Tag: king

To get the essence of Damien Echols’ character you need only look at the footage of him, aged 19, being sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. “You will be administered a continuous intravenous injection of a lethal quantity of an ultra-short acting barbiturate, in combination with a chemical paralytic agent, into your body, until you are dead,” is how the judge put it. In this moment, Echols stood with his head tilted back, almost arrogantly so. His posture was loose under his black t-shirt. Even as his girlfriend ran screaming from the courtroom, he never lost his cool. Ever sardonic, even in the face of death.

It was in 1994 that Echols was found guilty of the brutal murders of three eight-year-old boys. Convicted along with him and sentenced to life imprisonment were Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr, aged 17 and 16 respectively. Commonly known as the West Memphis Three, the teens were accused of murdering the children as part of a satanic ritual, but there were questions hanging over their guilt from the beginning. The story gained worldwide attention through the 1996 HBO documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, which detailed a series of investigatory errors that indicated that the conviction was made under almost entirely false premises.

In the proceeding years, the perplexing and sensational case became the subject of two more Paradise Lost documentaries, multiple books and vast media and celebrity attention, in turn generating the West Memphis Three an army of devoted supporters. Finally, on August 19, 2011, after 18 years and 78 days in prison, the men were released on the grounds of a lack of DNA evidence. Echols’ release was one of the most high-profile releases of a death-row inmate in American history.

Today, in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Echols reclines in a floral armchair, next to a window overlooking Central Park. Dressed all in black, with skin of a striking pallor, he appears tired. He’s in New York as part of a press tour for his new memoir, Life After Death, and to promote West of Memphis, a new documentary by award-winning documentarian Amy Berg that highlights fresh evidence in the case. It’s been over a year since his release, but Echols has had little time to relax.

“People are always talking about this case like it’s extraordinary, but it really isn’t,” he says in his soft southern drawl. “This happens all the time – people get murdered, things get swept under the rug, and nobody thinks twice about it. We were three kids: bottom of the barrel, poor white trash. They thought they could just throw us in jail and we’d be forgotten. The only thing that made our case an exception was that there were film crews in the courtroom who caught everything on tape.” It’s an eerily poignant statement, given the recent string of criminal exonerations through DNA testing that have forced America to face the fallibility of its justice system. Since the first such case in 1989, over 300 people in the United States have been released from prison on the basis of new DNA evidence. Eighteen of them had served time on death row.

The bodies of the three young boys, Christopher Byers, Stevie Edward Branch and Michael Moore, were found in May 1993 in a drainage canal in Robin Hood Hills, a wooded area in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas, where almost a third of the population live below the poverty line and more than one in four people have less than a complete high-school education. It’s Bible-beltcountry, the land of teased hair, where people are born but rarely leave, and where time moves slowly, or not at all.

When found, the bodies of the children were stripped naked, and each had been hogtied with shoelaces – right wrist to right ankle, left wrist to left ankle. They appeared to have been mutilated, specifically Byers, who was found castrated. Unsurprisingly, the grotesque nature of the murders had emotions in the town running wild, intensified by rumours of rape, forced oral-sex and genital mutilation. The murders happened at a time when an irrational fear of satanic cult violence was sweeping America, fuelled by sensational media coverage. Police officers in West Memphis felt the crime had “cult” overtones, which led them to suspect Echols – a self-proclaimed Wiccan whose black clothing, long hair and affection for heavy metal and the occult made him an outsider in the small, conservative town.

Looking for information on Echols, police questioned an acquaintance of his, Misskelley, whose IQ of 72 classified him as mildly disabled. After being interrogated for nearly 12 hours, Misskelley confessed to the crime, implicating Echols and Baldwin (Echols’ close friend) along with him. There was immediate doubt surrounding the confession, as many felt it was coerced out of Misskelley through leading questions by the police, and because parts of Misskelley’s statement were inconsistent with the facts of the crime. Though he recanted within hours, it played a major part in the three convictions.

If a trial is a contest of competing narratives, then this particularly dramatic narrative – rumours of murders performed as part of a satanic ritual – had the power to outcompete truth, implicating Echols based on his character and appearance rather than concrete evidence. In keeping with the convoluted nature of the case, the conditions of the three men’s eventual release were bizarre. Under a deal with the prosecutors, they had to plead guilty to the murders, while still declaring their innocence – what is known as an “Alford plea”. For everyone involved in the defence, the deal was bittersweet.

