Pavement Studios

Actress Vahina Giocante new york city
photographed by ned schenck

Visual artist Ned Schenck has spent the last ten years focusing his energies documenting downtown youth subcultures in New York City, taking over 2,500 portraits in the myriad streets and underground clubs of edgy neighborhoods in the East Village and Brooklyn. As a photographer, filmmaker and magazine publisher, his work has exploited a variety of media in an attempt to indulge his obsession with the visual image.

Growing up in the South and working for several years as Vice President at an investment bank, Schenck eventually decided to ditch the 'coat and tie' path to explore more creative pursuits. In 1997, he founded a visual arts publication Pavement Magazine with award-winning creative director Adam Roe, and opened a photography studio called Pavement Studios. As an extension of his work in photography, Pavement Studios has expanded its domain into independent film, resulting in several motion pictures currently under development.

Captured through the cracked lenses of an odd assortment of old cameras found on the street or purchased at flea markets, Schenck's collection of photographs are often characterized by long exposures and severe lighting, providing an unsettling and chaotic mood mirroring the atmosphere of the East Village late at night. The resulting images from this series accentuate the beauty, style and recklessness of Downtown youth with portraits including punks, squatters, hustlers, skaters, heroin addicts, club kids, and emerging artists.
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Pavement Studios shot its first feature film Squatter Teacher Haters during the summer of 2003, a dark comedy about three friends who retreat to an abandoned lake house and plot the murder of their high school teacher. Schenck's other current film projects include (untitled), series of real-life teenage stories about growing up in modern suburban hell in an as-yet 'untitled' generation; The Pigeon Kickers, a series of short films about degenerate youth in New York City; Return of the Disco Zombies, a horror movie about five college students trapped on an island with zombies reincarnate from a 1970's industrial disaster; and Neo-Mania, a death-metal horror roadtrip epic based on the story of Lautreamont's Maldoror written in collaboration with novelist Travis Jeppesen.
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Schenck's ongoing projects include publishing Pavement Magazine, a visual arts publication providing feature coverage of independent film, music, art, fashion and urban culture. In addition to his work with Pavement Studios, Schenck is also a contributing photographer for Filmmaker Magazine and the German publication Bully.

"The greatest thing about this kind of photography was that I could actively participate in the shot, or could just sit back in the corner in a haze and observe everything through the lens. Either way, the camera just became a part of things...I used to wander around the East Village approaching random people on the street asking to photograph them, trying out as many old cameras and lenses and lighting methods as I could think of. I know it's become a cliche among photographers, but the 'mistakes' really were the images that caught my attention. And I found myself increasingly surrounded by extraordinarily talented writers & artists like Travis Jeppesen and Kelli Bickman and Bard Cole, who became my good friends."
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Please contact Ned Schenck at Pavement Studios if you have any questions or comments:

PAVEMENT STUDIOS
Ned Schenck, Executive Producer
producer@pavementstudios.com
AIM: PavementFilms
tel: 917-587-6675