WHY HE’S NOT ON MYSPACE.

WHETHER HE SAW PARIS HILTON DIGGING THROUGH THE TRASH.

HOW TECHNOLOGY IS FLATTENING THE ECONOMY OF FAME.

At the tender age of 20, Mark the Cobrasnake has it all figured out. College is a scam, a waste of time and money. You’d be better off serving as an apprentice to a brilliant art master such as Shepard Fairey, attending lots of parties, and making images. Anyone who knows what’s up will tell you that parties are where the real action happens and images are faster and more powerful than words. Images of cool people work best. Parties are where you find and meet the cool people. Make friends with the cool people. They’ll invite you to more parties, introduce you to more cool people, and give you more access to more images, all of which you will post on your website. The cool people will visit your website, see the images and will soon be begging you to show up at their parties and make them into an image by taking their pictures. That’s all there is to it. Today my son, you are a man.

Actually, it isn’t nearly as easy as Mark makes it look. You need an ironclad work ethic, an eye for what’s next, and the ability to throw more elbows than Bill Laimbeer in your quest for the perfect shot. The Cobrasnake has all this in spades, which is why

http://www.thecobrasnake.com/ has become such a destination. Is the Cobrasnake a trendspotting porthole, a preview of what’s hot on the street right now? Is it the chronicle of a youth culture at its most commodified and self-absorbed? Or it is simply an A-List MySpace for the entire city of angels? Is it even a snake at all? The Cobrasnake is all these things. Ultimately it is a mirror, reflecting whatever prejudices and insecurities the viewer brings to it.

The son of a dental hygienist to the stars, Mark Hunter grew up watching Mark Wahlberg and Tom Cruise open wide to get those yellowy whites capped into pearl. Whereas most of us grow up believing that the stars are Olympian beings who dwell in a separate overworld, he learned at an early age that in certain rooms at certain times, their world will intersect with yours. If you have enough balls, you can ask to take their picture. Do this enough and they’ll start ASKING you to take their picture. We talked about fame, technology, MySpace, money, Shep, beef, cred, “the scene,” and the secrets of making Gawker before you’re old enough to drink. Consider yourself warned—for a 20 year-old kid, the Cobrasnake uses a lot of adult words. This is a good interview. Enjoy.

BUILD THE BRIDGE OF RAPPORT WITH BEAMS OF SHAMELESS FLATTERY

Vulture: What is the goal of http://www.thecobrasnake.com?

Cobrasnake: It’s really open ended. The broadest goal is to document what’s going on now. As others have documented the 60s or the 70s, I’m documenting the era that I’m living in, and sort of doing an “Almost Famous,” by being a peer to the people that I’m documenting, because we’re all growing up together. I’m not just this photographer guy who comes to take photos of them. We’re all on the level.

V: You seem to have a keen eye for folks who are famous, could be famous, should be famous, or are about to be famous. Your eye is so good that simply appearing on your site now confers some measure of fame. Who were some of your first discoveries?

C: I photographed Bloc Party the first time they came to America. Now they’re headlining Coachella, which is just crazy.

V: In less than two years you’ve gone from a complete unknown to the celebrated court photographer of Los Angeles’ various evening realms. How did you figure out how to navigate the city’s social whirl so quickly, and with such success?

C: It’s all about who you know. I worked for Shephard Fairey for two years. He’s heavy in the art scene and introduced me to a lot of people, gave me invites to certain events. At the same time promoters and club owners saw a direct benefit from what I was doing. Anyone who was doing a party would want me there.

AGE, AMBITION & THE BURDEN OF BEING PRECOCIOUS

V: Have there ever been any issues with your not being of drinking age? Folks must not always believe you when you tell them you’re only 20. They may not want to believe you.

C: I guess they think I’m older because I’ve accomplished so much. Most 20 year olds are in college and being idiots. I went to a little bit of community college but found that it wasn’t really motivating me. In my head I wish I’d started in high school. I would be much further along. But I have this fucked up thing in my head that I had to go to college because everyone wants to go to college.

