Foreigners are Allowed, or Should They Not Be?... with Oliver D
- LIAM C.
- Oct 6, 2016
- 2 min read
I had an interesting conversation with a friend recently, who casually asked how the Cardiff shoots went and what sort of progress I was at in making the new issue. I told him, and mentioned that I was currently working on the spread for Oliver D, a Catalan chap we shot in Cardiff.
My friend was perplexed as to why we'd shoot a Catalan guy in Cardiff. "He lives there", I explained... "we don't go to Wales to shoot only ethnic Welsh people, nor did we go to Berlin to only shoot ethnic Germans; it's just anyone who lives in the city."
"I understand" he said, "but I just think it's weird to buy a Welsh issue and find a Catalan. It's not what you expect and I think the readers don't want that."
Perhaps he's right, but here's another instance of where I arrogantly use my editorial control to say that I don't care. Some cities are more multicultural, and I want to show that. In Berlin we only actually shot maybe five Germans. In contrast to that, Cardiff was quite homogenous! Issue (01) Lviv, however was the most ethnically 'predictable', but then that city genuinely wasn't as multicultural as others. It's not like I was purposely trying to do a 'Ukraine for Ukrainians' edition.
So I'm ultimately happy to feature a Catalan, but if I'm 100% honest, I will admit that I probably wouldn't have considered putting him on the cover. For that I did choose a native Welsh lad, but that's not to say that next time I won't put a 'foreigner' on the cover. That's up to my editorial control.
Elska Boy: Oliver D
Photographer: Liam Campbell
Location: Cardiff, Wales
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