Page 12 - AdNews May-June 2020

Feature
FROM TOP: Fangz at the Hideaway Bar, Sydney; Bugs at the Lansdowne; Adrian Eagle at the Rag and Famish.
“When you consider what’s left over from the promoter or venue, fees are also split among several bands, each of whom have three to four members.
“So it’s not like they’re making anything in real terms. Even if punters were paying top dollar, statistically it may as well end up being free admit- tance as far as individual band members are concerned.”
With this in mind, Kirk made the decision to give his photography away for free to these bands.
“Each band I shoot, regardless of where they are on the bill, usually end up with 10-20 half-decent shots they can use for whatever purpose they like,” he says.
“My shots have ended up on T-shirts, as press shots, as profile pictures, tour posters - even on a couple of tracks as artwork. I think it helps. It seems to make the bands briefly happy.”
Kirk is from London, where his career started as a “know-nothing” TV-buyer at OMD in 2000.
“In 2003 I moved to Scotland on a fast whim, where I stayed for eight years and eventually joined MediaCom.
“After some truly glorious (but really cold) years there, we – my wife, daughter, labrador and I - moved to Australia in 2011.”
And COVID-19 notwithstanding, Kirk’s competing life skills continue to happily co-exist.
“I can say without shame that I am wildly enthusiastic about my hob- bies and pursuits, even when it’s clear to everyone I have no talent at them,” he says.
“I like trying things, I like figuring out how they work, and I like being able to understand what’s going on behind the scenes.
“Everything I’ve learned about technology, music, photography, or whatever is all just down to me having a go at it one day because I fancied it, and then getting sucked down the rabbit hole trying to learn a bit more.
“I’d really like to be able to look everyone in the eye and say I do these things out of a desire to learn, or on the back of some sort of grand philosophy, but it’s really just because I’m a restless, twitchy idiot who doesn’t know when to quit.
“Come to think of it, that describes a worrying percentage of my pro- fessional career too!”
He doubts whether he’s helped anyone with their careers but says it’s been amazing to see so many bands at the start of theirs.
“I’ve been lucky enough (and it’s mostly luck!) to shoot bands who’ve gone on, sometimes years later, to win ARIAs, or appear in the Hottest 100, or even sing for Australia at Eurovision,” he says
“Seeing The Smith Street Band, Courtney Barnett, Alex Lahey, Hockey Dad, Waax, Montaigne, Bugs, Milan Ring, Lime Cordiale, DZ Deathrays and loads more play in pubs or tiny venues was not only brilliant fun at the time, but also just so awesome to see them go on to make bigger careers in music. It also makes me sound like an unbearable hipster twit when I talk about seeing them early on.
“One daft little story where my hobby and my career overlapped - I started shooting the incredible Montaigne (Australia’s Eurovision 2020 entrant) really early on in her career.
“So early in fact that when I ended up in a pitch many years later for her record label’s media business, I showed their team an early photo of her and no-one at her own label recognised her.”
What are you photographing while at home?
“Literally nothing! And it sucks.”
He is an unmovable supporter of musicians.
When Virgin Australia went into voluntary administration, he wrote
on LinkedIn about the airline’s long-time support for the industry. “The Virgin Australia collapse is obviously bad enough from a human and business point of view, but I’m also staggered at just how badly almost ‘everything’ about this crisis ends up smashing musicians squarely in the face. “Virgin is well-known in Aussie music circles as a ‘particularly’ art- ist-friendly airline - the night before a touring act played in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane or Perth or Tassie, there’d always be a better-than-
even chance you’d run into them in the Virgin lounge.
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