“There are so many people and things and situations that formed the chain that got me out of prison, that if you remove one single link in that chain, I’d be dead right now,” says Echols flatly. “And the very first link in that chain was the first documentary, which I really feel played a huge part in saving my life.” The original courtroom footage, referenced by Echols earlier, was the basis for what would become Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Seen by millions, the documentary rallied celebrity support: Johnny Depp launched a campaign for their release, rock stars Eddie Vedder and Henry Rollins performed benefit concerts to raise awareness and funds and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson went so far as to finance a new investigation of the crime. But the heart of the movement was always about the kinship people felt with the three imprisoned young men, who became reluctant martyrs in the name of every kid who’s ever been picked on, singled out or called a freak. It’s a strange place to be in: solely by virtue of being wrongly convicted, you are suddenly a celebrity, a hero. But Echols always played the part well. He was the perfect bad boy: young, beautiful, irreverent, articulate. The courtroom footage of him is remarkable – goofing off for the camera, styling his hair, smiling charismatically, ultimately too innocent to think he could ever be convicted for a crime he didn’t commit.

There’s one particularly chilling interview with Echols on Court TV, filmed two years after his sentencing, in which an off-camera interviewer asks him if there’s anything he wishes he could change about his life before the trial. He responds: “I don’t think I’d change anything that’s ever happened in my entire life. I don’t think there was anything I could do to change (what happened). What, become a clone? Give up my personality? Give up my identity? Just march along like everyone else? I’d rather die.”

Following his release, Echols and his wife (who he fell in love with and married while in prison) moved to New York City, where they lived for a year before relocating to Salem, Massachusetts, last autumn. As the site of the most famous witch trials in history and a modern Mecca for alternative spirituality, it’s an all-too-fitting home for Echols, who became passionate about energy work and meditation while incarcerated.

“Salem is the only place in the world where I’m in the majority,” he laughs. “While I was in prison, I was ordained in the Rinzai tradition of Japanese Buddhism. I also had to learn Reiki and Qi Gong energy-working techniques, because on death row there’s no medical care, because there’s no point in spending time and money on someone you’re going to kill. I was in solitary confinement for ten years, I didn’t see sunlight for almost a decade, and I was eating garbage. There were times when I was so sick that I literally thought I was going to die before the night was over – times when I was in the most horrendous pain – and the only things I had to rely on were these energy techniques.”

Echols also devoted a large amount of his time inside to reading and writing. Despite dropping out of school in ninth grade (the highest formal education of anyone in his family), he is an autodidact who read obsessively from a young age, including thousands of books while incarcerated. “For the first few years I was in prison I couldn’t write, because I was so psychologically scarred by the way the police and lawyers had taken my own writing and twisted it, in order to use it against me,” he says, referring to things he’d written as a teenager which dealt with the occult, which were later used as evidence of his Satanism. “I really had to force myself to work through those emotional and psychological blocks to write.” In 2005, he self-published his first book, an autobiography titled Almost Home. While inside he also wrote lyrics with Pearl Jam and Michale Graves of the Misfits. His new memoir, Life After Death, avoids the details of the case, instead discussing his life on death row, as well as his childhood.

Something that is clearly absent from Echols’ story is his family, who do not appear in the documentaries. “I’ve never really been close to my family,” he says. “My father left when I was seven, and my mother gave me away to my grandmother when I was three years old because she couldn’t raise both me and my sister. So my grandmother was really the only person I considered family, but she died when I was in jail waiting to go to trial. I saw my sister maybe twice in the entire 18 years I was in prison. My biological mother came to see me a handful of times, but it was always pretty fucking horrible.”

However, in light of a new Hollywood film being made about the case, Echols’ mother and sister have suddenly appeared in the media, and have a book coming out detailing their side of the story. “The funny thing is, I haven’t known my mother or sister to read a book in their entire lives, but now they’ve apparently written one,” he laughs. “Somebody brought to my attention recently that they were selling t-shirts with my tattoos on them. They’re not making any effort to reach out to me, but they’re selling t-shirts, keychains, coffee mugs, and fucking cellphone covers.” Echols tells this story without revealing the slightest bit of anger. Always calm, always in control. “I don’t hate them,” he says. “I just want to stay as far away from them as possible.”

