This is how anal I am

I decided today, in the midst of procrastinating work that I was supposed to do today because I procrastinated doing it on Friday (still five and a half hours left in the day—I’ll finish it), that I wanted to play around with the layout of my blog. I moved the sidebars over to the left, and I increased the width of the posts. So far so good. Then I decided that, since I have this increased width to work with, I really should just make all the images 500 pixels wide, upload them myself to my server (instead of using Blogger’s image upload utility, which creates two versions of each image—a small one that appears in the posts, and a larger one that you can get to by clicking on the smaller version), and have just one version of the file (not the small and large ones previously used). Again, lovely.

But this is how anal I am: A sane person would implement this image-sizing strategy going forward. I, however, am not sane. I don’t like the fact that some of the images will be 400 pixels wide and some will be 500 pixels wide. I don’t like the fact that some of the images you’ll be able to click on to get a larger version and some you won’t. I want things consistent. So I’ve just spent the past hour resizing all the images for all the posts in the month of April. I’m going to have to take this one month at a time—it would take me days to do the whole blog.

Why can’t I procrastinate this kind of crap instead of the stuff that pays the bills?

New Simon Roberts project

I’m a huge fan of Simon Roberts’s Motherland—it was my favorite photo book of 2007—so I was absolutely thrilled to read on Hipshots about Simon’s new project, We English, and the accompanying Web site and blog. I’m long overdue for a trip to England, and as I’m skint, the closest I’ll get to being there is reading a blog that makes use of the word whilst. Hats off to Simon for braving the high petrol prices (currently £1.10/liter, or approximately US$8.25/gallon) in a motor home, sponsorship or not.

Searching

I’ve really only worked a lot on one project, In Store—I don’t count South of Cota, because I didn’t realize it was a project until it was nearly done—and In Store is such a literal project in my mind, straightforward facts, unvarnished reality. Writing the statement for the project was easy, and what I wrote hasn’t become outdated in the months since.

I have several new projects in the works—one I haven’t started photographing yet, another I’ve only just begun, and a third that I’ve delved into a little more deeply, though it’s still in the beginning stages. Of these three, the one I haven’t started yet is probably the most literal, the easiest to describe in words. The other two are less prose, more poetry. I’ve been trying to think of how to describe the third one, the one I’m farthest along with. All I can think of is that Jhumpa Lahiri’s words are the closest to getting at what the project is about. So last week I read The Namesake, and I’m just now starting to reread Interpreter of Maladies; her most recent short-story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, is waiting on my nightstand. I thought I might find something—some quote or passage—that would get at what the project is about for me, but so far, I haven’t. The feeling I get when I read Lahiri is the feeling I’m going for in this project, but it’s hard for me to be more articulate about it than that.

It’ll come. In the meantime, I’m getting to read one of my favorite authors, someone who, as I told S., “really has a way of taking your heart and tearing it apart.”

Self-storage in the news

Public radio's Marketplace had an interesting little story on self-storage in America yesterday. Take a listen.

via e-mail from Susana Raab

Favorites

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Jon Feinstein’s site the past few days, and this photo, which I first saw months and months ago, grabs me every single time.

Copyright © Jon Feinstein

It’s one of my all-time favorite portraits, right up there with this one from Rachael Dunville. I can’t get enough of either of these.

Copyright © Rachael Dunville

Interview: Susana Raab

You gotta love Susana Raab. Here’s why.

Liz: I first heard about you on Amy Stein’s blog, where Amy mentioned she’d hung out with you at PHotoEspana, and I figured, “Hell, if Amy likes her, she must be a swell gal.” I checked out your Web site and blog, and you were my new photo hero, a working photographer, making your living through your work, and also producing personal projects that were getting you to Spain and all over the world. Why don’t you start off by telling me how you got into photography in the first place? I think I remember that we’re both English majors (well, I know I was an English major, and I think you were, too). How did you get from English to photography?

