A Horse With No Name
"Rock & Roll has a handmaiden, and her name is photography"
With a sea of cameraphones blighting every concert, it’s easy to forget that while everyone’s now a photographer, only a select few know how to truly capture a band’s raw, primal moments onstage and behind-the-scenes. Finding someone who can press a button is easy. Finding a full-service photography and design agency that can shoot live performances and publicity shots, design album packaging, film and edit behind-the-scenes video, compile an EPK and design a logo for use on merchandise and websites is much harder.
Enter A Horse With No Name.
Brooklyn-based photographers Martin Glenn and Julie Ruiz have shot hundreds of bands ranging from Foo Fighters, Kanye West and Eminem to that local band you just read about on your favorite blog. “We’re not interested in just showing up for the first couple of songs and then taking off,” says Martin. “We’re staying for the whole show.”
You've probably already seen an A Horse With No Name photo and didn't realize it, as their work has been featured in the New York Times, Spin, VH1, Fuse and Financial Times.
Shooting on both digital and film, A Horse With No Name specializes in candid, fly-on-the-wall shots that may differ from the norm. “There are so many people shooting bands now, you can see 100 photos from 100 photographers and they all look the same,” says Julie. “I prefer to shoot on film and capture a band's rawer moments; those spontaneous shots that can't be recreated."
Despite growing up hundreds of miles apart, Glenn and Ruiz both share a lifelong love of music. Virginia native Glenn grew up obsessed with Elvis and would invite bands to perform at regular parties at his parents' home, unbeknownst to his parents. While Martin was curating the house parties in Richmond, Julie was in an “old hippie town” in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, listening to Dinosaur Jr. and the Pixies and using her grandfather’s camera to take pictures of friends.
A Horse With No Name’s growing popularity has allowed the company to branch out into hosting parties and photography exhibits throughout the NYC area. Photography has always been at the core of the company’s numerous talents, but the diverse experiences and abilities of Martin and Julie transcend photography, making A Horse With No Name an one-stop music design shop.