Chayse Irvin

ABOUT THE ARTIST

IChayse Irvin is a Canadian cinematographer who has worked in numerous films, art installations, commercials, and music videos. His cinematography for Andrea Pollaoro’s Medeas (2013), earned him the best debut-cinematographer award at the 2013 Camerimage Film Festival. Irvin continued to work with Andrea Pollaoro and won the best cinematography “Silver Hugo” award at the 2017 Chicago International Film Festival for Pollaoro’s Hannah (2017).

Irvin became more widely known for his experimental collaborations with Kahlil Joseph. He created stunning images for a series of Kahlil Joseph’s work, including Black Mary (2017), Process (2017), Flypaper (2017), and m.AA.d (2014). In 2015, a two-channel version of m.AA.d became part of the Kahlil Joseph: Double Conscience exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Additionally, Irvin and Joseph teamed up on HBO’s film Beyoncé: Lemonade (2016), a 65-minute visual album that serves as a companion to Beyoncé’s album Lemonade. Through many projects, Irvin and Joseph expressed their mutual interest in developing a relation between cinematography and jazz improvisation. Irvin describes his artistic practice and praxis as a “process” and “woodshedding,” which refers to intensive practicing and rehearsing for the sake of flawless musical composition. About “woodshedding” Irvin has said: “I come from a family of jazz musicians, and in jazz, woodshedding means isolating yourself to rehearse so you can come up with a harmonic device to pull out of your pocket during a set to take you out of the ordinary. I woodshedded on weekends during the shoot, creating devices to provoke a response in myself.  I wanted to listen and learn.” Irvin’s “woodshedding” thus moves in and out of isolation and collaboration as well as preparation and improvisation. His image-making is a mode of listening while at the same time learning with others.

Irvin’s collaboration with Joseph opened up another channel of experimentation with cinematic images. For Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018), Irvin experimented with both analog and digital film. He used specific vintage lenses while simultaneously leaning on the “grainless look of modern film stocks.” Most recently, Irvin worked as a cinematographer for Andrew Dominik’s Blonde (2022). Influenced by the work of British photographer Bill Brandt, Irvin created a distorted imagery he describes as a manifestation of “astigmatism” that not only generates the effect of “asigmatic irregularity” but also forms a bright cinematic flare. Additionally, by collaborating with his long-time dailies colorist Benny Estrada, color scientist Joachim “JZ” Zell, colorists Dustin Wadsworth and Tom Poole, Irvin rendered the imagery soft and tinted akin to Kodak’s Kodachrome.

Irvin acted as a cinematographer for numerous music videos, including with Topaz Jones, Jay-Z, Leon Bridges, The xx, Porter Robinson, Just Blaze. His cinematography for Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma, specifically the opening shot of the music video, generates what Alessandra Raengo and Lauren Cramer, both together and separately, would describe as “an aesthetics of suspension.” His cinematography comes to function as a bridge between cinema and photography as well as the popular and the avant-garde. 

Irvin shot commercials for Apple, Google, Gatorade, Heineken, Sephora, Samsung, and Ford. At the 2017 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Irvin won Silver and Bronze Lion awards for his work on “Squarespace: Who is John Malkovich.com?” and “Apple Watch Series 2: Go Time,” respectively.

SELECT WORKS

Cinematographer—Film and Art Installation

Jackals & Fireflies (2023), dir. Charlie Kaufman

Blonde (2022), dir. Andrew Dominik

A Pity (2022), dir. Kevin Barth and Alec Barth

Ruby Nell Sales (2022), dir. Adam Pendleton

God’s Creatures (2022), dir. Seala Davis and Anne Rose Holmer

Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma (2020), dir. Topaz Jones, Simon Davis, Jason Sondock

BlacKkKlansman (2018), dir. Spike Lee

Flypaper (2018), dir. Kahlil Joseph

Ishmael (2018), dir. Adam Pendleton

Hannah (2017), dir. Andrea Pallaoro

Process (2017), dir. Kahlil Joseph

Looms (2014), dir. Morgan Funk, Nathan Funk, Trevor Funk

m.A.A.d  (2014), dir. Kahlil Joseph (for Kendrick Lamar)

