• Recommends going very fast in shooting scenes. Rene Clair would get a scene perfect, and then say let’s do it again but faster. But is this just for comedy?
• Filmmakers have a natural biological rhythm. Allen’s is shorter, Scorcese’s is longer.
• The first thing the audience sees in a film and the last he tries to make special. He also says the end has to be special. ‘Have a theatrical quality.’
• The first 2 or 3 minutes, good filmmakers can bring you into their world.
• Acting in a play after it has opened is the easiest job in the world. You work for an hour and a half and the rest of the day is yours.
• A central driver in his work is the contention between reality and fantasy. He used movies to escape the harshness of his life. He still hasn’t grown out of that.
• He says the writer creates the world that he’d like to live in, where things turn out the way that he wants. But this isn’t always true for everyone.
• Found Diane Keaton to be a muse. But maybe more than that a creative partner.
• Doesn’t prepare a lot. Does the bare minimum and then wants spontaneity. Usually doesn’t carry the script with him on the set. ‘The less I study it, the fresher it is to me.’
• Doesn’t do too many takes, 2 to 4. ‘One, plus one for protection.’
• Listen to Cole Porter.
• Used very little music in Annie Hall as an experiment. Also influenced by Bergman and his non-use of music. I think he is wrong on this. Wong Kar Wai is an excellent example of why.
• Used very simple titles. What’s the point? Created a brand.
• Does hardly any coverage anymore, just works from long master shots. But he probably had to learn enough to do this.
• Something changed in him with Annie Hall xand he started writing good women’s parts. Better than the men’s part. An internal change he thinks.
• “For me it’s like stamping out cookies. I finish a film and I go onto the next one.”
• “I love the relationship of women to women.”
• “artists frequently are selfish. They need time alone, they need discipline and they need sometimes to behave with people in ways that are important for them but are not really very nice for other people. And Renata has come to the realisation that early on that her art is not going to save her, and it’s bothering her. I sometimes feel that art is the intellectual’s religion. … But the truth of the matter is art doesn’t save you.” By save, he means give you life.
• Recommends I read The Deniel of Death by Ernest Becker.
• Recommends Scorcese pictures as having great dialogue.
• “Yes, from the first day I ever made a film. Editing is a part of the making of a film. It’s so utterly, utterly crucial …”
• “What’s important is that your work is a part of your daily life and you can live decently. You can, as in my case, do other things I want to do at the same time.” Restaurants, children, playing music etc.

• reading notes
• woody allen
• interview

Posted 9 months ago

Interview - Chris Dickens, Editor – Slumdog Millionaire Part IV (Video) (link)

Some very interesting discussion in the middle of the clip where he describes beautifully how good editing can make something less obvious and more visual and ultimately more moving.

He also mentions Nicholas Roeg whose Walkabout is a very interestingly edited and shot film.

This is really making me think that writing for film is such a different job to writing novels or short stories. Whereas in the novels the quality of the words and sentences are what’s important, in film the best writers deal with visual sophistication.

(Click the link in the title)

• interview
• editing
• film

Posted 9 months ago

Permalink

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 11 months ago

Top two photos by Garry Winogrand

Here’s the complete interview. The video is good. You can get it on iTunes.

Winogrand’s personality is never hidden. It comes through plainly as cantankerous, intelligent, virtuosic, insecure, but always, always honest. Even when he is being terribly dishonest you can see the twinkle in his eye which tells you that he just can’t tell you what you want to hear—It would risk his work too much. I’m surprised he wanted to be interviewed at all considering how risky he thought explication of his method, or ideas were to continuing that work.

