Meet Gian Paul Lozza, Snowboard Photography’s Freestyle Architect March 12, 2011

On a gondola ride up to the peak of Laax, Switzerland at the last stop of Burton's BGOS tour presented by MINI, we couldn't help but notice a determined looking gentleman with a backpack full of gear and an eye pointed sharply uphill. Striking up conversation, we soon realized that we had stumbled upon a chief responsible for bringing Creative Use of Space in snowboarding to the pages of magazines worldwide - Mr. Gian Paul Lozza. Our gloved hands fumbled for a recorder and rolled tape right away. How long does it take to build terrain feat. Depending what its all about? Well...I'm not doing normal shooting, normal kickers - things like this. Most snowboarding photography is a sort of staged documentary. What I do - I come from another side - I stage everything. You mean the staging is the story with your work in a way? How does it work? It starts with scribbles, with plans...build a concept, then take it to the snow. I make a very precise picture and then go home. Is paper and pen the 1st step? What's first is when an idea comes to mind. Then I start to think about who I'd like to see ride it. Start speaking with them, how we'd like to plan the {terrain} feature so they can best ride it, then I take the whole concept to the people who run the mountain, for example here in Laax station, to speak about the plans - then we start to build it. We have to bring together a crew. Here we've built a quarterpipe within a cube, so that you have no idea where the rider's come from or where he's going. It becomes like a graphic work, I try to make work that has people ask themselves something. So where do you come from?
From here! From Laax. I was born in Chur, down in the valley. {Most} snowboard photographers, they stick with the same process: they make a documentary - they go up with a rider, see what looks good and shoot it, or shape something and shoot - build a kicker and shoot. I don't work like this anymore. I did for ten years - got bored. I can work for three months on projects like I'm on now. I'm always trying to break boundaries. Go a different way than everyone else. The important thing is that I'm going another way, not to go out and document something, but that it all starts at home. With conception. How big is the usual crew?
Anywhere from four to fifteen, depending on the project. Where's your favorite place to shoot?
{Laughing} Wherever the mountain is. {Again laughs} I really don't care. Because, the funny thing is there's not time to pick and choose usually. When it's time to do a shoot, these things can be hard-core - when we shoot nighttime stuff - it can mean 18hour days. One shoot last year - it was minus 20 degrees. At the end you can't feel your body - you can't feel anything. You don't care sometimes where it is. I come always to Laax, because in Laax I have the best crew. I grew up here, and I can work with those guys. They have the best shapers, I think, in the world. That's also why the European opens are here, you have really the best {support} to work with. Is the crew that cut the pipe and designed the slopestyle course for the BEO the same guys, or was another team brought in to help with the scale of the project? That's the local crew - same shape team. Same 5-10 people top to bottom all winter long. The unsung heroes of the BGOS, eh? The park crews - keep the riders safe and their runs the sickest...
Definitely. Thanks for letting us hijack your time as we head up the hill Gian Paul, thanks for joining us on MINI Space. ...Was my pleasure.