Sloan Laurits uses an 8x10 camera to photograph people as they really are. His current project of taking portraits of local skateboarders in Brussels, Belgium, where he currently lives, is being shown in a DIY exhibition called Les Friches.

Trained in fashion photography, Laurits has a penchant for realism. He’s able to capture the natural aura and coolness of the people he photographs by letting them be themselves. And by using an analog technique, his photographs show us how effortlessly cool they are.

Tom Winchester: What format did you shoot this project on?

Sloan Laurits: I own an Intrepid 8x10 camera which I bought off a photographer called Austin Shafkowitz. I purchased it right at the beginning of Covid. It was the perfect social distancing camera and photography was a great distraction from the everyday chatter being spewed by frustrated and fearful people.

TW: What about 8x10 drew you to it?

SL: Working as an assistant I was on the cusp of digital. The first time I saw the digital cart set up was on a photo shoot at Industria studios. This was 2002 it was probably a Phase One back (the predecessor to Capture One, the best capture software!) I think it was on a Hassalblad camera, if I remember correctly. To be honest it was terrible. It was slow. It crashed. The image quality was nothing as nice as film, maybe it was higher resolution than 35mm at this point, but overall it still lacked something in the physical look department in 2002. I think by 2010 digital had worked itself out. If you were skilled enough with Photoshop and you had a solid sensor with nice glass you could make any digital file look exactly like a film scan. Getting back to 2002 some of the photographers I worked for were still using 8x10, people like Steven Meisel & Paolo Roversi. By 2005 nearly all the photographers I worked for had given up on film.

The speed, security, and flexibility of shooting on digital along with eliminating the darkroom from the equation just makes sense for commercial use. Up until 2010ish film seemed like it was dead. You could buy amazing cameras for dirt cheap. In NYC I saw people throwing film equipment literally in the trash! I walked into Pier 59 studio one day and they were throwing the broken Pentax gear away instead of trying to sell it. I didn’t even ask to keep some of it. My apartment was already too full and that gear just seemed like a waste of space, hindsight is 20/20, I have lost sleep over some of the waste I saw while working in the fashion industry. Anyways, fast forward to 2015, film has made a comeback, but nobody was really shooting 8x10 in fashion. I started renting a camera each time I would shoot a celebrity, it was kind of a nice way to break the ice and make an impression on the subjects I was shooting. “Whoa, now that’s a camera!” I remember the singer Halsey commenting. You could see the presence of this beast of a machine made on the room. It takes up some of the oxygen with those big bellows. I was hoping it would become my niche.

TW: What was one thing you learned from the Meisel crew? Mine was that A Tribe Called Quest is the perfect early-morning soundtrack.

SL: Tribe rules. But I’m older than you so I already knew that. Sebastian Kim was a true gentleman. Amazing 1st assistant to work under. Daved Desling has some of the best musical taste of anyone I have ever met. He could have been a great DJ. He also was the most efficient and curious lighting director I ever worked with. Working under those two was a true honor. A+ experience.

TW: In fashion photography, there seems to be an equivalence between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Your work is uptown-downtown.

SL: I’ve never heard it described like that, thanks! Well first I’m obsessed with the 212. All of the other boroughs don’t matter to me. Staten island is a landfill, the Bronx is just a place you drive past trying to go upstate or if you want a good haircut. Brooklyn and Queens are fine if you like living on Long Island. Manhattan is what resonates with me. I love it. My kid was born there so that’s my true flex. I got a 212 seed growing in BXL.

TW: You’re based in Belgium but it seems like you also travel a lot so it’d be difficult to call you a photographer of a certain place. Where do you consider your style to be representative of? Or do you not think like that?

SL: Nations are just geographical lines created by rooms full of powerful dudes. I don’t trust or identify with any nation. I don’t like flags and I don’t take anyone who waves them seriously. That being said. I consider myself a photographer from NYC. I’m currently living in Bruxelles.

TW: Do you consider your work to be within the genre of portraiture?

SL: This exhibition is absolutely portraiture. They are classic portraits shot on 8x10 with natural light and some with fill flash. There’s even a few skate action shots too. Which is super fulfilling on 8x10!

TW: Please explain the event where you’ll be exhibited.

SL: Les Friches—like the actual word ‘friche’ means something like ‘reappropriated abandoned urban land’ kind of like a DIY spot, or an abandoned parking lot or something. Not everyone knows this word, I didn't. It's a real word though. The head curator called it that way because he's exploring the abandoned and reappropriated ways of looking at skateboarding, the same way an abandoned parking lot might be reappropriated into a DIY skate spot. The entire project wants to basically present to the public a different way of looking at skateboarding that's not just ‘hardcore’ switch flip backtail Spitfire wheels Thrasher Magazine, or X Games.

But while not dismissing that stuff, that's why the whole thing is kind of organized by non-skate industry skaters who have reconverted themselves into either theatre actors, illustrators, a French trained clown, a puppeteer, etc. etc….and me, a commercial photographer! Lots of OG skaters in this festival like but there's also like Bx'elles, the girl-skater group, as well as others who are sort of part of skateboarding from the sidelines. It’s taking place over three days at a proper socialist cultural arts center in the best neighborhood in Brussels called St Gilles.

TW: What will you be exhibiting?

SL: There’s this plaza in Brussels called Place Morichar. It’s the best. It's got super smooth ground perfect for rolling around. And it's Europe so it’s like a gathering spot for the entire neighborhood like one of those Italian piazzas with a church in the middle but no church. It's just a place to hang and skate mellow if you don’t wanna get yelled at or anything. I’ve been skateboarding there at least once a week for the past 5 years. I started bringing my intrepid 8x10 camera there and documenting the locals. I’ve made over 100 exposures. This show will be all of my exposures as contact prints. Hopefully I sell all of them! 20 euro for a darkroom print seems like a decent deal. If any readers are interested in a print from the exhibition, hit me up and if there’s something that hasn’t sold we can figure out how to make it yours for the same in-person price.

Written by Tom Winchester

Images Courtesy of Sloan Laurits