So I’ve always wanted to make films. And now I have the freedom to try it. This may end up a spectacular failure. But since all failure is just success … but a lot shittier, I’m looking forward to it.

Inquisitor

So tell me what’s going on with this cinema thing.

Aspirant

Well, it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. I think it fits me the best.

Inquisitor

Have you done it before?

Aspirant

I helped out a friend with a music video thing once.

Inquisitor

Did you like it?

Aspirant

No.

Inquisitor

Right. Did you not like the whole thing, or …

Aspirant

Well I didn’t like how messy it all was.

Inquisitor

Well, everything is like that right? I mean writing a novel is a fucked up process of looking either at a blank page every morning, or looking at the pile of crap you excreted yesterday and trying to clean it up.

Aspirant

Yeah, so I don’t know if I’ll like it or not.

Inquisitor

It means working with people. Working really closely with people.

Aspirant

I can work with people … as long as they do what I tell them to do.

Inquisitor

Right. So what happens to the photography thing?

Aspirant

It stays. It’s really important to me. It’s already taught me so much about seeing visually. About converting the world into a flat plane with edges which conveys some kind of feeling.

Inquisitor

Well, it’s going to be hard to be first rate at both.

Aspirant

I know. If the cinema thing works out. If I can do the work, and I look forward to doing the work, once I get up to some basic competence, then it will be primary. If not, then I’m more than happy to dedicate myself to photography.

Inquisitor

It’s a really different thing to photography you know. You’ll have to write a lot.

Aspirant

I have been writing a lot.

Inquisitor

No, but it’s different. You know those posts that you put off, that you dislike revising? Well it’s that kind of work all the time.

Aspirant

I’ve got a desire to craft something more perfect. This first step has been to learn to work, to learn to produce. Over and over again.

Inquisitor

Are you done with that? Have you learnt it all?

Aspirant

Of course not, stop being a bitch. What’s up with you today?

Inquisitor

I don’t know, I don’t like Autumn.

Aspirant

Is it Autumn already? I though you didn’t like Spring?

Inquisitor

It was the first day yesterday. And no, I don’t like spring either. So, I know you’ve always loved films, but loving it is not the same as doing it, you know that.

Aspirant

You’re repeating yourself.

Inquisitor

I mean, it’s not as easy to get into film. I think you’d be good at it. The stuff you’ve been writing recently, a lot of that has been blurring into fictional stuff. I mean this conversation you’re right up, it’s dialogue.

Aspirant

Yeah, well I find it easy to write dialogue. I like how it takes all those battling, cantankerous bits inside you and lets them battle it out. I like how you can get new knowledge out of it. Letting the characters take charge, run wild, or whatever.

Inquisitor

Yeah, yeah. Well that’s good, that’s a good start.

Aspirant

But you know I don’t want to make talky films. I don’t think they respect the medium, and really allow for the kind of truths that can be found say visually, or through sound.

Inquisitor

You were saying that a couple of months ago about photography.

Aspirant

Right, right. I mean, it was one of the most important things I’ve learnt about art I think. I mean the medium, really getting the medium. I think I’m only getting that with photography right now.

Inquisitor

Aren’t you going to see that through to the end?

Aspirant

Well, it’s going to be continuing. I mean, I think I’ll be taking pictures forever, no matter what I do. It’s an about looking at the world intensely and that’s crucial right?

Inquisitor

It’s quieter form though. I mean, you don’t have to talk so much with it.

Aspirant

Well, I actually saw that as a weakness.

Inquisitor

Oh photography?

Aspirant

No, I mean of me. To get very, very good at it, you have to work so, so hard at noticing the visual feeling in the world. Not the verbal complexity, or motives of people, or the feel of the breeze, or the gradual movement of bodies in motion.

Inquisitor

But the best photos hint at all of that stuff.

Aspirant

Right, they hint at that stuff visually. I feel that constraint too strongly.

Inquisitor

Do you? Or is it that you just didn’t try hard enough. That you didn’t want to put in the ten years of lonely walking around to cultivate that visual thinking.

Aspirant

I don’t think so. That’s what I’m doing now. That is such an interesting problem that there’s no way I’d let it go. You know, avoid it. And I think the best film makers. Guys like Antonioni, Hou Hsien Hsiao, or Wong Kar Wai, or especially Ozu, I mean …

Inquisitor

Right right. They pack in visual weight right? I mean from their visual arrangements meaning is made.

Aspirant

Right. You know all that stuff about the silent period, I think there’s gold in the way those directors conveyed meaning. Not the facile hand waving, leg kicking comedy stuff, that’s still necessary, but say Fritz Lang and his dark visual hallucinations.

Inquisitor

Yeah. But I’m worried about all the other stuff. You know getting money to make films, distributing and stuff. I know you hate that kind of stuff. You know, people …

Aspirant

Well, I gotta get over that. I can do it, when I care about the thing. I think that’s what brings people together and allows them to deal with an asshole like me. If they are committed to the thing. I don’t think I’ve really been committed to anything without abandon before.

Inquisitor

Without abandon? Women?

Aspirant

Listen, why are you being so negative about all this anyway? I mean, that’s what this year’s all about for me right? I’m supposed to on this experimental acid trip right? Break free of the manacles of slavery.

Inquisitor

Well, it’s about focus right? I don’t want to see you getting lost in something else. You’ve been doing great at this photography thing. You’re photos are looking great. And you were making some theoretical breakthroughs too.

Aspirant

Well, all that doesn’t go away.

Inquisitor

I know. I know you can build of that. But it’s still a fucking risk right?

Aspirant

That’s what I’m liking about it.

Inquisitor

Really?

Aspirant

Well no, of course not. Who the fuck really likes change and putting themselves at risk? It’s a necessary lie. But I have to try this. Death to regrets.

Inquisitor

So it’s a forgone conclusion?

Aspirant

Well, I don’t need to do what I needed to do before.

Inquisitor

You mean cutting your past life clean off?

Aspirant

Yeah. That’s been done, I’m much freer now. This time it needs to be a transition. I want to make sure I get my photography published or in an exhibition or something.  I have to make sure I continue to produce on that. I still want to execute on the Australia thing. But I’ll incorporate video into that. I think it’s a good place to develop an aesthetic out there. Make some stories with Anja. You know boy girl stuff, or boy dragon, whatever.

Inquisitor

Well, I really think it can only result in good things. I mean, you’ll find out pretty fast if you like it or not, and knowing you you’ll do the critical apparatus building so you can judge if what you’re making is good or not.

Aspirant

I think it’s easier to tell if a film is good or not. I mean, you know, at the most basic level. Is it interesting or not.

Inquisitor

You really have no respect for photography do you?

Aspirant

That’s not true.

