Chris Woo is a San Diego-based photographer, writer, editor, art director, publisher, and record collector. Born and raised in San Diego suburbia, he has long been a fan of outsider art forms.
One of the earliest of these encounters came at the tender age of eight when, upon the suggestion of a fat bearded alcoholic bum, he taught himself how to juggle. After sharing his newfound talent with a few of the street performers in San Diego's infamous Balboa Park, they instantly absorbed him into their quasi clown act and proceeded to exploit him in their public charade every weekend for months on end. He eventually grew weary of this trend of exploitation, but didn't care because he was having fun. This might not sound like much, but fun to a child is like water to a fish, money to a banker, a prostitute to a pimp ... one is necessary for the other to function properly. At any rate, money and materialism had not really entered his mind yet. Then, one day, someone gave him a dollar bill and it changed his life forever. With that dollar he would buy his favorite ice cream cookie sandwich treat, the Chipwich, and convince the ice cream vendor to let him play with a shard of the dry ice from her mobile freezer. This was super cool (pun intended), especially when the shard was dropped into a cup of water and dissolved into a billowing cloud of smoke as if bubbling out of a witch’s cauldron.
In the first three years of elementary school, Chris enrolled in a Spanish/English bilingual program that was quite confusing to say the least, but ultimately a challenge that caused him to earn the respect of his peers in other ways, like getting really good at dodgeball. By the fourth grade, Chris had picked up his first instrument—a recorder—and by the following year he began playing the violin. In seventh grade, he started skateboarding and learned to ollie. By eighth grade, he was skating backyard ramps and clogged-up sewer drains. He liked skateboarding because its rules were dictated by gravity, not by some fallible referee or rulebook. Skateboarding forced him to conform to his surroundings and make something that was more than the sum of its parts. If these surroundings were deemed illegal or off limits, he constructed them in a place where he wouldn't be harassed by the authorities and could work on his own terms.
Rap tunes like "Rhymin' and Stealin'," "Straight Outta Compton" and "Don't Believe the Hype" were his audio staples in junior high. His introduction to the fast and furious world of rock and roll didn't come until the ninth grade when he had two broken arms from a bike accident and had nothing better to do with his time but sit around and listen to records. Through the influence of friends, he heard popular anthems like "Stairway to Heaven," "Iron Man," and "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." He also heard punk songs like “Whip It,” “Holiday In Cambodia,” “Institutionalized" and “Rock the Casbah” and soon his violin had morphed into a guitar. He knew that he was a late bloomer in discovering this awesome noise, but he was still as determined as any to ruin a good portion of his hearing at various arena rock concerts by the time he reached his 20s. Barely enough of his hearing was preserved so that he could appreciate the ethereal sounds of crickets chirping, waves crashing on rocks, and snow falling. His favorite sound, however, is still the "chi-ching" ring of a cash register.
College is where he cut his teeth in the publishing world. Nirvana's Nevermind came out and he couldn't stop listening to it. That record pretty much changed his life, and for the better to boot. He wrote his first concert review after Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and Pavement played the O'Brien Pavilion in Del Mar in 1992. Over the next year, he discovered San Diego's underground music scene when he saw bands like Rocket from the Crypt, Creedle, Aminiature, Trumans Water, Three Mile Pilot, Heroin, Inch, Deadbolt, Fishwife, Drive Like Jehu, and Chicken Farm for the first time. In 1993, he rose to the ranks of photographer and entertainment editor for the school newspaper, and proceeded to publish interviews and features on local bands like Creedle, Inch, Tripwire, Fishwife, Heavy Vegetable, Honey Glaze, Rocket from the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Gregory Page, Deadbolt, Rust, and even a few on suckey bands like Natasha's Ghost. Even though his writing was average at best and often times widely ignored, he knew that he had finally found something that was worthwhile because he got free records in the mail. This is something that original rock critic Richard Meltzer has said is "more addictive than crack."
Shortly after graduating from the University of San Diego with a BA in Communication Studies (mass media emphasis) and Studio Art, he secured a job as a Pre-Press Specialist at a local daily newspaper and made a conscious decision to start taking record collecting more seriously. He continued to get articles and photos published in various publications and, in 1996, started doing a show at KCR, San Diego State's freeform college radio station. At KCR, his opinions on rock music were more fully formed through punk, hardcore, new wave, indie, garage, soul, funk, hip-hop, spoken word, folk, blues, reggae, and country, and he was also introduced to a vast array of esoteric musical styles and genres including Krautrock, Americana, Japanoise, Afrobeat, no wave, free jazz, black metal, anti-folk, joke bands, prank phone calls, dub, electronica, minimalism and 20th century avant-garde composers. Very few people listened, but those who did were grateful, so much that they would often do things like call up and offer to give him a full body massage. For free.
In 1997, using KCR and his freelance privileges as a springboard to get into shows for free, he would be exposed to an obscene amount of live music and bad free records. KCR was fine with just about anything, but he oftentimes found it frustrating when editors would edit out good photos or alter his writing for the worse. He already considered himself a below average writer and photographer with an above average taste in music, but to have professional editors drag him down even more was insulting and ultimately baffling when they had very poor or no reasons for their actions. Part of this could have been an excessive use of idioms, and using the word “literally” purely for emphasis. Although he came to terms with the process, he desperately felt the need to start a fanzine called Titanium Expose so there was a place for his marginalized tastes to beacon. It was through this publication that he brought together some of the best people and had the most fun.
By the late '90s he was taking photos of just about every show that he attended. While tagging along on a 1999 GoGoGoAirheart west coast tour, he decided that messy photos with large amounts of streaked light or blurryness were as interesting as perfectly crisp shots, even if they were sometimes accidental. Revisiting his old fascination with juggling and skateboarding, he wanted to capture more movement in his photos and started experimenting with multiple flashes on the same exposure. These "spashes of flashes" as he called them, were sort of like a strobe light effect to the naked eye.
Over the years, besides the Titanium Expose, Chris’ photographic and written work has been published in the San Diego Reader, The Village Voice, Dead Air, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Rocket (Northwest publication), WARP, Stance, San Diego Home and Garden, Plus Megazine, Uptown Newsmagazine, Slamm, The Reviewer, Arthur, Fahrenheit San Diego and countless websites.
Chris is apprehensive about calling himself an artist but doesn’t mind it if others label him as such. He began showing his photos of bands in galleries in 2003 and has ambitions to curate a series of group shows in the future. Currently, Chris works as a graphic artist at the San Diego Voice and Viewpoint newspaper. He has also returned to college to refine his skills as a studio photographer and is interested in pursuing a career in the slick and sleazy world of advertising, perhaps specifically in fashion or product photography.
CHRIS WOO
Visit the TITANIUM EXPOSE website by clicking HERE.