What inspired you to create TEPSIC?

When Tumblr was in its infancy, my mind exploded with all of this new art I was being introduced to. I wanted to share my favorite photos from the Internet and print them in my own magazine. I don’t think I necessarily had a vision or anything of what I wanted it to be, I just kind of compiled some pictures and sold it on Magcloud.

As time would have it, pictures would circulate on the internet at such a rapid speed that it began pointless to print these pictures. I got really burnt out on the mag and decided to do a “CAT ISSUE” as my last issue of 2011.

Around that time my best bud Dayv Mattt had pushed me to do a special music issue for the magazine in 2012, have them snap pictures for “the music issue”. So I began to e-mail bands and ask if they were interested, to see just how far I could take this idea. And a lot of them began replying back saying they wanted to be a part of the project.

I started e-mailing more and more, and before I knew it, I became so passionate and involved in this project. I knew that this was the natural evolution of TEPSIC, so I scrapped the earlier issues and started from scratch. No more art magazine, Magcloud, standard 8.5 x 11” paper size or pictures anyone had ever seen before. I wanted to make the pages huge and print it on a Heidelberg.

You’re photographer yourself, so why did you decide to hand the camera over to the artists?

Nah I’m not really a photographer. I mean, I take pictures to document my life, but that’s about as far as it goes. I loved publishing photographers and artists when I was working on TEPSIC in the early days, but for me it wasn’t anything special. I was some guy that printing pictures that had already appeared on the internet a zillion times, nothing cutting edge.

Photography has played an important role in my life and helped shape the person I am, I’m drawn to it. So by giving out cameras to artists who aren’t photographers makes it special in a different way. It’s more personal, real and introduces you to a true behind-the-scenes to their life. Photo vérité.