Ed Zipco

Ed Zipco carries his camera everywhere he goes.  But that's not to say preperation is his secret.  Lord only knows how he captures some of these images, from Brooklyn to Indonesia and most places in between.


Is Ed Zipco your real name?

God damn real enough. Anywhere you see the name Zipco, you can damn well assume some connection. I've got a lot of family out there. Most are into some pretty bad news shit, which makes for a fine time for most involved.

So you grew up in Florida? What's that like?

Life in Florida started off pretty boring, until a group of us decided to change all of that. We were fueled by equal parts basic modern chemistry and "angsty rebellious youth with no fear of exile". So we started building weapons and practicing to become young arsonists. We were violent, incredibly creative, hopelessly naive and primarily dependant on, my apologies for repeating myself, modern chemistry.

I think a great deal of freedom came from the ability to rebel against the environment itself. We hated Florida. We wanted nothing more than to take the people we loved and the pills that got us through the day and start over in the desert. Or in a major city. Or to go and live in that magical combination of both, that city in the desert, ether binging until our eyes turned sour and we bloated like lizards in the sun, our child brides beside us, long dead from exposure to chemicals we had no business having on our persons. That was the dream. But we were just children then. It was the time when we first start learning how to dream. Those always start off weird and off putting.

It was the feeling that the worst they could do was kick us out of school, or the house, or the state. And we didnt really want to be in any of those things, so the threats became meaningless. Like suspending a student because he skips school too often. "Because you broke the rules and stole, here it is for free." and so on.

I think what made it so powerful as a movement, was that there were so many of us thinking the same thing. The end result of all of this was the local high school was forced to the brink of having to close its doors to public students.

We became a "Tier 2" school seemingly overnight. Armed police officers at the end of every hallway. They appropriated a large office, then a classroom, then a wing of the school for In-School-Suspensions. An In-School-Suspension is when a student is removed from the regular class schedule and is essentially jailed on campus until the end of the day and is not taught a thing. It was an exciting time.

In the four years I spent getting kicked out of and into the 3 local high schools, the death count spiked in my graduating high school from 5 deaths my freshman year to double didgets throughout, finally peaking my senior year to a death count in the twenties.

Florida seemed like the end. That's an exciting kind of birth any way you slice it. I was happy to leave, but i visit.

But you survived Florida? Whats the secret? 

Loyalty. The kind that signs me up for your problems and signs you up for mine. With enough brothers, youre unstoppable. I have 5 brothers that share blood. The way I live my life has given me another 10 or so. I'd bleed all over the street for those sons of bitches.

Id say the secret to surviving anywhere worth a damn is maintaining loyal friends. Get that through your head as soon as possible in life.

Anyone that isnt loyal to the end should be put down like a fucking animal.

My other secret to survival was blind, dumb, self serving luck. Superstition. If two kids die Friday night and everyone wants to go out again on Saturday and stir up some of the same shit I would opt my ass out of that nonsense and over to a girls house.

Bad things come in threes. And other such utterances.

You’ve been around the block a bit, right? Traveling here and there, whats the most indispensable item to have when tromping through Asia or Europe or the USA? And don’t say rubbers.

I'll break it down by continent.

USA?
A full beard. People trust a man who wears a beard. it reminds them of what men used to look like when America was made out of hammered shit and riveted steel and we weren’t all complete whores. Their dads might have beards. Their father's father damn well has one. and that bastard's a survivor. Hell you might even get to meet him. And that guys a drunk, if he’s worth a damn.

A beard is almost always a good idea in the USA.

Asia?
American dollars. you can buy a good mans god damn soul for a pile of American dollars. The amount you would normally find stuffed into a purple g-string could buy you some poor bastard's car in Asia. by Asia, I don’t mean Japan. I mean poor, like we don’t know poor, third world, "what’s a computer?" Asia. So more specifically... like Laos. basically Laos. Or Cambodia. Or parts of Thailand. Vietnam is doing pretty damn well to be honest. Jesus, its like an Asian Paris seen through a damp silk fog. I love Vietnam. So many bullet holes. It’s fucking beautiful there. And the women look like melancholy angels dressed in long white silk gowns who float on bicycles that coast along effortlessly in packs that run in the hundreds. Stunning.

Japan?
Shave that beard you foreign jackal, you look like youre 35. And they don’t give a shit about your American dollars. Carry a camera. And a flask. To be honest you should just bring along an extra liver. They drink like god damn fish.