Inquisitor

Well, you always seem so …

Aspirant

Well I’m embarrassed to be a photographer. But that’s still a problem I need to work through. A photographer is a pariah in a way. Or maybe a piranha. I mean, they are these judges that are walking around pointing out the significance of a moment, or of something, or a person you know.

Inquisitor

No one likes to be judged.

Aspirant

But I love it too you know. I love the fact that anyone can pick up a camera and become the photographer. It is the ultimate testing ground for the ego. I mean, you’re competing against everyone, and skill, I mean skill appears over time, through editing, through inter-relations and juxtopositions.

Inquisitor

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Aspirant

Me either. I mean to say, at the top level of photography are some of the most sophisticated artist who’ve ever been. And brave. You know, really brave people.

Inquisitor

I know how much you like courage. So what? You’re going to make these ponderous films about love and silence and god and stuff? Bergman?

Aspirant

Bergmann fucking Fellini. That’s my angle.

Inquisitor

Well, you better get started writing.

Aspirant

I’ve got some plans.

Inquisitor

What are you going to do about the technical aspects? I mean how are you going to learn the whole editing thing, and the camera and so on. I know it’s all minor stuff, but you have to do it.

Aspirant

Yeah. That’s going to be a bit of a bitch at the start. I’ll see what Wesley is up to. If I can help him out with stuff. I’ve basically got a four to six months to figure that stuff out and I’ve got some money for some shitty gear. But, it’ll work out. I’ll have to get a job I think when I get back.

Inquisitor

How about school?

Aspirant

Nope. It’s tempting. It would be a nice way to get a job and so on, but I want to do it a different way. I don’t want to go the school route. I’d rather borrow that money and spend it on gear and the time to make stuff. I have to get into making stuff as soon as I can.

Inquisitor

Well, how about now?  I mean why not take some video around Paris?

Aspirant

I think I will. But I want to get the photo stuff finished as well right? I want to make sure those two sets are well edited, with all the things I’ve learnt in the library by the time I get back.

Inquisitor

Well, don’t make excuses.

Aspirant

I won’t.

Inquisitor

Here, have a toke of this you serious fuck.

• cinema
• essay
• dialogue

Posted 9 months ago

Photo by Callahan

• Finished off the Friedlander book’s opening essay. Relief. Galassi is not super fun to read. Tosser.
• Good end though: “‘Incessantly’ is if anything an understatement. Having long ago made the labours of discipline into the instincts of habit, and having still earlier obliterated whatever barrier might once have existed between his thirst for experience and his compulsion to make pictures, Friedlander pursues his profligate passion with undiminished pleasure. The consequent outpouring of photographs can seem as inexhaustible as it is fascinating, but so is the world.”
• Saw that Szarkowski had written the introduction to Harry Callahan’s book. Reading that.
• Callahan took up photography at the late age of 26. The film camera was too expensive apparently.
• Having a quick look at Callahan’s photos you can see he must have had the shortest attention span in the entire world. He prefigured a lot of stuff though, his pictures have drastically different looks. Prefigured some of my close up work, but probably with a zoom, the pictures are flat and the detail is not there. But his aesthetic was very clean usually.
• “In the same year he made his photograph of reeds in water ‘Detriot, 1941’. It seems to Callahan that he was as good then as he would ever be.”
• “It is well known that genius has reasons of its own, and that artists are not produced by a standard method. But is also known that artists are not produced by auto-synthesis, out of vapours and wishes, and that new art grows out of old art.” I’m not so sure about this. Initially I thought he was going to go down the deliberate practice path, but no.
• “An artist’s starting point is his understanding of the Tradition—a great floating thieves’ market of parts and schemes, made up of remembered works, dead and living rivals, cafe conversations, museums, and credenda.
• During his novitiate, the artist constructs from these sources a private, imperfect, more or less serviceable theory concerning what has been achieved so far, which serves as a bench mark from which his own advances are measured.
• “Yet in spite of all this perfection the pictures were not sterile but full of force; they were machines that worked.”
• He went against the grain of concerned work that was being done then.
• “In a letter to Todd Webb, he noted that the idea of concerned photography seemed to be attracting considerable attention and support, and added, ‘too bad for unconcerned slobs like you or me.” I wrote something very similar to friends in the past: “look on the web, and on video at all these concerned photographers, writers, activists and I balk. They seem so simple, so naive, so unsophisticated. I can’t help but see a significant, and valid history for poverty, conflict etc. I can’t make the leap to wanting to make it better, or believing it should necessarily be different.”
• S. goes on to say that it is not enough for a picture to have content, that content must be tautly held in a web of form, otherwise it falls flat to the ground. (My metaphor).
• “Callahan did somehow arrive quickly at the sure knowledge that the function of his own work was to describe not the public issues of the great wold, but the interior shape of his private experiences. As a position, it was presumably neither better nor worse than any other, except to the degree that it give energy to talent.”
• Deeply affected by Adams’ Surf Sequence.
• “The cool and distanced eloquence of Callahan’s work is presumably not only a formal matter. His pictures do not describe but embody a world of moral value, a world aspiring to perfect order.” The perfectly opposite method of Winogrand, but to the same end?
• Ah, he was a committed Christian who became an agnostic in college. Left a hole in him though. I wonder how much my loss of faith has motivated my faith in art. But it was always so.
• “Shaw’s figure suggests the quality of  blind, intuitive need, and there is in the work of most exceptional photographers, and surely in Callahan’s, a sense of compulsion, a need to know the world through photographing it.”
• “But no important photographer since Eugene Atget has shown less inclination than Callahan to theorize about his medium or his own work.”
• Callahan himself: “It’s the subject matter that counts. I’m interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can’t always see. Wanting to see more makes you row as a person and growing makes you want to show more of life around you. …
• I photograph continuously, often without a good idea or strong feelings. During this time the photos are nearly all poor but I believe they develop my seeing and help later in other photos. I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.”
• “The ambience of the Institute of Design was in fact a shock to Callahan, since the place was filled with people who liked his work and seemed to understand it.” Went against his artist as lonely hero idea.
• Callahan: “It has been very hard for me to teach here at the school. I am so completely non-verbal. Photography seems so simple to me that there doesn’t seem to be much to say.”
• “Like many powerfully motivated artists, Callahan is not naturally gregarious. … One senses in Callahan a large capacity for privacy—for an interior life unshared even by those closest to him.”  The artist nourishes himself. “Nevertheless, friends are important even to the most self-sufficient of artists—important for their ideas, for the comfort of their support, and for their companionship, when work is impossible or intolerable.
• His friends: Hugo Weber (an intellectual painter), Mies van der Rohe (sometime drinking companion), Aaron Siskind (eloquent photographer), and Steichen. S. says that none of these really affected Callahan’s art.
• Callahan: “Beethoven for instance—his early music sounded like Mozart, and the he worked, the son of a bitch—he didn’t wait a year and write another Mozart, he just kept working until it blasted out, and contributed something altogether new.” Work.
• He is nourished by boundaries, conceptual, or geographic, or technical.
• On the heads stuff that he did: “The technical problems were formidable. To stop motion of the subjects at such close range required a much faster shutter speed than the film of the day allowed in the shadowed city street. Furthermore, the problem of focusing accurately on a close-up moving subject would be almost impossibly difficult. To further complicate the issue, Callahan would also be a pedestrian, photographing as he walked, in order to avoid drawing attention to himself.” Fuck! Welcome to my world! He had to push his film speed significantly, my work is a continuation of this.
• “On the mechanical level of athletic skill, the problem was perhaps no more difficult than wing-shooting woodcock. On an artistic level, the instantaneous, intuitive decisions required were comparable perhaps to those of musical improvisation.”
• A lot of his skyscaper work prefigures Michael (what’s his name)’s work in Hong Kong and Chicago.
• Callahan worked in camera as much as he could and would tenaciously solve problem after technical problem.
• “And on occasion he refers to the greatest problem of all—the difficulty of waiting confidently for the next really good pictures: “I still am very tormented about my photography—it hasn’t been good for a long time. There is still some faith laying around somewhere though.”
• “It is the artist’s faith that discoveries made on such specialised journeys of exploration are somehow consonant with the hidden structures of larger designs.”
• “Most (not all) great photographers have loved photography, and have, more to the point, trusted it—have been willing to follow it some considerable distance on faith, intuitively persuaded that the patterns of its mechanical logic are instructive, elegant, and not yet exhausted.” Winogrand did too. Do I? Write an essay on why I hate photography.
• Callahan: “I am sure of one thing: I want to photograph. I want to search around and find out what will motivate me to photograph—I mean to make a  real photograph. I could go to Cape Cod and look down at the sea; I could stand in the middle of Providence and photograph the people, photograph their faces, their arms, their legs—I have just got to figure out what works. If I were to decide I was going to photograph the sea, and that would be it, that would be ridiculous. I mean I would have to go photograph the sea for awhile, and if that didn’t work. I would have to go photograph something else. So you can’t make those decisions. It’s not in your hands.”
• His pictures are good, but of things that I just can’t take seriously.
• Only photographed women with his close in shots. They are good.
• Did some cool collages.
• Lots of kind of interesting double exposures.
• Some things very Bauhaus inspired, in the mode.