• He stopped being a “hired gun”, because he enjoyed it “until I stopped. … I just didn’t want to do it anymore.” Did his personal work at the same time as his commercial work. The concern that doing commercial work somehow taints your artistic vision is I think a delicate, artistic pose. You’re personality should be strong enough to withstand, and even develop from doing commercial work. To having actual demands put on you. Something to try at least.
• Public Relations. “I don’t think anything happens without the press.” He says it would have been easy for him to come directly at the topic of the relationship between the media and the event, but that he tried to engage with the event itself. I think he is making the case for subtlety. That the very best pictures do not open up at a touch, but take puzzling, and prying to unloose. Or that photography is so clear that one must be ‘sly’ about how one uses it. Any heavy-handed sermonising, or positioning of one’s case comes through as unsubtle. He later goes on to say that he was the press, but that he was ‘slyer’, and that the people in the press were useful to him. I wonder if he means that by identifying himself with the press, by being one of them, and then letting just a little more into the frame than they would he could be the most revealing. Very interesting approach. Smart, smart.
• “What common thread runs through your work.” “Well, I’m not going to get into that.” He refuses to say the meaning behind what he does. To leave room for other interpretations. To allow for the greater subtly of the print than what words allow for. Words make you say what you mean. A photograph can be far more ambiguous. But was he like this at the beginning when he was starting out? Is he really just trying to make interesting pictures? Was he just lucky that Szarkowski picked him out? But he had already been shooting for more than 15 years by the time of the New Documents exhibition. “Never apologise, and never explain” a female novelist said that.
• Rejects the term street photographer. “I’m a photographer. A still photographer, that’s it.”
• Snapshot aesthetic. “That’s another stupidity.” The family album picture “is one of the most precisely made photographs.” A lot of work and planning went into the photograph. “It’s one of the most carefully made photographs that ever happen. They’re just dumb.” Amen.
• On his hand. “In the end, the picture. Right. Not how I do anything. … How the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms them. Now a photograph is not what was photographed, it’s something else.” He in a roundabout way is acceding to the artists intent. I think he he being paradoxical. By saying that the photograph was different from what is there, he is saying that something new has been made. Then the photographer has made something new to what was there. So the photographer’s intent is now captured in the photograph. And it is the consistency of the photographers intent which will reveal narrative. Later on in the interview he rejects the idea of talking about this, but this what he means. By choosing what to point to, and where you cut off the edges, what is clear and what is not, where things are in the frame, planes, shapes, balance, colours you are revealing yourself, your ideas, your feelings, and the meanings you see in life, and what you are trying to communicate. But he can’t come out and say this because he was the most subtle of all the photographer and dealing with the most delicate and ephemeral of human feelings and he feared that too much knowledge or analysis may destroy this ability. He was probably right. And, then, what about me and my endless desire to think and talk about things? Am I not Winogrand. Or am I just young? Did he talk more when he was young like most artists and then shut up as he got older?
• On equipment. “I don’t ask the photograph’s questions. Of mine, or anybody else’s. You know, how it was made. I’m interested if it’s interesting. The only time I talk about that kind of thing is when I’m teaching. When there’s a reason.” He is insistent on the picture being the ultimate truth. And it should be. My defensive posturing  about my photos being unscripted, on the street, difficult to make is really the wrong way to go about it. The photos should be good enough that the viewer asks that question and resolves it without me having to pipe up. They should see the number of heads, the honesty of the expressions, the unpreparedness of the face and come to the conclusion. By making the photographs the one and only fact, you put all of your energies into making them the best possible thing. You focus only on that and they become good rather than texts, and captions, and explanations. But that assumes that there are smart people already looking at your work and trying to get your name out. “When I look at photographs I couldn’t care less how.”
• “What do you look for?” “I look at a photograph! What’s going on. What’s happening in a sense photographically. If it’s interesting, I try to understand why.”
• The Animals. He would take his kids to the zoo and take pictures of them. Found some clue pictures in his contact sheets and then he went to work. I love how he uses the word work so much.
• On the current rise of interest in photography (this is in 1981). “I guess some of it has to do with taxes. You know, tax shelter things.” This is so funny, but probably true. He says it’s the money.
• “I don’t have any faith in anybody enjoying photographs, particularly, really. You know, in a large enough sense to matter. I thinking it’s all about, got to do with finances on one side, and there’s a kind of, there are people who are socially ambitious.” This is such a deeply nihilistic position on photography (forget about his comments on the photo world which is true). How could he not get enjoyment out of them. What does he mean large enough sense? I care about many of his pictures deeply and want to remember them for the rest of my life and I’m sure he feels that way about other photos that are important to him. Or is it that he is so deeply in lust with the process that the product does not matter?
• On tilting. “It isn’t tilted. … You use a vertical edge. … It’s all games. Keeps it interesting, to play.”
