Living at the Ace Hotel New York for 5 weeks has the benefit of getting to connect with the amazing cross section of people & culture.
Enter: Reggie Watts. I’ve got a ton of respect for Reggie. He’s a genius musician in a comedian’s skin, who moved from Seattle to NYC a short while ago as his career exploded. The LA Times called him, “Deliciously strange.” New York Magazine called him, “Spectacularly original.” And in GQ’s Man of the Year Issue, they called him a “Comic Genius.” He’s been on Conan’s show, even opened for him on all Conan’s last tour dates.
Reggie and I have a lot of mutual friends, but hadn’t connected until Sunday after a surprise performance at Ace. I grabbed his 60 second video portrait. Although the concept is simple, I’ve found the results to be pretty interesting. At a fundamental level, the human face says a lot, even without the person saying anything at all. Hope you enjoy. There are two more photos I shot of Reggie, plus a behind-the-scenes snap after the jump……
Here’s a Polaroid out of my favorite 600SE. I just can’t stop loving the types of images that camera is capable of making. The…ahem…scanner I’m using here is a iphone shot of the print.
From the Polaroid 600SE
And I couldn’t help but break out the ring flash. 
Here’s how unfancy the setup was in my hotel room.
Lastly, here’s some of Reggie’s work on Conan. Likes to goof, but you can tell at his core he is very serious artist and a musical maestro.
Here’s Reggie’s site. And here’s Reggie on Twitter. And if you’re an adult who likes parodies and curse words like I do, than you’ll love Reggie’s latest video: F*ck Sh*t Stack.
This guy is crazy. The video you shared of him, Oh Gosh!……I mean, am unable to believe he did all those effects all alone just with the help of few gadgets. He is sheer talent and unbelievably creative!
Am a fan of Reggie henceforth! 🙂 Kudos to you Chase for spreading such talent amongst mortals like me! thanks again for everything that you do!
Great photos of Reggie. Welcome to rainy NYC – hope you brought some GoreTex from Seattle.
I’m curious about what you’re going for with the 60 second portraits concept. It seems like it generates a kind of performance and I don’t know what it reveals about the subject (other than what they will do with a camera in front of their face for 60 seconds). With Reggie, it makes for kind of interesting viewing, but I imagine most regular folks would just be uncomfortable. But please keep it up, though. I don’t mind being wrong.
Great portraits – tho with a name like that he should really be an east london gangster
This guy is awesome
yeah norm. not just awesome in the sense of cool guy, but truly awesome. watching reggie at a live show, you really get a visceral feeling of his tremendous talent.
I love the 60 second portraits, I don’t know what exactly it is but I find them incredibly interesting.