would like to introduce someone who has inspired me. First things first though, but welcome back for those of you that made it in this morning. That's great. We appreciate that and you're gonna be blessed today. You really are. I want to bring Tanner Guzzi up on stage. He's a father of three, a fourth on the way in December. Give him a hand with that. He doesn't know that I was gonna say that. Creator of masculine style. Someone to listen to to talk. He's gonna talk to you about upping your game and he's got something special for you this morning. Tanner Guzzi. Thanks George. Appreciate it. Good morning guys. How you doing? I am excited to talk to you today. I've been thinking about this related to what I wanted to go over and yes, I had prepared a bunch of slides and a whole presentation about style. However, I recently learned this new word. It's hippergami. I think I want to talk about, no I'm just kidding I'm not gonna talk about that today. Guys a little worried you guys were too hungover and that was gonna land very well so we can get started. Before I dive in though, I do want to tell you guys, this is my third year and the quality of the way that you guys are dressing is you guys are killing it. You're doing really well and I'm really impressed because yes there's room for improvement. There always is but I can tell that you guys have put some thought into it. You're actually thinking about how it is you're trying to present yourselves. You're trying to communicate something with your image. You're trying to tell a story that you have some self-respect. That it's not just well you know my office did a 5k with the local bank and I got this t-shirt so that's what I'm gonna throw on today with the cargo shorts I've had for 20 years. But you guys are actually dressing in a way that's communicating some self-respect some dignity and some authority and so I appreciate that and I hope that you guys recognize that in yourselves because that's a powerful thing. Whether or not it should be is irrelevant because it is and so I appreciate that and so I want to say thank you guys. What I want to talk about with you guys today is I guess kind of the red pill related to appearance you know we understand that the world tells us pretty lies to make us feel good about ourselves and reality is not pretty and one of the reasons why we're here is because we've gone through this transition of being naive to being woken up to the reality of what's actually happening around us. Sometimes that leads to cynicism hopefully you guys can get through that and get out of your cynicism phase into a phase of courage where you're ready to actually do something with that and obviously I believe that that's the case that's why you're here none of us are here because we want to be stuck in a cynicism phase and there's pretty lies about our relationship with the way that we look that we're told as men and so what I want to go over with you today is what those are why they're absolutely garbage and how you can actually work your way past them so that you can leverage your appearance to help you become better versions of yourself so you can become more successful in your relationships with other people but also so that you can have a better self-perception of who you are and what you deserve out of life and so that you can see yourself is actually living up to the full potential of what you have. I know that that can sound kind of woo-woo and how are my clothes really going to do that but they're deep psychological things that go on with the clothing that we put on to our bodies both and how other people interpret that and what we see when we put when we catch ourselves in the mirror whether you know you're walking past a building like this and you catch a glimpse yourself in the in the windows or you're getting ready in the morning the man that you see staring back at you can either look like somebody who's ready to make his dent in the universe I like how Richard Cooper was putting that yesterday or he can look like a guy who's just trying to be safe and trying to fly under the radar it's up to you and what's nice is that you've got control over that it's not up to anybody else so let's dive into these all right the first one man this is universal you shouldn't judge a book by its cover that is stupid it really is because if you think about the reality of how we interact with other people and all the data that comes into our brains there's no possible way that we could look at I mean think about looking at every single other man in this room and treating each other like they're complete blank slates we have no idea I'm not going to make any assessments about you I'm not going to prejudge whether you're a friend or a foe whether you're a threat whether you're somebody who shares like interest I'm just going to treat you like a blank slate from a biological perspective our brains would just break from trying to be able to handle that we create shortcuts in order to be able to properly classify things and in order to be able to actually put things into boxes so that we can better understand and better navigate the world stereotypes especially stereotypes about the way that we look exist for a reason that's uncomfortable it sucks to hear that but it's absolutely true those stereotypes exist for a reason so we can complain about it or we can actually use it to our advantage now I I struggled with this one a lot when I was when I was a kid especially when I was a teenager I'm from Salt Lake City Utah I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I'm a Mormon and when I was in junior high and high school I was really into BMX and punk rock so very much not like in line with church culture and things like that right very opposite and I remember having like my safety pins in my backpack you know and all of my I tried to dye my hair black and I grew these awful sideburns that you can only grow when you're 16 and they're super ugly because it's all scraggly and bad and wearing you know my my BMX t-shirts and my bike chain wallet and it's just awful and I remember arguing with my parents and arguing with people at school it's like you can't judge me you don't know if I'm a good person or not you're just a bunch of selfish pricks you don't have any idea and of course that's what we want to convince ourselves because we think that anybody else who judges us based on the way that we look they're the jerks right that somehow we're more righteous or more holy or more whatever than they are and they're just a bunch of just a bunch of jerks for judging us based on the way that we look but the reality is is if you kind of look like a punk rocker regardless of whether or not you act like one people should assume that that's what you are and you kind of want to be associated with that right otherwise you wouldn't look that way and it's the same thing with any of these other associations now the reason why we're told this lie is because it's trying to shift the onus of responsibility off of us if you think about it this way if you guys aren't allowed to judge me based on the way that I dress then all of a sudden that means I'm not responsible for the way that I look you guys are how comfortable is that if I don't have to be responsible for that if the rest of you guys are there's no wonder that's such an appealing lie that we're told every day but the reality is is we absolutely are responsible for the way that we look we're absolutely responsible for the way that we interpret that and I will tell you that it goes in the other direction the right way to handle this because yes there are exceptions to the rule I dress like a punk rocker but man was I a bad rebel I never drank and ever smoked and every day I was a terrible rebel all I did was listen to whining music and tell my parents you're not my dad okay I didn't actually say that to my dad but it was about the equivalent of that I was a bad rebel so I really didn't actually fit that that mold that tribe even though I tried to to the extent that I could and so you could say that I was the exception to the rule and so what yes there are exceptions and so what our responsibility is is the people who are perceiving the way that other people dress is absolutely judge a book by its cover and then be open to reassessing that judgment based on further information that you get right you don't have to just put somebody into a box and say well based on the way you look that's who you are and anything else that I'm you're gonna try and tell me as different as a lie because then we're just handicapping ourselves and so the burden of responsibility is always on you whether you're the person who's being judged for the way that you look or you're the person who is doing the judging based on the way that somebody else looks the burden of responsibility is always on you and that's just life in general right burden of responsibility is always on us it's not on anybody else all right let's go to the next one love this one real men don't care how they look how you guys have ever heard that before yeah so there's so many things that tie into this and this is one of the the biggest and dumbest myths in the world this is one of the things I love talking about this one on Twitter which at Tanner does it you guys can follow me there men historically in every culture at any point in history have always use our appearance and particularly our clothing to express our masculinity and use it as ways to gauge things like courage strength mastery on or stuff like Jack Donovan talks about as the tactical virtues use it to signal things like status or fitness or accomplishments or anything else I'm going to look at these kinds of photos and tell me that these men wearing these things don't care how they look it's a preposterous idea men always have and always will care about the way that they look now this lie is rooted in a couple of different things and the biggest one is kind of this uniquely American idea that real men don't care what anybody else thinks of them right we hear that one a lot too you know if you're a real man you just do your own thing and it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks which really you're just describing a sociopath if you say that if you really don't care what anybody else thinks about you at all you have a problem and so we see this