• reading notes
• essay
• szarkowksi
• harry callahan

Posted 9 months ago

It was an Autumn morning in New York. The Artist is half an hour early. He has found a spot right in the middle of the bleak cafe he likes and sits looking towards the door. He is dressed in a black t-shirt, black pants, black socks, and black shoes. Later he tells me that he is wearing quick-dry underwear which are black. He says they dry in a hotel room within the hour. He has on black plastic glasses and behind those glasses are stiff brown eyes, which throughout our meeting, focused on me with firmness. His hair was closely cropped, and black.

Inquisitor

Sorry I’m late.

Artist

You aren’t. I’m early. Usually, I like being on time. Not late, not early. But I wanted to be in the space, and get used to thinking in here before you came. Educators suggest studying in conditions as close to the exam as possible, so I …

Inquisitor

Is this an exam?

Artist

Not for you. But for me it’s … I want to make sure I say things in the right way. You already know, but this is my first interview. And, sometimes … well, I just want to get the nuances across to you.

Inquisitor

Sure, but I don’t want you to feel …

Artist

I’m not … stressed. If that’s what you mean.

Inquisitor

Well, I don’t want you to think that we won’t have time to talk things  out. We’ve about 4,000 words in the layout for next month, so … we can take our time about things.

Artist

Be gentle. I’m pretty hungry so I’ve already ordered, did you want to get something?

Inquistor

Nope, I’ve already eaten. I’ve a daughter who stayed over on the weekend so I’m a little tired of eating out. Ok, you live around here right?

Artist

Yeah, about two blocks away.

Inquisitor

And you’re liking it?

Artist

Yeah, I think so. I’ve got a lot of time on my hands at the moment. So, you know, I’m thinking a little too much. And I haven’t really figured out how to take pictures in New York, so I’m just walking around a lot, and thinking in cycles rather than in a straight line.

Inquisitor

Yeah. Well I’ve been feeling like that a little prepping for today. I mean there’s all this writing on your blog, and it’s great to have that there, but it’s a lot to get through, and, well you won’t mind me saying, but there’s contradictions in there about all sorts of things. I guess you’re trying to work it out yourself right?

Artist

Yeah. It’s really a scratch pad rather than a codex.

Inquisitor

Sure. Of course, there are a lot of positions in there that seem pretty stable for you but why don’t you tell me a little about the blog itself, who reads it?

Artist

Mainly ex-girlfriends. And friends who care. I had a girl I didn’t know email me the other day and say she was obsessed with the blog and my photos. That happens once in a while …

Inquistor

Ah, fame comes knocking …

Artist

Well she wasn’t from the New Yorker.

Inquisitor

I guess I ask about the blog, because as you know, a lot of artist don’t really like talking about what they do, and certainly it’s rare to have such a public account of an artist’s education.

Artist

Well, a lot of artist’s have kept Daybooks and so on, journals that are full of this stuff. I was reading Weston’s writings the other day and a lot of it felt really close to what I was trying to do.

Inquisitor

Yes, but that’s really more of a inward looking, diary type stuff …

Artist

Well, this ain’t the 1920s. The private, I think that has really been obliterated. And unsurprisingly by the person themselves. No one forces people to reveal themselves just about to puke at a friends party, but people do. People want to explain themselves. But, you know, people still control their images really strongly, although they are revealing more of it. The looseness hasn’t mean that the knot of the self, or self-representation has come unloose. I think sometimes that the strength with which we can present ourselves has actually become firmer. People now have a more expressive scale with which they can talk about themselves. They can say, well look, I like to party hard on the weekend. But then you do a search on them and they have this linkedin profile which is all very serious, and it’s about networks, and where they studied, where they work and so on.

Inquisitor

So you’re blog is an attempt to control your image.

Artist

Well, when you think about it. If I just wanted a scratchpad like I said before, well why do I need to publish this stuff for everyone on the Internet? And go and publish this stuff on Facebook. I mean obviously I’m trying to communicate to people.

Inquisitor

Sure. And I guess that explains the structure that’s slowly grown on the blog. I mean you have these essays and reviews, and photo notes and stuff.

Artist

Yeah, I think that’s grown organically, it helps me to organise things too as well as maybe make it easy for other people. But you know, not a lot of people come to the site. There’s like 20 visitors a day on average or something.

Inquisitor

Well, many artists have had less that number looking at their thoughts in the past.

