Garbage Pail kids were a series of trading cards originally released by Topps Company in 1985. Topps is well known for their long history of trading cards, mostly in the sports world, so the gross trading cards were something different for the company. The cards of course were a huge hit and started a great following. Some people still have a collection of cards, (guilty). And sometimes people still bug Netflix to get the GPK movie (which was a terrible box office flop) added to their streaming service. I mean, they have Gigli of all movies, it’s not like they’ll lose any customers by adding The Garbage Pail Kids Movie and helping me relive my childhood. And the DVD has been in my queue for like 4 years but there’s always a ‘long wait’ for it. They probably only have one copy and some jerk wad in Wisconsin or something is hoarding it. But I digress…

30 years later, this incredibly well done photo series takes a look at where the Garbage Pail Kids are now, all grown up and getting through daily life as adults.
St Louis based photographer Brandon Voges explains how this came to be:

About a year ago, my friend Jake Houvenagle (a very talented local Art Director and Designer) and I (Brandon Voges, commercial lifestyle photographer at Bruton Stroube Studios) went to lunch to hang out, talk ideas, and drink good beer. In the middle of our conversation, Jake tells me about this concept he has to shoot Garbage Pail Kids, 30 years later…as real people, in real situations, with backstories of how their lives have played out. I then proceeded to crap my pants, tell him of his genius and get super excited. I was a huge fan of Garbage Pail Kids and had a large collection as a kid. The idea of revisiting them, thinking through their story and shooting these portraits was a dream. We had to make this happen.
From there, we picked cards we thought would be good candidates and squeezed these shoots in when we could. It took us until now to get them all finished -shooting them in studio and on location around St. Louis. These are our first 6, with more in the works. This project has been a big, awesome, hilarious collaboration between a lot of fun folks…art direction, photography, retouching, writing, production, and more (see the list of credits below). Big thanks to everyone involved, it’s been a blast so far!

And now, onto the show…

Continue Reading →