but then the problem is is the world tells us that we have to we're given a false dichotomy it's either I'm a sociopath and I don't care what anybody thinks or welcome to a global society where everybody's opinion has to matter to me it's a false dichotomy none of the none of those is the right answer what matters is that the opinion of the right people matters to you you look at these kind of men and I guarantee you that this guy doesn't care what that guy thinks of him they're not the same tribe they're not the same part of the world they don't have shared goals they don't have shared beliefs they don't care but these guys care what each other thinks these guys care what each other thinks right there is nothing wrong and everything right with caring what other men think of you but they have to earn the right for their opinion to matter to you and when they do then you have to maintain that loyalty and maintain that honor within them and one of the ways to do that is by caring about the way that you look right this is absolutely one of those things that you and you'll hear it over and over and over again real man don't care real men absolutely care honor is one of those things that matters and for you men who are trying to do something more my family my wife my kids their opinion matters to me they've earned that right a lot of the speakers here guys that I've known for years their opinions matter to me I've got clients here their opinions matter to me you guys way more so than somebody else who's just staying in the hotel your opinions have started to matter to me that's a good thing embrace that and recognize that if somebody is basing their opinion on you based on the way that you look that you either need to determine one if they already do matter and if their opinions matter or two if their opinions have the potential for mattering if you're going in for a job interview or you run your own business and you're looking to talk to a potential client better believe their opinion matters to you right otherwise you're not getting the job you're not getting the sale some idiot on the street or some YouTube I can already tell you I can already see the the YouTube comments because it's happened every year that I've been here this dude's going to talk about style look at that stupid suit why would anybody wear something like that every time it doesn't matter doesn't matter what I wear it really doesn't matter and that's another thing you guys need to embrace because one of the other reasons why we tell ourselves that real men don't care how they look is because we're just trying to play it safe we're just trying to make it so that we're not polarizing and we're really just trying to play not to lose as opposed to trying to play to win and I'll tell you guys the only way to not be judged based on your appearance is to not be noticed right it really is it's the only way to not be judged is to just not be noticed and sadly that's what the majority of men do when it comes to their clothing they just think well I'm not gonna I'm just gonna put on whatever is comfortable because you know what if somebody really didn't care about how he looked he'd be writing his wife's closet he'd be happy to wear her clothes it wouldn't matter right dress tights whatever I don't care I'll put on whatever I want exactly we we can hear how comical that is but it's a pretty lie that he tells himself because he knows that he's trying to avoid this and so all he's doing is playing not to lose all I only care to the extent that I don't look like an idiot because then if I have to actually whoa if I actually have to take a social risk and people might think that I look stupid for what I'm I can't handle that what if my friends make fun of me what if the people at work actually make a comment what what if I screw up and I wear something that's wrong and it's it's kind of silly to think that we're scared of that but a lot of men really are it's not a physical risk but there's a social risk that comes with that that's why we call guys who do start to change their style oh he's trying too hard oh what a poser what happened to you Ted you changed whatever those are the kind of guys who are just going to continue in every regard in their lives to play not to lose as opposed to playing to win and so yes you can care about how you look you should care about how you look your life will get better as you care about how you look and you gauge that properly both within your own self perception and the way the people who matter to you or have the potential to matter to you will react to the way that you look everybody else they don't matter you don't have to worry about it with them all right let's talk about line number three I hear this one a lot especially in the rare time that I you know get a backtrack and I'm being talked about on some pickup forum and it's usually a bunch of you know chubby timmies that are out there trying to do their day their day game and well you know all I have to do is have a good approach game it doesn't matter how I look and confidence is all that matters right this guy is pretty confident look at this he's got on cut off with this weird purple tie he's dyed his hair green and purple confidence isn't going to save that this dude looks like an idiot sorry doesn't matter how confident he is you go out that is not a winning combination it does not matter how confident you are confidence is absolutely a component of dressing well but to think that that supersedes everything is ridiculous it's like saying I don't need to have breaks because my car will go 200 miles an hour it's like yeah you're going to win the race but there's going to be consequences that come with that right yeah there's there's more to the car than just how fast it goes and yes there's more to dressing well than just having confidence there's actually three things and I want to go through those pretty quickly with you because it's related to this you have to have context confidence and then competence as well when you get those three things dialed in that's when you can actually develop a really good sense of style and when I talk about context what I mean is okay take what I'm wearing today if I were to go down to Miami and go try and go surfing on the beach I would be an idiot right because the context is inappropriate if I even even from a perspective of again I'm out of Salt Lake City it was snowing when I left my house on Wednesday if I were to be wearing what I had on there here today though that would be physically uncomfortable and it's totally inappropriate for the context of everything else that we have going on if I had a tuxedo on it would be inappropriate as far as the context fire just up here in my swim trunks and pair of flip flops it would be inappropriate as far as the context is concerned and that's where you need to be able to navigate the social expectations of where you are and what it is that you're actually trying to accomplish that context is important we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get further into one of the other myths competence is a big one too dressing well is actually a skill set and it's kind of hard to hear that because you want to be able to think okay well I care and I'm going to try so therefore I'm going to win and yes you can do that but you can also suck at it even if you try and there really is a skill set that's involved with it and the ability to understand all the little nuance that goes into it and how to create something that's that's visually interesting and it's congruent with who you are and it's telling the correct story and it's something that people want to see and that they're receptive to see all of that stuff requires some skill so you have to have the competence to be able to do that and then yes confidence does matter I'll tell you that the the people who do what I do but they're more in kind of like the stylist as opposed to the coaching component where you know you would basically pay somebody a few grand to you know it's usually some 22 year old chick with a fashion degree named Gina and she's going to go out and you know buy some clothes for you and you're going to put that on and yes that may be great for both a context and a competence perspective because she's been able to take care of those two things for you but if you don't feel awesome in it your body language is all kind of shrunken or you feel like you're a poser you just feel like oh this isn't me at all then it doesn't matter how good you look the confidence does matter but again confidence is not the only thing that matters it doesn't supersede everything you have to have all three of these in order to be able to actually dress well okay so let's talk a little bit more about uh that idea of context because this is one of the biggest ones that I see is guys now finally start to make the jump over into yeah I'm going to care about the way that I look a lot of times guys see this as kind of a light switch where good style is formal it's a suit right how many of you guys have ever thought that before okay well I would like to dress better but I don't want to I don't want to wear a suit all the time right I deal with that a lot I have a lot of guys who they talk to me about going through one of my programs or anything they say yeah I'm interested I just don't want to wear a suit all the time good I don't wear a suit all the time not at all I like wearing suits I worked for a custom suit company for years I love it but I don't wear a suit all the time because it's not the only way to have style just like when you hear all these other people who talk about the idea that bad stuff well America's gotten too casual we're just our style sucks and we don't look like men anymore because we're just too casual well I would agree that our style sucks now compared to the way that it used to be but correlation and causation are not the same thing and our style doesn't suck because it's too casual it sucks because of the execution because we're playing to not lose instead of playing to win so no you do not have to dress up in order to dress well that's one of the reasons why is Anthony asked me to help create the the dress code and the expectation for you guys as you were getting ready to come out to this event that we spoke very specifically about not saying that there is a