'Dinner Portraits' by Imps of Marge and Fletch
A sweet-toothed serial killer stalks the night, murdering by Skittle shotgun, a Snicker bar blade, Twizzlers; bronzed young dudes swing the hot tub with wrinkly old ladies; a deviant in a pinstriped suit poises to eat a live baby ala pineapple; smiling human heads make the Christmas spread; hip gamblers bet on a dog fight (the dogs are playing Scrabble); a pulp-faced boxer smiles like a child; and the children mug an ice cream man, stealing his tubs of cold goodness. This is the world of The Imps of Marge and Fletch, a dark parody of hipsterdom concocted with reckless attention to detail and photographed with analog bravado to advertise absolutely nothing.
First things: who exactly are these Imps? Without having conducted any sort of proper biographical research, I will tell you what I know. The IMF (as they refer to themselves, not to confuse you with the IMF) is a creative group consisting of photographer Scott Garrison, producer Nicholas Kirsten and art director Todd Daniels. Individually, they crew in the Los Angeles film industry; together, they create elaborate comedic situational photography. Since about 2008, they have exhibited their work in a number of small gallery shows in Los Angeles and have self-published three calendars and numerous postcards. If you believe the internet, they have a modest, but devoted fan base in places around the world including Denmark – a claim corroborated by a steady stream of online fan photos featuring IMF postcards in odd places (e.g. in front of a naked crotch). If you’d like to immediately sort-of know what the members of the IMF look like you can find some great self-portraits they’ve made and some silly fake biographies, here: http://blog.prettydamndope.com/2008/09/29/the-imps-of-marge-and-fletch-are-here/.
Most everything I could find online that the IMF has written about itself is silly and obscure. It is also true that The Imps of Marge and Fletch is a silly and obscure name: one that should probably be held against them. When I asked Scott (who goes by Pskaught online to avoid confusion), what was up with the name, he stammered for a moment, then opened the latest IMF photo calendar. “You see this,” he asked, pointing to a portrait of a comely young woman who gazes boldly into the future with a look that is ever so slightly off. Weird picture – could be San Fernando High 1970, could be last year. Scott explained: “She is always included somewhere in all of our calendars. That’s Marge.” Again, the silliness and obscurity, which frustrated me until I realized that this language of silliness and obscurity may simply be the language of the IMF. Perhaps it is the only language that it speaks. Perusing the IMF portfolio, I finally saw the IMF for what it is: one big joke, a joke that its three members take completely seriously. This is what makes it so successful.
From the 2011 IMF Calendar
The parody video: every teenage kid makes them, and watches how many thousands? A common assumption: college kids these days learn about the real news by way of parody news. For real: gullible Facebook users regularly mistake fake news stories for real ones. Perhaps: this interchangeability of the real and the parodic is a symptom that suggests our digital age itself is an endless self-referential joke – a constant parody of itself. Whether one is in on this joke or not, parody is clearly a dominant genre at this moment in digital time. So how is a smart group of aspiring young artist fellows supposed to do something interesting with parody? How are they supposed to make art out of it? For all its obscurity, the IMF follows a pretty straight ahead formula: start with a genre, come up with a joke, believe in the joke, believe in it remorselessly and unsparingly until it turns on you, chews you up and spits you out the ink jet. Repeat.
Suicide? Or something worse...
The 2011 IMF calendar follows the structure a generic detective thriller and is executed within an impeccably parodied pop noir backdrop (complete with fictitious commercial breaks). The joke is this: the killer’s weapons are all made out of candy. This joke is twisted through a series of exquisite, candy-covered crime scenes. My favorite: a beefy male body lies sprawled on the floor, a partially unwrapped Snickers Bar protruding from his back. Lit by the flash of a coroner’s camera, a fat old detective looks on with disgust. A prostitute stands at the door. She’s in hysterics. The policeman trying to take her statement looks very confused. Beside the dead man, a second officer collects evidence: Pixie Stix, fuel for this disgusting sugar powder orgy that went horribly wrong. Another fine detail: in the scene that the candy killer is finally caught, he is in his kitchen, in his skivvies, and his candy codpiece and bowtie are made out of the same colorful candy bracelets your little sister nibbled as a kid. That’s dark.
The persistence with which the IMF pushes images to the point of ridiculous genius is impressive, and it has a funny origin: the members of the IMF like to torture each other. “We all lived in the same house for four years,” Scott replied when I ask him about the frattish subtext in a lot of IMF images, “It was inevitable to torture each other.” By financial necessity, the Imps were their own models throughout their early work. They put on funny outfits and assumed whatever characters were necessary. “Once,” Scott told me, “We all drank ipecac and took portraits of each other throwing up in the backyard…that was not well received.”