Artist

Yeah, I feel that it’s a bit one way though. I mean I don’t allow comments and stuff, and people just consume the stuff, if at all. Back to your question about writing so much, and really a lot of it is about being an artist, or how I’m trying to become a better artist rather than explaining my work, It’s not straight-forward for me.

Inquisitor

You mean, it’s difficult writing that stuff?

Artist

No, that’s not hard, It’s all the stuff I’m thinking about and often it’s just a recounting of what I’ve done that day, so it’s not hard to think through, but what I mean is I’m conflicted about saying so much. That I might be killing the golden goose or something.

Inquisitor

Right, too much analysis and not enough doing.

Artist

Exactly.

Inquisitor

Well there is a lot of stuff there …

Artist

Yeah, I put up motives and plans and sometimes analysis and it’s revealing but I guess I’ve always been like that. I could never keep stuff hidden, if I get excited then I’m excited and I want to tell everyone.

Inquisitor

Well, it doesn’t seem to have hurt your work. You seem to have been very productive over the past year.

Artist

Yeah, well. There’s always the fear. I guess the other thing that I worry about is, well, shouldn’t I be putting in all this effort that I’m putting into explaining myself and what I’ve been doing, well, wouldn’t that be better put into taking pictures, experimenting out on the streets. And really, that’s something that makes really frightens me. I look at people like Winogrand, or Friedlander and they just, they were just always out there all the time. Or it seems like that from what you read about them.

Inquisitor

Well, Winogrand probably was, but that may have been because he needed to be, because of whatever difficulties he had with … you know … not being ok with himself and the world. But Friedlander has spent a lot of time researching, playing around, or making all those books his made. I mean, if that’s what you feel like doing … I think Friedlander has like 3 kids too.

Artist

Yeah, you’re right. If I enjoy it I should just do it right? But I, I distrust myself you know, I’ve got to make sure I’m working all the time.

Inquisitor

Does that tattoo on your arm just say ‘work’?

Artist

Yeah.

Inquisitor

That’s pretty undramatic! For an artist especially.

Artist

Is it? It ain’t for me. It’s the most serious, dramatic thing I think about. Am I working or not? Or am I just jacking off you know? I mean thinking is great, you need it, but without the hard test of reality, without the corrective of trying out your ideas for real, or making them real, well you can make lots of mistakes and not know it. You, one, don’t produce much, and second, what you do produce is not the best it could be.

Inquisitor

Right, sure. I guess the blog, all that writing, is kind of a test of the ideas?

Artist

Yes and no. I think it’s a test, but It’s not the best test. I wrote somewhere that an idea is worth nothing if it isn’t written down somewhere. But even when it is, it’s only worth 2 cents. You really have to go in and try that idea in the real world to see if it works, is right. And it sounds obvious, but that’s what separates people who make good stuff, to those who don’t. You’re really in a small minority if you go and actually try out an idea for real.

Inquisitor

But, see, I’ve been really enjoying some of your writing … as writing. I mean if the writing you do is treated as something that isn’t just incidental, but something worthwhile and publishable well, then maybe it’s worth spending time on.

Artist

Sure, but what I worry about is the maybe roughly 5000 photographers who’ve published professional books, and who haven’t made it. You know who haven’t joined the 50 or maximum 100 or so greats. I don’t want to be in the 5000. I really want to do something significant and something new. The way I put it to myself is that I want to be in an encyclopaedia, with a big article.

Inquisitor

But which encyclopaedia? I mean many of the 5000 are in the photography encyclopaedias.

Artist

<laugs> Yeah, right. Well I’d like to be in a general encyclopaedia, but the minimum is an encyclopaedia on art. I wanted to say something else about the blog. I think it’s greatest benefit has been that it has made me practice being regularly productive. I mean it’s been a great challenge to keep it alive, to keep on feeding it, and that’s brought about some good habits in me. It’s not perfect, often I don’t revise things at all before I put it up, but you know, I do put a lot of stuff up and that’ll come in handy.

Inquisitor

I agree. I’ve rarely met artists who I can find out so much about before I even meet them. Nearly find out too much about! I mean, all the very best artists think hard about what they do, but you don’t usually get to see that. I hope we do start seeing more of that. It’ll make my job easier for one.

Artist

That was an important consideration for me.

Inquisitor

<laughs>

Artist

Well, I’m probably contradicting what I said before, but it’s true. You know, I’m ambitious, and I think I really want people to know that there is intelligence, and hard work, or some kind of meaning behind what I’m doing. If I’m really honest with myself, I want them to know that I’m serious, or ambitious as well.

Inquisitor

Right, but you know, how many people are going to go through your blog. I mean, when you make a submission or whatever. I’m not trying to be aggressive, but you’re still pretty unknown.

Artist

Well, I won’t be after this right?

Inquisitor

I wouldn’t bet on it!

Artist

Right. Well, a couple of things. As I was saying before, I’m really in two minds about how much I should be analysing my work, and then how much I should be talking about it. On the other hand is if I do talk about it, although what’s on the blog is really like a river flowing, and things kind of just float away, well just the process of writing is really helpful. I mean, I like thinking on the page because bad thinking, or muddled thinking really becomes obvious on the page because you know writing is so assertive, you are saying something. And you can test things out to see if you really understand them, and to see where you are contradicting yourself or whatever. I mean, the problems you have to solve often result from either incomplete information, or some kind of contradiction. And I think the process of writing really brings those things to the surface.

Inquisitor

Of course the question you must be thinking of, well, I know you’ve studied Winogrand very closely, and he was, famously, very gnomic, or reserved about making statements about what he was doing …

Artist

Yes, but it wasn’t that he wasn’t thinking about what he was doing. I think he had really got to the heart of the problems he was dealing with. And that’s no mean feat, because you know, he was dealing with some of the most subtle problems in art, and some unique problems in photography. He was really trying to capture moments which said things so quietly, and which were so elusive, that they were nearly not there. So he … I think he … well one, he knew that it was hard to put into words what he was trying to do, because it was just a faint feeling, and of course, he didn’t want to pin down his work to any one thing and make it easy to categorise or explain and kill it. I think once you explain something you’ve simplified it right? You’ve taken away some of the magic of it. Also, I think what people say about him not wanting to, as I was saying before about killing the golden goose.

Inquisitor

Right, right. But that’s a little dishonest isn’t it?

Artist

Maybe it is. But so what? Who says we’re obligated to tell the truth? To explain ourselves? I think at the moment, because nothing big has happened for me yet, you know I’m at that phase where I need to get myself out there. Tell people about what I do. So, I think a lot of artists have done that: initially explained themselves until they don’t need to. Because I think that it’s best not to, but only when you have people who will try to do that for you. People who care enough already about what you’ve made, or trust what you’ve made to spend time trying to work out what new thing you are trying to say is. But before you have that, well, you’ve got to bang your own cymbals, no matter how much you may hate cymbals.