• On what makes a picture alive instead of dead. “There are things that I photograph because I’m interested in those things. … But I said something earlier tonight, I said the photograph isn’t what was photographed it’s something else. There’s a transformation.” “It’s got to do with the contention between content and form, invariably. Which is what’s responsible for its energies, its tensions. It being interesting or not.” “Most photographs are of life, of what goes on in the world, and that’s boring. Life is banal. Let’s say an artist deals with banality I don’t care what the discipline is.” Then how do you find the mystery in the banal. “Well that’s what’s so interesting, there is a transformation. By just putting four edges around it, you get a chance to …, it changes it.” This is the most revealing I’ve ever heard Winogrand be. He uses the word ‘you’ in a half sentence that peters off. He is saying that what he does is art.
• What were some photos in the development of your work. He mentions the Forth Worth rodeo photographs. I wonder why? “If I was going to make a book, I’d want to shoot more. You do a book, you want it to be a crackerjack little book.”
• “… was that your intent.” “I don’t have any intent. I’m taking pictures. My intention is to make interesting photographs. That’s it in the end. But, I don’t make it up. … That’s what was there to photograph.” He is strongly defending the artists subconscious process against harm. So evasive.
• Women are beautiful. “I’ve always compulsively photographed women. … What was interesting. Is it a good picture or was it the woman? And I don’t think I always got it straight. I think it is an interesting book, but I don’t think it’s as good as the other books that I’ve made.”
• On having a narrative voice. “I don’t completely understand that. … Only in the sense that I deal with something happening. … I think the pictures often play with the question of what actually is happening. … I always liked how puns function.” He wants to reflect the ambiguity of meanings in life itself. Things aren’t clearcut in life and he is trying to capture that on film which gives him even more reason to not talk about things. Double meanings. Tension between counter meanings. How can you load the most tension into the frame. Have little battles between forms and content, between various meanings in the content itself, and between visual shapes and colours and lines. Make it an active picture. Breathe life into it.
• On recurring themes, iconography. “Women. I don’t know.” Maybe he isn’t joking?
• “I was in Texas for 5 years. And the only way you could do it is to live there.” You have to intimately feel a place before you can start taking photographs. This is an important lesson that I felt in Bangladesh and felt the counter to in Europe. Until you start feeling comfortable, like you fit in, like you are of the place to some extent, it is difficult to start working.
• On influences from Evans. “My attitude to things is very different to Evans. …  Let’s say I have a different kind of respect for the world than he does. I have a different kind of seriousness about it which might be misunderstood. You may think that I’m being funny or whatever.” This is very revealing. What he is saying is that he has the opposite of Evans’ cool, steely, aristocratic, mocking distance from the world. What Winogrand is saying is that he actually loves the world, wants to be accepted by it, wants to enjoy its pleasures (women for example) but there is something in him, or something in the world, or something about the very character of reality and life that won’t allow it. His voracious interest in the world can’t ever be reciprocated. He can’t fuck all of the women that he is attracted to, and this is what results in the vast loneliness that is projected in his work. He then goes on to say that although there are visual puns and so on in his own pictures he is deadly serious about what he feels about the world and that this may be overlooked in looking at his work. “The things that I photograph may describe a lack of [taste].” He twists and turns in trying to avoid saying out loud what he can’t say. That is so very lonely, and so very disappointed with the amazing gift of life. I’ve never felt closer to another human being besides Nietzche before.
• “I’m less interested than he was. I’d think of Atget. Because the things that he would photograph were often beautiful. And that’s a hell of a problem … . I deal with much more mundane objects. I deal with it all. …”
• “What advice would you give in general to a young photographer, what should they be doing?” “Well they should be, the problem is, the primary problem is to learn to be your own best critic. Your own toughest critic. You have to pay attention to intelligent work, and work at the same time. You’ve got to balance what you do off better work. It’s a matter of working.” This is validation. This is exactly what I’m trying to do.
• “John Szarkowski called you the central photographer of your generation. It’s very high praise, but also an enormous burden.” “No, not a burden at all. What has that got to do with working? When I’m photographing, I don’t have that kind of nonsense running around in my head. It’s irrelevant in the end.”
• I don’t want to be like Raphael and be liked. I think it is a greater critical position to be in for people to like your work although they may not like you. And it may suit me better too.
• “What did you have in mind?” “Surviving. That’s all I have in mind right now. … I’m a survivor.”
• “I don’t ever think in terms of projects.”
• “You are the fastest camera around.” “Well, I don’t know if I’m the fastest. It’s irrelevant.” “Isn’t that important to your work. the fact that you can organise complex material and compose and snap it so quickly.” “But it isn’t that difficult. What would be difficult is if I was carrying something heavy. No. Do you know what I mean? It’s not difficult. I’m not operating a shovel and getting tired.” He’s right, this isn’t the hard part. The hard part is knowing yourself enough to figure out what you want to say and trying to make that in the photograph.
• “Do you think of yourself as an artist?” “I don’t think about it. But if I have to think. Yeah, I guess so. <sighs>.” This is some touching shit. He is nearly defeated into saying that he is an artist.
• “And how would you like us to think of you and your work?” “I couldn’t, I have no ideas. No ideas at all on the subject. It’s all about, let me work. That’s all. That’s what it gets down to.”

