PhotoDonuts -Hello Reto, can you introduce yourself?
S.P. I am originally from Switzerland. I moved to New York in the mid Nineties and I’ve been living in Los Angeles for over a decade now. I started to use Splice Pictures as a name for my personal photography and somehow it stuck.

PD -Talk to us about your background in photography.
S.P. I started as a kid, using my dad’s Yashica and really enjoyed printing the negative in the darkroom, manipulating the image. I started with portraits of bands and musicians in my teens which led to doing record covers and later music videos. It was a great time. There were magazines like The Face and I-D that published a new wave of photographers, MTV started and that had a huge impact on me. I got more and more into directing and photography became a side note.
A few years ago I grew frustrated by the huge amount of work that goes into a film/video shoot. You work with a crew, lights, locations, sound: it takes a long time before you can actually shoot. I was craving the immediacy and intimacy of a simple, direct way to work and rediscovered photography as the perfect tool for that. In 2010 I decided to start shooting with models, something I’ve never really tried before but was always tempted to do. I still do quite a few regular photo jobs as well: portraits, travel stories and so on.



PD -Are you full time photographer or is it just a hobby?
S.P. I create images in a frame to convey a frozen moment in time. Sometimes with 24 frames a second and sometimes one frame at a time. It’s a job.

PD -What place does photography have in your everyday life?
S.P. I am an image addict. I order way too many photo books and I am drowning in bookmarks of cool photo sites. I am really wondering where this oversaturation of visual stimuli in our culture will lead to. I am amazed by all the talented photographers out there but at the same time I feel, photography has lost a lot of its value through this democratization of distributing (online). I feel I am getting close to the point where my brain can’t process all the great images I see on a daily basis. Visual Overload – Game Over. I am really excited about all the independent printed zines that are being released though. It reminds me of the good old days in the 80’s. With all the digital media and its great advantages we have at our fingertips, I think a young generation of creatives is figuring out that photography still works and looks great on paper.



PD -What emotion or feeling are you trying to convey to the spectators of your photographs?
S.P. My personal work is characterized by a passionate yet unsettling exploration of intimacy. Like voyeuristic intruders I want the viewers to be forced to experience intimate moments. The locations of my shoots are often motels or characterless suburban interiors, parks or backyards – places that denote painful isolation over intimate contentment. I try to capture the palpable tension within the visual language of cinematic sensibility, revealing scenes charged with anxiety and laced with an underlying fragility.

PD -Your personal work focuses on women and nudity, why this choice?
S.P. I am fascinated by the form of the female body. The combination of the naked skin, the pose and the way the light hits the body can result in true beauty. There is not much that comes close to this perfection. It’s a tradition that dates back a couple of thousand years if you think about it.



PD -Can you choose a photo and tell us what went on behind the scenes.
S.P. This one:


I work most often with the Canon 5D MKII and I like shallow depth of field. Most of the shoots are very sponatneous and I just use whatever light is available. I really like when the surrounding dictates the shoot. Here we shot in Los Angeles in a tiny room with one window in the back of a boutique – most photographers would walk into that room and say “I can’t shoot here” – but we made it work. Kelly really brought an energy to the shoot, sometimes it just clicks with a model. The room didn’t even have a door, only a curtian – so when there were no customers in the boutique I stepped into the showroom. Kelly stood in the door frame, wearing nothing more than my glasses and the perfect attitude.


PD -Who and what are your influences?
S.P. The photographer who had the most profound influence on me is Robert Frank. He is as close to a true artist as it gets. I feel blessed that I had the chance to meet him. I also really like the work of Alec Soth and Philip-Lorca di Corcia. I think Larry Sultan didn’t get the wide acclaim he deserves and Rinko Kawauchi is a great talent. As for nudes in photography: there are the polaroids of Carlo Mollino that I admire and I enjoy the fashion nudes of David Bellemere – but thinking about this question I realize, that I am not consciously influenced by photographers of nude models.

PD -Something to add?
S.P. When I started shooting nudes I was intimidated. Can I do this? What will other people think? But you know what: life is too short as to put away your dreams and aspirations in exchange for a (false) sense of security. Live in the now and most of all, enjoy what you do and life will reward you with experiences you would otherwise not have deemed possible.

Thank you very much Reto!

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