Filming is underway on the movie, the Atom Egoyan-directed Devil’s Knot, which stars Reece Witherspoon and Colin Firth and is based on Mara Leveritt’s book of the same name. It credits Baldwin and Misskelley among its executive producers, a fact which has led to a public falling-out between Baldwin and Echols. “That movie is foul,” says Echols. “They’re saying it’s based on Leveritt’s book, but nothing in it is accurate. In the screenplay there’s a scene where Reese Witherspoon, who plays one of the victim’s mothers, wakes up in the middle of the night and sees me standing in her bedroom with blood running from my mouth, from when I’d been chewing on the bodies. There’s another scene where I take a woman to a satanic orgy and cut her and drink her blood. And the people making the film say, “Oh, that’s just a dream sequence,” or, “It’s just illustrating what someone is thinking.” But you know when they make the trailer that those are the scenes they’re going to stitch together.” The movie also completely cuts Echols’ wife from the story, who, he says, did 85 per cent of the work on the case, and quit her job to work on it full-time. “But I’m not allowed to say much more about it,” he says, “because they’ll sue me.”

Since his release, Echols has also done some acting himself, playing a part in the upcoming IRL, about a girl’s (Sky Ferreira) dark adventures in NYC. The 20-minute short was directed by Grant Singer and written by Dazed contributor Patrick Sandberg. “I play a guy who works in a gun shop who tries to convince Sky that she needs weapons to protect herself against the monsters in the big city,” he laughs. “I liked doing it, mainly because it felt very ‘New York’.”

But Echols can’t devote his life to movies and meditation and casually hanging out with Johnny Depp just yet, for there is still work to be done. Because the West Memphis Three technically pleaded guilty, no further action can be taken in the case until the three are exonerated. West of Memphis focuses on this goal, and highlights a possible new suspect in Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of victim Stevie Branch. The film reveals that new forensic tests found DNA from Hobbs (who has a history of violence) at the crime scene, and displays expert testimony stating that the “mutilation” of the bodies, originally thought to be evidence of a satanic ritual, was more probably the result of post-mortem animal predation in the wooded area where the bodies were found.

In light of the accusations against him, Hobbs had created his own, early-2000’s-looking website, terryhobbs.com, with a header-bar that reads, “I am a quiet, laidback man who loves my children and is always there when needed. I love to play guitar and write uplifting music – every message is positive.” If you scroll down you will also notice off-putting photos of him “goofily” re-enacting stabbings in a wooded area with his family members, accompanied by such captions as, “The day was beautiful and we enjoyed it like a regular family. Nobody was fighting and there wasn’t any drama.”

“The person who killed those three kids is still out there walking the streets,” says Echols sternly. “I’m not pointing a finger at anyone, I’m just saying we should let the evidence speak for itself. Not myth or rumour or ghost stories, but concrete, physical evidence. There is significant evidence against Hobbs – there’s DNA evidence linking him to the crime scene and three eyewitnesses who say they saw him on the day of the murder, with all three boys.

“It makes me feel physically sick to talk about this,” he continues. “The only thing I can compare it to is being car sick. But as hard as it is to keep ripping open these wounds, I understand that it’s a necessary evil. I’m looking forward to the day when I can finally put this all behind me, but this isn’t the time. This isn’t that day.”

West of Memphis is out on December 21

This interview was taken from the January 2013 Issue of Dazed & Confused

Photography by Michael Avedon

Nineteen eighty-two; David Lindwall, birth, 3950 grams, 50cm. Since then the Swedish creative, based in New York has dabbled in a number of disciplines from band booker and denim rep to cutting his teeth as a model in Paris, djing, styling and designing. Since 2009, however, Lindwall's focus has been his label David Lindwall. Reborn. 1982, a heavy existentialist t-shirt line picked up by Dover Street Market that, somehow, even found its way onto David Beckham's back – the pap shots prove it. Our universe, like lightning, is recondite.

