About Eryk
I cannot count how many times I have heard Eryk blurt out, "A photograph does not speak, it does not smell, it makes no sound, it does not move, it is just a two dimensional piece of paper, but a good photograph can do at least one if not all of the above!" At the end of the day that is exactly what Eryk's images are all about. Considering the fact that most of the images in this website have been created under the auspices of creative advertising photography makes it an even bigger achievement. Within the restrictions of budgets, client requirements, deadlines and all else associated with advertising, he never loses sight of the fact that a good photograph is more than just a two dimensional piece of paper.

With no formal training, Eryk was working as a photojournalist in communist Poland three months after he first picked up a camera. It was not about a love for the camera and photography as such at that stage, it was more about staying out of the work camps that the unemployed were put into by the government at that time. Up until then Eryk knew only Icehockey, exchanging money on the black market and a bit of modeling. The reality of it was that these were the things that actually helped him to succeed as a photojournalist, knowledge of street life, the ability to take risks and an active and creative mind. It more than made up for lack of technical knowledge and experience with the camera.

A few years later Eryk emigrated to Australia, he worked on building sites during the day and took photographs in restaurants at night. Slowly he infiltrated the world of advertising. I could fill a book with stories of the beginning of Eryk's career in Australia, maybe it is enough to say that there was no advertising in communist Poland and so there was no chance of getting experience or knowledge.

His first advertising shoot in Australia was done in the living room of an old house he'd just bought. The background was a curtain stolen from a demolition site he was working on and he had borrowed 2 lights. When he first got the job he had prepared a quote based on double a building labourers wages, just as he was about to give the advertising agency the bargain of the century something made him stop and explain that he was new to Australia and he wasn't familiar with the rates here so they gave him a budget. Be it enough to say that it was considerably more than what he was about to quote.

It's all a bit different now. The studio is centrally located in Melbourne and constitutes 4,000 square feet. It has all its own lighting equipment, cameras, cyclorama, bar, dressing room, darkroom, artroom, etc. All processing and printing is done in the studio as it is necessary for Eryk's specialized photographic postproduction techniques. It is also important when working with tight deadlines and overseas clients as we are able to work successfully within limited time frames.

Unlike some photographers, Eryk enjoys and possibly thrives on diversity. He believes it keeps the senses alert, ideas fresh and the brain stimulated. To those who say that everything has been done, Eryk's reply is: "You have forgotten how to live, if you do not push yourself to experience, do not set new challenges, do not accept the good with the bad, then you can expect nothing". His greatest influence is life. Drawing on experience, being able to relate, understand, empathise, excite, stimulate. Advertising demands that you work hard, play hard and then take time out to recharge batteries in order to be able to do it all again. 

Recharging batteries happens in a house on the beach in the country far from Melbourne in an area one can only refer to as fishing heaven. Obsessive as Eryk is about creating images, he is equally obsessive about his fishing, both small and large fish, ocean or estuary. Amongst the locals in the small town he is as revered for his fishing ability as he is worldwide for his photography. The house is situated in such prime country area that it is now equipped with darkroom and postproduction area as the location has proven itself time and time again for a variety of shoots from catalogues to advertising of all descriptions.

For many, Eryk's strength lies in his photographic postproduction techniques, I say it lies in his ability with people. Not only those he puts in front of the camera, but those he surrounds himself with. The importance of production, the right selection of talent, makeup, stylist, the right everything. Every link is important, if one link is weak it will show in the final image. Advertising relies on group effort. I watch him brief people, explaining the concept, his ideas, lighting, showing references and then he waits for input. Inevitably every now and then there is a new makeup artist or stylist who listens carefully and then with the best of intentions quietly asks, But Eryk, what do you want me to do?

At this point, those who are used to him suddenly remember something very urgent and important that they should be doing and they disappear into different corners of the studio to the strains of Eryk's voice, "Sweetheart, I am not a makeup artist, do I ask you what film I should use? You know the brief, you have seen the model, the references, my lighting - now make it work!!!!!!" It may all sound a bit severe, but lets face it, its a tough industry and its amazing what people produce under pressure.

Indeed the industry thrives on pressure and needless to say so does Eryk. It is under pressure that ideas flow, decisions are made and the sun comes out when least expected. It is also at these moments when budgets and restrictions become secondary to the need to produce good shots. There can be no worse feeling than the knowing that you have not succeeded, despite sometimes very real restrictions beyond anybody's control. Similarly the thrill of succeeding against the odds has no equal. There are different measures for success in Advertising, such as winning awards or being selected for publications, but the thing which generates the most satisfaction is knowing that an ad has really worked.

