What’s Bad For Your Heart Is Good For Your Art : An Interview with Richard Meneses. 

BY RENE RAMIREZ

There are a lot of photographers such as myself from the Bay Area. One of the main problems that many fail to pass by is being able to find their own path or style with everyone going to the same view spots around San Francisco or trying to get on the same rooftop that you saw on your Instagram feed. The photography scene has become so saturated with the same pictures making it hard to distinct photographers from one another. The way of storytelling through photography has been swapped with pink skies with no substance. So where does Richard come in?

Richard Meneses is a photographer from San Francisco, CA and has found and paved his own lane with his photos. While everyone heads to the beach for that sunset that hits once in a while. Richard is out shooting when Karl the fog is out and hovering the city making it easy to get that dark and depressing look. So has Richard continued that path? 

Well, He has actually started to get serious with photographing Sneakers. With his newfound love of sneakers he has been able to work with the company PUMA and has released a book showcasing sneakers through his perspective. 

I was able to speak and talk to him on his beginnings and how he got to where he is now.

The FIRSTPLACE x Richard Meneses interview. Read Below.

So tell me, How and when did you start to get into photography?

Richard: I bumped into the hundred when it was on post st. I took a picture of the sign and posted it on Instagram and people were like “Oh this is dope”  and I was like oh this is pretty cool and from there I just kept taking pics on my shitty Iphone, Then my mom was like “Oh this dude is liking this, Lemme buy him a better camera” and she bought me a point and shoot and I thought I was cool with that but then just seeing people with big ass dslr’s. I Don’t know if it just made me feel like an underdog so from there I was just shooting a mix of Iphone and that. And that was around the time when FlaskMob was actually going on so I was going to a couple of their meets until they got shut down. But it was mostly just shooting around the city and meeting cool people like you guys.

Was there anything that influenced you in the beginning? 

Richard: When I first started I was following this account that was kind of like those nature and outdoor vibes typa pages. And its funny because their instagram name was “Path8” and at that time I was 15 so I was like fuck i don’t know what my @ should be so I kinda stole theirs and gave it a twist and my first instagram @ was “Path15” so I kinda bit off dude and then I was taking landscape and architectural pictures since there isn’t that much nature out here in the city. But yea it started as outdoor and city shots and from there I kinda made it more personal to like portraits or anything I was feeling at the moment.

There's some things that I wish I knew when I first started so for you, Is there anything that you wish that you knew when you first started taking photos?

Richard: I just wish that I knew that gear didn’t matter if that makes sense. Actually no it does matter. It's just that you gotta make the most out of the shot, It really is the person instead of the camera doing the magic.

In this day in age, we see so many of the same type of photos being taken and I was even guilty of that. Despite that, what were some ways that you stayed or strayed away from going to popular spots or taking photos of views?

Richard: Well for rooftops I was kinda forced out of it, I took a photography class in High School and you know I thought that I was the shit that I knew everything but my teacher put me on some game, He was like “Yea these shots are cool but the only thing that makes them stand out is the fact that you were there but if anyone else were to go there they can take that shot also”  and I was just like damn alright so I just felt like it has to be the unique perspective that people put on because anyone can really take a picture and that's kinda the thing right now. As long as anyone can get on a rooftop they can just point their phone and come up with a cool shot. It's just knowing where you can shoot and make things look better.

Do you feel like the photography type of storytelling has kinda gone away in recent times? 

Richard: Yea, I just feel like now people post whatever just to get some clout, Like those tiktok videos. Like they're everywhere just like even on instagram of people throwing letters on the floor and i'm just like ‘What are you trying to say” their just big trends that people follow. And it's like I'm not even going to lie. I did it too, Like I Wasn’t storytelling with “SNKRS” it was just something that I liked.

Rene: I think we're all guilty of that, Like we all started like that.

Richard: We all go through our phases, Like there are some weird ass trends out there and everything looks the same. 

I know you went through this but, Artist blocks. I remember being with you when everything around us just felt so uninspirational and we didn’t even take any photos because everything felt so saturated. What are some ways that you get past those blocks where you feel like you can’t create anything?

Richard: For me it was mostly leaving social media because nowadays everyone is just following trends and not really doing things their own way. So I just looked in Magazines, Photo Books, photojournalists, even websites where people would show their work.  Because instagram has this whole algorithm that if they see you like this one pic they start to recommend like twenty thousand other pics that look just the same. So I kinda manually looked for things in the library. Even at Nike because i'm apart of the whole visual group so we just get a bunch of images promoting the shoes and the clothing and then they have different styles from what you see on instagram where its just the cliche girl sitting on her bed sitting showing her shoes and with nike we have people levitating with the neon lights in the background and i'm just like “Damn this is some next level shit” But it was really just looking for things manually. Sometimes I came looking for one thing and came out finding twenty other things that I ended up looking at.