Inquisitor

Right. So what do you think about this killing the golden goose thing? I mean, that too much analysis subverts the creative alchemy to use another metaphor.

Artist

Well, I’m not sure. I know that when you’re in the midst of shooting you’re thinking, if it can be called thinking, about completely other things. I think thinking beforehand can hurt, if that thinking is bad thinking. I mean, I don’t think you should go into a day of shooting saying that this is it, this is your subject and that’s it. Sometimes you have to, but it shouldn’t be primary in your mind. You can really … one, make it hard to start whatever you are doing, and two, you really do close yourself off to other opportunities. But I think the key thing that Winogrand meant when he said he took pictures of things to see ‘what they looked liked’ as pictures is that photography was a way for him to find new knowledge. And I think that’s really important to creating significant work, or new work. If you just go in there with ideas, well, ‘I want to capture this kind of face’ for example, well you’re just going to confirm your motive. I don’t think you’ll learn anything new. And most of the time you’ll be saying something obvious, something which isn’t new, because well, you probably heard or read about something which has formed your view, and you know, that’s a little boring. Really, what was so great about Winogrand is that he discovered new, wonderfully delicate knowledge about the world in his photographs. Knowledge that had never been shown in that way before. Because, you know, he didn’t push it.

Inquisitor

Well as an artist aren’t you supposed to do that? ‘Push it.’ Impose your personality into, you know, what he called the transformation that happens?

Artist

No, that should come automatically, intuitively. You don’t have to work at imposing who you are, you already are who you are. You have to ‘discover’ who you are with your work. And, you just have to work at producing. What you produce will already be coloured by who you are. And the more interesting you are, or have made yourself, the more finely you see the world, the more depth you see in it, well the deeper your work will be.

Inquisitor

But how about editing? I mean, surely that is the most analytical of tasks. You’re there by yourself looking and choosing images which say what you want.

Artist

But listen to what Winogrand had to say about that. He said that he looks for tension, or energy in the pictures. Now these are nearly ‘technical’ terms, very abstract terms. He doesn’t talk about meanings at all! He just talks about the pictures. Are they interesting pictures? Does the picture make you want to look at it? Does it hold your interest, and does it have a strong feeling about it? Those are the clues. Not the answer but the clues. This is all so that he can discover a photographic kind of knowledge. I think this is why he was so against set up imagery, or anything that clouded the clarity of the lens, because he felt that that was really heavy handed, that by allowing for so much of the artist’s intent you were going to end up with something banal. I think he believed that the consciousness, and really these are my terms, is so affected by what is said in the media, in the papers, by what’s going on, that it takes on the boring, simple, clear ideas that are peddled there.

Inquisitor

And so, he felt that the unconscious, to use your terms, that essence of who he was would reveal the truth …

Artist

You’re nearly there I think. I don’t think that he thought it would reveal the truth, but his truth. That if he could photograph the world enough, and without any agenda, well that he would find out more about himself. And by gaining that knowledge he would have something firmer about who he was, that he would feel less helpless about why he was here in this world.

Inquisitor

But, is that going to far? I mean he used to say that he just loved the process of shooting because he could forget about himself.

Artist

That’s right, I think it was a bit of both. Just getting lost in the act is great. But it’s great because I think he also felt so at harmony with who he was when he was shooting, this totally receptive being, the clearest any human being has ever been … like, that’s what’s so important about photography as an art form. It means that you have to put yourself into the world. And since you are out there in the world, you have to learn how to deal with it. Some go in and they have agendas, or visual or theoretical histories and they try to impose themselves on the moment. But that was too rhetorical for Winogrand. He saw that photography by being such a clear medium, allows us to see things that words can’t describe, feelings that may be so subtle, or so detailed that words and consciously put together statements cannot stretch that far. I think that was his great discovery (or maybe it was what he learnt from Atget). And I think that’s what Szarkowki meant in his essay when he says that he lived within his art. He really lived, gained knowledge of the world through the camera. Not for any reasons of worldly ambition, but the barest reason for why we make art at all, to find out who we are.

Inquisitor

Do you see that as your mission?

Artist

After this conversation, yes, I do.

Inquisitor

Ok. Listen, I think this is going very well, but we will have to do this in parts, I’m only a quarter of the way into what I wanted to talk to you about. How would you feel about continuing this over a two or three sessions?

Artist

That isn’t a problem for me. Could I read the transcript of what we talked about today?

Inquisitor

That’s not a problem. I’ll have it done by midday tomorrow and maybe we can meet in the afternoon.

Artist

Sure. Here at 3 then.

Inquisitor

Right.

• essay
• interview

Posted 9 months ago

Photo by Unknown

The Pompeidou centre library is truly wonderous. The photography section is the largest I’ve seen and the tables, and stuff is great. There is wireless internet but it is like owning a temperamental ass, it does what it wants, and only works part of the day. So many attractive girls in the art section. They all seem very wary of me though. They must know that I’m writing an essay on them.

• Had a look at some of Edward Weston’s daybooks. It’s always such a shock of recognition looking at the writings of another artist. You feel like you’re reading the diaries of a twin brother. You don’t feel exactly the same way, but you’re writing about the same things. He bitches a lot about Steiglitz. Whereas I would have rejected his work out of hand before I came to Europe, I can see the good in it now. And I can see the intelligence. Perhaps instead of wanting meaning in a work what I really want and appreciate is personality, daring, and intelligence. Shock! That’s what I desire from people in life too. He was defensive about his subject matter. But rightly so, it’s great that he did that work. Next I’ll start liking Steichen and Minor White! I get so much from looking at the older, deader masters. I really am fucking competitive. I didn’t really know that. No, really I didn’t.
• Galassi on Friedlander: “He subsequently continued his self-assigned tutorial in the rich collection that slumbered there. “I was interested to know what had been done,” he explains matter-of-factly, as if any young photographer would do the same. But this was unusual behaviour. Even today, when most aspiring artist-photographers attend graduate school (in part to acquire the credentials that will allow them to earn a living by teaching the next generation of aspirants), only a few take it upon themselves to study photography’s past so avidly.”
• “The Leica’s thirty-six-exposure roll of film is just as important as its negligible size and weight; and a patient review of the contact sheet is as fundamental to the art as any number of hours spent on the streets.” Would Winogrand agree? Probably.
• Freidlander. Dense. But only visually. Winogrand was dense with happenings.
• Evans’ writings are strewn around half forgotten magazines and mouldy out of print books. I must find them. The cunt was a razor.
• Szarkowski in the New Documents text: ‘In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach to more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it.Their work betrays a sympathy—almost an affection—for the imperfections and frailties of society. They like the real world, in spite of it’s terrors, as the source of all wonder and fascination and value—no less precious for being irrational.’ Fuck I have to read everything ever written by Szarkowski before he dies. I have never seen someone who can see art so CLEARLY!
• Awesome that his first book was just all self-portraits. Fucking sweet. How would it look now with Stephen having delivered curries from a gallery? Still it’s funny and things like that need to be done. But looking at the actual pictures, I don’t think the book was frivolous. Preceded that shallow Sherman.
• Paul Strand also went off to make films and then came back to photography.

