Profile: Amanda Marsalis
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Living
Profile: Amanda Marsalis
February 16, 2016
I was connected to Amanda through my friend Simone LeBlanc. An award winning photographer that counts Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, and The Guardian as clients, her debut feature film, Echo Park, was released in 2014.
Amanda lives in Echo Park in a home with touches of Spanish influence and no shortage of charm. Inside is a thoughtful, comfortable, and welcoming space filled with an eclectic mix of objects collected in her many travels, as well as beautiful Danish furniture inherited from her Grandmother. I hope you enjoy this look inside. XXJKE
Beauty
R+T: What are your go-to beauty products? Why?
Mountain Ocean Skin Trip Coconut Lotion. I’ve been using it since college. Love the smell and how clean it is.
R+T: Is there anything special you would like to share about your beauty routine?
I go to the Korean spa for a soak and a scrub regularly. I recommend it to everyone.
R+T: What are the 5 products you couldn’t live without?
Mountain Ocean Skin Trip Coconut Lotion
R+T: Bath or Shower?
Shower 80% Bath 20%
R+T: What do you sleep in?
My birthday suit.
Decor
R+T: What is your design philosophy for your home?
It is sort of an organic eclectic mix. I like things clean and uncluttered. My drawers are organized. I don’t keep things I do not need or use. I like to see object or images displayed that remind me of special trips, friends that live far away, my family. I had a great meal with friends in London and came home and framed the menu so I would always remember the night. Things like that.
R+T: What are your favorite pieces in your house?
Two Danish chairs that are from my step dad, he bought in the 60’s.
My McRoskey mattress, that was a life changer.
Dream Collective poof that my dog Queso has taken over
R+T: What are your favorite home stores?
R+T: What is your favorite room in the house?
The record room, it feels like a tree house. I am mostly in the kitchen or my office though.
Fashion
R+T: Who are your favorite designers?
Margaret Howell, Clare Vivier, Rachel Comey, Dieppa Restrepo, Jenni Kayne, The Quiet Life.
R+T: What is your uniform?
High wasted skirt, tucked in shirt, flats. Blazer or jean jacket.
Food
R+T: Do you cook?
Yes.
R+T: What is your favorite recipe?
Jeanne Kelley has a great book called Salad for Dinner. I get a lot of great meals out of there. One of my favorites is from her first book, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes and it is a sausage lentil stew. It’s delicious and easy, it all cooks in the same pot.
Art
R+T: Who are your favorite artists/photographers?
Larry Sultan, Jim Goldberg, Bruce Davidson, Nicholas Nixon, Nan Goldin, Louise Bourgeois, Oliver Payne, Hank Willis Thomas.
R+T: What is your favorite piece of art you own?
A print of Nicholas Nixon’s. A black and white photograph from 1978.
Shopping & Blogs
R+T: What are your favorite stores to shop for clothing?
Mill Mercantile, Mohawk General Store, Creatures of Comfort, Ten Over Six, Margaret Howell.
R+T: What is your favorite city for shopping?
London and LA.
R+T: What are your favorite sites for shopping?
Ebay, Totokelo, Mill Mercantile.
R+T: Are you an impulse buyer, or do you wait to commit?
I am a reformed impulse buyer, mostly.
R+T: What are your favorite sites for recipes?
Kevin West made a book from his blog about jamming and canning. The fig tree in my backyard gets a page in the book, I was so honored!
This Maple Walnut Pie from Seven Spoons is insanely good. But the whole blog is great – nice photos, good writing, and delicious food.
Danilelle Rubi lives in Paris with her husband and son but is from Santa Barbara. She is a great photographer and a lover of food. If you are going to France read her blog first!
I do have an extensive cookbook collection as well as a stack of old Gourmets. I love cooking out of them more than anything.
R+T: What are your favorite blogs?
Saipua has the most beautiful blog about her life as a florist and now a flower farmer in NY. Her writing is fantastic. It’s intimate and giving and insightful. I’m a super fan of hers.
My friend Heather has great style and taste and I’m always inspired by her blog, LA In Bloom.
Other sites I look at regularly:
Mike Mills, Fathom, Partners & Spade, Design Sponge.
I find Instagram a big source of inspiration (and envy) too.
Photography & Film
R+T: How and when did you enter into the world of Photography? What was it that drew you to this art form?
As a teenager I would photograph punk bands at shows I hosted in my mother’s basement and skip class to spend time in the dark room. I wanted to be part of the boys making music, not just be another girl standing on the side of the pit holding her boyfriend’s jacket, and the camera was my most empowering tool.
R+T: What are some of your sources of inspiration?
California. Airplanes. Passports. Tropical Oceans. Joan Didion. Great Films. Other photographers. Rebeca Walkers book Adé. My dog Queso. Sleater Kinney.
R+T: Your portfolio includes lifestyle, travel, portrait, motion….the list goes on. Do you have a favorite to shoot? If so, why?
I don’t have a favorite thing to shoot. I love travel photography and how it is just me and my camera and assistant for a week or two each day looking for great photos to tell the story, waiting for the light, making friends with strangers. Then I like coming home and being director on a large set and having a different set of puzzle pieces and time pressures. I see it as sort of a left brain right brain way of life/work. I like to use them both.
R+T: Are there any other photographers whose work you particularly admire?
My teachers Larry Sultan and Jim Goldberg, Bruce Davidson, Nicholas Nixon, Nan Goldin, Todd Hido, who I worked for just out of college.
R+T: Tell us a bit about your feature film, Echo Park… For you, how does shooting a film differ from photography?
Echo Park came to me as I sat in a friend’s apartment in New York. An email arrived out of the blue asking if I would like to direct a movie and had a script attached. The script was about my neighborhood: Echo Park. Where I live. I could not believe it. It was so serendipitous. It was a gift. It was a story of my neighborhood with a woman my age making a change in her life. The story was not my own, but I set out to make it so. I wanted to look into a moment in someone’s life. Transition. Intimacy. Hope. This spoke to me when I read the script. I was lucky to find Jason McCormick my DP, and then Mamie Gummer who became my muse. It was extraordinary all the help and support that followed. I am used to the much more solitary act of taking a photo. I was surprised at what a pleasure it was to collaborate. My crew and colleagues were so excited to make this film even through all the challenges. I learned so much.
I put myself into the film. My furniture, my photos, my friends, my neighborhood. I used everything I had. I gave it everything. I’m very excited to share this film with everyone.
Both photograph and filmmaking are similar in they are tool for telling a story. Making a film is a much more complex endeavor and take a lot more people and time to realize.
R+T: If you had to, could you pick a favorite image or series from your portfolio?
Not really. Sometimes my favorite images is the one I took yesterday. Other times it is one I took 15 years ago. It depends on my mood. The best is always the image you have yet to make.
R+T: What is the most rewarding part of your work?
I get to think about images making and storytelling all the time. I get to travel the world. I get let into worlds I would never seen if I did not have a camera in hand.