I have never lived very few things more moving than this interview. A great, great man. Thank god he’s dead, or else I’d try to do something stupid like go and meet him. The thing to do is engage with his work deeper than anyone else has. Figure out his problems and where he left off and where the gaps are and then work away at them.

My video cut out bits. Here’s some extra comments:

• His bit about the black power and woman’s rights speeches is hilarious. I like his politics. “Tiresome.”
• His position is that it doesn’t matter whether the photo is set up or not. I have to think that through.
• Says that photography is fashionable now.
• He says teaching is interesting because it presents the problem of having to talk about photography. I think his actions belie his words. From other sources it’s known that he was a haphazard teacher who talked little and took students out to shoot as the main method of teaching.
• He seems to have bitter, acrimonious relationships with other photographers.
• Names these contemporaries of his as shows he’d go see: “Tod or Hank Wessel, Bill Dane, Paul McConough, Steve Shore. Robert Adams, for sure. I’m ready to see what they do. Nicholas Nixon, also, I would make it my business to see. There’s a lot of people working reasonably intelligently.”
• His extension of the pun idea is enlightening: “I generally deal with something happening. So let’s say that what’s out there is a narrative. Often enough, the picture plays with the question of what actually is happening. Almost the way puns function. They call the meaning of things into question. You know, why do you laugh at a pun? Language is basic to all of our existences in this world. We depend on it. So a pun calls the meaning of a word into question, and it upsets us tremendously. We laugh because suddenly we find out we’re not going to get killed. I think a lot of things work that way with photographs.’
• When he is working he wants his photos to be as ‘useless’ as possible. To let things take it’s natural shape, or to avoid the pressures of construction? Or both, or more?

• garry winogrand
• winogrand
• review
• interview

Posted 11 months ago

Interview: Tod Papageorge by Richard B. Woodward (link)

Photos by Tod Papageorge

W Are the mistakes that your students are prone to now the same mistakes that students were prone to when you were teaching back in the late ‘60s?

TP No. I think now that, in general—and this includes a lot of what I see in Chelsea even more than what I see from students at Yale—there’s a failure to understand how much richer in surprise and creative possibility the world is for photographers in comparison to their imagination. This is an understanding that an earlier generation of students, and photographers, accepted as a first principle. Now ideas are paramount, and the computer and Photoshop are seen as the engines to stage and digitally coax those ideas into a physical form—typically a very large form. This process is synthetic, and the results, for me, are often emotionally synthetic too. Sure, things have to change, but photography-as-illustration, even sublime illustration, seems to me an uninteresting direction for the medium to be tracking now, particularly at such a difficult time in the general American culture. All in all, I think that there’s as much real discovery and excitement in the digital videos that my students at Yale are making as there is in the still photography I see either there or in New York, perhaps because the video camera, like the 35 mm camera 30 years ago, can be carried everywhere, and locks onto the shifting contradictions and beauties of the world more directly and unselfconsciously than many photographers now seem to feel still photography can, or should, do.

He is very revealing on the attractive difficulties of photography which he likens to poetry:

RW You said the goal with Garry always was process. Not exhibition, gallery shows, or sale of prints. Did you absorb that mentality pretty much?

TP This may go way back to your first question: why no book until now? I don’t photograph for exhibition, but to engage in this process of understanding photography itself. I started to photograph because poetry was impossible for me, not realizing that photography was at least as difficult, and also not anticipating how, as with poetry, that difficulty can, in itself, create an addiction in those people who see this kind of creative test as something monumentally attractive. We all have to deal with our strengths and weaknesses, and while I guess my strength is my willingness to engage repeatedly with this deeply difficult problem of making coherent pictures, my weakness is an equally strong tendency to want everything in my pictures to be part of a perfect web—not a very healthy or often-satisfied ambition when trying to clarify such complex chunks of the visual world. But that’s my problem, and maybe something I can’t escape.