• reading notes
• essay

Posted 10 months ago

It is the ambitious photographer’s job to find, define, redefine, configure and reconfigure the symbolism present in the world. The photographer must continue the job of Adam but go further in naming things not just in and of themselves but as either something new, or more significantly, to give it a new character in relation to something else. Perhaps to everything else.

Take a tree and see a ghost. Photograph it as a ghost and you’ve created a new symbol whereby the world is now full of green and brown ghosts that grow and watch over our fields and fences. The ur-symbol has been reconfigured and that reconfiguration changes all instances of that symbol, and also adds new meaning to juxtapositions of that symbol with something else, like a field or a fence.

This truth is central to understanding how a photographer creates work beyond the first level of the obvious meaning. This second level intra-meaning can appear obviously on the surface of a picture itself but often results in trite, and cliché images. Not always, but often. There is more opportunity of reconfiguration in the spaces between images, that is, in the interplay between a set of pictures. Robert Frank’s work is an excellent example of a consistent reconfiguration of symbols according to a idee fixe. With The Americans however, he was able to reconfigure symbols within many of the photos themselves as well as producing meaning between the images, as well as holistically. Bravo, Robert Frank.

For a photographer, I’m not sure how feasible it is to consciously attempt this kind of reconfiguration. Rather, I think it is something that first, comes out of the character and personality of the photographer, and second, if it can be consciously manipulated at all, can be most easily done in the slower process of editing rather than the whirlwind battle of shooting.

A charge may be laid that, well aren’t you just giving a fancy name to telling a coherent story? No, what I’m talking about is telling a deeper story by not just using the meaning of pictures at their face value, which you do have to do of course, but finding and using deeper symbols amongst separate pictures and in-between large number of pictures to say consistently what you want to say.

Atget is a master of this in his later years. Perhaps it is best done over decades rather than mere years. I think this idea is useful in studying photographers like Winogrand and Evans who’s work’s significance or coherence often come from a consistent feeling. Often, this kind of symbol reconfiguration manifests as a feeling for the work, or the photographer. And the best photographer will engender the strongest, most consistent feeling amongst his viewers. It means that he has grasped, perhaps intuitively, his personal symbolic vocabulary, and has learnt the appropriate syntax.

Why do I feel like I’m writing bullshit? I will state the what I’m trying to say as simply as I can say it: there are symbols in the world, a fence can be a restraint to freedom, or a protective cacoon for instance. A photographer can create greater depth in his work by being aware of these symbols, which are often quirks of his own personality, in individual pictures but more importantly in the way he selects and orders pictures, and for the work as a whole. Now this isn’t new stuff, photographer and image makers have been doing this for centuries, but the number of images presented in photography and presented as a whole thing gives photography the unique potential to say something with symbols consistent throughout a set of images rather than singles. Done, good. I’m really sure this is not a new idea in art history. New to me though, and useful for the Twilight edit.

• editing
• sets
• symbols
• wank?
• essay

Posted 10 months ago

The conundrum in art now is that the most bizarre is the most acceptable. The crowd and the Art Industry likes nothing better from their high art than to be shocked and horrified. They are titillated by the rudeness of it, the incomprehensibility. Of course they pretend to be in on it all and barely raise an eyebrow. Ever since their mean jokes on the Impressionists backfired, they are quite happy to be the butt of every joke from every upstart artist who pays the necessary $100,000 requested at the best art schools. The public have learnt their lesson.

But we artists have not. We have become fat and lazy. Ok, thin and lazy. Without any map but our own intuitions, we’ve lost our way. As Dave Chappelle says of his brethren after the acquittal of OJ Simpson, the blacks of America, we’ve celebrated with too much gusto! Now it is embarrassing for an artist to talk of meaning or of restraint. It is taboo to talk of religion, man’s desperate search for meaning, or love, or beauty. It is not so everywhere, but it feels like it is so anywhere that matters.

Because the thing with an in-joke is, that people who aren’t in on it, or have the ambition to create a definition of ‘in’ with them at the very centre will be out to destroy you. And that effort isn’t hard with the kind of art that has become prevalent, because they are a minor anomalous offshoot from the central purpose of art. Or let’s just call it thinking. The purpose of thinking is life and everything in it. It’s about asking the right questions, and crawling painfully and joyously towards answers. Answers which, of course, aren’t there as solids, but only as smoke.

Now I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m speaking out of ignorance. I know what has lead the best artist of the last 100 years such as Duchamp, and Beuys in this direction. I understand that Damian Hirst For the Love of God diamond encrusted skull is saying something funny and important (kind of) about the art world, and the consumer world, which is the world right now. The freedom that art gained when unleashed from the iron collar of Academicism and from the rise of photography had to be explored. But the other day I read that an artist in the 60s (and still working today) made navigational art, or walking art. That is he would walk out in the bush, and make patterns with his walking. I think that’s really cool but I think the notion of art has been expanded enough. It is no longer an important problem to solve. Now what is required is to make art helpful again, concerned with what concerns us as a species.

Art needs to start explaining life to ourselves again. I don’t mean political or ‘-ism’ art! That simplistic shit needs to be burned on sight. I don’t mean to say we should look down on something like performance art. I think performance art is a powerful and appropriate method to make art in the times we live in now. But I want performance art with a purpose. I, for example, love VALIE EXPORT’s walk around a city with a man dressed in suit and dog-collar crawling on his hands and knees. I love that. And that couldn’t have been made a hundred and forty years ago. I also don’t mean we need to dumb down or be simplistic about our art and how it is presented. It is our right to make demands of our public. But make sure that you understand your own art. That’s a higher bar than you think.

Now, I’m not saying we need to be conservative in our methods, only in our meanings. And I’m using the word conservative very carefully. If an artists wants to explore the deep meanings about sin, lust, powerlessness, pleasure, chaos, horror, history behind child rape in their art, then go ahead. My definition of conservatism would encompass that. What it won’t encompass is navel-gazing about what art means, and empty attempts to shock the public (unless it is very new, and significantly thoughtful, which will be a hard task as many, many great minds before you have attempted the same thing).

So here’s to meaningful, humanist, quiet art.

I’m in debt to the great E.H. Gombrich’s book The Story of Art for clarifying how I feel about this issue.