Europe?
Hash. Just carry hash. It is the international language of hash, which is a language of love. Papers. Always have papers. And a bottle of wine. And a lighter. And a nice jacket might help get you laid a little bit. They want you to be the crazy American. Play the part, its more fun anyways. Dance for the organ grinder, dance.

Cuba?
Back to American dollars. CARY THAT SHIT. Hide some in your socks. Hide some in your damn ass if you have to. Also, just as habit, always carry your own booze. They have two prices for everything , and the amount they charge rich white scum is completely appropriate.

Don’t think for a second that you should pay it.

Befriend some locals as soon as possible. A dude your age is the way to go. Say you have 600 dollars to last 2 weeks. That’s like coming to New York with 600,000 and you have to spend it in three hours. If you put that money in your buddy’s hand and have him buy booze and food, it costs literally fractions of pennies on the dollar. Don’t give it to him all at once or you wont have money for bribes once he takes off. Hell leave you high and dry and then, of course, you get framed, that’s right you were framed, for killing that hooker that couldn’t stop laughing at you. (Make up your own hilarious reason for breaking down into tears in front of her, mine is more of a riddle. What goes up and wont come down? The answer to the riddle? If I knew that I wouldn’t be crying.)

On your website, you got pictures of musicians, friends, animals, landscapes, and the homeless, what gets you off the most?

I like it when a face has character. Or is really animated. Or when you really capture who someone is at that point in time. Its hard to see it when you see them in person, you get a feeling and you know so much makes up who they are, to you, to other people, to themselves. So its really exciting when you can capture that in a frame of their life. Like you just summed a part of them up in a look. That shit bugs me out when it happens.

I like portraits. I like the temporary. I like catching things in a shot that are literally or figuratively in the air. Like a moment. I thought for a while that I would really like to photograph people really beating each other badly with sticks or bats, but I think that might have its own challenges. I’ve taken to photographing women lately. Something about that feels good. It feels positive and good, which isn’t something I photograph a lot. Its new to me and I’m really starting to like it. The intimacy of that is pretty alluring.

Mind you, I still love the "true grit" of photographing bizarre animals, road kill, one eyed dogs, and so on. For everything but the road kill, which always seems to me as a frozen act of violence, I get the feeling of God's rethinking of form in a way, almost a creative mutation showcasing abnormalities. Uniqueness, even to one's own detriment, so lit up and just jutting out of the mundane, is always interesting and valuable. There is a certain feeling of natural obscenity or an obscene nature that is so potent when captured honestly. It all just blows my mind.


About that naked man with elephantitis of the balls is that just New York or is that something else entirely? He looks like a mannequin.

Yeah, he looks like a melting wax statue. He goes around to certain openings, always asking permission before he arrives. He feels he helps to make the scene. And he does. He helps to make the scene absolutely fucking disgusting. He drips.

Some of your captions are down right mean and dirty. Hilarious, but callous and borderline-racist. Has anyone ever told you that?

Actually one of my friends who I’ve grown really close to, Joey Royale, took me aside after meeting me for the first time and asked if I was Anti-Semitic. He had seen my website and I had said some inflammatory things about the Hassidic problem as I think I referred to it on the site. I told him that I wasn’t and we eventually laughed it off. We’ve become really good friends, the man is a damn genius. The Lonesome Doves is one of the best bands I’ve ever seen. So at the end of the day, luckily, he bought my death bed recant.

Also I was dating a girl for a while who was a much better person than I usually am, and some things made her so upset that she threatened to break up with me over it. I was so furious with her over her not getting some of those jokes that I almost broke up with her. Recently she told me Ill die alone. So clearly her sense of humor has improved drastically.

What are you up to these days?

I got a book deal with Thames and Hudson, to write The Adventures of Darius and Downey, a book of short stories from the past of the two street artists. They're brilliant.

Also I have a Cartoon in development called HAWKTOWN! which will be premiering some short 2-3 minute animations on YouTube.com sometime in the Fall.

I shoot for Vice, I provide a fair amount of their Dos and Donts. Also The NY Press other random things.

Thats all the legit stuff for now, the rest all falls under Zipco Industries. Which should be starting up in early 2007. Exciting, exciting.

If I gave you a round-trip ticket to anywhere airplanes fly, where would you go?

The Island of Macao. Its an island off the coast of China. I may be mistaken but its either that island or another one off the coast of Korea, that is the international home of Horse Fighting, the final frontier of animal abuse and gambling shenanigans. I would sell street dick a quarter inch at a time to get over there.

As far as that last sentence... I have no idea what the hell that means, but it sounds pretty damn serious, which, allow me to assure you, I am.

Website

http://www.edzipco.com

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