Expanding his collection to include outwear, hand knits and jeans for AW12, and his life from Brooklyn to upstate New York, we caught up with Lindwall to talk more.

Dazed Digital: Tell us about the AW12 collection. How has your label expanded?
David Lindwall: This year I decided to do a small collection for winter with the essentials, basically what I would like to wear instead of getting locked into design concepts for the collection. I knew I wanted to make amazing-cut designs in the best possible fabrics I could get my hands on. All made here in New York to support our local businesses. I ended up with a long boiled wool coat, a black leather biker jacket and a bomber jacket in a light boiled wool, working a lot with the details and inside of the jacket, something I hope you notice every time you put them on.

Also new this season is a few knitwear pieces – a hoodie in 100% ecological Alpaca (yarn is spun and knitted in Sweden) and a round neck jumper in 100% ecological wool. They're hand knitted, with no machines involved at all. A project that I’m super happy with the outcome of.

The design of the shirts is a play on the first 100% genetically modified human created in our Reborn. 1982 Laboratories and the general waste of resources in the world today, such as the USELESS (using less since 1982) t-shirt.

DD: What’s the moment your creative journey began? Has it been an incidental trip?

David Lindwall: It all started in my childhood, my father always let me use his tools and I was always making things in wood and welding at 12 years old. Then growing up into a 6’4” teenager my mum got tired of altering my clothes and said, "the sewing machine is there, feel free to find out how it works." I did. After working for some houses in Europe as senior designer (I have no formal fashion education whatsoever) I decided that the only way to do what you believe in is to do it on your own.

I remember the day when the brand actually began for real (more than in my head). I was in Paris doing the shows and I got talking to Adrian Joffe at the Comme offices in Place Vendme. I showed him some prints I’d done for a small t-shirt collection and he said, “these are great, you should make them and we could buy them for Dover Street Market.” That was the birth of David Lindwall. Reborn. 1982. Just like that on a sunny day in France. So to answer your question I guess you could say it was incidental.

DD: What have you learned along the way?
David Lindwall:I think the best thing I’ve learnt is that the fashion industry is a lot of smoke and mirrors. I had a good fashion education from modelling, seeing business that close with fittings and getting a understanding for what you actually need to have and the things that people perceive you to have made a big impact when I set up the structure of my own business. Getting to know the big designers in person and talking to them about their business and creative journeys, ups and downs, seeing shows both backstage and sitting in the crowd has been very helpful. Another thing that has been a big help is working for someone else when you make mistakes. Everything has a learning curve.My highlight is waking up everyday next to my wife and working on something that I truly in my heart of hearts love.

DD: You’ve lived across Europe and both sides of the US coast. Where feels most like home?
David Lindwall:New York, no question about it. Though I do at times miss living in Tokyo, a place I could see myself going back to again for a longer period of time.Our flat here in Brooklyn is really my first home, since I've travelled so much in previous years. About a year ago we bought a old Victorian farmhouse (that needs a lot of work) in upstate New York, on lots of land with a barn separate from the house. That’s where I’m starting to set up the new Reborn 1982 office and I can’t wait to get it all done. Just being up there amongst nature is amazing; fishing, hiking, kayaking, snowboarding, it’s a dream come true.

DD: Do we all have a capacity for rebirth?
David Lindwall:I would like to think so. Some might be closer than others.

DD: What would you like to be reborn as next?
David Lindwall:I’d like to be a shadow.

DD: Tell us something we wouldn’t expect of you...
David Lindwall:My bone marrow is dying and I have holes the size of ping pong balls in both my legs. Add to that some 300 stitches in my stomach and being 5 minutes from instant death on a operating table in my 20s.

DD: What else?
David Lindwall:I’m currently working with the brilliant talented photographer Mr. Brett Lloyd on a new project that will present itself at some point next year. Thoughwe could also talk about how productivity and profit is enslaving mankind and destroying our planet at the same time...

PhotographyBrett Lloyd
AW12 imagescourtesy of David Lindwall

Taken from her recent experimental lo-fi LP, Will Happiness Find Me? on Not Not Fun Records - London-based, Estonia-raised pop-referencing electronic producer/singer Maria Minerva's track Never Give Up is subtly dark and haunting, made up of her signature softly off-key vocals backed by dreamy piano keys and disparate synths. The accompanying video which we premiere here sees Maria Juur in a monochrome light, gently moving to the melodies she's created - not too far removed from her DIY-feel music videos she first made her name with. Here we fired our some-intimate, some-plain weird questions at her to find out more about her worrying sleeping patterns and coming off like a 7-year-old...

