Interview: Fahim Kassam Talks Shooting wings + horns' and Reigning Champ's Lookbooks

Photographer Fahim Kassam talks about shooting campaigns for wings + horns and Reigning Champ, and how he's trying to help change Lululemon's image.

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Complex Original

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Fahim Kassam walks into the room in a navy blue crewneck sweatshirt, jeans, black Common Projects sneakers, and a white Nike Dri-FIT cap. He's in town to shoot a campaign for Lululemon, the athleticwear brand that employs him as its full-time photographer. "In Vancouver, there are sort of a handful of companies that will have full time photographers," he says, "and I’m fortunate to be with a company that will pay me full time."

Born and raised in Vancouver, Kassam says he fell into photography "by chance," adding that he initially went to college to study film. In the late 2000s, he was working as a sales associate at Roden Gray, a menswear store in Vancouver. The owner asked him and three other employees if they'd help launch the shop's e-commerce site, with Kassam taking on the role of shooting the store's products. "I had just finished university and he needed a photographer, so I went out and bought a camera," explains Kassam. "I've just been shooting ever since." 

In the last five or six years since picking up his first camera, Kassam has booked pretty impressive gigs. In addition to being Lululemon's full-time photographer, he shoots for Canadian menswear brands wings + horns and Reigning Champ. He also works on personal projects on the side, shooting friends (including Adrianne Ho) and, for a short period, Major League Soccer team Whitecaps FC. 

We talked to Kassam about how he started shooting campaigns and lookbooks for some of Canada's best, and also why, given his work, he doesn't refer to himself as a fashion photographer. He also discussed what he's doing to help change Lululemon's image, possibly switching to sports photography, and why he doesn't think he's defined his photography style just yet.

Interview by Karizza Sanchez

1.

Photography is not easy. How did you teach yourself to do it? 

I think the digital age changed everything, and I think technology is so good these days we can instantly see how we’re doing and compare it to what’s on the web or the inspiration photos that we have. I think technology has definitely helped a lot. Everyone always says, “Everyone is a photographer these days,” like you can go out and buy a DSLR and take awesome photos right away. I think there’s so much available for us to learn how to do it.

But I think the ones who are really good and know what they’re doing know lighting, and that’s obviously clear in your photos. How did you learn that?

I always look at photos to see how they’re lit. You can look in the pupils of the model's eyes and you can see how many lights... you can sort of guess how they’re lighting it. Roden Gray also allowed me to experiment with lighting a lot. After Roden Gray, I started shooting for Lululemon and we have a huge equipment inventory so I was able to experiment and mess around with lights; that’s what helped me learn. But for a lot of my personal work I use natural lighting; it's mainly just the campaign stuff that I might light. If I can avoid using flashes and strobes then I will. 

Do you think your work has changed?

Yeah, I definitely see a difference. I feel like after every shoot I’m sort of looking back at what I did and trying to improve. 

I feel like all your photos are cohesive and look as if they can all stand next to each other. Did you always have the same aesthetic?

I don’t know, I just had this conversation with my girlfriend actually and I was like, “I feel like I really don’t have a set style and I feel like I’m still trying to develop it.” I look at other people's work and I can clearly see what their style is and I sort of want to be there and know what my style is. People always tell me, “Oh, I love your style,” but I don’t really know what they mean. But I guess it's there, I just don’t see it yet.

Why do you think that is though?

I don’t know.

2.

When I look at your photos, everything seems so calming and peaceful, and almost stripped down. 

Someone actually said that to me. I did an assignment for Popeye magazine in Japan and I had to do a photo essay.

Of Vancouver, right?

Yeah, there's a famous trail called Quarry Rock, and I grew up right beside it so I thought it was awesome to do a story about it, but I had trouble writing it so I had one of my friends who’s a good writer just chill with me for a night and help me with it. He was telling me, “Your photos are so sensitive and there’s some sort of solitude in it." I think that’s what you’re referring to as well. I think one day I’ll see that, I appreciate what you’re saying. 

How did you realize or decide that this is what you wanted to do?

I love movies and so that’s why I went to film school. I was first in business hoping to get in marketing—I don’t even know what that means but I wanted to get into marketing, whatever that means. I just wanted to make my parents proud, but I hated it. So I was like, "Why not go to film?" The one thing I didn’t like about film was that you had to work with a crew of like 30 to 40 people to come out with an amazing product. With photography, I can go out on my own and just do it and I can get instant gratification for what I do. And then once I realized I can actually make a living out of it I think that’s sort of the path I wanted to take. I’m still sort of figuring out what that means and where I want to go with it, but I’m very fortunate. 

How did you go from Roden Gray to Lululemon and then wings + horns and Reigning Champ?

At Roden Gray I think I met… All the people I know today are from that era. I got to know Doug [Barber], who runs Reigning Champ while I was at Roden Gray. We were very close when I worked there and so we stayed connected. Now that he’s running Reigning Champ, he hires me to do their campaign stuff. I also got to know everyone at wings + horns as well. 