Medeas (2013), dir. Andrea Pallaoro

Remember (2012), dir. Eliot Rausch

Cinematographer—Commercial

 EE “Stay Connected” (2022), dir. James Gray

P&G Tokyo Olympics-Thank You, Mom (2021), dir. Miles Jay

Heineken “Daniel Craig vs. James Bond” (2020), dir. Miles Jay

Vogue “I Love New York” (2020), dir. Bardia Zeinali

Sephora “The Unlimited Power of Beauty” (2020), dir. Jonas Lindstroem

Apple “It Already Does That” (2020), dir. Craig Gillespie

Powerade “Earl” (2018), dir. Daniel Wolfe

Volvo “Late” (2018), dir. Miles Jay

John Lewis “Christmas 2018” (2018), dir. Seb Edwards

Macy’s “Space Station” (2018), dir. Martin De Thurah

SQUARESPACE X John Malkovich (2017), dir. Miles Jay

Volvo “Moments” (2017), dir. Gustav Johansson

Apple Watch Series 2 “Go Time” (2017), dir. Megaforce

Vogue “Just a Minute” (2015), dir. Gustav Johansson

Cinematographer—Music Video

Killer (2022), dir. Yoann Lemoine

When I get Home (2019), dir. Solange

Black Mary (2017), dir. Kahlil Joseph

Lemonade (2016), dir. Beyonce, Kahlil Joseph

River (2016), dir. Miles Jay

SELECTED INTERVIEWS

Mavity, Will. “The Next Best Picture Podcast—Interview with ‘Blonde’ Cinematographer Chayse Irvin.” Next Best Picture. January 13, 2023.
https://nextbestpicture.com/the-next-best-picture-podcast-interview-with-blonde-cinematographer-chayse-irvin/

Mulcahey, Matt. “Chayse Irvin on Shooting Blonde in Digital Black and White and God’s Creatures in 35 mm Color.” Filmmaker Magazine. September 29, 2022.
https://filmmakermagazine.com/116744-interview-cinematographer-chayse-irvin-blonde-gods-creatures/#.Y9Kh2y-B0dU  

Film Roundtable with Chayse Irvin & Akin McKenzie, moderated by Shawn Peters, July 1, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZTcbKK1u8

SELECTED REVIEWS

Prince, Ron. “Chayse Irvin CSC- Blonde.” Cinematography World. December 26, 2022. https://www.cinematography.world/bombshell-chayse-irvin-csc-blonde/

Bosley, Rachael K. “Blonde: A Chaotic Canvas.” American Cinematographer 103, Issue 12 (December 2022): 7-12.

O’Falt, Chris. “BlacKkKlansman: Spike Lee Sought Out the Radical Cinematographer Who Shot Beyonce’s Lemonade.” IndieWire. August 14, 2018. https://www.indiewire.com/2018/08/blackkklansman-cinematographer-chayse-irvin-interview-1201992991/

THEORETICAL CONTEXTS

1.     Improvisational Cinematography

Schonig, Jordan. The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Morgan, Daniel. The Lure of the Image: Epistemic Fantasies of the Moving Camera. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2021.

Torlasco, Domietta. The Rhythm of Images: Cinema Beyond Measure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021.

Campt, Tina M. Listening to Images. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2017.

Keating, Patrick (ed). Cinematography. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2014. 

Keeling, Kara. The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2007.

Weheliye, Alexander G. Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Jafa, Arthur. “Black Visual Intonation.” In The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. Edited by Robert G. O’Meally, 264-268. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

2.     Color, Sensitometry, Technology
Branigan, Edward. Tracking Color In Cinema and Art: Philosophy and Aesthetics. London and New York: Routledge, 2018. 

Moten. Fred. “Chromatic Saturation: The Case of Blackness.” In consent not to be a single being: The Universal Machine, 140-246. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Maurice, Alice. The Cinema and Its Shadow: Race and Technology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. 

Pozo, Diana. “Water Color: Radical Color Aesthetics in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 11, no. 4 (December 2013): 424-437.

Cheng, Anne Anlin. Second Skin: Josephine Barker and the Modern Surface. New York, Oxford University Press, 2011.

Misek, Richard. Chromatic Cinema. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. 2010.

Lorna, Roth. “Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies and Cognitive Equity.” Canadian Journal of Communication, Volume 34 No. 1 (28 March 2008).

Dyer, Richard. “Lighting for Whiteness.” In Images: A Reader. Edited by Sunil Manghani, Arthur Piper, and John Simons, 278-284. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2006.

Price, Brian. “Color, the Formless, and Cinematic Eros.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 47, no. 1 (2006): 22–35. \

Neale, Steve. “Color and Film Aesthetics” in The Film Cultures Reader. Edited by Graeme Turner, 85-94. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Ahmed, Sara. “Animated Borders: Skin, Colour and Tanning.” In Vital Signs: Feminist Reconfigurations of the Bio/Logical Body. Edited by Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick, 45-65. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press, 1998.

Winston, Brian. “A Whole Technology of Dyeing: A Note on Ideology and the Apparatus of the Chromatic Moving Image.” Dedalus 114, no. 4 (1985): 105-123.