specific dress code in regards to formality formality is not the only thing that matters and some of you guys are killing it in a t-shirt and jeans and other guys are doing really great in suits some of you guys don't look great in suits and other you guys don't look great in t-shirt and jeans the formality is irrelevant that is one of many things again we think about it when we're getting started is this light switch but what it really is i'm just going to skip those what it really is is a soundboard okay this is one of the things i teach my clients is that good style it's a whole soundboard and you have all these little dials that you can play with yes formality is one of them you have other things like color or pattern or texture or fit or are you trying to stand out or fit in or so many other things that you can tweak with in order to really have good style you need to understand what the expectation the context is and then be able to know how to tweak every single one of those dials in order to be able to get it right saying that good style is formal and bad style is casual is kind of like saying good music is classical and bad music is everything else yeah i i love classical music but i also still love punk rock and i like hip hop and i know this is kind of weird but i'm actually starting like even a little bit of country which is i don't know what that is but thank you i guess right but it's not again it's not this fault's binary this fault's dichotomy of formal is good casual is bad it doesn't work like that there there are a lot of ways to be able to do that and so i'll go back to these i'll show you this example this is the way that most of the world thinks bad style because it's casual good style because it's formal this is great not just because it's formal and this is bad not just because it's casual because here's the opposite super casual but the fits good right the context is really good he's a good looking guy he's got some things that are visually interesting that are going on the colors work well there's interesting textures this is just awful right the fit is bad the shoes are terrible i don't know what that vest is or why i mean it looks like he's 40 going to prom which is creepy in and of itself you know yeah it's formal but this is not good style so again you got to get out of that mindset that formal equals good and casual equals bad because it's not it's not that simple you need to be able to play with the whole soundboard okay so related to that and again this is where you get some of these guys who decide you know i'm i'm going to be into style we kind of look at the old times we look at especially kind of the classic age and you know you could even say that these guys are the equivalent of the trad cons when it comes to style stuff because you look at guys like uh like uh cary grant and you'll go yes this is this is when men dress like men this is what good style was or steve mcqueen or this kind of stuff and that that that's true but then you get guys who try and dress that way today they're gentle dorks right i'm not gonna this this is a kid he's a senior in high school these are his senior high school pictures with the top hat and the vests and everything else and you know he's got the the collar pin and all that and he thinks i'm bringing you know i'm bringing some class back the ladies i'm gonna kill it you know when really it's like why are they why are they with all the football players instead of with you're a gentle dork dude you think you're being a gentleman you think that you're dressing well and you're cosplaying this is a costume it is absolutely a costume right timeless style is impossible now okay so then you think well we'll go the other direction does that mean that i have to follow all the trends because a lot of people do think that that in order to actually be stylish you have to be fashionable and that means you have to follow the trends but trends are kind of a danger too right this was killing it back in the 90s and now we can look at that and go oh dear and all the stuff that we're wearing today especially the more aggressive you get in 20 years we're gonna look back and go oh boy what was i thinking with that and the problem is is that we use the fear of this to convince us that this is the alternative and again it's another false dichotomy it's not either or the way that it works is it's one big cycle because okay take that to its logical extreme if if good style is timeless then what that means is that i could dress up as george washington or socrates or somebody because they looked great in their time period and so if i mean if this is good when men were men then men were really men back then and so i should dress like that and again we can see how comical that is when we get a little bit further away from the time period nobody's going to show up in a toga and think i'm bringing masculinity back right of course not but we think it when it comes to suiting and stuff because we're just one step removed from that one of the hard things about good style is yes it actually moves and changes you can't avoid that you can't accomplish timeless style when it comes to things like suiting or stuff that may be a little bit more conservative or more dignified that change happens more slowly and you're welcome to embrace that or if you're somebody who wants to embrace the fast pace of change with trendiness you can do that too and you just have to embrace the fact that that means in five years or 10 years you're going to look back and go that was stupid glad i tried it but that was stupid you know it worked then or something else but you can't avoid you can't avoid the risk of regret when it comes to dressing well you can't and even if you go through and you look at uh my wife and i just finished watching um the people versus oj simpson the one that was on uh it's on netflix and it's gotta it's good and it's really interesting to see what the dream team you know this this whole awesome team of the big powerhouse lawyers were wearing for their suits in 1995 and they're awful they really are you know they're they're bad they're just you know and i'm wearing a double breasted suit today but even then they're cut differently it's these massive shoulder pads and they're super baggy you know but at that point they weren't even trendy they were just dignified and acceptable and they were with the times and so again you can't you can't play it easy and convince yourself that either i have to be trendy or that good style is timeless you have to know where you want to be in that current is it worth it to you to be in the fast part of the stream and play the trend for some of you guys it is or is it worth it for you to be in maybe one of the eddies where things rotate a little bit more slowly but either way you're in the current you're not in a lake it's not going to stop it's not going to stand still you need to be willing to change as the change happens this is one that i um was recently introduced to me actually i uh most of the style communities don't like me very much that's not true i have a lot of guys within the style world who like me but a lot of guys don't they don't like it because i talk about how it's related to masculinity and it really bugs them that i talk about stuff like dressing in a way that's powerful or trying to express that you have self respect and dignity and they and from their perspective they just think well i just i just want to look good i just like style because i look good and in the past i've kind of argued against that and i've started to come around to the fact that there's actually something to this idea and we as men especially those that are still kind of stuck in the phase of you know i don't care how i look as long as my clothes are functional we think that that's all that matters that my physical comfort or my ability to apparently put a bunch of stuff in my side pockets and i really i don't have a thing against cargo pants thing i'm gonna wear some cargo pants tomorrow but you can make them look good but we think that function is kind of the king of everything and aesthetics don't matter and so again let's take that out of the realm of clothing and apply that into other scenarios in our lives okay think about your architecture think about the buildings that we're in right i mean all it really has to do is protect you from the weather but we appreciate beauty for its own sake when it comes to architecture don't we i know i love being in beautiful buildings and seeing pretty skylines and things like that what about the food we eat well if i get the right macro ratio and i've got my calories and it doesn't matter how it tastes it matters we absolutely care about our experience when we're eating food and good food and the taste of good food is beautiful in and of itself irrespective of what it does for us based on calories or macro nutrients or anything else we enjoy it not because of the function but because of the experience of participating in it it's the same thing with music or with sociality or anything else and again think about think about your relationship with women you don't see a beautiful woman and go yeah you know what biologically i think she'd be a good fit i mean that's those are those are really good calves and i you know i like those hips i think those would be really good for bringing me a couple kids and no of course not you appreciate beauty for its own sake right same thing with when you're traveling right people don't go to the beach because it's functional we go to the beach because we appreciate beauty for its own sake and this is one of the things i love that goldman talks about this as men we can embrace beauty for its own sake now i'm not saying you need to dress in a way that's beautiful but i am saying that you can embrace aesthetics within your style you can embrace looking handsome you can embrace looking good not simply because it serves a function or because it's how i communicate status within my tribe or because this is how i'm going to be able to be the most comfortable in this environment those are good things but a lot of times you can make a decision simply because i think it looks good and as long as it's not conflicting with all those other things then that's a really good rubric by which you can make a good decision about the way that you dress what i don't want you guys to do and this is one of the things that i'm working with a lot of my own clients on is getting so set on the fact that it's okay well does this fit with my archetypes and what is my tribe going to think and how am i signaling this there to that all of that stuff does matter but sometimes what it comes down to is do i like the dark wash on the gene or do i like the light wash and you can you can make a decision based on that anybody who tells you otherwise that you're effeminate or that you're gay or that you're weird because you make decisions based on that stuff again they're telling themselves their own pretty lies and it's based in some weird aversion that they have for either social risk or miscommunicating how they are as a man and that has nothing to do with you so it does not have to be based on function in order to be valuable to us as men okay here's another good one good style has to draw attention this is one of those where i see a lot of guys as they're kind of new and getting started in the game they think that in order to be able to dress well they you know i know we don't i don't hear this term very often anymore but it's like i have to peacock you know i have to be able to i have to i have to stand out i have to draw attention and i i get that because again you know when you are able to recognize that you're not just playing not to lose you're not just trying to fit in and to blend in that well obviously the opposite of that is that i have to stand out but again another false dichotomy you don't have to just stand out for the sake of standing out and especially in the ways that a lot of guys really think that they need to stand out we already talked about the formality one but another thing guys really get into are things like color and pattern they they think okay well cool i don't want to just wear a navy suit with a white shirt like everybody else in my office so the way that i'm going to stand out because i care more about styles i'm going to wear a purple suit with a green shirt because that's how you stand out and it's like well yeah you're going to stand out but that's a negative stand out especially if you work in a serious environment but we do that we convince ourselves that in order to be better we need to be so visibly different that it really changes things and good style it can be done that way absolutely pattern and color and these kind of big bombastic changes to your appearance those can be appropriate but a lot of times good style if you guys again on twitter if you follow at well-built style mani his his saying is simple style is winning style so you can look at stuff like this very simple right i mean you've got a chambray shirt with some chinos and some boots a sweater with another pair of chinos a t-shirt some i don't know if those are jeans or flannel trousers and like a little knit bomber super simple stuff not too formal not too casual but the fit's great right the colors are simple you see any crazy patterns or any wild colors on there no right are we seeing any like fun socks or anything like that no it's really simple but what makes it good is that the fit is great they've got some good textures going on they're wearing it confidently yes again that confidence matters and they're wearing it within the right context and so you do not have to stand out in this crazy attention seeking way in order to be dressed well in fact more often than not that's actually a liability and it's not going to do you as much good a lot of the guys that I get in through my program are guys who work in the IT industry and they are constantly debating with this problem of okay well everybody everybody that I work with wears a t-shirt and jeans and sneakers and I want to have good style I don't want to look like the rest of these guys and so they'll spend time before they find me and it's like okay well I'm going to try the suit a polo but that doesn't look any better what do I do and nine times out of 10 the right answer is you still wear a t-shirt jeans and sneakers we just get them so that they fit you better and their higher quality material and that the sneakers are kind of classic and they're a little bit more visually interesting than a pair of soccanies that you pick up a pay list for 14 bucks and all of a sudden you can be appropriate within the context of that work environment but you can look infinitely better and guys aren't going to see you was standing out in a way where it's like he doesn't fit in anymore he thinks he's better than the rest of us but you will stand out in a subtle way you will be somebody who is recognized as being better dressed as someone who takes himself more seriously as somebody who has more authority more credibility someone who is actually doing more has more discipline within his life again the appropriateness the formality of it is exactly the same you're not standing out based on those big things like color or formality or pattern the only way that you're standing out is based on the simple stuff it's based on those little things all right let's jump into this one attracting women is the only reason we should care about style I get this one a lot too most of the time it's from men who they let their wives do the shopping for them or their girlfriends or sadly their moms and yeah and they think well all that matters is that you know that girls think that my style is good you know well if it works when I'm out picking up chicks then it's great and I'll tell you guys that when it comes to this kind of stuff the opinion of women really doesn't matter that much controversy it really doesn't matter that much because you can be well dressed in so many different contexts and what you're doing when you're dressing well is you're signaling things that ultimately are much more important within the men in your life and then they're confirmed and ratified by the women within your life so let's talk about that a little bit think about when you're in okay we'll go back to a work environment think about when you're in a work environment and you're dressing in a way that is indicative of the fact that you you're trying to go somewhere you're not at the bottom of the barrel you're not overstepping your bounds dressing like the guys who are kind of on the top rung but but you're trying to look like you're trying to go someplace you're signaling status right and status is not something that is granted to us by the women in our lives it's not I know a lot of guys especially in the pickup community or other things will tell us that well you're only a real man if you have so many notches under your belt right or you're only a real man if women respond to you a certain way but ultimately it's putting the cart before the horse because women respond positively to men who have high status they don't give high status to men on their own if that makes sense I know that that can be kind of a subtle distinction but it's an important one because the people who grant you status in your life are typically the men who are setting the rules by which you play whether that's in a work environment or it's a hobby that you engage in or it's you know your friends or when you were a kid it was the the people that you had in school or whatever else it may be it may be something as big as an industry the majority of the time the people who are setting those status rules and that are helping you understand how to navigate that whole social hierarchy it's usually men and then when you've attained a certain level of status then you get the added bonus of being attracted to women who fit within that group that that culture that tribe and then they help bump your status even higher because now the other men can see well that that works because not only does he already have high status but he's attracted to women so double whammy but again you can't come in to something and think that well all I need to do is be attractive to women and therefore my status will increase you're again you're putting the card before the horse and so to think about it in this context if you're dressing to attract women it's not going to work for you I mean I guess it could but then you're missing opportunities as far as all these other things that you could do as far as how you can leverage that relationship that you have with other men or how you can leverage that relationship to your own self perception and I do I see this a lot with other guys who come onto the side or things like that where they will they will create this entire wardrobe and it's all based on what they think this one particular girl or this group of girls are going to like and then they go through putting it together and putting it on and usually they don't execute on it very well but nine times out of 10 what really ends up happening is I just feel like a poser I just I don't feel like myself when I wear this and so their confidence goes down and really what they usually end up signaling is that well they are a poser because you're not actually you haven't actually earned the right to wear high status clothes like that I'll give you an example for my own personal life I have a brother who's a professional snowboarder was for a few years and at the time when he was really on top of his game and sports are weird especially the way that guys do clothes and sports and stuff like that at this one particular time all the big snowboarders were wearing really baggy pants and they would wear basketball jerseys and then they would have a certain type of like brim beanie and you'd have these big massive goggles and that was what all the pros look like okay so again if we were just dressing in a way that we were trying to attract women if that was the main goal then that means that I show up on the mountain and I'm dressed like all these guys because the women are attracted to these guys and obviously are attracted to these guys because they dress that way right and so then I show up on the mountain and I can't do anything on a snowboard because I don't actually have any skill in that arena whatsoever and then what happens you look like an idiot you aren't attracting anybody because you're sitting here projecting this big game of I have I have I have attained a level of mastery within this and I am high status within this tribe and I'm really good at this sport and I'm in