Geof Kern’s Latest Work Comes Down To His Expert Eye

Banowetz + Company chose photographer Geof Kern for this wonderful accessory story for the luxury shopping center, NorthPark Center, and their biennial in-house magazine, “NorthPark The Magazine,” which features such esteemed brands as Gucci, Bvlgari, Neiman-Marcus, Burberry, Kate Spade, Longchamp Paris, Louis Vuitton, and more. But his contribution to their Fall 2018 issue marked a first for him: an illustration credit. Geof’s “Little Paintings,” as he calls them, “were made with a camera and a computer, with the most basic tools, because I am a photographer, not an illustrator.”

By pairing surrealist details and backgrounds with the kind of precisely photographed accessories for which he is known, and then by addressing scale in a way that was wholly his own, Geof achieved in post what wouldn’t have been possible on set—or, for that matter, in the world as we know it. Clarifying this distinction, he replied, “saying they’re created on a computer doesn’t make them automatic or easy. There are no programs to ‘make’ these. They’re made with overlapping procedures and techniques. There is a lot of hand work. Mostly it's eye work. The eye that says yes or no, over and over, during their creation.”