#AllCoopedUp with Shade Degges, Interior + Architectural Photographer
Shade Degges is an Architectural Digest photographer who has produced some of our favorite design images over the years. Most recently he collaborated on Bibliostyle, which is one of my favorite books to read or gift. I could spend all day looking at his work. I am particularly obsessed with the current series he is shooting of everyday groceries during the quarantine. He and his partner are expecting a baby any day, so his quarantine routine is pretty unique. — Jenna
What’s your profession, and what does your day-to-day work experience look like now?
I am a photographer of interior design and architecture. Going into different stranger's houses, 5 days a week, with a team of people, touching and moving everything in said stranger's house for 12 hours. My job has become the exact definition of what not to do.
Describe your at-home quarantine uniform.
I get dressed, as if I'm leaving the house, every single morning.
Who are you quarantining with? Do you feel the need to “get away”? How do you make it happen?
I'm quarantining with my 8.5 month pregnant better-half. So a lot of our time is spent trying to navigate a Global Pandemic Birthing Plan. We’re FaceTiming doulas and doing birthing classes on YouTube, and I'll just say, there's a plethora of misinformation out there. This is an exciting time for us, so I have yet to feel the need to get away.
What’s the last thing you purchased online? Regret or obsessed?
The last thing I purchased online was produce and fruit boxes from the good people at All Time in Los Feliz and bars of soap from my friend at ProjectWoo (of which all proceeds are going to Baby2Baby). These two online orders are what lead me to my current Quarantine Project. I started shooting fruit and vegetables because I just missed shooting images of anything. When the soap came from Woo, I thought, “I'm just going to continue to shoot things”. Another friend who makes baseball gloves for Marruci sent me a box of gloves, which I spent days shooting. Of course, since the makeshift studio is set up in the baby's room, my studio has a finite amount of days left.
Do you have any new quarantine activities or rituals?
Our newest ritual is cooking together and sitting down for 3 meals a day together. Both of us working does not allow for that often. But it's something I will attempt to continue to do if we are ever released. I also take one image of my baby mama every day on one of several different vintage film cameras. This is just another extension of my Quarantine Project, but they’re photos I probably won’t get around to developing for a decade or so. And we will look at them one afternoon and say, "Oh, remember that time we were quarantined? That was odd."
So far during quarantine, we’ve had 110 meals at home together sitting at the dinner table. Of this 110, we together cooked 106 of them in our kitchen, with nothing but fresh produce from produce boxes put together by restaurants that we love. We’ve had days filled with conversations, and discovery, focusing around life, music and art. When the quarantine is lifted, we will not be returning to the status quo, instead taking our son and our new perspective into the world.
What is your favorite quarantine snack? What restaurants are you ordering takeout from?
We've only picked up a meal 4 times during the entire quarantine. All of them have been from All Time in Los Feliz, where we pick up most of our produce from as well. We also get produce from Cookbook in Echo Park, because they have amazing produce (which I've subsequently photographed). They have a good selection of frozen sauces that they make (which I haven't photographed, but I’ve really thought about dumping marinara sauce on a seamless... however, I have a limited number of paper backdrops, and I can't waste one pouring sauce on it.)
My quarantine snack + indulgence are cubes. (I don't actually know what they're called. They are some Italian wafer cookies in a blue bag that's name actually looks like the word quarantine, so I thought it was funny. And then I tasted them, and they were like a vanilla pot of gold, and I ate them so fast, that now I don't have a bag currently to tell you what they're called... even though we got one last night.
When this is over I cannot wait to ___________.
Go to the farmer's market.
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