V: I’ve found the 20s to be the decade of uncertainty, envy, and generally looking over your shoulder. You have this leftover sensation from high school that you’re in some kind of race for prizes, but you’re no longer sure how the race is being scored, or what the prizes are. Most people are too busy wasting their 20s to fret about the time they’ve wasted. Do you ever get shit for being precocious?

C: Not really. It’s funny. Even when I was working as Shepard’s assistant I was bossing around 27 year olds, telling them what to do.

YES, BUT IS IT ART?

V: You said the mission of your site is to document the times you’re living in. Does that make you an artist, or more of a journalist?

C: I would consider myself an artist, but I wouldn’t consider my current work to be that artistic. One thing that keeps my site from being art is the quantity of photos versus the quality of photos. If I were to really showcase my work I would choose five photos per night that were really stellar, five at the most. If you look at the front index photos, those are stellar or better. My whole thing with Shepard is that some people could say he’s not the best designer or whatever, they might criticize his work, but the fact is he figured out the best way of getting it to the masses. I’ve seen lots of talented people not get anywhere because they’re not able to market themselves. There are 1,000 photographers who are better than me, but I’ve set myself up in such a way that nobody can fuck with what I’m doing. So I’m going to get hired instead of the better photographer.

MYSPACE, “THE SCENE,” A FEW NOTES ON RACE

V: Do you have a Friendster or MySpace account?

C: No. Someone recently made a MySpace about me, as a joke. I’m not sure what they’re trying to accomplish.

V: Why not? I’d guess that MySpace is probably a fairly big deal with the people you’re photographing.

C: Why would I want to distract people from my site by putting content on a MySpace site? I’d rather have something special on my site for them to look at. You can turn it around and say I should be on MySpace to get a different audience, but I don’t want that audience. Enough people waste their time on that shit. I don’t want to contribute to that. Half the shit on there is like ‘oh, you look cute.’ And on top of that you get to approve everything that appears on your page. It’s biased.

V: In Philadelphia there’s a lot of talk among the nightclub-going public about “the scene.” It’s not clear exactly what “the scene,” means, other than me, my friends, their friends, and the people we all see at the bar. But there’s a sense that it’s a world of some importance, and that becoming a prominent figure within it might lead to some greater fame. Some people take this really seriously; for others it is just an excuse to go out and drink more than they ought to. Anyways, I’m rambling. Do people talk about “the scene” in Los Angeles?

C: There’s definitely a group of people who go out and like the same kind of people. But there are many groups. Hip-hop clubs—that’s a scene. Mexican jukebox—that’s a scene. We’re just a different scene. We’re pretty diverse because … not that they wouldn’t like it if I were there. But it would probably be pretty awkward for me to roll up to some hip-hop thing. But then again there’s always the token group of minority folks who go and hang out with the white folks. Los Angeles is more open than some places.

PHOTOGRAPHY & AESTHETICS

V: Tell me about your technique as a photographer.

C: I’m ADD. I can only fixate on one thing for a second before my focus transfers. I like to try and capture the moment. I don’t like things that are too obvious. That can seems contradictory because sometimes I set up my photos. But I’d much rather walk up a staircase, say, and see two people making out than walk up a staircase and ask two people to make out.

V: What are some of the best spontaneous moments that you’ve captured?

C: Once in New York I saw two girls reaching across this guy to put lip gloss on each other. That’s so girly, and they were completely crushing the guy in the middle.

NARCISSISM, TECHNOLOGY & THE FUTURE OF FAME

V: Do people ever complain that your work is narcissistic, that you ought to be directing attention to prisons or minimum wage working conditions or whatnot instead of the decadence of the global nightlife circuit?