• essay
• art
• new path

Posted 10 months ago

Desire as a subject is highly problematic. The reason is very simple, it is so strong a force, and has such a personal effect that it overwhelms the ability of the artist to analyse. In the throes of desire the artist is helpless and cannot get his hands on the rudder. Creating art, as opposed to living life, is an out of body experience. Desire implodes self-consciousness. It draws one into oneself deeper and doesn’t leave the artist any freedom from the self that is essential to art. It is this distance from the self that lets the artist abstract and symbolise the things that he feels and experiences into something that is communicable. Of course how communicable or acccessible he makes his art is up to him, but art always communicates. Otherwise it is just private thoughts, or personal actions; merely, life.

From the very beginning, as early as I can reminisce to, I have been badly plagued by the quicksand-like urge of desire. It’s most powerful manifestation was and is towards women, towards girls. Then, secondly, to diginity. And, thirdly, to meaning. There are 83 such categories in strict order.

I have been avoiding thinking about desire for as long as I can remember. And I wouldn’t even breathe of it in whatever art I wanted to make. I felt that it was, that it is, a cliché. It is perhaps the most overdone, and badly done subject known to man. It is everywhere, and in everything. But there something askance in the state of Adnan. I fear that it may not be a topic that I can avoid. And since I cannot do anything purposefully below great, I fear that I have to invest a significant amount of blood and treasure into something which has such a high risk of failure. Of course, all this talk is defeatist, is pessimistic. It should be looked on as a great challenge. As the foundations of a masterpiece. But fuck that. I don’t want to get hurt. It’s all so boring. We’ve all bored our friends, and our friends in retaliation have bored us with tales of desire. It’s such an uncouth, low, maudlin subject. I won’t touch it. But I don’t have a choice. It’s a monkey on my back. Digging, scratching, spitting, and chirping. If I had a gun I’d shoot desire in the face.

And the secret is that it is not boring to me. It’s fascinating. The very universality of desire, and the desire to make art of desire that is attractive. It is under the crush of millions of rocks and and trillions of grains of sand that diamonds are made.

Desire did not, for example, start with advertising. You can see it in the cave etchings of the uncivilised. And even the great Winogrand couldn’t do it right in photography, even he, one of the most selective, most sensitive and discerning of photographers was no match. All the fashion photographers aren’t even trying to look at it critically, they are hedonistically jacking off (is there any other way to jackoff but hedonistically?). Something can be done here. Something critical. Something big. I will have to attempt it at some stage even if I get caught in the whirlpool and disappear.

As a beginning, I’ve started a piece trying to analyse my desire for women. What are the forces that are behind it? How does it manifest? I’ve started watching desire play out across the museums, metro stations, shopping malls, and parks all across Europe. I’ve learnt nothing yet. I know I run the risk of being labelled a pervert (well I am a pervert) but I will start to take photos of the things that have the scent of desire, the Madeleine. It won’t be easy and I may not be ready for awhile but there is no avoiding it. My psyche won’t leave me alone and neither will my ambition. But I feel like this will be a slow burner, it will take its time coming out, but this is an important first step. In even acknowledging it I feel like I’m going too far, exposing myself too much, or even committing to too much. I commit to nothing! I’m only fearful of the certainty that it is coming.

• desire
• essay
• plan

Posted 10 months ago

Speaking to the Frenchman the other day and hearing him say that my work was not original was exactly the opportunity I was waiting for. My heart contracted only momentarily and I launched into a defence nearly instantly. It is worthwhile to start building a strong case for why these photos are unique and worth spending all the difficult time that I’ve been spending on them.

Most importantly, these photos are real. The Frenchman, after having seen 4 or 5 photos from the Architecture of the Human Face, referred to them as portraiture. Further, he later said ‘portraiture from India, Pakistan’ etc. This is fundamentally wrong. There is no statement I would fight harder than to have these photos referred to primarily as portraiture. They are not.

My photos are street photographs. They are ‘in state.’ They are without any consent, and in the overwhelming number of cases without the subject’s knowledge. Traditional portraiture, starting from the very beginning with etchings and then paintings and sculpture meant the artist had to share power or representation with the subject. Often this power was overwhelmingly with the subject, as are the portraits of political leaders even now. People are highly adept at presenting a ‘face’, a narrative that they controlled. After all, they did it every day. And once people become aware that a photo is going to be taken, they start manipulating the image that will be presented.

The very best portrait photographers such as Avedon, or Arbus could undo some of this reluctance, and facade with a huge effort in time and trust but it is not only the truth of an unguarded character that is lost, but also of what I call situational truth. Situational truth is really existential truth, an authenticity that comes from a lack of any meta-alteration of reality. A reality without the taint of artifice. Of course, there is the everyday artifice and control that people take out with them but that is within the sphere of situational truth and isn’t subversive. The faces of these people on the street is what was there. Was what others walking past these people were seeing. What is destructive to my purpose is a concerted effort to change the situational reality by anyone other than me.

Why is this situational authenticity important? Because most people aren’t shooting it anymore. The current trend in photography, after it relinquished it’s crown of being the arbiter of truth-telling to video, is to a staged, conceptual photography. I don’t agree with Papageorge that this is inherently a wrong direction for photography to go in, although I can see that it is not the most natural fit for the medium. I think great staged photography can and is being made, work by Roger Ballen for example which is meaningful, funny pictorial art. But as with any movement that is mainstream, with so many practitioners who are starting out with little experience, both of the medium and of life, there will be a lot of pure, unfiltered shit produced.

I want to put myself in sharp contrast against that and my work does that. The expressions, the skin, the glasses these are all real. These are what the people look like in real life, and what they use day to day. The bent, deformed teeth is what that man has had to live with everyday of his life. Like all great meaningful art, I want to use my imagination as subservient to reality, to life, and not for it’s own sake. The truths and stories in my work is how life is. There are no actors taking off costumes at the end of the shoot. This is one of photography’s strengths.

But capturing an uncontrolled reality isn’t unique in the history of photography. In fact, it was the norm for much of it. But what I’m also doing which is truly new is that I’m getting closer than anyone has on the street before. I’ve written before about the detail that I’m trying to capture. And I don’t mean closer in filling the frame. That can be done with a zoom. But closer with my body, and a short lens, and I’m working with a very narrow depth of field of about 20-40cm which makes the sweet spot for the shot very tight. There is also the question of race. I can get that close because my skin is brown and my parents are Bangladeshi. No one that I’ve seen has gotten this close in street photography. And a white person couldn’t.

