Connor Tomas O'Brien interviews Marlowe Tatiana for boty

Connor Tomas O'Brien was rad enough to send over this interview he did with Marlowe Tatiana a few weeks ago.

words by Connor Tomas O'Brien
Marlowe Tatiana Granados used to run The Only Glitterati, a pretty amazing two-year online photographic documentation of youth and beauty. Now she's moved on to Petite--Anarchy.com, a site showcasing the work of some of the hip young photographers, filmmakers, etc we know and love.



Connor Tomas O'Brien: I might as well start with what's on my mind... I'm really intrigued by Petite--Anarchy – what's that all about?
Marlowe Tatiana: I've always wanted to override the common aspects of what we have available to us online, like online magazines or blogs. Petite--Anarchy will be something like a visual online experiment. I want people to be able to get what they want to know about someone, or maybe just find out about someone without it being too editorial. Mostly it's going to be a website that features artists and writers as well as being considered an art piece as well. A lot of people I've met will be contributing as well as people who have submitted to me. But of course, the content will be along the lines of the kind of attitude that The Only Glitterati had as well.



What I liked about The Only Glitterati is that your photography exists somewhere between party photography and diaristic photography. A lot of party photo sites like cobrasnake and streetparty.tv get boring fast because the photographers don't really seem to give a shit about who they're photographing. Your photos are more intimate. What do you think of party photo sites and where does your personal/party stuff fit in?
It's hard to say, I mean I'm friends with some event photographers and I know Mark (Cobra Snake) and he's really fun and whatnot but for me, event photography at its peak became this huge thing where everyone could be famous in a certain way. Event photography is more about photographing everyone who is at a party and what fucked up shit happens or what someone is wearing. I think TOG fits in somewhere between – part of my lifestyle is going out, but I don't go out to take photos. I mostly only take photos of my friends. Aka my little "Glitterati" clan. You know, mostly we just happen to go out a lot, so that's where my film goes. I've been called a party photographer before, but really most of the time I get too fucked up anyways. I think that's a reason I'm jealous of event photographers they have their entire nights documented, where with me I'll get a roll back and say, "What were we doing? Where were we?" To be honest I've never really found the need to go on an event photography website unless I was at the party – it's unfortunate but there has to be a level of quality to get someone to look at party photos.



So when you began The Only Glitterati, what sort of audience did you want to appeal to? Friends, or strangers?
I was pretty young when the whole idea came about, I didn't really know what to expect, in the beginning I did more shoots than any personal stuff, so when I did start to put photos of friends...I guess reflecting on it, I would hope people wouldn't care if they knew us or not, and maybe just appreciate a single photo for the way it looked or the atmosphere.

You use film exclusively, yeah?
I only use film, you're right. I don't know whether people look at them differently, but if they did, I'd hope they see the massive difference in the quality and skill – film forces you to become a better photographer, like this is the one shot and you better get it fucking spot on.



And you use SLR cameras and not little point-and-shoots?
I mostly use an SLR, but recently I've been buying little point-and-shoots and testing them using colour film. They get annoying though, I want to get one of the point-and-shoots you can change all the settings on. A friend has a Contax t2. So amazing.

You know Tim Barber, right? Tell me a story about him, he fucking rocks.
I met him a year ago at the Agathe Snow's Whitney Bienniel 24 hour dance party. I gave him one of the first issues of my zine one night when he was Djing at Lit, and he asked me to sign it – he was the first to ask me to do so. One time he caught me puking in an alley after this really crazy night of open bars and debauchery, that was really embarrassing. But yeah, he's really cool and humble. He has really blue eyes.



Are you interested in the gallery/'fine art' side of things? Have you had any shows?
I haven't had an individual show yet, but I've been in a couple [of group shows]. I'm participating in the Contact Photo Festival this year in Toronto. I get really awkward when I'm at a show where my photos are being shown – I freak out when someone is analyzing one of my photos gesturing ‘the rule of thirds’ on a print.

I hate that too. I end up getting too drunk because I'm nervous.
Same, one show I was in all my boyfriends/ex boyfriends came, I drank an entire bottle of Veuve Cliquot.



Who are some of your favourite photographers? NYC-based, or elsewhere.
I'm not really a full time New York girl, but yeah, I have been lucky to have met a lot of cool photographers. Some of my favourites... I love all the ultimate photographers, Mapplethorpe, Doisneau... Currently I love Dana Goldstein's work (she's actually contributing to Petite--Anarchy), Robin Jonsson, Ryan Mcginley's older stuff (‘The Kids are Alright’), I'm such a sucker for anything slightly interesting.



What do you like to photograph?
I'm lucky to know so many beautiful people, but I'm really interested in idiosyncrasies, I like awkwardness. It's cool when people don't give a fuck how they look in a photo. In the current series I'm working on, ‘What We do is Secret’, my friends are all just deadpan looking straight into the camera, their beauty comes off as a gift as well as being tragic. The series is going to be something of a test of what identity really is – I'm trying to isolate all association from the photos like titles and names of the subjects.

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