C: I have two responses. One is: Invite me to something. I’m not opposed to it. I just don’t know about it, and I don’t have the time to investigate. Two is: Look at my website. I guess you could say I’m supporting the glossy magazine world and all that superficial shit because I’m just taking picture of what’s there, people smoking and drinking and wearing expensive clothes. But I’m not forcing them to do all that. That’s what they do, and I’m going to take pictures of it. I used to take pictures of crackheads and homeless people in downtown LA. I didn’t make them pee on the wall, or look in the trash. My work might have a bit of my own bias to it, but it’s not misconstrued. I’m not Photoshopping Paris Hilton’s head on a homeless guy and saying Paris Hilton is digging through the trash.

V: Where do you see the notion of fame headed five years or ten years out? You’re living proof that there are no longer any barriers to entry for paparazzi and starmakers. Does this mean the end of stardom itself?

C: Yeah, this reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend earlier, about some girl on MySpace who had a ridiculous number of friends and had made a name for herself from that. It’s funny. A girl who’s on my site a lot will be shopping for groceries, and some random guy that she doesn’t know will come up to her and saw they saw her on Cobrasnake. That’s fame. Generally I don’t put too much importance on fame or being in the spotlight.

V: I don’t see fame disappearing. Technology might disperse fame to some extent, but you’ll always have that tacit conspiracy of editors deciding that we have to run photos of Tom Cruise and his girlfriend because people want to see them, when really the only reason people want to see them is because we always run the photos. Known quantities are comforting for readers, but even more comforting for editors and decision makers. Stars make it much, much easier to form editorial decisions. Phew, okay, I’d like you to pretend that was a question.

C: In my world the value of fame is magazine print stuff. If I’m in a magazine that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m famous, but it means that I’m legit. Just to be on someone’s website doesn’t really do it for me. It seems watered down. The web means more people are getting exposure whether they deserve it or not.

MONEY & ADVERTISING

V: How do you get paid?

C: I play it by ear. I would do it for free if I had to, because I’m doing what I like. Here’s my motto: I used to pay to go to concerts and now I get paid to go to concerts. That’s kind of cool. I never wanted art to be my profession. If this doesn’t work out for some reason, I’d seek out some kind of creative job and keep doing this as much as I could on the side.

V: Where do you see your work headed?

C: Looking at Shepard’s life, he started with simple stencils and simple silk screens, then he got into clean computer designs, then he started complicated the computer designs with stencils and extra paper. He started feeling it a little more and being comfortable with the stresses on stuff. Everything is so clean and digital these days that it helps to have some kind of added fringe or aura or something.

V: Are there any brands, products, subcultures, corporations, objects, concepts or words that you find particularly appealing or cool this week and would feel comfortable sharing?

C: My big word right now is “aesthetic.” Everyone values aesthetics nowadays. All these big brands have to reinvent their advertising and everything, because they got so shitty and out of touch. It’s cool because they can’t really fuck with artistic peoples’ aesthetics too much. They’ve sort of admitted that they don’t know what they’re doing.

V: Do you have any beefs or grudges that you’d care to air in this forum?

C: I’m pretty good with everybody. I’m aggressive, but I’m friendly. Negative is positive, most of the time.

V: What do you think of Gawker’s Blue States Lose? Do you feel like the book publishers do with Google, that someone is piggybacking or reselling your content without cutting you in on the proceeds?

C: It’s a trade off. They bring a lot of traffic to my site, and I guess it benefits them as well. It’s one of those things that you don’t want to touch, because it’s good for you. It gives you cool points or something. It’s like I contribute to Vice, but I haven’t ever gotten paid. It’s more the fact that my photos are in Vice and that makes me look cooler and that will get me a job and so on. Or the person that reads Gawker works for a big ad agency and will use me for something. I’d hate to go to them and say “you owe me money for all this.” There’s certain things you do for the resume and other things you just do. You got to steal from the rich and give to the cool people. It’s a give and take.

Visit the Cobrasnake

Read about the Cobrasnake in the LA Times

Nipping at the Snake’s Heels: Last Night’s Party

See the Cobrasnake’s photographs this March, at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles.