Sundry & Vice is a nationally-recognized craft cocktail bar located in the Over-the-Rhine downtown neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. I began photographing for the five year old establishment in November of 2016. The bar puts out a custom, staff-created cocktail menu twice a year, and a brunch cocktail list once a year. Capturing images in the same space several times a year can be tricky as my goal is to make every menu look different, while keeping the feel and essence of the images the same. I look at it like this: there as several ways to get to 10. We have the bar, the staff, the space, and the cocktails. Sometimes it is 2+2+3+3=10, sometimes it is 1+5+2+2=10. This time I took the bar out of the equation completely for a 0+2+4+4=10.
Every time I shoot in a space, I try to re-imagine it.
I moved the bartenders from behind the bar to have them do all the pours from the booths and high-top tables. All of a sudden, the vintage wallpaper began to pop, the weathered walls of the 150 year old building showed new life.
Using the age of the building, I set my lighting to have the feel of the space: moody, sophisticated yet tongue-in-cheek. The first time I walked into Sundry, I felt I had been transported to an East Village NYC bar circa 1955 with Allen Ginsburg writing poems for Howl on cocktail napkins from the back booth.