I remember when a young designer came to Eryk and wanted him to shoot an ad for her. She was fairly new in the fashion industry and could not really afford him, but her attitude and determination got him thinking and he struck a deal with her. If she trusted him he would come up with an idea which would be very simple and inexpensive but it would buy her publicity. She trusted him. Without doing anything illegal, immoral, sexist or offensive he did a simple black and white shot, very photojournalistic in style. It was published in one magazine. One week later the ad appeared on every prime time news bulletin on every major television channel along with interviews with the designer in her shop. Lets just say that you couldn't wipe the smile off Eryk's face for a long time.

Helmet Newton once said that, every photographer has got a tiger inside, unfortunately the tiger often dies before the photographer. For Eryk, setting himself challenges like that every now and then, combined with diversity of work, big jobs, small jobs, some very large parties, some smaller parties and fishing, keeps the tiger very much alive. 

Models too often need more than a bit of prodding to make them work, with experienced models there is often the need to break established routines in order to get that extra magic. The current swing towards more real people in advertising, often involves scouting and working with inexperienced people of all ages and genres. To a large degree Eryk almost prefers the fresh and uninhibited reactions of inexperienced talent. The result is that we are always scouting our own talent which we use extensively for a variety of jobs, many of whom appear throughout the book. 

At the end of the day, the studio structure means that Eryk manages to have control over the work he does. Every detail from choosing talent to how his films are processed is important to the final result. At the same time let me not forget the importance of Eryk, his eccentricities, love of people, nature, fishing and of course photography. His inability to do anything in halves, be it work or play - it is always all or nothing and maybe that is at the end of the day what counts the most.

photography site: http://www.eryk.com.au

THI$ WILL MAKE YOU CREATIVE

For a creative person starting out on a career, try not thinking about film/ media/ whatever.
Think about money. It's honest.

DON'T STAY TOO LONG IN A JOB.

RESIGN?
It's the way to show you mean business.

If people constantly reject your ideas/ what you have to offer, resign.
You can't keep fighting and losing that makes you a problem.

If you are good, and right for the job, resignation will not be accepted.
You'll be re-signed in your own term.

If they accept your resignation, you were in the wrong job, and it's better for you to move on.

It takes courage, but it is the right move.

FIRED?
It's the best thing that can happen to you.

Things not going well at work?
Frightened/ being fired?
Waking up at 4 a.m. worried sick?

Okay. Just imagine you were fired 10 days ago.

Since you had no choice but to accept it,
you might as well look upon it aa a good thing.

You will have to arrange your life differently.

You hated your situation anyway.

You must begin again.

It's a wonderful opportunity for you.

Literally, they'll let you go.

NUMBER 1
Churchil said that when you are at the top you only have to think about policies.

When you are no 2 u have to think about what your boss is thinking, and what your opposite no is thinking, before you begin to think about policies.

Start your own company, then you can have control of your own destiny. It makes you no 1 from the start.

TURN UP

If you don't have the degrees/ fee to go to uni, just turn up.
If you want to be in a job where they won't accept you, just turn up.
Go to all the lecturers, run errands, make yourself useful. Let people get to know you.
Eventually, they will accept you, because you are part of their community.
They will not only respect your perseverance but will like you for it.
It may take time, a year say, but you will be in, not out.
When asked the secret of sucess, Woody Allen replied, "Turn Up"

---

Paul Arden, Whatever you think, think the opposite.

Album Design and Illustration for Ray&Co.  Feel free to listen and support his music from the link below www.Rayncomusic.com | www.myspace.com/RayandCo  www.blueduckrecords.com/RayandCo

Mr.Bernbach talked for 25 years of DDB
Interviewed in 1974

INTERVIEWER: Since DDB became successful, many other agencies have started, almost invariably as creative agencies, and almost invariably with two or more creative people as the principals. Have you ever thought what might have happened if you'd started that way 20 years ago?

BERNBACH: I had a tremendous advantage in having with me partners who do what I don't do well. I think we would have been a bankrupt agency... possibly creatively successful, but certainly a bankrupt agency if I had been running it myself or had as a partner another creative person. Mac Dane and Ned Doyle kept us on the right road financially. They kept us in line and that helped our creative work be effective. I've always felt fortunate that I was released to think purely in terms of the work itself; that I had as my partners men who gave me a completely free hand to run my end of the business. I was able to develop a philosophy of advertising that was never bastardized and therefore had a certain purity and effectiveness.

INTERVIEWER: Would you say that philosophy has remained the some over the past 20 years?

BERNBACH: Yes. The philosophy has remained the same. The techniques of implementing that philosophy change. You always haw to work in the idiom of the times in which you live.

