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Adam Courtney moved to Portland two years ago after 22 years in New York City. By day in the Big Apple, he worked as a real estate consultant; by night, he ran a studio that photographers and filmmakers could rent for shoots.
What set his studio apart, he says, was a preponderance of props and furniture, including six vintage couches he stacked up on a couch rack. (No, there was no forklift, he says; if someone wanted a piece of furniture, it had to be moved very carefully by people on ladders.)
“That was actually my problem in New York, was that I’m an abundance person, and so I like collecting all my stuff,” Courtney tells WW. “You own four or five, six couches, you run out of space pretty fast.”
He looked for a new city to relocate to, and found in Portland the kinds of food, music and art scenes he could enjoy as well as easier access to nature. And once he got here, he kept driving by a particular building in Kenton that he wondered about—one that seemed large enough to hold everything he’d collected over the years, one local artists could use for shoots and events. A place big enough that he wouldn’t have to buy a couch rack.
It took a while for Courtney to figure out who owned the space, he says. It turned out to be the property of Prosper Portland; he reached out to the city about renting the 5,000-square-foot space, located near The Off Beat music venue and Oregon Contemporary art gallery. He also sent out a survey to local photographers asking them what they were looking for in a creative space.
One of them, Rob Clark, had been toying with the idea of opening his own studio, and—after looking at photos of Forgotten Works Brooklyn—got in touch right away.
“I was like, I don’t think there’s a studio like this currently open, which is shocking, because in Portland, you get that vintage stuff everywhere,” says Clark, who has a background in accounting. “I was surprised that nobody was already doing it. So we met for a cup of coffee two or three times, and kind of had a good, congruent vision of what we wanted to do in terms of operating a space.”
Courtney and Clark decided to open Forgotten Works Studio as business partners last summer; they got the lease in May and officially opened in September.
To say the space is big is an understatement; Courtney says he’s had a hard time conveying the size in photos and videos. It’s also enjoyably weird. It includes a walled-off daylight studio, a cyclorama wall—a specially constructed, U-shaped wall with seamless, curved transitions between the walls and floor—and several open bays for shoots. These include a goth-tinged Victorian living room set with a black “brick” fireplace, a massive brown velvet sectional, and a wall made entirely of stuffed animals.
“I used to do photo booths at an event in New York for about five, six years,” Courtney says. “Good friends of mine ran like a party, and every time was a different theme. Costumes were required, and I would do a photo booth for each one, and the photo booth would be on theme. And one of the themes was stuffies, and so I literally just built an entire photo booth. Like I just wallpapered the walls with stuffed animals.” And that set came to Portland with him.
The daylight studio is also furnished with vintage furniture; Courtney says that in addition to the things he moved with him from New York, he and Clark love thrifting and estate sales and have sourced a lot of furniture and props from the ReBuilding Center and ReClaim It.
Photographers or filmmakers can rent one of the individual studios or bays for $65 an hour, or the whole building for $125. Forgotten Works also offers memberships for $49 a month; members still have to pay to rent space but get lower rates. (Space rental also grants access not just to furniture but props and costumes—if you need a sword, a prop gun, a carousel horse or a massive bin of dolls, Courtney can help.)
Courtney says he and Clark wanted to differentiate Forgotten Works’ business model from that of other photography and film studios in town, and he doesn’t really see them as competitors.
So far, Forgotten Works has drawn more interest from still photographers than filmmakers, though a handful of music videos have been shot there. Courtney and Clark also offer Forgotten Works as an event space, and regularly host Creative Mornings as well—a series of monthly talks sponsored by Adobe.
“I love seeing another creative person come in, take exactly what I’ve got and come up with something that looks completely different—you know, change the lighting, grab different props, different energy, and it’s just amazing to see that,” Courtney says. “That’s one of my favorite things about owning a studio, is that I get to see that constantly. If we didn’t own the studio, we’d see other photographers’ work, but you don’t get to see the process. The process is as much fun as the final result.”
