homepage > people and interviews > ken marcus

It is always a pleasure to meet somebody who has - always - something interesting and intelligent to say. Like Ken Marcus. We interviewed Ken before, several times. Each interview was different, always interesting and rich with new ideas. Like this one. Also this time Ken found the time to sit with us, and talk about his life, his background, his views on life...

Do you feel you have achieved your goals, being one of the most famous and appreciated fetish and bondage photographers in the world? Are you - professionally speaking - where you wanted to be?
I don't relate in those terms. I don't think in a competitive way. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy the opportunity to be creative, edit and display my own work. I don't think in terms of other people as being competition, as: 'am I number one, are they number two?' I think there is plenty of room for a wide variety of different kinds of photographers. Each person has his own style. Really, at this stage of my life it is all about enjoying myself and the opportunities to be creative and expressive.

You manage your website, which is http://www.kenmarcus.com by yourself, and you have a very high rate of production of pictures for the website which is updated regularly. Are you ever afraid this might lead to a kind of routine and take you away of the creative side of photography?
No, I don't think so. All of my professional life I have been very productive, shooting all the time. So for me to do something once or twice a week is not a tremendous effort and I would much rather be doing that than not shooting at all. I enjoy it all, taking the photos, doing the computer work, even the Photoshop work. It's a creative process that I really like. Every once in a while there is a time that I want to take a week off but I always make sure my weekly updates go on.

Many photographers have sites where they show their commercial production, and then they have a portfolio where they keep their personal work, where they put their ideas, that creativity that cannot be commercialized very easily. What do you have in your personal portfolio if you have one...
Actually, my personal portfolio IS my website. For many, many years, when I was shooting for Playboy, Penthouse, Muscle & Fitness and all the othercommercial accounts I had, I was shooting what others wanted. Photos specifically for them. And then in my free time I made pictures that I enjoyed doing. Well, now I am retired from that business. I don't deal with those people anymore. No more editors, art-directors, designers or clients. So everything I shoot now is really for myself.

You are 100% internet now...
Absolutely.

Do you ever think about going back mainstream?
No, not really. I have been doing comercial photography all my life. I started when I was 17 years old. I am 58 now. I have been doing this for over 40 years. I should have been retired long ago. You know, sitting in a wheelchair, or something. I don't know what my life would be like if I wasn't a photographer. I am really enjoying what I am doing. I sometimes feel that I am doing more creative work now than I have done at various other points when I was working on big accounts. So, I don't miss that at all. I have done this for too many years. Being on the road for months at a time, living out of a suitcase. Yes, I do miss certain moments. I have had many wonderful experiences. There were times when I was working for Playboy and Penthouse that we went to wonderful, exotic locations and I had lots of their money to spend. But I've been there and done that too many times. Those are the kind of things that young people, starting in the business right now, dream about. I hope for their sake they get to experience those things. But at this point I am enjoying my life more. I have a wonderful place where I live and work, and a good group of friends. Fortunately I am in a position where models come to me from all over the world to shoot. What more can one ask? For instance. here are we standing in a convention hall and Emily Marilyn passes by to say hi . . . and Jenna Jameson offers to do another bondage shoot with me . . . I'll have set up 20 shoots before this convention is over. These are the kind of rewards that one gets after a lifetime of work. I am sure that many other photographers just starting in the business wish that they can have that. I feel very fortunate...

Are you the kind of photographer that sees everybody and everything through a lens? Is photography so much part of your life that now you cannot separate the two things anymore? Is your life photography and is photography your life?
Yes, I think that is a really good assessment, particularly how I see things literally. I learned how to see at a very young age, from Ansel Adams. He taught me that everybody can look, but very few people really see. I believe the difference between looking and seeing suggests there is a more intent way of experiencing things, recognizing the relationship between objects and things of sizes, colors, textures, contrast and lighting particularly... I am very sensitive to lighting. The camera really is nothing more than a tool you can use to record what you see. The camera is not going to make a great picture. It is what you see in your minds eye. I walk around in the world and see pictures all the time...

Very energy consuming...
It can be sometimes. It can be very exciting, also. Even without a camera, there is a level of anticipation in my vision. I may see certain compositional elements that are just waiting for a certain person to move or do something to create a decisive moment and make a perfect picture. And then sometimes it ends up with that person not doing the right thing, or conversely, he or she may do just the right thing and if I had my camera with me, with the right lens, then at the right moment there would have been a perfect picture. I amuse myself like that a lot, observing the relationship between people and their surroundings. I don't need a camera to see those moments.