INTERVIEWER: How would you sum up that philosophy?

BERNBACH: It's really quite simple. There are two parts to it. The first part is to find something important to say about your product. Search very, very hard for a point of superiority and difference in your product as against competition. If it doesn't exist, work with your client to make it exist. We've done this a good many times. One of the great writers said, "You say something better if you have something to say." And we always look for something to say.

Now, whereas at the time we started most agencies felt that once they'd found something to say they'd done their job, our point of difference was the belief that at this stage your work was only beginning.

So the second part of our philosophy of advertising is that, having found something better to say, it is more than worthwhile to say it memorably and artfully and persuasively so that it is remembered and acted upon. We look for a way to say it in an original, fresh and imaginative way. As soon as you say it in a way that has been said before, you reduce your impact. We came into this business with that philosophy. It was more than a philosophy -- it was a deep conviction. And it was DDB, I believe, that brought the full meaning of disciplined artistry into advertising.

Artistry is, of course, a very difficult thing to measure. It's an intangible thing. But we had the job of convincing business -- selling them the idea -- that this unmeasurable, intangible thing could give them maximum impact for their dollar.
Perhaps it is becoming very much more tangible and measurable. We're preparing an ad now on the fact that of the 400 best-read ads of 1968, as tested by Starch, DDB produced more than any other single agency, and in more categories of merchandise. We're not talking about awards now -- these are the best-read ads of the year. So what is mote practical than the artistry that makes memorable the message to the consumer?

INTERVIEWER: I've heard you say that a DDB writer or art director is not a DDB writer or art director when he goes to another agency. Would you elaborate?

BERNBACH: It's quite obvious. When you take a flower and transplant it to another soil, it doesn't grow in the same way. A person's work is the result of what he is and what his environment is. Our environment is not the same as any other environment. There are many factors involved: our relationship with our creative people, the way we present their work to the client, what I might say to a client to get him to understand our creative philosophy and therefore make him more ready to accept it, my own personal relationships with our creative people, our help in disciplining them in terms of using their own great talents most effectively.

What they get someplace else may be just as good, but it can't be exactly what they get here. I'm not saying they will perform more poorly someplace else, but I don't think they'll perform in the same way. If, for example, an agency has a different point of view than ours about its relationship with its clients, it can't have the same relationship that we have with our copywriters. Now we don't say a copywriter is right just because he's a copywriter. What we attempt to do is back creative people when we think they're right, and discuss the thing with them when we think they're wrong. And, as DDB has developed the greatest number of skillful creative people in the business today, perhaps our way of bringing up creative people is good.

INTERVIEWER: There were many Cassandras who predicted that creativity could not survive the kind of growth DDB has had.

BERNBACH: It's not a matter of bigness. Of cource it's more difficult when you're big. Because what happens with employees is a result of the relationship of management with them, and naturally the more employees there are, the more difficult it is to have a strong personal relationship with them. That's true.

But if the right people are there, if the management contmues to have a deep interest in them and the quality of their work, that's what' counts -- not the bigness. I refer you to the awards this year. We were number one in the ANDY awards, number one in the AlGA awards, we are number one in the Starch study. It's amazing after 20 years that this still happens. So to coin a phrase, perhaps we're doing something right.

INTERVIEWER: Do you ever worry that the supply of young talent will dry up?

BERNBACH: I don't. There are some people in our agency right now who are giants creatively, and they were not giants in the beginning. Some of our great ones took one or two or more years for it to happen. But ehen it's in them -- and we choose them with great care -- and they are kept after, and worked with, and exposed to our point of views, it's poing to happen.

It's a very thrilling experience for me to see one day -- and it happens like that, in one day -- that suddenly, the man has it. I know that art directors have it when they stop thinking of how good the ad looks and start thinking of how good the ad is as an ad -- how convincing it is, how persuasive it is -- when they worrry about the copy as well as their graphics.

Time and time again a year goes by, perhaps more, and you wonder if a person will ever make it. Then one day he comes in to you with a campaign, and you say, okay, he's arrived, it's there.

The proportion of people to whom this happens is high enough for us to feel that we're doing the right thing in taking people and building them, instead of looking for people who have already arrived, as so many other agencies do.

INTERVIEWER: Recently a British advertising man was quoted in a British trade journal as saying he had visited a number of American agencies, and that none had a personality except DDB. He added that when you walk around DDB talking to people at random, it was as though one man was talking. His words were, "Bernbach has so brainwashed his people" that they speak with "one voice." Comment?

