Norman Reedus: “The Walking Dead” to Big Bald Head
By Ysabel Cacho
Both Norman Reedus and his character, Daryl Dixon, like to shoot. While Daryl is always seen shooting walkers with his signature crossbow on AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” Reedus prefers shooting with his camera.
In his new photography book, “The Sun Will Rise Up Like A Big Bald Head,” Reedus said that he used “everything from Ricoh to Holgas to Lomos and Canons…” He related his collection of cameras to an incident he had with a friend.
“I was looking for a bass guitar once and I asked my friend who plays one, ‘What guitar should I get?’ And he goes, ‘Get the one that feels best in your hand ‘cause you’re gonna play with it the most.’ That’s how I am with cameras. Like, if I find a camera and it’s feels awesome, I don’t care if it has one megapixel or a million. I don’t care. I’ll walk around with it for months.”
The idea of making a book started from the actor’s website, Big Bald Head, where he sells his photographs and short films and donates the money to charity.
Reedus explained that “it was a nightmare” to burn his work onto DVDs, package them, go to Chinatown in Manhattan to mail them and wait in that line forever. He eventually opted to have his work downloaded from the website, but even that was a pain.
“To buy the photos means that I had to go to the printer, print it up, ship it to Australia for you or something,” he said in a recent interview. “Everyone had always asked me to do a book and I have so many photos ‘cause I get opportunities to see things that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Someone approached me and I said yes. Finally. Let’s do it.”
Reedus’ favorite image happened to be shot in a sub-basement in a maximum security prison in Moscow, he said.
“I was doing a film there with Andrey Konchalovskiy and Chris Solimine and we’re in this dreary prison basement that’s just … I never want to go to the prison in Russia ever. There were these really good-looking prisoners that were working in the kitchen in these kind of sailor-looking outfits and one of the guards [shouted], ‘Get back in there!’ or whatever he’s yelling at them. When he left, I noticed and I went [whistles] a little kitten came running out. This little, orange kitten ran out and these two guys — they look like supermodels — and there are cigarette butts all over the floor, like, hundreds. They’re leaning out and it’s green and this blurry kitten’s going by … that’s one of my favorite ones. It’s one of those lucky ones.”
It should come to no surprise that if the actor were to study here, he’d probably do something with photography.
During the weekend, Reedus held a master class with the students. He advised them to “pay attention.” He particularly remembers closely watching Alan Rickman during the filming of “Dark Harbor,” one of Reedus’ earlier films.
“It wasn’t more on the things he said,” Reedus explained.
“I was very impressed. He’s got this calm about him. There are typhoons going off and he’s just calm. He’s very good. There’s just [waves arms] and he’s just as smooth as a cucumber. So … just watching him. There were some speeches that he gave, I remember, talking about he and his wife (played by Polly Walker) and where they had gone and who they are now and what it all means and me, just watching him, I was just like, ‘Woah, he’s so good.’ And I got to make out with him,” he quipped.
Another piece of advice the actor said was to “go out and make a thing,” he said. “I think the whole idea of sitting around and waiting for it to happen is never going to happen.”