with all these guys but then your actual skill set what you're actually delivering is completely antithetical to that it's the opposite and so what you're wearing is proving you a liar right whereas you're much better off if you're kind of the beginner on there and you're trying to attract those girls one maybe that's not the best place to go look for girls because they're going to be interested in those guys and maybe you're better off looking for girls in a place where you're really good or if you like those kind of girls and you want to get good at it then you get good at it and you continue to get better at it and then you improve your style as you become more and more part of that particular group or that particular tribe until you've actually earned the right through mastery through status through becoming part of that group to actually dress like you belong you know I think about you guys remember back to the future three when Marty McFlagg gets all of his cowboy gear and he just looks like an idiot because it's all prim and proper that's what so many of us do when we're trying to dress in a way that the only thing that matters is attracting women we end up just kind of shooting ourselves in the foot on that that's the problem that we create okay I'm sorry I'm going to go back well we can just leave that there there's one more thing that I hadn't prepared that I want to talk to you guys about as far as another lie this is one that has come up within the last little while and it's the idea that good style means you know wherever you are now in order to improve your style you have to have a really big transformation okay and I get that I love the idea of transformations I mean you see fitness transformations especially on Instagram or stuff like that and we all love seeing the guy who goes from you know 300 pounds and he's 99.9% body fat to he's now you know a great lean 175 and he's 0.1% body we love that kind of stuff right because it's demonstrative of things like dedication and hard work and all this this kind of stuff it's great okay and you see attempts to do that within the communities that is centered around things like appearance and style especially from stylists and more often than not from female stylists where what they will do is they will take you know I mean talk about actually I've never seen an episode but I've seen some of their before and afters but like queer eye for the straight guy on Netflix and that kind of stuff well they'll take these kind of bumbling idiots and their cargo shorts and their World of Warcraft t-shirts and then by the end of it they're wearing suits and this kind of stuff and it's like wow look at this great transformation but what they never show you is that six months later this dude is back in his cargo shorts and his t-shirts because again this is just a costume right there's no actual authenticity to it there's no expression of who he is internally all he's doing is just being a mannequin for his stylist that's that's the only thing that he's done at that point that's why it's so crucial for you guys to learn how to do this for yourselves because good style is not this crazy major transformation some of you guys are here in t-shirts and you're wearing you know like hypey sneakers I saw a couple guys wearing some good NMDs and stuff like that putting you guys in suits is not gonna work other you guys are here and you're wearing suits and so putting you in the latest streetwear stuff is not going to work either right the real way to do it is that you take what you have you get rid of the stuff that you're not good at and you double down on the stuff that you are good at so that it's not this big 180 degree turn it's just an evolution it's becoming a better version of what you are it's cutting out all the dead weight and being able to actually express again externally who you are internally because that's the biggest secret to all of this that's the biggest thing that most guys when they start to realize I need to dress better don't quite understand is that it has to be both internal and external if there's not congruence there between the two of them it's not going to last it's not going to stick and you're going to hate it you're not going to get the benefits of the competence the context and the confidence because you're going to miss one of those either you're going to look awful but you're going to feel confident because it's what you're used to which again is where most men are I hate it I don't really like the way that I look but I'm comfortable in it it's what I'm used to so I'm going to stick with it and why mess with it but it ain't broke or I'm going to work with a stylist I'm going to go through a transformation and yeah I look at this is stupid and I don't like the way I feel at all once again false dichotomy those are not the only options that you guys have so what I want you to be able to do is you go through all of this is recognize that what you need to really have a good grasp on how you present yourself to the world is you need to know who you are internally and you need to know who you're becoming and then you need to be able to express that externally that's one of the questions that I get a lot especially from guys like you at events like this is okay what if I'm like 75% cool with who I am right now but I know I want to be better do I fake it until I make it or how do I how do I make that work and that's that's a valid question I actually genuinely love that question because the correct answer is yes you do kind of both right and you think about it within the principles of like weight training okay you think about progressive overload I talk about this in the book if I if I wanted to go and deadlift 500 pounds I'm not going to go to the gym today and put on 500 pounds I can't and I think the last time I did a one rep max on a deadlift I was at 315 so if I were to go and put that on that's that's good but if that's all I stuck with that's me being authentic that's me focusing on dressing to who I am right now then I would never actually get from 315 to 500 but what I do is I go in and I put a little bit more weight on and then I put a little bit more weight on and then I put a little bit more weight on as I go you do the same thing with your appearance and with your style dress authentically to who you are but then dress aspirationally to who you want to be so whether that's within the context of a work environment if you're down at the bottom and you want to work at the top don't dress like the guy at the top dress like the guy who's one step above you and then when you get to that level then you dress like that guy and you continue on and on and on it's that progressive overload within that whole system same thing within any group that you're trying to dress that you're trying to become part of or trying to increase your status within same thing with just your own self-perception that's another one of the questions that I get a lot from guys as they are going through a weight loss you know okay so should I be what should I be doing as far as my style right now because I've got 25 or 40 more pounds to drop should I be spending any money on clothes or anything right now the right answer is yes you buy cheap stuff and use this as a perfect opportunity to experiment to go through that progressive overload to be able to look at and go I'm going to get rid of these clothes anyway so maybe I take a little bit more social risk or maybe I do dress in a way that it's a little bit more aspirational because if it doesn't work so what I know I'm not going to be wearing those same clothes in a month anyway so then I can correct and I can go to the next thing so you can use those as opportunities to be able to be both authentic and is and aspirational in what it is that you're trying to build so take that last one the idea that style doesn't have to be this big transformation it's progressive overload it's a gradual progression of who you are and what you're trying to do real quick before I open it up to questions again I want to tell you guys how awesome you're doing I seriously your shoe game just your intentionality it's been so fun you know again three years and just see how much you guys have progressed if you're interested in talking more about this stuff with me I'm going to be here and I would love to talk more as we answer questions some it might just be if you get really specific then the answer will probably be it depends because again that context thing is huge and so I'll answer those for you but if you guys are interested in learning more even about how I can help you out specifically coaching I've got a couple of my clients like Jack and Phil and other guys who are here that they're happy to talk to you about how that program has gone for them so thank you guys for your time I'm excited to answer questions and talk to you guys throughout and hopefully I can help you guys level up even another level on how you guys are looking so thank you hey Tanner awesome talk as always thank you very informative I was wondering what's your system on gauging what kind of context you're going to be in so like for example you're having a dinner party somewhere or you're having different events where you don't really know the people so there's a lot of unknowns so how do you go with selecting your style to be appropriate good question okay so the first thing that I that I do is you try and understand as much as you can about the environment so if you're going to a dinner party or something like that where's it going to be who are the people that are going to be there and it's very rare that you actually go into a complete unknown so the better you can understand all of those kinds of variables especially things like formality or where in the world it is so how hot or how cold it's going to be or stuff like that then you can gauge that if it is a complete unknown then usually what I try and do especially on that formality spectrum is you just kind of split the difference and you're kind of right there at a five or six and so for me that may be a button-up shirt with some chinos and a sport coat so then that way if I need to dress it up then that's appropriately dressed up enough or if that's too overdressed and you can ditch the jacket and you're still kind of appropriately casual enough so you're just