Dazed Digital: Where is the weirdest place you’ve ever put your hands?
Maria Minerva: I think touching other people's heads is pretty weird

When abroad, besides pleasantries, which phrase should you always learn?
Just something to impress the locals, show that you are interested in their culture/language. when I was living in Lisbon I told people I met the days of the week in Portuguese and people thought it's super cute though I felt like an 7-yr-old/retarded person... Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday... I was there for 4 months and all i could say was that basically.

Who is your nemesis?
My own dark thoughts! They come and go.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever done?
Making something out of nothing, becoming independent and courageous, learning how to cope with both love & criticism.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
I do not usually regret stuff but I hate myself when I start playing games with people, it's not fair, it's not cool, it's stereotypically immature, girl-seeking-for-attention type of behaviour and I hate it, though it does occur.

Describe your swimming style in three words.
I think in Estonian we call it "doing the frog". Froggy style. The normal style? I go swimming like three times a week. I get really angry sometimes cause people are not very considerate. The other day I asked a guy if he could have his splashfest in a row further down. Bet he thought I was annoying.

How do you sleep at night?
Soundly, but not always. Apparently I grind my teeth at night and scratch my wounds til they start bleeding... I also get insomnia. I am armed with some Latvian prescription sleeping pills that my mother sent me from Estonia. Even those don't work sometimes cause my mind is unstoppable. Mainly worried about not being able to fall asleep but also thinking about breakfast. I love breakfast. Sometimes I go to bed just so I could have breakfast sooner, if that makes sense.

What’s the scariest word to you?
I think it is scary when people give you silence, refuse to say sorry, and so on

What is your go-to fancy dress outfit?
I can't do fancy clothes until I know where I'm gonna be living, right now I only own like cotton t-shirts/functional boring wear. Just a hustler in leggings.

If you were a (Roman, or otherwise) goddess for a day, what would you do?
Naomi Klein says we are all goddesses, right. But if I actually were a goddess then yeah, would be great to help women/people around the world to become intellectually and sexually satisfied - at the same time.

What would be the title of your cookbook?
Fucking up with Maria Minerva... or 101 Creative Ways of After-Midnight Munching

What is your spirit animal?
Really love dogs, what can I say.

Who is your hair icon?
Chinese crested dog fo sho'

What was the last sound you heard?
Filling out this questionnaire I accidentally pushed the CD drive eject button, so that made a sound.

Send us a picture of the thing you most like looking at on the internet.
Watches - just bought this from Macy's for myself for Christmas. it's white.

Aaron Brown is one half of directing collective FOCUS CREEPS. They've done videos for everyone, including Girls, Neon Indian, Cass McCombs, Wavves, Smith Westerns, Delorean and more. He's also a good friend and has a cool bird named Birden that he and his girlfriend Natasha, who is a stylist in LA, take everywhere. This year, he and his partner Ben Chappell have wrapped up their two-year long wave of videos and creative direction for Arctic Monkeys.

Aaron's ability to lower people's defenses with his chill charm and dope clothes and knowledge of obscure Bay Area rap makes him a perfect choice to continue our TRIBUTE series here, exclusively on Dazed.

A few days ago, Vince & I got online and asked him a few questions.

MAINLINE:

YO

THIS IS VINCE & AG

your inviewers

AARON BROWN :

hpwdy

howdy

we've both already typo'd

MAINLINE:

hello Aaron

you ready

AARON BROWN :

no

MAINLINE:

ill fix your typos in post

AARON BROWN :

ok

yes

you better

MAINLINE:

we'll do our best to make you look good

AARON BROWN :

that's a tall order

MAINLINE:

lets get started w some questions

AARON BROWN :

ok

MAINLINE:

I'm smoking weed in-between your long pauses in responding

AARON BROWN :

lets commence the circle jerk

MAINLINE:

perfect

question 1

Where did you find the main kid in your film?