• tod papageorge
• photographer
• interview

Posted 1 year ago

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Helmut Newtown Interview with Frank Horvat (link)

Photo by Helmut Newton

Frank Horvat : I don’t know much about your life, but I remember the impression you made on me in the fifties, when we first met. You were a very regular guy, very disciplined. You did the work you were supposed to do, and you did it well. We used to hand jobs to each other, when one of us was too busy to accept them. Then, in the late sixties, you started something that was unmistakably your own, working with phantasies which had been taboo until that time and which were becoming less taboo. This became very successful, because sexual liberation was in, but also because you were treating the subject with a certain chic, that allowed you to get away with it where others wouldn’t. Then you had a heart attack, and this was a turning point. You decided that you didn’t have the time to please “them” any more, that from there on you would only please yourself. That was where you turned the tables : by pleasing only yourself you got more recognition and made more money than any commercial photographer would by trying to please his clients.

Helmut Newton : I am still very disciplined.

Frank Horvat : I know. Sometimes I think : “Here he photographs nude girls, but he could just as well photograph vintage cars or football games, he would do it with the same imagination and the same discipline”.

Helmut Newton : This is why I continue accepting commissions, even though economically I don’t have to. Because making money gives me a kick, but also because 1 think it’s important for me to have the discipline, to work for somebody within a given frame. At least from time to time.

Frank Horvat : But you also apply this discipline to your personal work.

Throughout, Newton sounds like a man who has gotten his way with the world. He is used to being childish and he knows that the world will accept it. That, in fact, the world has politely requested only his juvenilia. It is amusing, if a little bilious to see how the culture of selling can appropriate, protect, and encourage whatever it needs to survive. (Better than the torture chambers and perpetual civic anxiety and boredom of totalitarianism at least). It’s not particular as an organism in this regard.

There is a weak acidity in Newton that comes from being seduced then raped by that world. Amongst those who choose money, and who have real ambition, there is always this familiar regret. Like a persistent, scratchy sore throat.

It’s comforting however to see such honest, clear criticism that only two artists can do to each other. Real critics are real bad because most of their time is spent disguising their motives. Most of their efforts are wasted on trying to convince you that they are trying to do it for the betterment of the public. Trying to hide that everyone is essentially for and by themselves. Critics are inefficient. Someone who creates knows what’s filler, and knows what is new in the work, as he can see how it was put together. Only the very best critics can do that, and they usually started out as, or are, makers themselves (Szarkowski, James Woods, etc. etc.)

This is a healthy interview in the Nietzchean meaning of that word.

Click the link in the title.

Note: On a second reading of the interview, I’m not so sure anymore that he has a sore throat. ‘Because making money gives me a kick.’ Just because I don’t get that doesn’t mean he doesn’t.

• interview
• helmut newton
• photographer

Posted 1 year ago

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Thomas Ruff Interview with Daniel Birnbaum (link)

Photo by Thomas Ruff

No. Cologne was really developing more and more into a party town and a place where artists could show their work and make money. For most of us it was a kind of parallel universe that we looked on with some skepticism, because the galleries in Cologne in the mid- to late ’80s still showed very little interest in what we were doing. But one cannot really go out and party every night, so we weren’t tempted to move to Cologne. Of course we would go to openings there.
…
In the very late ’80s I started to sell a lot of work. But none of the things that one associates with the art world of the ’80s really came to Dusseldorf. My photographer colleagues and I really didn’t have commercial success until the ’90s. It’s easy to project things back onto the ’80s, but the truth is we went rather unnoticed through most of the decade. Sometimes I think it was probably a good thing that we were left alone to develop our work without being too disturbed. I had jobs on the side and never thought that I would be able to make a living from art.

The photographs naturally appeal to my aesthetic as a viewer, but I wonder about how limiting the style is. Also how easy. I think everybody and their cat have been doing this kind of work for the last twenty years. And although the best of the work has a still tensility, what can you actually say with it? They could argue, why are you so intent on saying something? On verbalising through an inherently silent medium? They would probably tell me to go make films if I want to tell stories. The time for photography to do that is over now. I don’t believe that yet.