kind of splitting the difference with that but more often than not you can do enough homework to be able to get the context and then you just go from there so Hey Tanner do you have any brands or vendors that you'd recommend for finding better quality clothing that depends what do you mean by better right so that's that's where it gets hard because there are plenty of brands that are out there but are you looking for stuff that's more like classic Americana stuff or are you looking for stuff that's more streetwear are we looking at suiting or those kind of things so come talk to me after and I can get a little bit more context as far as what you're looking after and then I'm happy to point in the direction of some good brands will actually be beneficial for you yeah Hey Tanner great speech Thank you my question is so you mentioned how it's kind of a skills get when you already had a dress better right so my question is for the winter time is there also skills that learning how to layer clothing during winter because you know you have so many garments you have like the the base layer or maybe it's the t-shirt and then you have like the sweater over you know how do you go about that is it like is it a separate skills in itself or is it just a matter of learning how to experiment with different types of winter clothing and whatnot yes it's both and that's what's fun winter time and being able to experiment with layers and that kind of stuff really is a lot of fun I'll give you some basic rules of thumb that are appropriate for that the first one is that you typically want as you get further in and closer to your body you want those to be layers that are lighter in color so for example if you were doing suiting you would never want your tie to be darker than your shirts or for the most part you want kind of your layers as you go further out away from your body into a sweater or top color or something else like that to be darker other good rules are if you're playing around with different layers you don't want anything to look like it's trying to match and missing so if you're playing with different patterns you want there to be enough disparity between them that you know it's not like this is a my jacket is a small check and my sweater is a less small check and so maybe one is like a big check and another is a small stripe or something else so that you don't look like you're trying to match a bunch of different things and actually missing you want some intentional contrast with it but ultimately that's again where it can come down to you know are you playing with textures are you playing with weights are you playing with different materials because cashmere looks different than wool which looks different than cotton and all of those can be appropriate even if they're all similar in color or they're all solid without any pattern or anything else and you can play with things that way so it's just playing with those dials the way that you can yeah really concise Tanner what constitutes the incorporation of one of the newest accessories the man bag ha ha ha you're talking about like the the gucci fanny pack yeah I see the gentleman there in the in your photo I'm assuming that maybe a like a yeah this little thing right here yeah it's tribal just depends on where you are yeah that's where context can really come in because you know if you are in an urban environment and you're somebody who leans a little bit more towards a style that's a little bit more refined then that's actually something that can be appropriate and it may be just a slim messenger bag or something that's a briefcase or it may be something that actually is a little bit more purse like if you're working out on an oil rig in North Dakota you'd better stick far away from that stuff right so it's really it's very contextual and that's one of the things that's really important to understand with style is that I mean George Washington wore tights right we look at that kind of stuff today and we go there's no way I'm touching that but everything is totally I mean the Native Americans that I showed you guys that they're wearing makeup dude I've got makeup on right now George put it on me it's weird but I'm not doing it to try and look pretty for you guys it's just to avoid any flaws or anything else like that because what the camera is going to pick up so context and what you're trying to accomplish is way more important than being able to draw a hard line in the sand as far as yes you can do this or no you can't do that because it depends all right thank you yeah I'm currently wearing 10 and a half quadruple ease what advice do you have for wide feet and I've driven four hours one way just to buy shoes because it's a nightmare sometimes how many how many shoes do you rotate through as far as like throughout a week three or four I only have really one pair of dress shoes that I wear at work though so gotcha I would say in a situation like yours especially because foot size is not something that really changes it's worthwhile to invest whether that's going through a maker I'm not sure if Alan Edmonds I know they do triply I'm not sure if they go all the way up to quadruple ease but maybe even doing a fully custom pair because again it's not like you're going to grow out of them and in a lot of cases something like that is going to be a long-term investment anyway you know a pair of shoes like these once the sole runs out then I can get them resold these shoes as far as the upper and the leather and everything else they'll basically last forever and so in a situation like yours you can even look at it as you know the amount of time that you took trying to find the right pair and having to repeat that process over and over again what's that worth versus investing in something that you know is going to fit great it's going to look great it's going to last forever and so it sounds like custom may actually be a better route for you thanks yeah hi Tana thanks for a great talk what do you do I travel full-time so how do you do style in like a limited space so you've only got a suitcase what kind of things do you need how do you start with that good question that's a fun one this comes down to versatility and being able to have a bunch of things that you can kind of mix and match and make them work together really well one of the best ways to do that is to avoid a bunch of color avoid a bunch of pattern and just focus on again kind of texture and you want stuff to not be too formal nor do you want stuff to be too casual so for example jeans that can look great on their own or they can look really good with a sport coat and then it's actually a sport coat as opposed to a suit jacket or that kind of stuff and so I even I'll give you some kind of some color advice that's helpful with it and honestly most of my wardrobe consists of just these colors on their own anyway blues, browns, grays and whites you avoid everything else and then because the problem that you run into is it's just like okay well there's that there's that green shirt again because it's more memorable because it's a color that's not as versatile it's great you know the color's fine but the more memorable it is the less often you can repeat it because then people recognize that you're recycling the same shirt whereas if it were a simple white button down or a blue something you can get away with wearing it three times in a week as long as it doesn't smell bad and nobody else is going to even notice yeah thank you yeah I like your double breasted suit thank you I'd like to know if that's going to be coming back in fashion oh yeah I mean I already brought it back right I can't find them anywhere that's why I like I want to get back to do it and my second question is what about the French cut double breasted is that in something I could incorporate into my outfits so again depends on the context okay because if you are part of the kind of sartorial world like the guys who really geek out about men's wearing that kind of stuff then there's room for you especially with double breasted or wide lapels I mean I'm wearing I'm wearing pleats on a lot of my stuff again because that's kind of where that that particular tribe is going in relationship to its clothing so for you whether or not you can incorporate that it just depends on is a look that's that strong is that going to be to your advantage in the relationships that you have with the people around you or is that going to be an increased liability for you and so as soon as you can navigate where that is then you can make the assessment it's like yeah that's worth the risk or no I'm gonna wait or I'm only gonna wear it when I'm within a certain context and so it kind of depends well I was like to know because that was a style used back in the 40s and 50s a lot would I be out of like you say out of time with that wearing those kind of outfits you know it's like the kid you put up with a top hat I don't want to be looking like that right wearing a a double breasted friend's cut yeah and that's again where it's difficult because I would say if you're trying to resurrect old suits that you had from that time you can't do it because the double breasted that I have on now is different from one that's in 1995 which is different from one that's in 1945 and so that's where it does start to turn into that kind of gentleman cosplay stuff where you're trying to resurrect a vintage style as opposed to taking those cues and injecting them into a contemporary context and so I would say take whatever it is that you like about that and find a new or a more appropriate way to get that same thing out of it as opposed to just trying to recreate it exactly the way that it used to be okay thank you yeah all right guys anybody else okay we've got one more coming up thank you great stuff I earlier learned that when you use strikes and if you are short height like me or then you shouldn't do the horizontal stripes right and you should do the horizontal stripes only if you're very tall is that still stay yeah is that is that kind of still the rule yeah yeah so that's that's one of the few things that actually falls within and I know it's really easy to fall into the temptation of I want to know the rules you know what is something that's kind of timeless and it's permanent and that is one of them but there are a few things about