Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Seth Kushner's CulturePOP Season 2 starts 10/4 on ACT-I-VATE.com

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Seth Kushner's CulturePOP:

"Photocomix Profiles of Real-Life Characters"
Season 2 starts 10/4 on ACT-I-VATE.com, FREE
All 12 episodes of Season 1 available free:
http://www.act-i-vate.com/104-1-1.comic


Seth Kushner loves comics and loves taking photos of interesting people. Over the past year, Seth began combining the two passions, in the form of photocomix, AKA fumetti, first popularized in the U.S. with Harvey Kurtzman's Help and later in Robert Crumb's Weirdo. In those cases the experiment was played for laughs, but Seth's doing something different: fusing photojournalism, personality profile, and comix. His first photocomix profile was of the late, great Harvey Pekar, for GRAPHIC NYC, the comics journalism site he co-edits. CulturePOP is his new ongoing series of photocomix profiles on ACT-I-VATE.com.

"What Seth achieved with that initial Pekar interview-cum-comic was a triumph," said Jeff Newelt, Harvey's editor on The Pekar Project. "He took key moments of an interview, matched the words with photos he took, and sequentially arranged the results so as to read as smoothly as an American Splendor comic."

In CulturePOP Season 1, Seth's shined his flash on the lives of subjects including poet Caits Meissner, sousaphonist/producer Clark Gayton, singer/songwriter Elyssa Loveless, designer John D'Aponte, graffiti artist/sculptor Carlos "Mare 139" Rodriguez, yoga instructor Melisa Winitzsky, former US champion rhythmic gymnast Olga Karmansky, toy designer Super Sucklord, author Douglas Rushkoff, VJ Jonny Wilson of Eclectic Method, burlesque performer Jennie Fiske and artist Jen Ferguson.

"Seth Kushner's omniscient lens distills NYC's brave and bold into graphic time capsules," says Dean Haspiel, creator of Billy Dogma, & The Alcoholic.

CulturePOP Season 2 launches Tuesday 10/5 with a photocomix profile on Bronx Flavor TV host Baron Ambrosia. Episodes run every other Tuesday and will include such scintillating subjects as writer / erotic editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, cartoonist Dean Haspiel, illustrator / designer Dave Franzese of Dark Igloo, aerialist Lisa Natoli, hip hop performer Akim The Funk Buddha, comedian/musician Reggie Watts and more TBA.

“Working on CulturePOP has been a dream come true,” says Kushner. “It’s the melding of my life-long love of comics and my photography into a new form of profile for me. Working on the first twelve was such a challenging and rewarding experience that I can’t wait for viewers to see some of the new tricks I’ve incorporated into the next twelve.”

CulturePOP is co-curated by Jeff Newelt, and edited by Dean Haspiel.

Join CulturePOP's Facebook fan page - http://www.facebook.com/CulturePOPphotocomix


Seth Kushner — shoots portraits of celebrity-types for such publications The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, L'Uomo Vogue and others. Seth's first book, The Brooklynites, (with Anthony LaSala) was published by powerHouse Books in 2007 and was) considered ”a terrific coffee table photo/interview book” by The New York Times. Currently, he's co-editing the comics journalism site Graphic NYC (www.NYCGraphicNovelists.com) (with Christopher Irving) and working on his next book on comic book creators. Seth first comics work was Schmuck (with artist Kevin Colden) and can be seen on ACT-I-VATE.com

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