everything MAX SINGER:

From Underground to Aboveboard.

From Yankee to Yat.

Although I am not a New Orleanian by birth, I can reasonably claim to have spent my second round of formative years — professional as well as personal — living and working in NOLa. ¶ I had arrived as a carpetbagger: a “Yankee” married to a Academy of the Sacred Heart/Newcombe girl. My aspirations were to be an underground cartoonist ala R. Crumb, just less neurotic. And I did in fact spend a brief stint as cartoonist for the local alternative paper The Nola Express. ¶ Some years later when I moved to New York I was a established design professional and a nationally recognized editorial illustrator joining the world-famous Push Pin Studio. ¶ On the personal side, I had become part of what I consider my personal “Paris in the 20s” — not a “moveable feast” but a “moveable fais-do-do”; a member of a community of artists, writers, journalists, photographers, musicians, and assorted other lunatics. (Many went on to greater prominence: George Dureau and Robert Gordy, Jason Berry and Walter Isaacson, Harry Connick Jr. and Vernel Bagneris.) ¶ In the process my feet and head became permanently rooted in swamp mud. New Orleans will always be a large part of my soul, my life, and my work.

[ to receive aspicradio by e-mail contact me and write signup in the subject line]

remove me from your mailing list

running the gamut

from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous

Oddly enough, one of the best things about my NOLa years is an outgrowth of one of the city’s downsides for creative professionals. It was/is a small market and there was/is not a whole lot of paying, creative work to go around. As a result, in order to make a living one can’t be too much of a specialist, one has to be flexible, and wear many hats. A little bit of this and a little bit of that keeps the Gumbo pot full. I had to become proficient in many styles and genres, learning my craft(s) as I went along working with and for ad agencies, printing companies, publications, not-for-profits, cultural organizations, design studios and freelance clients. In some way this training did — and still does not — fit in well to the New York ethos. (I tell the story of a photographer friend up here who decided he wanted to specialize in photography of alcoholic beverages only to discover that he not only had to choose between wine, beer, and hard liquor but between domestic and imported!) I still wouldn’t change that for the world. At least I am not bored.

about max singer

Max Singer is an innovative photographer as well as an award-winning artist and illustrator whose work has appeared in numerous national publications including High Times, Psychology Today, the NY Times and NY Magazine, to name but a few. Max was associated with the world-famous Push Pin Studio. His work was featured in The Society of Illustrators landmark show and book The New Illustration. His unique, colorful and bold illustrative style of imagery has been exhibited widely both in his homebase of New York City, in particular at such music and club venues such as the Knitting Factory, as well as various outsider and contemporary venues in his spiritual home of New Orleans, and was featured in the documentary Blood Brothers: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

BACK TO TOP

copyright max singer
2006-2012.

contact: max@maxsinger.com