This also bought up my old ideas about minimalism which I was very into five years ago and that has affected many aspects in my life. That simplicity in the way I dress, try to live, architecture, furniture and art that I like. I’m not sure how I’d reconcile the generosity of the medium of photography, the abundance of detail in the world, with my taste for simplicity. But it’s a grand mistake to assume a resolution is always necessary. It isn’t. Often the unresolved ideas are the most fertile soil.

Also, I feel as I’ve gotten the hint of the easy sterility that minimalism can fall into, and through the Danish furniture makers have learnt that it can be life affirming, soft, and humane.

Click the link in the title.

• interview
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• thomas ruff

Posted 1 year ago

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William Faulkner - Paris Review Interview (pdf) (link)

INTERVIEWER 
Is there any possible formula to follow in order to be a good novelist?

FAULKNER 
Ninety-nine percent talent … ninety-nine percent discipline … ninety-nine percent work. He must never be satisfied with what he does. It never is as good as it can be done. Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

INTERVIEWER 
Do you mean the writer should be completely ruthless? 

FAULKNER 
The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be com- pletely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his moth- er, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies. 

INTERVIEWER 
Then what would be the best environment for a writer? 

FAULKNER 
Art is not concerned with environment either; it doesn’t care where it is. If you mean me, the best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it’s the perfect milieu for an artist to work in. It gives him perfect economic freedom; he’s free of fear and hunger; he has a roof over his head and nothing whatever to do except keep a few simple accounts and to go once every month and pay off the local police. The place is quiet during the morning hours, which is the best time of the day to work. There’s enough social life in the evening, if he wishes to participate, to keep him from being bored; it gives him a certain standing in his society; he has nothing to do because the madam keeps the books; all the inmates of the house are females and would defer to him and call him “sir.” All the bootleggers in the neighborhood would call him “sir.” And he could call the police by their first names. 

So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

INTERVIEWER
You mentioned economic freedom. Does the writer need it?

FAULKNER 
No. The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper. I’ve never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He’s too busy writing something. If he isn’t first rate he fools himself by saying he hasn’t got time or economic freedom. Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don’t have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

I hate his fucking confidence. How can he not care at all what people think. How can he trust his own judgement so damn much. But really it reveals my dirty truth: I’m still afraid of being poor and unloved. Need to get over that.

• william faulkner
• interview

Posted 1 year ago

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Tom Wood Interview (Issue Magazine) (link)

Photo by Tom Wood

The biggest fear is to be a flash in the pan. To get tired, or bored, or feel like photography isn’t really an important thing, or not important enough.

There is so much peace and permanence in hearing Tom Wood speak on his long monastic efforts at seeing. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been easy for him. Time is never easy, things happen, you lose jobs, it’s hard to find money, something breaks, you get sick and can’t produce.

To persevere is an old fashioned desire, but there is a natural truth to it. To be lost not only in the moment but in the decades. To have worked, and produced, and built for decades. What a wondrous thing. How deserving of respect. My youthful (am I so young anymore?) instincts, my ambition has a lot to learn.

JWD: And you’re still going around shooting just as much?

TW: Yeah, but less so in Liverpool, after 25 years of doing the same kind of routine day after day, I’ve exhausted it. I can’t do it anymore. But I travel to Ireland, to photograph the landscape. I’d been coming out to Wales on day trips on the train and I’d bring my bike and I’d photograph. I moved to Wales to be in the middle of the landscape, but I’ll continue to photograph in Liverpool—it’s only 40 minutes away.

JWD: And when you travel do you take pictures too?

TW: Yeah. I don’t travel a lot, but I take pictures from the train window and the car.

JWD: When you went to Germany for your show, did you photograph the people there too?

TW: It doesn’t work as well. Different kind of people, different feel, different everything. I’ve rarely got a good picture wandering around a foreign town. More likely a good one when I’m traveling, in a station, or from the train window, or in the hotel. When I’m in Ireland I relate to it very strongly, I can just shoot like mad. I took some photographs when I was in New York but couldn’t get beyond the Gary Winogrand backgrounds everywhere.

…

So, no question about that. Photography doesn’t wear out. It’s just as interesting to me now to look at a bunch of pictures as it was then. It’s the same as music. You can play the same piece too much maybe and come back to it a couple years later and see why it was great. And a good picture you should be able to look at a lot of times without wearing it out.

That’s what you’re aiming for.

