Malice the K

It’s my first NME session - and it’s a cover!

I was reading the New Musical Express obsessively as I was getting my first inkling of being a photographer. It’s the first place where I looked at the photo credits, realizing that actual living people made the photographs of my favorite pop and punk musicians. I learned about Anton Corbijn of course, but also Kevin Cummins and Pennie Smith.

The photography of the NME taught me that you can make a name for yourself if you make truly distinct photographs of notable people.

I now have my first session for them, and I was lucky that it was with Malice K, a fantastic musician and a dynamo photo subject. (Much appreciation to Simon Freeborough for the opportunity!)

Malice K (aka Alexander Konschuk) lives in Brooklyn, NY, but is originally from Olympia, WA; his songs are an anxious pop, with 70s punk rock edginess. In fact, the soundtrack to our session was a Pandora station seemingly built around Generation X, the pop punk band of the young Billy Idol and Tony James.

As he continually moved and changed, I just tried to keep up, but I did encourage him to disrobe further, and we got to the point where the landline telephone stood in for any further reveals.

A likable mix of thoughtful and unpredictable; he moves seamlessly between sophisticated and raw. A quote from the NME story: “I’ve just been hurtling through space since I was a young teenager. It felt like nothing was ever going to work out, but everything that’s brought me to this point has been important.”