style that actually kind of go across the board color theory things like do you have a warm or a cool complexion what colors are going to make your skin look healthy that's one of them and then patterns in the way that those work yes when you're shorter well really where however you're built if you wear a vertical stripe visually what that does is it kind of elongates and things you out and so if you're a bigger guy and you want to look thinner or if you're a shorter guy and you want to look taller vertical stripes are awesome whereas if you're a skinny guy and you want to look a little bit broader than wearing a plaid or like a box in the check or even a horizontal stripe is going to be better if you're a wide guy and you you don't want to look bigger than you already are you're you're going to want to avoid a horizontal stripe so that is kind of timeless just because of visually what happens but again you need to think about that within the context of something because context and communication are always going to supersede those simple rules of style for example you can talk about things like contrast where somebody like texts who's got really light hair and light complexion he's better off if he's wearing lighter colors but if he's going to an event that is a black tie event in a tuxedo he's going to look stupid if he shows up in a powder blue tux as opposed to a black one irrespective of what actually looks good based on his coloring and everything else because the communication in the context you're going to supersede that so if you're in an environment where you know maybe you're on a I don't know a rugby team and you have to wear a horizontal stripe shirt wear it as opposed to it's like no I'm skinnier I need a vertical stripe one because that that looks better on me so yeah the context is always going to supersede those rules thank you yeah thank you for your talk I enjoyed the one last year as well it really helped me thank you get on my game but um I was just having some debates about what some guys about like simple solutions and so I wanted to know your opinion on like the statement like the gym is the best tailor right like getting your body fit is the is really good that you can do for your style yep yep I would agree with that you have so much more leeway in what you can get away with when you're in good shape and sadly enough when you're handsome you know if you've got good facial structure if you're grooming is on point or anything else you have so much more leeway as far as what you can get away with but what I would say is a lot of guys use that as a crutch they think that I don't have to dress better because I go to the gym and I work out and really what you're doing is you're kind of cutting yourself off at the knees because then you become and a lot of guys who are in great shape they really are kind of one dimensional where they either dress in a way where they look like they just came back from the gym because it's like you know I go to the gym right like you can you can tell like it's like dude we know you go to the gym there's there's more to you than that right or they use it as the excuse of oh I'm just so big I can't find anything yeah you can you can find stuff that fits you just have to put a little bit more energy to it so a lot of yes absolutely you will look better in anything if you're in good shape and you will look even better if you still put energy into your style and your appearance while you're in good shape so it's like you said the confidence isn't you have to have all exactly it's a balance between all three things all of it yep thank you yeah I notice you're wearing what looks like to be a smart watch yes blasphemy right I've Apple and some of these companies that are starting to hire executives from places like Louis Vuitton and they're starting to think a lot about style how do you see technology and technology pieces tying into style and how that projects what you're looking to accomplish that's a fun question I like that I guess it just depends on how anything is going to go anyway you know thankfully the Google Glass never took off right glad we're not all wearing those so it will be interesting to see as as smart technology evolves but brands like Apple and others they recognize I mean Apple they're they're known for their attention to detail when it comes to aesthetics right when it comes to the way that their their machines are created or even I had a buddy used to work for them and I'm pretty sure that he said that each one of the cords under the tables in the in the store had to have like 13 coils like they're super hyper sensitive detail about stuff like that so I'm not surprised at all that even like the new the latest addition it's longer and a little bit broader so that it fits over the wrist a little bit better and it's more aesthetically pleasing and so yeah I think that we'll continue to see more and more that being a focus so that it's not this piece of technology that's kind of on you but it's something that's more integrated within you and within your appearance yeah Tanner thank you very much let's give it up for Tanner Guzzi


For so many people, they think that black and white photographs are simply an absence of colour, that the world of the black and white is just dull monochromatic shades of grey, that it lacks any of the vim and the vigour that you might see from a wonderful photograph in strong and rich primary colours. Today we're going to be looking at black and white photography and discovering that it is actually an extremely colourful way of seeing the world. How's it? When you think about great black and white photographers, so often people will drag up names from the past and with the exception of say people like Ansel Adams who did a lot to develop and nurture and grow the art of black and white photography, a lot of the names that are suggested are simply names from back in the days when black and white was really the only option in which to photograph. So I thought it'd be involved for better to look at more modern exponents of black and white photographers. The people who do have the option to express themselves in colour but choose to embrace the medium of black and white, to go into that monochromatic world and to tease out all of the potential in those wonderful tones, in those rich lighting, the texture, all these things quite often get swamped by the domination of those strong primary colours who are always kind of elbowing themselves to the front. You're no doubt familiar with the piece of advice that says when you remove colour from a photograph, then emotions are able to surface from easily, certainly subtle emotions. And this becomes quite prevalent with two photographers, one of whom I was quite familiar with is Alexi Tyrenko and another guy called Zhu Hanshun, and I do apologise if my pronunciation of some of these names is a bit off, but they have two wonderful approaches to using exposure to their benefit, certainly with Alexi's photography. There is this crowd, this faceless crowd, this blur of people and occasional just the one hand just frozen in time and I find they're very powerful. But at the same time, I find them very cold, I find them very distant and alien and maybe that's because of the nature where these photographs were taken during the collapse of the Soviet era. But then you contrast these with Zhu Hanshun's photographs of Hong Kong, which feel, although they have on the surface a similar sort of feel to them, are far more about the layers of story, but far more about the infinite number of people who have passed by that spot and how each one of them has left their mark on the places they are at. So there are far more discernible faces, there are far more personal touches within Zhu's photographs, with the Lexis, there tends to be a far more dispassionate feel, maybe dispassion is not the right word, but a certain far more withdrawn, I think withdrawn is a good example. There's a funny thing that I have that sometimes I can taste a photograph. I don't know if you understand, if you've experienced that, where you sort of taste a colour. Well, I kind of occasionally taste black and white photographs and Vincent Peter's photographs absolutely do this. They have a wonderful tonality to them that is in some ways quite reminiscent of images from the 1920s, 1930s, George Hurl sort of studio glamour shots of film stars. And I just, when I look at these images that there's something about the tonality of these photographs that really appeals to me. And I think also it's because, you know, the way that they're lit has added to this kind of this very organic, very warm inviting feel to the images that you look at them and they are at once familiar because obviously these are faces for whom most of us are familiar with. And yet they feel like they come from a different time and a different place, but not because, unlike, say, Sally Mann's wet plate photos which we'll look at in a minute, because they are photographs on technology that is archaic, for want of a better word, but because they are evocative of a time. And once again, when I look at Vincent Peter's colour photography of the same people of the same time, in the same setting, with the same lighting, they don't have the same quality to them. They lack any sort of emotional connection, I feel, that they get when they're in this black and white world that is exceptionally intriguing. And I can't quite put my finger on it, and that sounds like a weird thing to say in a channel where we talk about photography, but sometimes it's just, it is really just the vibe. And if we can't understand the vibe, that's actually perfectly fine. We're not required to overanalyse everything. But there is, when you look at these photographs, just look at them and feel that you could almost, you could almost like, you know, run your hand over it and everything would just be smooth and almost like, kind of slightly rubbery. So when you let your hands bounce back together, it's just, I love this aspect of black and white photography. And that's why I feel that when you start connecting to this, once you start opening up yourself to seeing the worlds of black and white, just beyond these tones of grey and shades of grey, that it does become a far richer experience. It's no surprise when we think about black and white photography, that quite often a lot of us will jump immediately to black and white landscapes after Wandsville Adams.  