Outtakes: The Zone, StyleZeitgeist Volume 4

I wanted to share some photos from the editorial titled the Zone that we shot for Volume 4 of the print magazine, out now. I had the idea of doing something on Tarkovsky’s iconic 1979 film Stalker for quite a while. The problem was finding a location that would  even remotely resemble anything like the phantasmagoria of the abandoned hydro power plant that Tarkovsky used for the film’s setting. Ironically, it took a natural disaster that has shaken up New York to provide one. A few days after Hurricane Sandy we were at Breezy Point, the Queens neighborhood that was destroyed by fire.

For modeling I approached Paul Boche at Fusion Models, who has walked every men’s show and has been in every magazine imaginable. He was enrolled in an acting school at the time and the idea of doing something on Tarkovsky’s masterpiece immediately appealed to him. It was a now-or-never moment and we scrambled to get the clothes from Europe and New York. Luckily, the teams at Rick Owens, Boris Bidjan Saberi, M.A.+, Alexandre Plokhov, and InAisce, among others, helped us get everything on time.

It was a cold day and we all felt heavy and uncertain about shooting at a site of a disaster. Breezy Point looked like a village destroyed by an air strike. In the end we agreed that we did not create this disaster. Soldiers and rescue workers stopped by to take a look at what we were doing and the fact that we were creating something in a place of destruction was a welcome diversion for them. Maybe we were doing something right after all.

The photos here are mostly outtakes that did not make it into print. The rest are in Volume 4.