Über Snowboard Photographer Collective Releases 5 Part Series, Club Sandwich
Club Sandwich is the new snowboard photography project by Matt Georges, Perly, Andrew Miller, Rip Zinger and Cole Navin. Club Sandwich will feature a DIY box filled with 5 photo essays covering 5 different stories; covering action and lifestyle through a snowboard tinted lens. Read an with Matt and Perly below for more info.
Club Sandwich
Ok Matt let’s start with the name. Why Club Sandwich?
5 years ago I started my independent Publishing House called THE.DIRTY.DOGS. and I wanted to have a not-so-serious name and one that was easier to remember. The term ‘Club’ is very relevant to this new project since it’s a collaboration between a few people and the term ‘Sandwich’ is the result of this collaboration. It’s also a little tribute to all the junk food (club sandwich being a big part of it) we always eat on the road while travelling and shooting snowboarding. Each guy is one of the ingredients to make a nice meal! Perly could be the lettuce, Andrew Miller the tomato, Rip Zinger the tofu, Cole Navin the mayonnaise and I can be the pickles for example.
Your first photo book came out in 2014: how many books you released so far?
Yes indeed, I released volume one of THE.DIRTY.DOGS. and still working on the volume two but I have been so busy with building a family (3 kids) and do a bunch of projects for and with other people that it’s still in the making. Since then I have made 5 different books with Vans called First Layer, together with 4 newspapers. Our new collab project is called Triple, it’s a concept, and I have created 3 different books this time. These always come with bunch of postcards to put on the fridge or wherever you like. Last year, I also helped Ben Thouard, a famous surf photographer, to edit and design his book Surface and a few months ago I did exactly the same with Jerome Tanon for his book Zabardast, from his expedition in Karakoram, Pakistan.
I really enjoy editing and organising my own photos for a book but I also really like doing it for others. I believe it’s a good training for my eyes and photograph culture in general. It’s like going to the photo gym, it keeps me in shape in a way! 🙂
Club Sandwich, Matt Georges and Perly
Andrew Miller, Rip Zinger, Perly, Cole Navin and yourself: such an eclectic range of creative minds with different styles. What should we expect from Club Sandwich? Is it a snowboard publication or is there way much more than just shredding and awesome pictures?
The idea of Club Sandwich was to have a nice black box custom spray painted together with a patch on top, designed by an artist. Inside you can find 5 different little books with different bindings and papers. They all have a common snowboarding thematic, but my goal was to show 5 different stories through 5 photo essays. It’s not necessarily action stuff, it might be only the lifestyle around it, for example. Andrew’s is a black and white essay about powder, Perly’s is a collab with Louif Paradis, Rip Zinger’s explores the similarities between winter surfing and snowboarding, Cole Navin’s documents his daily routine travelling around for snowboarding and mine is a Katie Ormerod & Jamie Nicholls visit to Yorkshire, UK, to show where they grew up snowboarding on a ghetto dry slope in a middle of a grassy field. So yes,it’s very eclectic!
Club Sandwich claims a more DIY feel: why the box + zines + patch format?
Well not really since the first book THE.DIRTY.DOGS. was hand bound with a leather string and embossed by hand with a +100 years old Heidelberg letter press. I’ve always liked the D.I.Y. touch and I really want to bring something different than just a basic magazine. For Club Sandwich, the DIY still remains as we customised the box with spray paints, numbered each of them and stuck a patch on the front. The zines have the same sizes but different looks, papers and bindings.
Club Sandwich, Perly and Matt Georges
Is there a hidden message behind Club Sandwich?
There is no hidden message, haha. We just love to take photos and print them as we like. It’s always rewarding to start some projects from scratch, let’s see where it takes us! I wouldn’t say it’s competitive at all with magazines, since it’s a very small edition of 500 copies, it’s maybe more complementary. I understand some mags have a specific page count for a specific portfolio or travel story and sometimes the editorial direction is diced by brands that buy advertising. I totally get this, and I definitely don’t spit in the soup, it’s a whole circle. Here with Club Sandwich we are fully independent, we don’t want any advertising and the goal is not to make money for a living. All the benefits made will go directly in the new CB N°2, it’s a non-profit print project. Also, even if it’s a limited & numbered edition with 250 pages in total I just want to keep things affordable for everyone. I don’t want a high price hipster shit thing; I just want to make people stoked to go snowboarding.
Seems like print in general is coming back in a different form and with a different meaning. What’s your opinion about that?
I just think it’s great to see people making projects about snowboarding in general, whatever medium it is. Movies, zines, books, magazines, blogs etc. We had a few nice print projects lately like Curator by Tassilo Hagger, Atagge/Planeteria Zine by Aaron Schwartz, Zabardast coffee table book by Jerome Tanon, Torment Mag and all the First Layer and now Triple by Vans. It’s very stimulating!
How many copies of Club Sandwich will be printed? And will they be available for sale? If yes, where?
We have 500 customised black boxes with a Will Smith designed patch + 5 zines inside (250 pages all together with different styles of paper and bindings) + 2 stickers + 1 postcard.
It will be sold in a few select shops here and there but mostly through our website www.clubsandwich.studio or Instagram page @clubsandwich.studio for 35€ shipping included.