Have you already taken the perfect picture or are you still looking for it?
First of all: I believe you cannot TAKE a perfect picture, but you can MAKE a perfect picture. And I have made thousands of them. That is what I do professionally. I take various elements, I put them together and I make it as perfect as possible, so when someone looks at the picture, it instantly reads to them. That's really what all the centerfolds, calendars, magazine covers and record covers are about. Thats what advertising photography is. Those are the perfect images because they instantly communicate to the viewer and they either sell you a product or they make you interested in something you have to see more of. That's what the perfection of photography is all about . . . instant communications.

You are 58 now and you are obviously very satisfied about what you are doing now. If you could go back to the beginning of your career and start all over again, would you do the same things? Or would you not change anything?
Well, I know this is going to sound strange, but I don't think I'd change much if anything. For much of my early career, I was extremely lucky and things seemed to fall in place for me. It was like the universe opened up and put opportunities there for me. I will take credit though for acting upon those opportunities. Early in my career, somebody said: 'You know, you should be a corporation'. So I said: 'Ok, I'll be a corporation' and I took their advice. I had no idea why at the time, but over the years I saved a fortune on taxes.

Someone else said: The two most important words to being successful is 'Look Expensive', so I thought: 'Ok, when I make pictures, I will make them look expensive.' And that set me on a course that I followed throughout my career. My clients always liked the 'expensive' look that I added to their photography. I was very lucky to receive advice from older, successful people who knew what they were talking about. I greatly benefited from their experiences and suggestions.

More good advice was: 'If you want to be successful, do what successful people do'. If a successful person wakes up every morning and hops around on one foot in a counterclockwise circle, you don't have to know why, but just do it and eventually you too will become successful. So, I spent my early life studying what other photographers have done to become successful, and I tried to follow in as many footsteps as I could. But the kind of luck that I've had in being chosen to be the first American photographer for Penthouse, at a time when they were growing so quickly and to be getting such incredible publicity.... It made me famous in a year and a half. I had no idea what I was doing in making the decision to have them publish my photos. I thought that I was going to shoot some nudes for this little unknown magazine and nobody would know... I didn't want my other straight clients to know. I thought it might interfere with my advertising career and ultimately it did. It replaced my being a, modestly successful Los Angeles advertising photographer with becoming a highly publicized glamour photographer with opportunities to travel the world and do wonderful things. These are things I would have never been able to do by myself. Was this all one great plan that I came up with when I was young? No, it was not. All I knew was that I did not want to do anything else in life other than photography, and that if I did good at photography, whatever type it was, I would be able to make a living until I was an old man. That is what I learned from Ansel Adams as a kid. That you can be very old and do photography, or you can be very young and do photography It's something that you can do throughout your entire life. I think that I have just been tremendously fortunate to have been in the right place in the right time. I feel gifted in that respect. I did not have to go out and invent some brand-new plan. I feel like opportunities were presented to me in the right way and I was aware enough to appreciate it. And I've appreciated it fully till this very day. I love what I do. How could I not?

Just a last question about technology and the Internet. You have full control over what you publish. Making the picture, choosing the pictures, editing them. You do everything by yourself. But then the pictures must be published on your site. How much control do you have on the site itself? Probably, when it comes to the site, you have to rely on other people...
Well, I have one of the best in the business, Digital Organics. For several years I did everything myself. I was the webmaster, the photographer, the designer, I did all the marketing . . . but you know, you can only do that to a certain extent. There are only so many hours in a day and I eventually ran out of time. I was very fortunate to work with Digital Organics, they were producing the website for AVN, Andrew Blake, Earl Miller and other important people and decided that my site fit in with her overall plan. There became a point where I really needed to delegate certain responsibilities. I am very good in what I do but there areas in Internet technology that I don't have enough knowledge of. And as long as it was a small site, I could fake my way through that. But as it got bigger and more complicated, it started to need multiple servers and we were getting hacked, needed special software and support... I needed help because I didn't have the time to learn all those things. Maybe I should have, but I would have never been able to and continue to take photos. You can only be a one-man site for so long. Digital Organics made it possible for a tremendous amount of growth and I still have control over all of my pictures. I have final decision over what the site looks like, even though she designs it. If I do not like some things, it doesn't go up. But I think they have done an excellent job. I love what they do. They recently redesigned the site and I was very thrilled. They contribute in areas I might not think of. And I like their design sense and all the people that work there. So, it is really like having my own art department. Everything gets presented to me and occasionally I change some things. But as far as my pictures go, every Friday morning I send them from my computer up to our server and then I call Digital Organics so they can put them live online. But the total look, the layout, the photographs, the sequences, and everything else is all my product. It is 100% mine. It's me...

januaty 2004