It is a combination of these two factors which assures the uniqueness of the work that I’m producing. I’m eager to hear of any counter-examples that can be produced. It is also important to say however that I’m not making work just to be unique, that isn’t a high enough test for art although it is an important one for significant, remembered art. I’m doing this because it fits what I’m trying to say about the world, to look closer and deeper, at the things which are becoming lost in our increasingly same same cultures. I’m also exploring personal issues of age, and growth, and history. These people are the ones that I’ve come from. Will I look like this? As the Frenchman emphasised to me, there must be strong meaning behind the work to differentiate it and I believe that my perspective of a wholly assimilated immigrant is an important one, a rare one if not a unique one. But what I’m not making is ethnic art, my work is in the line of the Western tradition in which I’ve been schooled.

So far, I have been talking just about the Face work. But I believe the Twilight work itself is new too. Great night work has been done from before Brassai on down. But I don’t believe that detailed, coloured, low light, people filled work in third world countries has been done before in any significant amounts. I do remember a book that has been released in the last 3 years (unfortunately I can’t remember any of the details at the moment) which did work in India at night which looked great, but it was not of the same style. I believe that the technical capabilities of the cameras we have now has been a significant factor in the newness of the work.

Of course, these night photos themselves are again, real. I walked in the depths of the night through a foreign town with unfamiliar faces chattering, plotting in the shadows. I wasn’t in a warzone, but it was something.

Beyond this, what I found during the editing of the Twilight of the Male Soul was how strongly I was trying to tell a story rather than have a random juxtapositions of similar pictures. The story is complex and I hope subtle. And it is intimately about me and how I think about the world and how I feel about life. This is unique. We will see if other people believe this story is well told and whether it is important but it is my story and no one else can reproduce that.

I feel the tone of this essay is too arrogant, and self-satisfied. I don’t mean it to be. I’m early on and these are my first works and I have no history or reputation to rely on. I must make and protect my reputation because at this point no one else will. I’m not even close to being satisfied with the work that I’ve made, and although they make me happy in some ways, seeing the ragged edges, and mistakes, and bits of potential I didn’t capitalise on, is depressing. But it is new work, it is unique work that hasn’t been done before. That is very important to me. Because there is no other purpose to high art than to increase man’s knowledge of himself. Otherwise, it is decoration, not art.

• essay
• uniqueness
• defence

Posted 10 months ago

This has been a source of major heartache. I’m always worried when I’m not working. I don’t know if the tap will run dry. But I haven’t really been able to get excited about shooting in Europe for a number of reasons.

• It is too familiar. I know these people. I know the streets. I know the pace of life. I know their secrets. All of this is what I grew up with back in Sydney and I don’t find it immediately interesting. If I did I would commit myself to finding the stories that exist on these streets too. I left to Sydney to escape this. It makes me worry about what my three months back in Sydney is going to be like photographically. I can’t just market and study. What will I shoot?
• I don’t have a base of operations and the clear free-time to go out and explore and really settle. Everything costs so much in Europe even though I’ve had free board in both Vienna and Paris. But it’s more a matter of coming up with a regular stable pattern of working. That just hasn’t been possible.
• It is boring. Maybe I should try harder but Europe is the epitome of bourgeois values and the urge isn’t to capture it but to puncture it with some performance art.
• People are powerful and bourgeois here and are much more likely to get pissed off. It is also illegal to shoot someone without there permission. Neither of these things should stop me but I’m afraid that they probably have had an impact. Sad.
• I just don’t get the light. The light is crystalline. Pale, wan and boring. I don’t know how to get contrast here in the colour pictures. Everything comes out limp and lifeless. Of course, this is probably also a matter of effort but I think that I just don’t love this place aesthetically. I can’t put my heart into it. It took me a long time to get the colours right in Bangladesh and I loved it once I did get them right. I’m a little worried that Australian light will be like this in the outback and that this will make the project that I’m planning difficult. I just have to wait and see.
• I need a break after all the work in Bangladesh. I’m not sure if I believe this though. I think that I did need to spend time editing and I’ve gotten all of that done in Europe which has been great (although it took a longer that I expected for the Twilight set). I also had no access to books in Bangladesh and that’s been nice to have that here and be able to research a bit. It’s not that fun looking at pictures from new photographers, the quality is very low and I’m rarely moved but there are some good things and the classics are always very good. It was lovely to read Szarkowski’s essay on Winogrand when I was in Berlin.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. We’ll see what’s what when I get back to Australia.

• essay
• shooting
• fail

Posted 10 months ago

“I’m really tired right now kid.”

I have been showing my work around like crazy. To anyone I meet who I have the opportunity to share 10 minutes with. People having a drink in bars, people on transport, girls I meet at museums, people in bookstores and sometimes I’m the one who is approached, like in Berlin.

These aren’t uncomfortable or awkward encounters. No really, they aren’t for either party. It happens very naturally with just one initial hurdle where they fear that they will have to respond to really bad art with the artist right in front of them. Scary. But having done it enough times now, I’m pretty natural about presenting them the opportunity to see some photos “which are really good, I promise you’ll like them” and they have very little time to really say no before I’m already into my “I just spent 3 months in Bangladesh shooting close up …” and looking straight into their eyes.

Usually the conversation runs on and on. It’s always at least half an hour of them looking at the photos and commenting. I have a spiel that I do now for the photos and an order that I show the photos in. Talking to people like this has been great in first, clarifying my own ideas about my work, but more pleasurably, getting original reactions to the work form others that I wouldn’t have thought of. I thought that this whole audience participation thing was a myth but it is decidedly not. It has made me hungry to get my work out and in front of other eyes and minds so that I can have more conversations about how great I am, my art is, and my ideas are.

However, there are some problems in paradise. One, there is little point I think in showing the photos if I don’t have the time to show significant numbers of them. Otherwise the overall story that I’m trying to tell does not come across and I start rambling incoherently and quickly. This is especially bad in France where they pretend not to understand English.

Another is handling any negative comments. And really from about 10 people I’ve shown it to I’ve received one negative feedback. Even that was couched in how good the work was technically and that I had a very good ‘eye.’ But a French art bookshop seller (who also makes collage artists (yeah I know)) said that my work had already been done. When I researched the references that he gave me to backup his statement I could not find any similarities. Also, he believed the way the art was made, or it’s context of creation was not important. Once the work was done, it was done. Of course I do not agree with this. It is very important to my work that it is real and hard. That the people in the photos haven’t consented to the photos and often do not know that the photo has been taken. This gives the work authenticity that is lamely lacking in the art school theatre that passes for photographic art. I had the time and I should have showed him all the photos.

Another problem which surfaced in Berlin was that often the director of the gallery is not the one who is in the gallery at the time of the visit and the assistants are very reluctant to look at the work, and they aren’t of huge use anyway. I need to start printing work and learning to use the mail system (or dropping them off) to be able to reach the directors and not fall into the email rat race which I refuse to participate in.

Hopefully I will be doing a lot of this stuff when I’m in Australia.

• paris
• promotion
• sell
• essay

Posted 10 months ago