BERNBACH: I think "brainwash" is exactly the wrong word. It would be terrible to have everybady do things the way you would want to do them. Peaople have their own particular talents. I know some art directors in our shop who have as their basic skill a tremendous sense of humor. One I have in mind has a great warmth and compassion for human beings that shows in his work. Another has almost a mathematical crispness and sharpness and strength.

What I try to do with a creative person is to take the talent that is his -- not mine, his -- and if you really like and respect people you want them in their own image, not in years -- and then help to shharpen and discipline that natural gift to make it as effective as possible.

That's why our work here has such great range. That's why in the Starch study you will find us represented in the most categories of merchandise -- right across the board. We don't do just snob ads, we don't do just short copy ads, or just long copy ads, or any particular style.

If you want to know what makes DDB ads, we have no formula. We have no formula at all. The only common denominator in our ads is that each one has a fresh idea. We present the story in a fresh and original way. Now you can be fresh in many directions. I have no rules for people. I just want them to do what comes naturally to them, but to do it in an effective way. So that they're doing their own thing, but they're doing it in a sharp and disciplined way to make it work.

INTERVIEWER: What does it feel like to become a legend in your field?

BERNBACH: You embarrass me...

INTERVIEWER: All right, then, back to the agency.

BERNBACH: It's a great feeling, of course, that we built an agency that reached the heights this one has reached, and that's been successful as a business as well as creatively. We've never divided the personality of the agency. Right from the beginning, my partners and I agreed that we would always sell agency on the basis that THE important function of an agency is to do great advertising, and that all the other functions should help that Doyle Dane Bernbach has, I think, as good or better a media department, marketing department, research department as (or than) any other agency in the business. But we have never sold that. We have sold only our ability to do good advertising. Having better media, marketing, research departments has helped us do better creative work. They provide the discipline for creative people. They give the creative people the information and knowledge they need to leap intuitively into SOUND ideas.

Interviewer: Sandra Karl
"DDB Document" Tadahisa Nishio / Seibundo Shinkosha Co., Ltd. (1970.11.10) by "DDB News" July issue 1969

I am a small child who wants to be a writer. I have written a story down and I have it with me, scrolled up into a roll. I know that not far from my house, in a tall, magical wood, there lives a powerful Word Wizard whose words can create miracles and wonders. With the blessing of this Wizard, my word can do the same. Although everyone warns me that the woods are dark and scary. I set off to find the Wizard- that's how much I want to be a writer.

I walk and I walk. Morning comes and goes. Afternoon comes and goes. Twilight descends and I begin to grow apprehensive. Just as it begins to grow in the dark, I see ahead of me a glowing golden square set in the forest floor. When I reach that square, I see that is actually a glass door through it I can see a tunnel. The tunnel is lit by torches. It could be salvation or it could be a trap.

I open the door and enter the tunnel. I know I might meet a dragon, but then again, I might meet the Wizard of Words... By the flickering light of the torches, I walk for a very long time. The tunnel leads deeper and deeper into the earth. I clutch my scroll of words close to my side. It is the best story I have ever written- at least it's the one I wrote that day-  I am hoping it will win the Wizard's blessing.

Finally, the tunnel ends in a large, round cave. The walls are covered in wine-colored leather and they are lined with books in many languages. Where, I wonder, is the Wizard of Words? In the center of the room, I notice a tall mirror. Maybe he is hiding in the mirror, I think- Wizards frequently do that.

Cautious, be determined, I look in the mirror. Yes! A Wizard is there!

"Show me your manuscript," the Wizard directs, reaching out with a jewel-encrusted sword. I unroll my story and allow him to read it, touching each word with the tip of his sword. To my astonishment, every time he touches a word, a vibrant jewel falls to the floor of the cave.

"Do you want your treasure?" I ask the Wizard when he has finished reading, and a heap of jewels lies on the floor by my feet.

"Foolish child!" the Wizard roars. "The treasure is yours! Such is the value of your words!"

With that, the Wizard vanishes and I find myself staring back at me from the mirror. True, I do look a little like a Wizard. Also true, that the jewels still like scattered at my feet, waiting for me to claim them. I stuff the jewels into my pockets and carefully place my story under my shirt, next to my heart. (It is more valuable than I had realized.)

Newly rich, I retrace my steps through the tunnel, open the sealed-glass door, and climb into the forest clearing where I find a crowd of villagers awaiting me.

"Who goes there?" they shout.
"It is I," I announce, "The Wizard of Words."

Reference:
Cameron, Julia,  The Vein of Gold- A Journey to Your Creative Heart, Tarcher/ Putnam Penguin Inc, 1996, NY, p. 85-86, Chapter: The Kingdom of Story