We recently connected with Crsh. and have shared our conversation below.
Crsh., looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
The first time I knew I wanted to pursue a creative path professionally happened when I was a young kid around second grade. I had a best friend the same age whose mother often sang live at bars & venues in the city. Around this time she was dating a seemingly successful producer. I don’t know how it got set up but one day she dropped me and my friend over at the producer’s studio. Little did I know we were brought there to learn how to make a song. That day he taught us how to produce music for a record, then he had us write down lyrics to the music and threw us in the recording booth to track our vocals. When it was all said and done he printed the song on a cassette tape. When my friend’s mom came to pick us up we popped in the cassette tape in the car and it sounded and felt like we were on the radio. The feeling was unexplainable. It was at that moment I decided that whatever I did in life I had to feel like that again. At the time as a young boy, I felt like that feeling could only come from making music, but as I got older, I realized that what I was really experiencing was the overwhelming euphoria of materializing my ideas. I’ve been chasing that high in every creative way, shape or form since.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My birth name is Brandon White and I operate as a multi disciplinary artist in Los Angeles under the moniker: “crsh.” (pronounced Crash). I am the creator of “room for error.” and I consider myself to be proficient in various art forms (music, photography, videography, directing, graphic design, acting) but for the sake of time I’ll focus on one of the mediums that currently has been giving me the most grace: photography. I decided to take photography seriously in 2020 during the pandemic. You can read my previous Voyage interview for the full details but in short I attended the George Floyd & Breonna Taylor Protests in Los Angeles and captured a burning police vehicle as well as images of protesters on my iPhone. The images turned heads online so I decided to frame and sell them resulting in sales across the US leading to some of the images selected to be featured in a 2020 recap book published by Google. It was that moment I decided to dive headfirst into film photography as a street photographer focusing on people, places and things. Peers in the entertainment and production industry began to recognize my work which opened doors for me to shoot BTS for major artists’ music videos and studio sessions for Grammy awarding producers & engineers. That allowed me to meet various music artists who enlisted me to creative direct and strategize on enhancing their aesthetic value and branding. Around this time I also began doing event photography, landing consistent gigs with Nike LA. I had good momentum but I wanted to take it a step further and lean more into professional portrait photography so I took a job as a Stage Manager at Hubble Studio where I learned the ins and outs of digital photography and indoor studio lighting. There I was able to observe and shadow the top photographers as they shot campaigns for major corporations, brands and magazine publications. The highlight of that experience was photo assisting for a Kanye West shoot for DONDA Sports and The GAP one month prior to the world polarizing “DEATHCON” tweet. Those images never saw the light of day for obvious reasons. Other highlights in my visual arts journey was being contracted to photograph moments at the 2023 Juneteenth event hosted by Nike LA at their headquarters in Los Angeles. Moreso on the motion side, I am proud to have been contracted as the assistant editor for the most recent series of NBA 2K24 ‘Crossplay’ video game commercials. In closing, I’m proud of every soul I had a chance to capture simply because it taught me more about myself, my craft, and the world around me. When clients work with me, I want them to rest assured knowing that I am committed to capturing the true essence of their existence or their brand’s existence.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
This may be an unpopular opinion but as of right now one thing society can do to best support artists is to pull the reins back on A.I. and its infiltration into the creative/art space. I understand completely that it can and will be used as a tool but I feel it will cheapen the artistic experience and may cause more harm than good. My biggest concern with it is major corporations/brands using it as a way to avoid giving opportunities to the array of human artists who can perform the exact same tasks for the sake of increasing profits. A.I. art appears to focus solely on the destination, eliminating the gold you discover from the journey. The true essence of art lies within the process of actually creating the art: the dance between the idea and the execution, the trials and errors along the way, the “happy accidents”, the collaborative efforts and discoveries made with other humans. I’ve been on a plethora of production sets and projects to know for a fact, there is nothing more fulfilling for an artist than building and manifesting an idea or concept with other artists and/or contributors. Since I don’t see it going anywhere, there needs to be regulations on how it’s applied, especially with regards to corporations in the ad world. A gun and a knife are also tools, that doesn’t mean we can go around shooting and stabbing everybody and everything. If we have the audacity to penalize athletes for using performance enhancement drugs, there needs to be some penalties in place for the corporations and/or artists who aggressively use A.I.. Finding that threshold may be a difficult search but it is necessary for the sake of preserving the honor of the creative ecosystem.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Don’t quote me but I read somewhere a while back that creatives have the ability to make over one thousand observations in a minute compared to non-creatives who may only rack up a couple hundred. With this ability, it gives room for recognizing more patterns, solving multiple problems simultaneously, and developing innovative & progressive ideas even outside of an artistic environment. I believe the non creatives may struggle with understanding just how creatives can materialize ideas and all the risks associated with the alchemy. Risks may include exhausting all your finances to reach the goal, physically relocating to unfamiliar & unforgiving environments, detaching from long standing relationships with loved ones who possess conflicting energies, and most importantly trusting the process even when it feels like the world is collapsing around you. It ain’t for the weak and most people can’t stomach that type of life for years on end, that goes for some creatives too. You have to become delusional for your dreams.
Contact Info:
- Website: roomforerror.co
- Instagram: @crsh.187 & @roomforerror_
Image Credits
main photo: Akeem Ali
all other images shot by crsh. of roomforerror.