AARON BROWN :

There's a skateshop out on Atlantic in East LA. They have ramps in the back room to keep kids out of trouble in the ghetto. I started hanging out there on the weekends to stay outta trouble too

There's three kids that I would cruise around with, they seem like the leaders

Everyone said, you'd like to hang out with this kid Meklo, he's crazy

His name is Meklo, cause he has green eyes and looks white, like the guy named Meklo in that bloods and crips movie

MAINLINE:

Was there any issues with you hanging out somewhere you really didn't belong, were the kids suspicious of you?

Being that you're much older, and not from east LA?

AARON BROWN :

i made friends with the owner first and said i was making a skate video but with no skating.

it wasn't really weird, it was more about keeping them not bored.

MAINLINE:

So Meklo was immediately responsive to you wanting to film him?

AARON BROWN :

he was, yeah. he has a positive attitude in the midst of a potentially really shitty environment, and how he keeps that attitude was fun to explore

he does a lot of pranks and manipulates people a lot

he's the kinda person who would say 'yes' to anything and figure out what's in it for him

AARON BROWN :

immediately

MAINLINE:

did he manipulate you or potentially the process of the film, or who he truly is? Did he put on show or pretend in anyway?

AARON BROWN :

When you hang out with people for interviews you first encounter a kind of shell they've made up, but if you stick around long enough you see who they really are, darker stuff but also funnier stuff. I just went back a few times and could see that stuff coming out more and more.

It was more of the vibe, like: "why the hell do you keep coming out here? "You're weird, haha, lets go hang out."

MAINLINE:

What was that place he took you to? And WTF was that mound of prescription pill bottles?

AARON BROWN :

Some homeless guy had lived there forever and had just died. It was a kind of memorial. We actually all found it together while wandering around the river.

there were kids kinda taking turns watching his encampment, kids would actually come and relieve the kid that was there before, it looked like they slept there

but they weren't homeless themselves

they must have just been friends with the dude that died. obviously he looked like he was fucking awesome

MAINLINE:

Last question, what was it like to be part of their clique for a day, and why do you think it's important to pay attention and capture youth?

AARON BROWN :

they had a lot of ways to elevate above getting in trouble like it seemed a lot of their peers do. the irony is the way they would do it was by breaking different laws

but they were individuals.

but they were coming from a place of 'how to have fun' instead of being desperate.

This piece is mostly about that, their good attitudes.

that's the thing you forget a little, getting older you get more pissed at stuff. when you're fifteen that doesn't really exist.

MAINLINE:

Thanks Aaron, we're super excited about your film, thanks for not blowing us off.

any last words?

OH and one last last question, was it weird seeing your girlfriend get her head shaved on set for a Scorsese film?

AARON BROWN :

haha, was hysterical, long story

MAINLINE:

aight dude, thanks again, well talk soon

MAINLINE:

cool dude

i think thats it

AARON BROWN :

THANXoXo

lets hang soon

MAINLINE:

most def

love ya dude

AARON BROWN :

im around all week

MAINLINE:

same here

go see Killing Them Softly

Ben Mendelsohn kills it

AARON BROWN :

dude, YES

WHEN AND WHERE? looks so good

MAINLINE:

i saw it

but arclight

i would go again maybe

AARON BROWN :

okk

steph emailed about some party thurs?

going to that?

MAINLINE:

ya

its Caviars party

AARON BROWN :

aight, that's a start

MAINLINE:

should be cool to drink free drinks and make fun of AG

it's what I do most of the time

AARON BROWN :

we could go get your truck stuck somewhere this weekend?

its not 4x4 is it? has that nice lift

MAINLINE:

ya it is

dude

its full on

wheel locks and everything

AARON BROWN :

SICK! LETS GO SOMEWHERE

my brother and i sleep under his truck haha

if you drink enough you make it through the night

Last year, when Dazed Digital spoke to the photographer/curator Laurence Von Thomaswho was releasing the second book of photographs from his blog If You Leave-the blog had little more than 3,000 followers. A year later, the numbers have hit 100,000, and Von Thomas is back in London to launch his third and final book - with a selection of the best images from 95 global contributors.

