We were lucky to catch up with Jenna Belevender & Michelle Gerard recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jenna Belevender & Michelle Gerard, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
In March of 2020, we moved from a 750 sq ft apartment into a 2800 sq ft live/work studio space. It was a huge undertaking financially and emotionally and just as we moved in, COVID hit Michigan. Suddenly we were locked down and all of our business disappeared overnight. We couldn’t control what was happening outside, so we did our best to take advantage of our situation: We had no clients emailing, no social obligations, no errands to run. We got to work unpacking our studio and organizing all the props we’d been collecting for a few years.
We began a photo project called “Scenes from Quarantine”. We challenged ourselves to come up with small scenes, mostly inspired by movies, TV shows, childhood memories, and use the props we had on hand. Creating these little worlds became our form of escapism during the lockdown.
It gave us something to focus on each day, forcing us to think creatively, modify what we had on hand or could have delivered. It also allowed us to support the numerous restaurant clients of ours by including their curbside carryout food in some of our photos.
The constantly bleak news day-to-day was wearing on us so we started sharing the photos to Instagram and the response was far beyond what we expected. People were sharing their own memories that we sparked with our photos, and we made new friends all over the world, some of whom became wonderful clients. It became the cover story for Compound Butter, a magazine that merges food and art.
Scenes from Quarantine jumpstarted new collaborations, connected us with new clients, and cemented our decision to stay in our studio. We were very lucky to have the space and time to be creative during that time. It taught us that our personal projects were important, both to our own creativity and to connect with others. We now make time on our calendars to commit to personal work.
Jenna Belevender & Michelle Gerard, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We are Gerard + Belevender, Michelle Gerard and Jenna Belevender, a photography and creative direction couple who can’t seem to stop building maximalist scenes. We’re very passionate about creating worlds we want to live in and designing our images centered around memory, nostalgia, and pop culture.
Our early paths are common for freelance artists without a traditional college background. We worked incredibly hard for years, taking every opportunity we could, largely editorial work. We met by chance in 2017 and started spending nearly every day together, helping out on each other’s shoots. When we began collaborating, incorporating our love for food, nostalgia and pop culture into our personal work, professional opportunities followed naturally.
We’ve created campaigns for brands worldwide but our commercial clients and photo editors are always looking at our personal projects, like Sunday Sinema, Scenes from Quarantine and Christmas TV Dinners to see examples of our process and style.
Our methodical creative process is what sets our work apart. We do extensive research, creating a foundation and plan for how each project is conceptualized and eventually shot. At our studio in Detroit, we’ve built everything from a 70s era motel, log cabin, Con Air’s airplane interior, pastel colored grocery store, your 90s childhood bedroom, to a miniature Dune movie set.
In our free time, you’ll find us repurposing a Barbie dream house into a themed cocktail bar or scavenging the junk drawers at estate sales for trinkets to include in our next series. For us, success is having the freedom to explore any weird idea we find exciting, and connecting with clients that think the same way.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
We both have stories about other photographers who felt they had seniority in our local market and pushed us to change the ways we do business. This was often under the guise of being helpful or believing they were protecting the industry as a whole. In reality, their intention wasn’t to help us but to protect their way of doing business.
No one should dictate how you work. They don’t pay your bills, know your circumstances, or have the same goals as you. Every industry changes over time, it’s important to keep assessing and making changes that are right for you.
We’ve had photographers tell us that no professional would ever use a digital camera. Graciously accept advice from everyone, but always examine if it makes sense for you.
These experiences have motivated us to always operate with a mentality of abundance rather than scarcity – there is more than enough work to go around, their gain is not our loss. Embracing community over competition with other professionals will make our industry a better place.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
There weren’t as many resources when we were starting out for the genre of photography we were interested in. Now, there are lots of resources and communities that we would recommend. Here are a few favorites:
Domestika – Very affordable online courses covering all types of creative industries, taught by working professionals. We’ve worked with Domestika to put out our own photography course that will be released soon.
The Luupe – The Luupe is a global online platform and community of women and non-binary photographers who collaborate to provide diverse content for brands.
Tin House Studio – A YouTube channel run by a professional photographer answering practical questions about running a studio.
There are also some tools that became invaluable to the way we run our business:
Milanote – Milanote is an easy-to-use tool to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards. We use this for almost every project!
Qapital – Sets aside money for taxes automatically, this is very helpful for someone struggling to balance their finances as a freelancer.
Sortd – Transforms your Gmail into a workspace, allowing you to group emails together, turn them into tasks, create workflows, etc.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.gerardbelevender.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gerardbelevender/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gerardbelevender/
- Other: https://www.behance.net/michellegerard