Berlin-based photographer Angus Scratch Green’s debut photo book captures one friendship group’s ‘international chaos spiral’ over two years
Sex, drugs, furries and enough fake blood to rival a Rob Zombie production. This is what you get when you leaf through the pages of Berlin-based photographer Angus Scratch Green’s unfiltered publication, This Is My Lifestyle. Taken amid a two-year hedonism stint by Green and friends – “some strange array of musicians, artists, drug dealers, sex workers and models” – the book is best thought of as somewhere in between lifestyle art and a thought experiment.
“Two years ago, my friends and I embarked on an international chaos spiral. Anyone who seemed unconventional attracted me. I think I was just looking for experience beyond limits,” says Green. “Somewhere on this path, we began to develop the idea of ‘lifestyle art’, a derivation of Dada, which we refitted for the Instagram era. We had no real agenda other than entertaining ourselves through increasingly extreme and erratic behaviour.”
From blood-drenched suits to naked photoshoots on the streets of Venice and the occasional drug-fueled bender, This Is My Lifestyle isn’t for the close-minded. Aside from giving an actual glimpse into Green’s everyday life (hence the book title), the images are designed to provoke, even if the process itself was “unconscious”. He expands, “I want people to think about what they believe and why. I want people to feel contempt, lust, confusion, acceptance, and eventually sink into an immaterial grace.”
Featuring friends and artist collaborators, including Evanora Unlimited and model Chudnyy, the book serves as an extension of Green’s creative practice – he is also the art director of underground fashion label KMIF, which is behind those iconic ‘Kiss Me I’m Famous’ vest tops all over socials. The blood-drenched motif in the photo book can be seen across his work. “Now I’m beginning to train my mind so I can make more interesting things,” he explains. “It’s nice to take photos but it’s also nice to develop physical products and shoot videos. But I also enjoy smoking cigarettes and sitting in back rooms for long, uninterrupted periods. It’s all the same impulse so anything I release is bound by the same philosophy.”
It’s the same DIY ethos that underpins most counterculture; the desire to resist mainstream narratives of what’s acceptable or not, which is arguably more needed than ever in an era where rising conservatism and online censorship makes most of the images we see on socials appear sanitised and safe. “Real beauty is found offline, in experience and relationships,” he agrees. “Hopefully people will walk away with a new lease on life.”
This Is My Lifestyle is out now via Synchron Mag