As an aside. Looking at the photos, you can see why Martin Parr likes him. But Parr is mistaken if he thinks that they are motivated similarly, Wood isn’t making fun.

via Sineload

Click the link in the title.

• interview
• tom wood

Posted 1 year ago

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Larry Clark Interview (with Jutta Koether) (link)

Photo by Larry Clark

I’ve always respected Larry Clark and although I’ve always liked his work, I’ve never loved it. I can see how good he is at being there, at feeling, at telling the story, and even visually, but his story really isn’t my story. Everything I feel when I look at his photographs I feel at a distance. Also, It’s unfortunate that because of how teenage drug culture has been appropriated by society as entertainment his photos have lost some of their impact. They shock, but in a predictable way. It’s not his fault.

This is a brilliant interview where you see the rawness of the man; how much he feels and how open and vulnerable he is. He reminds me of W. Eugene Smith. For sentimental work, I guess you need sentiment. I don’t mean that flippantly.

Clark: Yeah, absolutely. I just lock myself in the studio, basically. For a couple of years I didn’t come out. It’s all recluse and isolated, and it got pretty crazy. I had stuff all over all the walls, like a maniac. But I got so much pleasure out of it. It was like a happiness that I very seldom experienced. I used to just lie on the floor and look at the work and just be so happy and laugh like a maniac. And I’d wake up and I’d have no idea what anybody was going to think of this, because I didn’t know what other people were doing because I was working in a vacuum — just me. I wasn’t looking at art. I wasn’t not looking at anything.

I made a point not to look at anything because I was afraid that I’d be influenced. That’s a funny way to work. I find out that artists look at other people’s work and they get influenced, or they get ideas, or they get inspired. And now I look around a lot — in the last year I’ve been looking at art, looking at stuff — and I say to myself, “Oh, this is how they do it.”

This perfectly describes the often hilarious, and more often anxious, hateful time you have to spend with your work. Before you put it out there you are never sure if it’s any good. You can tell yourself as many times as you want that what matters is what you think about it. But there’s always the fear that it’s no good. That no one else will like it. That you’re just ‘playing around.’ This is especially the case at the very beginning, before anything has happened to you yet. I’m sure someone established would tell me to enjoy this time of virginity. Fuck you, show me the money.

On influence, he describes very well the two ways that you can go, to create from scratch, a painful, highly personal experience, or to build on what has come before. Of course no one does each of these exclusively. It’s always a mix. Although the from scratch end of the spectrum is what is most lauded in time. The derivative end of the scale has the benefit of being fashionable and so more quickly accepted, but also runs the risk of being banal in the long run. On that end, you never know whether what you’ve created is of real value, or just in vogue.

Clark: Yeah. I hated photography. I never liked photography that much. I always wished I was making films. Always wanted to be a filmmaker. The work was always structured that way, kind of like a film, narrative kind of thing. I always wished I could be a painter or a filmmaker, anything but a fucking photographer. I certainly didn’t want to be in a photography gallery. There is no way I would have shown this work in a photography gallery.

Funny.

Koether: Right.

Clark: You know, trying to …

Koether: It takes energy.

Clark: Just trying to, you know, get well.

Koether: [laughs]

Clark: I’m a sick person. I’m not a bad person. I’m a sick person, getting well and better.

Koether: I’m just curious because, you know, it’s a long time, when you think of it.

Clark: Mm-hmm, it’s a long time.

Koether: It’s a long … [laughs]

Clark: Long time.

[ … ]

Ouch. You can hear the echoes in that room. He doesn’t hide anything, even when he is hiding things. He does go on to explain later in the interview that because he has to get so into these situations, so intensely feel them, that it takes a long time to do the work. He also says later that he may have lost access (just by growing old) from his subject, by not being able to hang out with these ‘kids’ anymore.

Of course his kind of teen-idolesque behaviour was instantly copied and aped by a thousand photographers after him. This is something I could never do. This is something that he never did. I’m not interested in the world of a lost and corrupted adolescence like he is. I’m not interested in the drugs and the effects and the feelings of loosing oneself. I’m middle class, and my drug taking has been controlled, and I’m interested in Walter Kaufmann’s regeneration of Nietzche in the 40s as much as I’m interested in pussy, and getting close to street fights. I’m sure this in its own way is unique. I sure hope it is.

Click on the link in the title.

• larry clark
• interview

Posted 1 year ago

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