By Rodney Bowes
Asymmetric Magazine: Tell us about your series.
Rodney Bowes: The series is my insights and perceptions of the environment in which I live.
AM: What inspires you most?
RB: Dynamic visual elements, irony, humor, pathos, truth, juxtaposition, incongruity love and beauty.
AM: What themes do you pursue in your work?
RB: My environment becomes my theme. It fascinates me to compare what I photograph and what I see as interesting and how it makes me feel in a new environment to what I photograph in the same environment years later once I've become inured. Perception is always truth, yet it's interesting how the truth becomes different through time. From naïveté to a completely different form of naïveté.
AM: What's your favorite thing to photograph in LA?
RB: Whatever I find compelling and interesting in LA. What others find worthy of mass photographing and how I see that same subject matter.
AM: We love the variety of subject matter in your work. When you're shooting—how much of it is instinctual vs. planned?
RB: I don't plan photographs anymore. When I did plan specific images, I never ended up shooting what I had planned to shoot, so now I let the location dictate what I capture on film, and in my post production, I articulate what I saw and how it made me feel. Funny that I actually lead my life in the same fashion.
AM: What else can we expect to see from you?
RB: I am producing current images for gallery shows in 2016 in LA, Paris, Tokyo, London and Toronto. I am also resurrecting hundreds of images that I made in the punk rock era and beyond, of musicians and lifestyle in America during those times. I will be showing those photographs in galleries and in book form 2016/2017.
Rodney Bowes is an LA-based photographer and designer best known for his music photography and album art. He has been running his original design company, Rodney Bowes Design, for 35 years. His clients include Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Rush, David Bowie, Ramones, Dead Boys, Plasmatics, Shania Twain, The Band, Oscar Peterson, Sam and Dave, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Poison, Nickelback, Steve Miller Band, Smashing Pumpkins, Godsmack, Creed, Live Nation, EMI, Universal Music, BMG Music, Sony Music, Bell Telephone, Estee Lauder, Warner Music, Blue Note Records, and many more. You can find more of his work at rodneybowes.com.