And most of the landscape photography that I certainly am drawn towards is black and white. And there's two photographers who I'd like to look at today because they come from very different perspectives or different sides of this landscape coin. One of them is Sally Mann, who we will get on to in a second. And the other is Hengie Congeroro. And again, I'm terribly sorry if I mispronounced that. But I saw his photographs and I was immediately, and I'm seriously immediately captivated by them. There was something in them, this quietness and obviously now minimalist sort of still zen like photographs are not necessarily unusual. They are not rare. There's quite a lot of that around. But there was something about it. There was something about the way that these particular photographs had been composed, had been crafted. That individual tree was allowing to, was allowed to somehow reach out and grab me from the screen. That it impacted me almost immediately. In a way that again, I find difficult to somewhat express. And I feel that when you photograph in black and white, that because we are taking away all of that color, which I mentioned earlier, that we are allowing the subject to be itself. To be the true version of itself that is not invited or impacted by the color that is all around it. That our emotions are not being influenced and tickled and teased and confused by color. So in anything, it's actually more colorful. These photographs are more colorful because they have no color. Because they now have not somebody who's elbowing their way in to tell you what you should think. But that quiet little delicate thing that's in the photograph that's going at the back, just hello, hello. Is allowed to speak its full voice. I love that. I love that about black and white photography. I love the fact that we see things that make us, that still me, that make myself calm. Sally Mann is most famous for all her pictures of her family and some of the more controversial pictures. But she is also very focused on images of the land, of the world. And this is where atmosphere starts to come into play. Just as much as with Henchke's photographs, they have an atmosphere of calm and of quiet and still. I dare say like a zen sort of quality. Sally Mann's photographs, these landscapes have a very different feel to them. Not only are they photographed on equipment that has within it inherently, I'd say disjointed, maybe the wrong way. But it's old technology. It's imperfect. It is extremely organic. A lot of the results and a lot of what comes out of it is nothing to do with her. It's to do with the process itself. And I love when she's photographing in the South, in America, with these steamy, almost swampy scenes. I imagine she's in South Virginia or somewhere in that sort of region. There's not quite the deep South, but it's getting there and stuff. And there's the Spanish moss in the trees and everything feels a lot more primeval. A lot more primordial is probably a better way of saying it. And she's tapping into, again, this feeling that I think if you were to do it in colour, if you were to photograph these scenes in colour that they wouldn't have. A, they wouldn't have this wonderful tonality. They wouldn't have these deep blacks that were inky and hiding things that we may feel slightly uncomfortable about. Because of course, if you photograph in colour and have these deep blacks, any colour that's in there because it's next to a darker colour becomes more bright environment. So rather than the shadow being the main feature, which you so often find in black and white photography, you would find that the colours, the greens of the trees or the blues of the skies and stuff would start dominating. So you look at these images and you see that it's a far richer experience because once again, we're not allowing the colour to dominate. Of course, the irony with black and white photography is that we can't actually see in black and white. You know, we see the world in colour.  Now, remember when I was a student that on the list of equipment that they sent to us, there was a thing called a Ratten 90 filter. And this was actually a magical device that all of a sudden, it's been due to my untrained eyes, started showing me a world that was hidden right there in place. Much like, remember the old predator things, you know, where you put on the mask and it would go into infrared and all those sort of things. The Ratten 90 did that.  And all of a sudden, the world looked very different. And that's what I love about black and white photography. I love about photography in general, is that when you see the world for more than it is, then you start being able to make the photographs far more powerful because you're showing the viewer something that they see every day, something that they recognize in a way that impacts them differently. In photography, photographing the human figure, the torso, is hardly revolutionary, especially in black and white photography. However, I was struck by these photographs by Baba Khaji when I was researching this video because of two things. One of which is the fact that he is photographing a male figure, rather than a female figure, and that is somewhat unusual. And that lends itself, or lends the torso itself, a wiry sort of feel that is infinitely suited to this idea of tonality, this kind of roughness. And the way it's been lit is bringing out the shape and the form of the body in a way that you don't necessarily get with a female form, which is quite often portrayed as formal sort of curvaceous and soft and inviting. Whereas these forms feel a little bit harder, they feel a little bit more angry, they feel a little bit less inviting, especially when you look at some of the contortions that Baba is creating in these photographs. They are tense and they are a twisted thing which kind of, I suppose, goes quite well with that wiry feel to the figure itself. Then also putting the torso into a landscape, making it part of the landscape, but not a dominant, here I'm photographing somebody in a landscape, it's making the landscape almost the dominant and then introducing the torso. And of course with black and white, when you do this with black and white, is that you are playing tricks on the mind, that you are sort of saying, well where does the landscape start and where does the person begin or vice versa. It's very hard to do this with colour photography and that leads me neatly to the photographer who I think is probably one of the greatest exponents of black and white photography in the world today. Sebastiano Saigardo is maybe controversially for me to say this, but I don't really care. He is one of the greatest black and white photographers working today. His photographs encapsulate everything that we have talked about in this video, we have looked at the idea of tonality, of the absence of colour, allowing story to come through, of all of these things, of emotion, of feeling, of atmosphere. Just look at this photograph of all these mind workers in this open-cast mind digging gold out almost with their bare hands in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. Because this photograph is in black and white, we cannot tell within that mud and filth and horror, I think this horror is probably the right word, to where the mind ends and the people begin. These people are the mind and the mind is them. If you are not familiar with Saigardo's work then I would highly recommend you check out this video here because his mastery of black and white is unparalleled. Thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.


Bandits have again killed 10 people and abducted 33 women in seven villages in Guusou local government area in Zamfara state on Sunday. Other villages had fled to Guusou town for safety as there were no security agents within the area to combat the banditry attacks. Efforts to get comments from the commission of information al-had-i-brahim-do-sada have failed. Hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


My name is Augustin Ayatunde. I work with Erie and based at Mali Office. My background is animal science. Well, I attended this conference on the future of pastoralism in Africa here in Addis and it had me a very wonderful conference in my perspective. One, the participation is quite very amazing. You have a lot of so-called giants in pastoral studies that attended the conference and I could remember some of them that I read about their work as students now meeting them is a big opportunity. Well, in terms of taking away messages, when you talk of the future of pastoralism in Africa, the message that came out here clearly is you have different people with different inclination. There are those one that I can call the optimist that still believe there is future for them in Africa and that they are resilient based on what they have no pastoralism, they have been living in harsh environments and they have been adapting over the years and that they will keep on adapting. But then you have the story of doom and gloom, the pessimists that say, look, they can keep moving around so they need to sedentarize and because of the population no pressure, demographic pressure and the government policies around having to sedentarize them since in a way the future is not all that good for them so there is no clear cut picture but one thing that is very clear is when we talk of the future of pastoralism quite very often we cannot generalize different pastoralists in different places we adapt, we have different future and we take the case of West Africa, the pastoralists there have really managed quite well to adapt to the changing context in which they operate. For instance many pastoralists, especially the full learning of the pool in French, they have been known now to be cultivating crops for more than 30 years and the crop livestock integration there even by the pastoral system is amazing. So in a way for them they are more or less pragmatic set of people, they still keep their tradition but at the same time they take advantage of the present opportunities and I think that's where the future will lie that whatever the challenge, they take advantage of the present opportunities while at the same time they keep their tradition.