mayfair townhouse to celebrate the launch of PORT‘s 18th issue

Our 18th issue is an important milestone for PORT as it marks five years of the magazine and is our biggest edition yet. So it seems only fair that such a birthday commands an equally special celebration.

To coincide with the issue’s ‘family’ theme, we brought together some of the key people that have supported PORT over the years for an intimate dinner. The evening was hosted by Dunhill at its historic London Bourdon House in Mayfair– a fitting partnership, given that it’s where we launched the first issue of PORT with the influential British brand back in spring 2011.

Guests in attendance included models Jamie Campbell Bower and Paul Sculfor, who arrived in sharp Dunhill tailoring, as well as celebrated chef and PORT food editor Fergus Henderson and YBA artist Gavin Turk, all of whom toasted the new issue with a champagne reception provided by G.H. Mumm,

Our SS16 family issue is out now and features two cover stars at the top of their creative fields: the venerated author Will Self, who takes on the ultimate subject (himself) and the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, who gives us rare access to his Osaka studio. To find out more about the new issue, or to purchase a copy, click here.

Thanks to all those that attended and to our readers. Here’s to five more years of PORT.

Photography Iona Wolff

Sherpa: Life And Death On Everest

Filmmaker Jennifer Peedom discusses her BAFTA-nominated documentary Sherpa, which follows the aftermath of one of the greatest disasters in Everest’s history

In April 2014, Mount Everest bore witness to the second worst human tragedy in its history: 16 guides from Nepal’s Sherpa community lost their lives in an avalanche while scaling the world’s highest mountain. Sadder still, the Sherpa guides were climbing Everest’s notoriously treacherous Khumbu Icefall to prepare a route for scores of foreign climbers, who had paid huge amounts to fulfil their lifelong ambitions of reaching the summit. The number of deaths since 1922 is astonishing. 

Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom was on Everest at the time of the disaster, and captured the trauma that followed. It was an event which shook the mountaineering community the world over, and caused Nepal’s Sherpa guides to take the unprecedented move of striking for the rest of the climbing season.

Peedom had initially set out to document the fraying relationships and tensions between Western climbers and the Sherpa, which had threatened to boil over in 2013, when a European mountaineer launched a barrage of expletives at a Sherpa guide, sparking off a fight at Base Camp, 5364m above sea level. Instead, Peedom found herself at the centre of a monumental disaster, caught between grieving Sherpas, indifferent Nepalese government officials and self-interested Western climbers. 

The result is Peedom’s new BAFTA-nominated documentary, Sherpa – a stark and beautifully shot account of life on Everest for Sherpas, as well as the travellers and tour operators who populate the relatively luxurious tents surrounding Base Camp. Here, Peedom talks to PORT about life after the disaster, filming at altitude and what drives the Sherpa people to continue risking their lives on Everest for the benefit of others.

Sherpas training in Khumbu Icefall
Sherpas training in Khumbu Icefall

You initially set out to explore the lesser-known side of the Sherpa-Western climber relationship. Why was this and what had you hoped to discover?

In my 20s and early 30s, I had spent a lot of time working as a climbing camera operator and ‘high altitude’ director. I’d worked three Himalayan expeditions and all with the same Sherpa team at the heart of the film. The change I witnessed over that time, and the intervening years was really interesting. For the Sherpas, expeditions brought prosperity, and with it, education. During that time, the internet also came to the Khumbu Valley. With access to information, they started to notice that they were being left on the cutting-room floor of the films, and their heroic pursuits – saving foreign climbers from certain death – being conveniently erased from foreigners’ accounts of their expedition. Initially, they would laugh this off, but I started to notice that, particularly for the younger Sherpas, many of whom had received training overseas, it started to bother them.

When a fight broke out between foreigners and Sherpas in 2013, I felt that it was an indication that this tension had reached a tipping point. I felt they had reached a stage where they realised they wanted more acknowledgement and respect for the dangerous job they were doing, getting foreigners to the top of Everest and back down safely.

I thought the best way to observe this was to follow an Everest expedition from the Sherpa point of view. Given my relationship with the Himalayan Experience (HIMEX) Sherpa team, it was an obvious choice to follow that particular expedition.

You happened to be there while a great tragedy hit the Sherpa community. How did that change the narrative of the film and your relationship with the Sherpa community?

When the avalanche struck, it wasn’t immediately apparent how this would change the narrative of the film, but I immediately knew that this was an event that would put the cat among the pigeons. This was something that we had to continue to shoot.

