Five years ago, Ben Rayner was the hardcore kid who lived in my spare room and did odd photography jobs for Vice and a couple other small magazines. Today he is fast becoming one of the most internationally recognised photographer “brands” in the world.
He’s symbolic of a groundswell of young entrepreneurs who are using social media and cheap plane tickets to further their names/brands/businesses without the need of the backing of cumbersome, creaky old company structures to back them up.
He’s used this freedom to work for Nike, Coca-Cola, Vogue, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Reebok, K-Swiss and is now being talked about to shoot the next campaign for Audemars Piguet, the luxury watch brand that has overtaken Rolex as the rapper’s favourite choice of watch. The Florida rapper Rick Ross even has a shout out to the watch in his song B.M.F (Blowin’ Money Fast), which is a song that the generation of Ben Rayner and his fellow young entrepreneurs have adopted as their theme tune of sort s. It is a song dedicated to the imprisoned Atlanta cocaine dealer Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory and his expanding Black Mafia Family empire which is swelling in African American jail populations up and down the United States.
Why do Ben Rayner and his thousands of Twitter followers often refer to this song during the rare times when they stop working and take a little time out to drink and dance? Well because it represents the rebel entrepreneurial spirit that he and his generation embody themselves. When Rick Ross talks about being “Self-made”, he talks of an intense working class pride in building his own brand “ground-up” without leaning on traditional company structures or looking for handouts in creating his business.
As well as being an internationally renowned photographer, Rayner has also created his own publishing company Rayner Books, which he uses to publish the art, photography and essays of similar-minded talented young people such as the renowned photographer, Sandy Kim. They employ a DIY aesthetic which corporate America is ploughing millions of dollars into every day in support to make their corporate products appear more attractive to young people.
Making money is one thing but why do this kind of thing if it was purely for the dollar? Well, there are several non-commercial entrepreneurial initiatives also available for people such as Ben. The initiatives go by the names of things like “partying”, “meeting new friends”, “having fun” and “discovering the world and finding out lots of cool stuff about things”.
That might sound glib, but this new wave of entrepreneurs, which Ben is symbolic, of have built their brand / businesses around such “tent poles” and to me that’s one of the most inspirational things about this whole scenario.
If you were to ask me what were his initial motivations and inspirations then I would say that the above “tent poles” were pretty high up on the list, with “brand building” and “money making” a lot further down the list than being able to sing karaoke really loud at a bar with all your best friends while spraying the whole room with beer.
What would Ben and his peers like to achieve when this whole shitshow is done? Well I think in the long run, that not only the main objective, but the electrical current that runs throughout their lives and their worldview can be summed up by one word: Happiness.