From the 2009 IMF Calendar
The IMF has wisely retreated from this sort of lame hazing stunt, but evidence of boisterous one-upmanship continues throughout their work. Even as they have begun to work with additional models, the Imps themselves continue to appear in IMF images, suffering all sorts of indecencies. In the 2011 calendar Scott is the candy killer’s second victim. Hands bound behind his back in a dark, dirty basement, he is force fed a glossy candy apple, his eyes bulging with Oscar-nominatable terror. “I was totally against it,” he lamented, “but it was a two to one vote.” By a similar vote, Todd was zipped up in a body bag, and Nick was forced to portray a middle-aged African American maid – a role that, as an Asian man, understandably made him feel uncomfortable. Extremely. Though I have to admit, I could not tell that the character was not actually an African American woman until Scott pointed this out to me. The Imps inhabit their characters well. They are very convincing. Pushing one another to more and more absurd extremes, the Imps have stumbled on a happy accident: they continue to push their work together into new and more elaborate forms of weirdness.
The most important aspect of the IMF that remains for me to mention is probably that of which its members are most proud: devotion to the art of photography. As their recent funding pitch via the website Kickstarter explains it: “The IMF aim to keep everything in camera. Finding a way to do something on set rather than using composite tricks and post gimmicks. Spending more time in the production aspect of it reduces the amount of Photoshop time, returning credit to the art of digital photography, and not the art of Photoshop or HDR.” Looking only at their images, I would not have guessed that the group practices such disciplined photographic classicism. The rich colors, painterly lighting and detailed mise-en-scene give the work a plastic, hyper-real quality that I assumed was highly Photoshopped. The wide, formal frames of most IMF images, within which a multitude of characters act out a highly scripted story, underscores that this is complex work done by professional artists who take pride in doing things the hard way. Spending some time with an IMF still, one really notices the incredible attention to detail. All sorts of little things start to pop out – an interesting character in the background, a tattoo on somebody’s finger, or a portrait of a starry eyed debutante…Ah, yes, Marge, on that counter, behind a camera, propped askew. The IMF is way into goofy little self-referential jokes – lest you forget that the Imps are way into making these photographs.
Earlier, I claimed that the IMF, “advertise absolutely nothing.” This is entirely untrue. The Imps of Marge and Fletch has appropriated the form of the commercial photograph to sell what everybody in Los Angeles is here to sell: themselves. These photographs – think of them as elaborate business cards advertising three brilliantly weird minds…for sale in bulk. In the true spirit of rock-n-roll, the Imps have transformed themselves into their own product, from the sale of which they control the spoils. It is the living artist’s route to economic and political liberation. They still, however, need your money. At the moment, they are ambitiously attempting to raise $15,000 for their next project – a full-length photo book about “a patsy messiah that unknowingly, with the help of financial and political powers, is sent on a mission to destroy the world as we know it to put what’s left of the power in the hands of evil men,” which sounds like a silly and obscure premise out of which the IMF will create a series of photographs that I’d sure like to see. They have filmed an amusing short video to advertise their financial plea, with a twist that purportedly got them, and some of their friends, detained by the Los Angeles Police Department Anti-Gang Squad. Punk rock. So, I’d like to end this piece with an offertory moment, during which you might consider supporting the next IMF project, here: http://impsofmargeandfletch.com/.
I do not know if the IMF will raise the necessary funds with Kickstarter. $15,000 is a lot of money to procure by good will (though for a $2000 pledge the IMF will shoot your portrait as elaborately as you want to concoct it, which sounds like a deal to me). But I do know that the group will eventually create this book about a patsy messiah, no matter what. I also know that the IMF creates the rare type of parody that will be as funny twenty years from now as it is today. Which is to say, someday The Imps of Marge and Fletch is going to be huge. So, whether or not you support them on Kickstarter, whether you follow them on Facebook, show up at one of their gallery shows, get their postcards in the mail, or just happen to spot them walking down the street – someday, perhaps far in the future, you will look back on the work of the IMF, and you will laugh. And I think that’s saying something.
A Brief Interview with Scott Garrison of The Imps of Marge and Fletch
'Beta Boy' by Imps of Marge and Fletch
What do you like best about the photos by IMF?
Scott: Doin’ ‘em, probably. Actually taking the photos.
Oh, it’s fun?
S: Yeah, it’s always fun on a photo shoot. We always have a good time.
So they’re kind of mementos of a good time?
S: It’s a good way to have fun. You know sometimes it’s one of those photo that…I can look at for a while. Most of the time I get bored of ‘em, real kinda quick after I do ‘em. But uh, every once in a while it’s something I’m really proud of and kinda…you can get high or something and stare at it.
So you sort of hunt for things that you don’t get bored of?
S: Yeah, that’s the whole point of all this stuff – it’s something you can continue to look at. That was kind of the ideas with calendars, too. Cause since you’re forced to look at it for a year…
Or a month at least…
S: At least a month, yeah…spend a month looking at a photo, and then…..
Why not just take pictures of naked ladies?
S: You know, that’s why I got into this, actually, and it didn’t work out. I’ve never been able to…I’ve never had the chance to take a picture of a naked lady. Could be fun, though. I end up taking pictures of oiled up, ugly dudes. Myself included.
Right.
S: Somewhere along the line I totally fucked up.
So in a way this represents, like, completely the opposite of what you wanted to be doing?
S: Yeah, well, for the most part.