I knew that whatever happened, whether the season would be cancelled or not, was now the main story. It was an event that was going to go right to the heart of the issue that the film explored, which, in the end, could all be boiled down to respect.

I was already embedded closely with the HIMEX Sherpa team and the Sherpa community at Khumjung Village, and had made some relationships with other Sherpa leaders on the mountain, but the events forced me to expand that reach. The Sherpas I knew helped us gain access to the broader Sherpa community at Base Camp. I’d spent my days traipsing up and down the glacier at Base Camp, talking to and interviewing as many Sherpas as possible. But after a while the word spread and some started to come to our camp to be interviewed and share their feelings. By the end of the season, I’d have Sherpas pushing people out of the way so I could get a better camera position to film the various meetings that were going on at Base Camp. It felt like they knew what I was doing and wanted their story to get out there.

Phurba Tashi
Phurba Tashi

How did this event affect the Sherpa community’s morale and attitude towards tourism?

It was a tough blow for the Sherpa community. They are Buddhist people and very superstitious about events like this. I can’t speak for them, but what I gauged is that they felt as if the mountain was angry. And when foreign operators and climbers then pushed for expeditions to continue, they felt disrespected. They also felt very angry towards the Nepalese government for their lack of support, and for the paltry compensation that was being offered to the victims families (the equivalent of US $400), where most of these guys could have earnt up to US $5,000 for the season.

What do you think drives Sherpas to continue working after such a disaster?

Sadly, it’s money. There really aren’t any other jobs available that come close to earning the same amount of money. The alternative is to move to the cities (as many already do). Like any of us, they just want to feed their families and educate their kids.

What were the biggest physical and technical challenges you faced filming Sherpa?

Altitude always presents the biggest physical challenges, as it makes any physical activity more arduous. Certain people adapt better to the altitude than others, so some of the crew were more able to work than others. Once you get sick at altitude, it can take a long time to get better, so we had a couple of crew members who were struck by illness. It is also a real motivation-sapper, so you need to really steel yourself to get moving each day.

The technical challenges are largely related to power for downloading cards and charging batteries. The cold is also a drain on batteries and computer equipment. Our laptops all had to be packed away each night by the data wrangler, given hot water bottles and put in sleeping bags! We didn’t have enough power (or time) for me to watch rushes during the shoot, so I really had no idea what we were getting until we got back to the edit suite.

Mount Everest
Mount Everest

How did you physically prepare for the film?

Having been at altitude a number of times before, I know how my body responds. Best training for me is just running, which I do with my dog, and running up and down steep stairs.

What, if any, Western attitudes or preconceptions about Sherpas are you hoping to challenge with this documentary?

I would hope that people would leave the film, understanding that Sherpas are an ethnic group, not just people who carry bags up a hill. I guess I’d also like to think that if people were considering climbing Everest, they’d have a deeper understanding of what they are asking other people to do, and risk, on their behalf.

What was your approach to cinematography?

It was really important to me that this film look different to other Everest films (and I’d worked on a couple). I wanted the camera to really observe the mountains and the natural environment in a different way. That helped imbue it with the spiritualism that the Sherpas feel for their environment. For them, their surrounding landscape is a very important part of their spiritual beliefs.

I also know how hard it is to achieve a beautiful look in such a difficult environment, so I handpicked a really experienced team of guys, including the amazing climber, and cinematographer Renan Ozturk. For Renan, the mountains are his natural habitat and he has spent a lot of time in Nepal over many years. This meant that he was able to operate almost as normal in those conditions. He really shared the vision of the film too, so it meant we could be in different places (as became necessary with this film) and he’d be able to self-direct.

Given that the geography of the area is eye-catching, how did you ensure that the story focused on the Sherpa people without focussing too much on ‘the mountain’?

Finding that balance really came down to the edit. We were spoilt for choice with the visuals, but we also had such amazing access to our Sherpa characters, particularly Phurba Tashi Sherpa and his family. They really welcomed us into their village and their homes and trusted us.

What do you think the future has in store for the relationship between Sherpas and Western climbers?

Only time will tell I guess, but cancelling the season after the avalanche was a big deal. It really showed that the mountain can’t be climbed without Sherpa support.

I think it made the Sherpas realise that they have more power than they previously knew. But the Sherpas need foreign climbers to come, so they can earn an income, so I hope it leads to a more co-operative, mutually respectful relationship in the end.

SHERPA is nominated for Best Documentary BAFTA and will broadcast globally on Discovery Channel in 2016 sherpafilm.com