Issue No. 1 ~ DARK SIDE OF THE BOOM
In April 2011, I was assigned by my photo editor, Randi Silberman Klett at IEEE Spectrum magazine, to photograph the co-founders of Diaspora*, a new social networking platform. I was immediately impressed by how they had raised their start-up capital ($200,641) through a video they had posted on Kickstarter while they were still students at NYU. <http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr>
Diaspora* was meant to be a rival to Facebook, offering an alternative that emphasized greater control for users over their personal data. But on November 11, 2011, those great hopes were marked by an equally great tragedy: Ilya Zhitomorskiy, one of the four co-founders, committed suicide in his apartment in San Francisco.
I was deeply saddened by this news, particularly because Ilya was so full of life on set that April, it was hard for me to understand. More often when I shoot at startups, I meet founders who are millionaire’s at age 21, and cannot even to begin to imagine the pressure they are under.
The images I took for IEEE Spectrum were subsequently used alongside an article by E.B. Boyd entitled 'Dark Side of the Boom,' published in the March 2012 issue of San Francisco Magazine.
This is a very special promotional piece I made, as a way of sharing with you some of the most meaningful work I produced in 2011.
Click to see link to article. And too see a PDF of ISSUE No.1 click here.
In April 2011, I was assigned by my photo editor, Randi Silberman Klett at IEEE Spectrum magazine, to photograph the co-founders of Diaspora*, a new social networking platform. I was immediately impressed by how they had raised their start-up capital ($200,641) through a video they had posted on Kickstarter while they were still students at NYU. <http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr>
Diaspora* was meant to be a rival to Facebook, offering an alternative that emphasized greater control for users over their personal data. But on November 11, 2011, those great hopes were marked by an equally great tragedy: Ilya Zhitomorskiy, one of the four co-founders, committed suicide in his apartment in San Francisco.
I was deeply saddened by this news, particularly because Ilya was so full of life on set that April, it was hard for me to understand. More often when I shoot at startups, I meet founders who are millionaire’s at age 21, and cannot even to begin to imagine the pressure they are under.
The images I took for IEEE Spectrum were subsequently used alongside an article by E.B. Boyd entitled 'Dark Side of the Boom,' published in the March 2012 issue of San Francisco Magazine.
This is a very special promotional piece I made, as a way of sharing with you some of the most meaningful work I produced in 2011.
Click to see link to article. And too see a PDF of ISSUE No.1 click here.