Did getting hired at Nike change your direction of what you wanted to do? Photography wise? Especially now since we see you dropping photos of sneakers.

Richard: Yea foreshore because back then we would always shoot landscapes and portraits, go out hiking and get all these shots but now im kinda like a product photographer just because I have to think about how i'm going to organize something to make sure the consumer wants something.Even when it comes to sneakers whenever I see some promo I think that their sick but when I see them in person I think that their trash so it's just the way we get the images and how their sold to us.

How many sneakers do you have in your collection? Do you have a favorite in your rotation and why?

Richard: Man, I don’t know how many I have, I got some in my room and even some downstairs in the living room because I don’t have space. It’s kinda bad now. I guess my favorite pair would have to be the Travis Air Force One where you can change the swoosh. The flames are like when I'm about to do some crazy shit. The little flares felt cool. Sometimes I don’t want any swooshes because I don't want any logos. It's just a shoe that goes with anything.

Matter of fact. Let's talk about your first photobook “SNKRS” What was the process of getting those photos and the shoes for the photos? 

Richard: 99 percent of those shoes weren’t even mine. They were one of my homies who used to work at Nike with me. He would always say that we had to make it on HYPEBEAST. And the thing about him is that he would get shoes the day of or like weeks before so it was like fuck this is crazy. Knowing he had it like that he would say fuck it lets shoot. And then the first time I shot with him I was like oh he's going to bring like 2 or 3 pairs but he opens his trunk and it's like twenty pairs of new shoes, old shoes, and some shit that hasn't been released. So I ended up having a photoshoot with like twenty pairs of shoes. For the magazine most of those shoes were shot in one session. It was a mix of his and his girl and they would both hit me up because they both wanted content and when I asked if I could put the photos in a book they were saying to go ahead. 2 of the shoes were mine which were the cement 3’s and something else. It was all really from 2 people which is crazy. And that wasn’t even the whole book, The whole book was a year's worth of shooting and when you start the pictures come out shitty so I went with the nicer pictures which ended up being in the book.

How did it feel to see the success of the book from being a top seller on the website where the books were being sold?

Richard: It was crazy because like I said I started out with portraits and landscapes and stuff like that, But not to be instagramy influencer type but most of my followers were used to that so whenever I posted a sneaker shot it would be my most least interactive pictures so when I dropped it I kinda said fuck it and then it did numbers and I did not expect it to. I was just like fuck because I was going to put out nostalgic first but then let me practice with this one and during the beginning of quarantine I had a zoom call with some of my nike people and said ima make a book and they were holding it against me. So I guess I just have to do it. But yea. Snkrs wasn’t even supposed to even come out; that was just a test run for nostalgic. And I didn’t think it was going to be that popular but it did and i dont know Im kinda nervous. I feel nostalgic I feel like everybody is just expecting sneakers books now.

Where do you go now? I see that you just released a second book called “Nostalgic” . Can you maybe tell the readers about that and how the process of that book has been going? 

Richard: Nostalgic is a collection of images in the 5 to 6 years of me shooting. Ranges from black and white portraits that I love to do, Just like the cotton candy sunsets we used to do, and the rooftopping we used to do. It's just a summary of my journey with photography really and it's a more personal book. I named it nostalgic because I’m a pretty nostalgic person myself, I'm always thinking like damn I remember when I used to do this or we used to do this with my homies and I felt like bringing back old stuff was necessary because we catch ourselves not really remembering where we came from and stuff like that, Like back then I would hang out with the homies and take trips and just enjoy life and document everything. And I feel like I owed that to the people that followed me before SNKRS because they saw the progress and the trips and everything. I feel like the people who saw SNKRS felt that but like my actual photography should be brought back because that's where I started.

Do you plan to keep making photo books? Or are there any other directions that you would like to go towards or maybe touch on?

Richard: For now I wanna do 2 more for the rest of this year. As far as the future I feel like these two are a test run for what I ultimately want to do. Kinda like what you're doing with putting people on. But what I wanna do is document people and artists from the Bay Area and make a little pamphlet. Pretty much what we see online but in a physical copy. Like we see a post and you never see it again unless you really look for it. It's just a record of people's progress but I really want to do something like HYPEBEAST where I put people on to artists and other brands.

Ok, what's the endgame for you Richard? What's the dream, and why do you deserve to be in first place?

Richard: I don't know man, As much as I love the city I feel like I need to leave. Ultimately I want to be In New York in the more Artistic scene. But there is no end goal, it's just different paths and seeing where that takes me too.

Any last words for the readers?

Richard: Shit I don't know. I would just say what's bad for your heart is good for your art.

If you are interested in Richard’s work or even want to purchase any one of his books that he has put out. Check out his website at the link below!

https://richmsfc.com/