TheIf You Leaveblog started in 2009 as a platform for young photographers to submit their best work. The name, If You Leave, is inspired by three words Von Thomas scribbled down on a piece of napkin, and seems to have consequently become an apt guideline for the stream of submitted photographs, as they incorporate similar themes and aesthetics drawn from the title. Loneliness, vast landscapes, distance and intense expression have all been inevitably present on If You Leave over the years.

Dazed Digital: Tell us a bit more about this year’s selection. How is it different from previous books?


Laurence Von Thomas:I've learnt to always believe what my mom says is true when it comes to intuitive exploits... last year's selection was "more positive" than the first... she hasn't seen the new book yet. This said.. thank fuck there's no more comment box or she'd retort with a full blown Baudrillardian essay about colours and frequential energy.



DD: Can you list a couple of words or phrases that would characterise the selection?


Laurence Von Thomas:I'll leave that up to personal interpretation, but I would like to try and define the style of If You Leave, since it has often been asked and I never felt able to accurately respond. Me and Berlin-based photographer Lena Grass spoke about this during the summer and we felt there was a definite style/subculture going on and that maybe it was time to create some sort of manifesto and then give it an eccentric name... alas, in the absence of this glorious pamphlet, I think the term neo-romanticism might come close, since a lot of the imagery seems to relate to many of the characteristics of Romanticism in terms of mood, composition, theme or even technique. Turner and Friedrich return frequently as a source of inspiration.



DD: With so many submissions, is your selection just instinct based? Are there any guidelines?
Laurence Von Thomas:

There are no guidelines. I prefer it this way. My selection is not based on objective parameters, so it wouldn't make sense to dictate any.



DD: Do you know how many submissions you had overall?


Laurence Von Thomas:I had to look it up, but it seems over 4000 since the start of the blog, though I would say 1/3 of these are images I invited.



DD: I can’t help but notice there are a lot of soft coloured images of women in a certain type of mood. Do you think that is a natural reaction to the theme and title of the blog?


Laurence Von Thomas:Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that, in general, women like to explore the visual in a different way (and at a different pace) than men. I think a lot of the photographs you refer to are in fact self portraits or images of close friends serving as study objects.



DD: Can you pick a song that would suitIf You Leave Vol III?


Laurence Von Thomas:Today it would be 'One more cup of coffee' (the White Stripes version). 

But over the last 2 years I've been putting together a playlist for each book launch. The list is a collection made out tracks from Spotify playlists by If You Leave photographers, so in a sense you could say it's the soundtrack to the book. 

Here's one for Volume III (though it seems to only show the first 30 tracks).




DD: You started If You Leave in 2009 on both Flickr and Tumblr. Have you sensed some kind of retreat from the Flickr community in general? Are artists moving to their own blogs, tumblrs, websites?


Laurence Von Thomas:Flickr has most definitely suffered some fall-back since Tumblr has boomed. For me personally, they have their individual qualities... Flickr still has many groups, is very useful as an archive and feels less curated, blogs work better chronologically or as a diary and a website still works well as a showcase.



DD: You mentioned this would be "the third and final instalment of If You Leave". Does that mean this is the last book for If You Leave? What’s next for the blog?


Laurence Von Thomas: I don't want to give the impression I'm milking it. I've been exploring the aesthetic you've come to expect of If You Leave for almost 4 years now, and while I still really enjoy it, it feels like it is time for something new. The blog will still run on and a few 'established' galleries, and more recently museums have been showing an increasing interest in the blog, but none of this will happen before the next season. Maybe we'll put on some sort of retrospective in combination with new images.

DD: 

Do you think If You Leave has influenced your personal photography? Or vice versa?


Laurence Von Thomas:Undeniably yes and yes.


DD: Any future projects you’ve been working on?


Laurence Von Thomas: I've been working withArthur-Frank, the publisher of If You Leave, and we have two magazines in the pipeline. One is purely visual reference, based on a pop-up project I ran during the summer. The second one is a heavily content-based concept. That’s all I can say for now! Maybe by this time next year I will publish some of my own work, take it on the road and hopefully combine it with a film project I've been working on for ages.

Books are available to pre-order online exclusively viaif-you-leave.tumblr.comand will hit London and UK stores by December 16th


cover image Matthew Lief Anderson