trippin'

One of my favourite things is when couples work on creative projects together. I think it's a beautiful melding of everyday life and creativity, and some of the strongest collaborations come from lovers - John and Yoko, Nic Briand and Susien Chong, Inez and Vinood, and on and on. Last year, I wrote about Holly McCauley - I really like her aesthetic and design work, and we are lucky enough to have her create invitations and bits and pieces for us when we need them. She has just released a zine that she made with her boyfriend Mark Trzopek. Respectively they're both very clever, but together they make art/printed matter/photography/words that are more than the sum of their parts. The 'zine is called Trippin' and it's really cool and cute and calm and nice and you can buy it here. It makes me excited for summer and roadtrips and small towns. Anyway,  I got Mark and Holly to answer a few questions about how they met, how they create and that sort of thing.

- how did you meet?

Mark: It was the first day of university for us both and we had no friends. I spotted a girl in the lecture theatre and sat down next to her and her friend, she was very quiet and her friend did all the talking. I thought she was pretty cute and used her friend to help break the ice with her. After the lecture it turned out our first class was together and that class didn't begin for a few hours. So, I asked her on our first date, not knowing her last name even. We went to the uni bar and got fairly tipsy, instantly hitting it off. Everything i know about being creative is closely tied back to Holly, the day I began this creative study was the day I met Holly, and ever since then the two have coexisted closely and I don't think I could have one without the other.

- we love it when lovers collaborate on creative projects - what sparked the idea for 'trippin'?

Escaping the city life of Sydney has always appealed greatly to us, we would look like total tourists wherever we went both with camera strung over our shoulders as we made our way through quaint towns and country side. We burnt through a lot of film in our first few years together, this collection of photos are taken by me (Mark) but feel more like they are taken by both of us, as none of this would have existed on film if it wasn't for being on an adventure together. We had made a few smaller 'limited' zines before, but this one is the culmination of some special locations and moments captured. The poems are Holly at her finest, capturing the essence of bygone wordsmithery a la Kerouac and Neil Young. She is great with words and also with photos. Her words capture the spirit of these photos and being young and dumb.

- are you planning to do more work together?

We never plan to work together, it just happens on occasion like with 'trippin', we both have a love for photography so at least one of us always has a camera on hand to capture those moments. Another zine or book would be cool. Documenting our impending overseas travels outside the borders of Oz.

- what are your day jobs?

holly on mark:
Mark is rather high-brow these days. a bit of a change from the young scaliwag i met all those years ago. He works as a designer for the Art Gallery of NSW and gets to wear a lanyard everyday. And smart shoes. He saves the rat-bag attitude for the weekends.

mark on holly:
Holly is rather middle-brow these days and comes to visit me in Sydney to get a dose of culture and culinary delights. We like getting nice drinks and food aprés a long time apart. She works for Frankie magazine. She is super talented and can do anything. Like a Swiss army knife.

- tell us a story about one of your trips - a favourite memory or place.

Mark: I managed to squeeze a roadtrip into my design major project for uni. The route went north and west from Sydney ending a day long drive in Gilgrandra, a dry dusty country town. We stayed the night at a typically quaint motel, with wooden panel walls and artificial flowers. I took some photos of Holly asleep in the morning with the morning sun pouring into our room, a few of which made it into this zine. One photo in particular has such a beautiful, calm and reflective mood about it. We drove for two days on a round trip starting and finishing in Sydney, taking photos the whole way, eating dodgy takeaway and binging on milkbar milkshakes.

Holly: The first proper road trip we went on together was from Sydney to Melbourne back in 2007. The drive down was great and we had a super time in Melbourne, just a couple of kids getting around in a new city, wide-eyed and giggly. The drive back to Sydney, however was the best few days we ever had together. We stopped on the South Coast of NSW near Bawley Point and slept in the back of Mark's old Mazda, with the boot full of warm blankets and pillows (it was the middle of winter). Each morning we woke up to deserted beaches and icy cold ocean swims. I think I was trying to impress Mark by not complaining about the cold sea, car sleeps and spooky night air. He took me to his favourite surf spots, we got chased off sand-dunes for lighting bonfires, went skinny-dipping, lit illegal fireworks in the national park, played with horses on the side of the road and got so scared one night from rustling bushes that we drove out of our little camping spot like a bat out of hell and slept outside the Bawley Bakery, somewhat comforted by the smell of bread baking into the early hours of the morning. Mark gave me a little Moleskine full of photos and bit and bobs from this epic trip. A very treasured possession.

- the images are really beautiful - what sort of camera do you use?

We always shoot film and use a combination of cameras. When we are packing up the car for a trip, we usually have a menagerie of cameras perched on the backseat. Most of the photos in Trippin were taken on a manual 35 mm SLR. The old Nikon brass body F3 is the fave as well as Marks old Ricoh. Others were taken on shitty little point and shoots that we saved from markets and country lawn sales. There's also a spectra polaroid camera and land camera along with some golden oldies that I don't even know the names of. I love the process of taking a photo on film, you never know how it will turn out and in that moment everything has to come together perfectly as you usually only get one chance to pull the trigger. Digital photography can make you a little lazy. Although we treat our point-and-shoots like digital cameras sometimes, taking photos as if money and film were no object.

- your work feels very calm and considered, but quite soft and warm... how do you work together, what's the process?

Holly: For the words, it was easy for me to write, the feelings that came to mind when I looked at these pictures summed up our lives and adventures together. Mark sent me the pics he was going to use in the zine when I had just moved from Sydney to Byron Bay for work. We were both missing each other terribly and making this artifact together was both painfully gut-wrenching and also sort of lovely. I guess we connected through our creativity even though we were physically miles apart. It made me miss him heaps but also remembering all these times together brought a cheeky smile to my face.

Mark: Ditto to Hollys words. This zine came at a very foreign moment of our relationship, with Holly moving 900km's away, but it captured the essence of who we are as a couple and summed up why we weren't about to let some distance between us change the amazing mutual appreciation we had for things and life. I think we both see a lot of beauty in banal locations and activities which lend themselves to our way of creating and photo making.

Right now, we are sitting in Mark's room in Redfern with sun pouring through the curtains drinking beers and eating olives. I was only visiting for the weekend and will be flying back up north tomorrow morning. I guess it's time for volume 2 of Trippin'.