Photo Credit: © Morand & Zwirner

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Creative alliances are born in some of the most unlikely places. Morand and Zwirner's was forged in the laundry room of their L.A. loft building. Chris Zwirner, a strapping, all-American guy with colorfully tattooed forearms, had just stuffed a week's worth of jeans and T-shirts into the washing machine when Gaelle Morand walked in. A Swiss-French expatriate with alabaster skin, raven hair and a sultry Greta Garbo accent, Morand had her own dirty laundry to contend with. The two neighbors eventually struck up a conversation to pass the time, and discovered some common ground. Zwirner is a gaffer. Morand also works in the film industry as a CGI artist. After some desultory conversation about moviemaking, Morand began talking about her desire to embark on a photographic career. She told Zwirner she had already been shooting some fashion, beauty and portrait tests. She asked him a few questions about lighting. Zwirner, who as a teenager had photographed the stunts of his skateboarder friends and punk musicians around the San Francisco Bay music scene, offered to lend her a hand on an upcoming shoot. Before the last article of clean clothing was folded, the two had planned a collaboration that would ultimately rekindle Zwirner's passion for photography and lead to a creative partnership.

Today, nearly seven years after the laundry room tête-à-tête that led to their first collaborative shoot, Morand and Zwirner have developed a visual style that is a hybrid of Zwirner's lighting skills gleaned from 17 years of motion picture work and the formidable digital imaging capabilities that Morand has developed during her eight-year-career as a CGI artist. In between stints as the softer side of the team, Morand continues to ply her trade at a CGI special effects studio, creating computer-generated imagery for films such as Land of the Lost, Evan Almighty, Night at the Museum, The Cat in the Hat and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Photo Credit: © Morand & Zwirner

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"We are truly more than the sum of our parts," reflects Morand. "When we joined forces, all of the pieces of the puzzle fell together very quickly for us because our skill sets were so complementary. Because of Chris's background as a movie gaffer, it is very easy to dream big, to envision shoots that require trucks of movie lighting equipment, to bring a little bit of film industry know-how to our photographic endeavors. That is very exciting to me."

"It is a good marriage," Zwirner concurs. "My experience with locations and lighting takes us to a certain point and then, on the day of the shoot, Gaelle's strong points take over in a really big way. The work that we've produced as a team is much stronger than anything we have previously done on our own."

Their cinematic perspective, narrative style and meticulous lighting have garnered fashion as well as portrait assignments from clients such as Universal Records, Epitaph Records and Island Def Jam Records, and a mix of magazines such as Prestige Magazine in Hong Kong, Culture Magazine in Australia and Genlux Magazine in L.A.

On set, when their different personalities come into play, Morand is very much the yin to Zwirner's yang.

"I'm more outspoken and probably a little more brash," Zwirner concedes. "I call it like I see it, while Gaelle tends to be the more polite, soft-spoken one. She's more concerned about feelings, which I don't always have a lot of patience for. My attitude is that we're all here to get a job done, so let's just keep moving things forward."

"Chris has a real love for the craft of lighting," counters Morand. "He is very committed, meticulous and detail oriented. Even though we joke around with each other, he is very businesslike when we're on set, very intense and intent on running a tight crew. I am definitely more laid back. I'm not a bubbly type or a super cheery type, but I am always very sweet to the crew, very conciliatory. It's extremely stressful when we have to shoot an editorial assignment with a lot of different shots in one day in one location. I am very grateful when people come in to help us and I definitely try to make sure that everyone has a good time in spite of the pressure we may be all be under."

When asked about the perils of working as half of a photographic team, Morand says, "I think it helps that what we bring to the table is so different." She explains, "When we talk about concepts, Chris's emphasis will be on the lighting, while mine is often on what I can do in post."

"There are many more benefits than drawbacks for us," Zwirner emphasizes. "The best way to explain it is to use a band analogy. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were both great musicians on their own. But something really great happened in the collaboration. That's what happens when Gaelle and I work together: an amazing alchemy takes place."


PDN: What compelled you to pursue a photographic partnership when you had both already established successful careers in the film industry?

Zwirner: I never really signed up to be a "lifer" in the movie factory. It can be a real soul killer to spend day after day on a movie set, going through these intense lighting drills to achieve somebody else's creative vision. As a gaffer, if the director of photography says, "I don't want hard light," you will be changing that light or you will be going home.

In her work as a CGI artist, Gaelle only has control over a small portion of the final product. Photography has allowed both of us to take the skills and talents that we had been using day after day, week after week for other people, and create something that we have total control over something that reflects our own sensibilities.


PDN: Tell us about your first commercial shoot together.

Zwirner: Gaelle and I had been shooting together informally for about a year by then. It was tough in the beginning. We would work 70-hour weeks at our film jobs and then shoot tests on the weekend. Then Gaelle was approached by Universal Records to shoot some promotional shots for Unwritten Law, a heavy metal/punk/alternative band. We had a shoestring budget and we shot the band in a filthy old warehouse so that we wouldn't pay for a studio rental. It was just a toilet of a building, with broken windows and pigeon droppings everywhere. We had to negotiate this very treacherous area of beams and nails and bags of cement to get up to the second level, so this became the backdrop for our shoot. It was summertime and it was hotter than hell to begin with, and I was using tungsten sources. The guys in the band were baking under the lights and the pigeon droppings were starting to stink from the heat, but everyone on the client side was very happy with the images in the end. That led to our next job, which was for Island Def Jam Records.