T. Reilly Hodgson is a photographer based in Toronto, Canada. He’s also the creative director for No Fun Press and Blood of the Young Zine. His work has been featured in Thrasher, Vice, Color Magazine, Booooooom, Scion and Nofound Project. He’s exhibited across Canada, the US, the UK, Europe and China.
A lot of my photos don’t have anything to do with Blood of the Young. That zine was a side project that took over. It’s improved my work, though. The experience of working on someone else’s photos means that I can edit my own work better. We go through hundreds of submissions all the time and looking at that many photos gives me a better idea of what I want to shoot.
Dimitri [Karakostas, co-founder of BOTY and No Fun Press] and I are mostly into the same stuff and I think that’s why we’ve always worked so well together. I’ll be like, ‘Holy shit this is hilarious–I want to do this!’ and either he’ll laugh and I’ll do it or he’ll be like, ‘What the fuck is your problem?’ and I’ll either do it anyway or not do it.
A lot of the clothing stuff isn’t completely related. It’s just an aesthetic thing. We always thought bootleg stuff was really funny and it sort of links up with the zine. We made a bunch of Simpsons bootleg shirts to make more dough, to make more zines, and people loved them so we keep doing them.
I’m a punk kid. I don’t know business worth hell. It’s all self-taught. I’m pretty good at branding because I grew up writing on stuff. Graffiti is a ridiculous work ethic and marketing teacher. Half the things I know about branding and marketing is just graffiti 101.
When it comes down to it, we’re just really honest about what we’re trying to do and we’re not trying to fake anybody out. I took what I was doing as a teenager and turned it into a living. Fuck me getting a real job. As if that was ever going to happen.
–T. Reilly Hodgson, as told to Studio Beat
Photos by Courtney Vokey
Visit Reilly’s website here.
Check out Blood of the Young here and No Fun Press here.
