MICHAEL STAROBIN  / Portfolio

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THE MERGER

With everyone clicking and posting photos all day long with their cell phones, the challenge of finding interesting photographs isn’t especially hard. I’m not worried about finding a singular giraffe image, or any other easily identifiable asset that I may need for a quick turnaround production. I worry for reasons that lurk beneath the surface like shallow rocks at the shoreline. 

QR CODES at the MUSEUM

Trips to a ball park and trips to a museum require visitors to be physically present. In the same way as watching a game on television, seeing a painting on a screen is a wholly different experience from seeing it in real life.

PLASTICS: What We Lose When Reality Isn't Important

So many things are shot on various kinds of virtual sets that actors and directors less frequently get to fully steep in a sense of place. That doesn’t mean modern creative teams can’t do good work; they clearly can. But over time, I think there’s something eroded in the foundations of culture every time a prop or a throne room gets inserted electronically by work done in a quiet computer lab isolated from the living, breathing crew. 

ART IN A TIME OF SMOKE AND CINDERS

No matter what Election Day may bring —and I’m conscious that on whatever date you may be reading there will likely remain massive uncertainties ahead — it would be irresponsible to pretend that the travails of the day can just be ignored. They cannot be ignored. Artists especially cannot avert their eyes, even as the balm of creative work promises a cloak of comparative purpose, or at least meaningful pursuit. To pretend that our collective, human induced problems are not substantial would be to assert an abdication of civic engagement. 

INFLUENCERS

A culture capable of even casually reading anything — car magazines, gossip magazines, music magazines, newspapers— meant its citizens were capable of simply focusing on something—anything—for more than a fleeting moment, by which I mean minutes not seconds.

MOVING IMAGES

LIVE EVENTS

PRODUCED MEDIA

HOSTED REPORTING ON LOCATION

SPHERICAL FILMMAKING