But when I was working at Roden I think Lululemon found my portfolio. At first, I was skeptical but I’ve learned so much and I'm thankful for the work I'm doing there. I’ve also developed relationships with Inventory magazine and Ryan [Willms​], who runs it; I’ve done a lot of work for him and he sort of inspires me and pushes me to do more. I’m very fortunate to have those relationships. 

3.

I think it’s interesting that you shoot Lululemon's campaigns because, honestly, the photos I've seen you produce are quite different from the image I initially associate with the brand. What's the thought process when you do those campaigns? 

That men's campaign, I did that without Lululemon knowing; no one at the company knew except my direct boss who I asked for a budget to do it. I told her I wanted to do something awesome for the brand and I don’t want anyone to know about it, so I hired Ryan from Inventory to produce it, and he's also the model in the editorial.

Were you a little bit nervous  to go into work the next day after that shoot hit the web?

I think I was definitely nervous, but I was definitely happy with what I did. In hindsight, it's still one of my favorite shoots.

Would you call yourself a fashion photographer? 

I don’t know that I would call myself a fashion photographer really. But my main body of work is with brands that are in the fashion industry. 

What is it about shooting campaigns for brands that appeals to you?

The brands that I work for sometimes don’t pay the most, but I do it because I love the brand and I love working with them. I look at something like Inventory magazine. I love what they do and I love the images that they create and I think working with Ryan, especially, I’m inspired by him and I think it just pushes me to do more. I think maintaining those relationships is a big thing for me because they’re like friends to me. It's also nice to see that Vancouver has such a big impact in the global scale of things, like Reigning Champ is big all over the world, and I think it has definitely opened a lot of doors for me. 

4.

How did you end up shooting for the Vancouver Whitecaps FC of the MLS?

I’ve always been interested in soccer and football. The Whitecaps have been around for a long time but they just started playing in the recently-renovated stadium in Vancouver, called BC Place. They didn’t really have an awesome blog or anything that had nice imagery from their games, so I bought season tickets and I just started shooting from the stands. I noticed that all of the photographers were on the field and they’re all getting the same angles so I wanted to get something that was a bit different. I would shoot from the stands and after the games I would wait at the parking lot where all the players came out. Then I actually became friends with one of the players, Matt Watson, who is no longer on the team, and he sort of introduced me to everyone, and eventually I got a media pass out of that relationship. So I would go into the stands and take photos and I'd go onto the field and take photos, it was sort of a side project.

I feel like that same aesthetic we were talking about earlier still applies to your sports photography. 

It’s definitely a different angle of things. I like to think it’s more like documentary style and photo journalism. I just wanted to take a different angle at it and I think that’s something that hasn’t really been seen yet or it's not huge. Sports photography, if I think of it in sort of the traditional sense, is like a player in movement and it’s not that interesting. We’ve seen it a million times. So I was hoping to do something a bit different.

Would you ever do sports photography full-time?

I’d definitely be open to it.

Who are some of the photographers that inspire you?

For studio stuff, there’s a guy in the UK named Neil Bedford, he shoots a lot for Inventory and he does a lot of work for Hypebeast and Highsnobiety. His studio stuff is incredible, I think it's along the lines of someone like Richard Avedon, a classic photographer. And I look up to…I think I’m pretty open to everyone.

What's your favorite photo that you've taken yourself?

I do a lot of work with Adrianne Ho. We have a few mutual friends and we brought her in for a test shot at Lululemon and we just started working with her. We were doing a shoot I think early last year, she came to Vancouver for Lululemon and she decided to take an extra day so we could do a personal project together and she said, "Why not Stussy?" We took a day off and I rented a small studio in Vancouver, she got the outfits from Stussy, and we shot the Stussy 2013 lookbook. I think that’s when people started to notice my work, and that sort of sparked everything. I still get people saying “Oh, you’re the one that did that.” That’s one of my bigger works, I don’t know if It’s my favorite, but I think that’s one that’s always gonna stay in my mind.

5.

Do you only use digital cameras?

All of my professional work is digital; I do a lot of personal work in film. But I actually just shot a lookbook for wings + horns that I shot on film. It'll be released in December. 

Why do you shoot your personal projects in film and all the campaigns using a digital camera?

I like to call myself an anxious person. I don’t want to fuck up, so I think that’s a lot of the reason I shoot digital. I want to be able to know that I can go home at the end of the day and see what I captured as opposed to waiting three days for my film to come back. I think those three days would be hell, just waiting to see if I captured what I actually wanted to capture. But I do love how you don’t know what you’re going to capture when you shoot film, and it’s more about capturing those moments, like, “I hope I got it.” It definitely feels more real and you’re not always checking your camera to see if you got it. I definitely want to start shooting more film. 

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