A faux Louis Vuitton belt cinches his plaid Bermuda shorts, and two gold chains (one with a cobra medallion) dangle over a ratty T-shirt. We're standing outside New York's Roxy nightclub while sweat soaks the headband woven carefully through his Garfunkel-like 'fro. Meet Mark Hunter, aka the Cobrasnake, the 20-year-old who claims he can get me into a music awards show thrown by haute denim retailer Diesel. I'm skeptical that anyone wearing tube socks pulled up to his calves can gain entrée to this exclusive event, but before I know it I have a VIP bracelet and the kid is dispensing high fives, hugs, and air kisses to everyone inside the club.
Los Angeles-based Hunter may be the first person to make a living off a photoblog. He started a year and a half ago by sneaking into clubs with his point-and-shoot digicam to document the night's drunken festivities. Then he uploaded his photos to TheCobrasnake.com, for everyone to snicker at the next morning. It was easy to garner buzz when shooting the likes of Paris and Nicky Hilton, Beck, Johnny Knoxville, André 3000, Jack Black, and Jarvis Cocker. Soon his pics were showing up in the LA Weekly, and companies showered him with schwag and party invites ("I'm a marketing genius," he says). He has plied his trade at the South by Southwest music fest, the launch party for Sony's PlayStation Portable, and even the NME music awards in London (with hefty stipends to cover travel, of course).
TheCobrasnake.com is as self-consciously crude as its proprietor's fashion sense, with childish illustrations and hundreds of pictures dumped onto pages without annotation. "I don't like futzing. If the photo doesn't look good, I don't mess with it in Photoshop," Hunter tells me. The amateurish look is all part of his brand. It's won him a book deal, and he's taking meetings with the producers of The Real World and The Simple Life, who are planning a reality show about him. But he still hasn't hit the big time - he can't afford a car, and he had to go on Extreme Makeover to get the Lasik eye surgery he wanted. When I meet him that night, his laptop is broken and he can't update his site. (He asks me if I can get him some sort of Wired discount on computers. As if!)
As we walk toward the cavernous dance floor, Diesel's marketing rep talks logistics with Hunter. The mission: to photograph good-looking scenesters having fun. Hunter pulls out his camera - he's upgraded to a $600 Canon PowerShot Pro 1 - and morphs into the Cobrasnake. He runs around like a coked-up paparazzo, shoving his camera in people's faces and punctuating the dim interior with photo flashes. His patter and calculated dorkiness put everyone at ease. He catches great candid moments, as well as humorous subtleties, like the Levi's worn by the dance-punk bandmates from Out Hud as they accept their award from Diesel.
At 10 pm, Hunter's still nursing his first beer of the evening. "I don't want anyone to think I'm here fucking around," he tells me. "I have a job to do." He confides that he's also hoping to avoid a repeat of last year's event - he got ejected for Heineken-related offenses. Perched on a speaker and snapping away at the stage, Hunter shouts, "Hey, do I look like a real photographer up here?"
Two hours later, as 300 partygoers dance beneath giant disco balls in the VIP lounge, a fight breaks out. Suddenly, eight guys are swinging their fists and tumbling over fashionably bulbous lounge chairs. I beat a hasty retreat, only to see my escort running toward the fracas, his camera flashing. As bouncers carry the hooligans outside, the Cobrasnake dashes to another photo op.
Later, when I log on to TheCobrasnake.com, Hunter's shots of the awards show make it look a lot more fun than the event I attended. And yes, my mug is there: number 83 out of 240 JPEGs. I should be excited, but all I can think is "Why doesn't he use Photoshop?!"
- Sonia Zjawinski
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