Susana: I spent a lot of time out of college trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had switched from a business major (which my mother had urged me to be—“How else will you get a job?”—oh, the irony of that statement now!) to English after I was flunking out of econ and stats from total apathy. Ended up finishing my major in three semesters with close to a 4.0 and really being enthused about my coursework again. Growing up, I was pretty much a latchkey kid, moving every two years till junior high, and, as a result, I spent an inordinate amount of time in my room reading and not really pursuing any other interests. As a result, when I graduated from college, I had no clue what I wanted to do or how to determine it.

Returning to Northern Virginia, I took a job working at the National Beer Wholesalers’ Association, which at the time, as a recent post-grad, sounded way cooler than it was; revisionist history being what it is, I see it now for what it was: a desperate attempt to pay rent at any cost.

Knowing I had to figure something out, I fell back into English, taking grad classes at night, and deciding to move across country to Eugene, Oregon, to pursue a graduate degree in English there. (Two out of my four best years as a kid were spent in Eugene, Oregon, and I think I was drawn there to sort of recapture what I thought of as my Edenic moment.)

About a year in, writing a paper on Foucault and madness, I began to feel slightly mad, realized I was enjoying the literary theory too much and to what purpose? Didn’t want to get a job teaching freshman English in BFE. Stumbled upon a book by Howard Chapnick, Black Star agency founder, entitled Truth Needs No Ally, and realized that, through photojournalism, I could combine my love of words, narratives, social utility, and art.

Started taking classes in photography at the local community college, dropped out of grad school, skied, camped, hiked, joined the Peace Corps, dispatched to Outer Mongolia, and, when I returned to the D.C. area, I started working for local newspapers, which led to an internship and job at Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Congress, which led to a full-time non-staff position at The New York Times D.C. bureau, freelancing for major pubs, which led to grad school for a self-imposed timeout and a reinvention of myself as a photographer, a process which will probably continue till I die. As you can see, it’s been a long and winding road.

Copyright © Susana Raab

L: I have a master’s in writing from USC, and though I’m glad I was there (because of the people I met), I graduated with forty thousand dollars in student loans and the realization that I didn’t want to be a writer. To me, grad school seemed like a way to force people to write who weren’t writing on their own. Some people I went to school with are writing and publishing; but more of them are just working day jobs paying off their student loans and talking about how they haven’t written much lately. You got your master’s from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communications. What made you decide to go back to get your master’s? What are your thoughts about grad school for photography in general? Do you recommend it? Why or why not? What purpose does it serve?

S: I was really burning out on D.C. photojournalism, covering Congress and the White House, that feeling of being so cool because you were traveling on Air Force One, landing in some small town and walking in a giant pool, colleagues in the bubble being rude to local press, being pushed by and screamed at, “Go pool!” by twentysomething White House staffers, evaluating your photography in comparison to what thirty other people had shot, from virtually the same angle, being asked every evening, “Do you have something that matches the wires?” This was really not for me. I really value not foregrounding one’s ego, being nice to people, regardless of status, byline, or who made the front page of The Washington Post. Don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic experience, and I’m grateful for the opportunity. I have many fond memories, but I wanted to put more of me into my shots (I mean my thinking, my personality—this might be ego?). I have a lot of respect for the photographers who make their living this way, there are some excellent and nice ones, it’s just not for everyone. It was a fantastic training ground, and I was privileged to learn so much, technically, how to handle situations, how to work a scene, how to work fast, and, of course, the caliber of the people I was working with was super-high. I also was able to meet a lot of extraordinary human beings. So no regrets, but it was time to leave.

Grad school for me was my hall pass. I got out of D.C. I could focus on what I wanted to shoot and how I wanted to shoot it. Moving to Appalachian Ohio was a complete paradigm shift, but moving all the time growing up, and spending that time in Mongolia, I really look forward to new environments and am pretty happy anywhere. My tolerance for ambiguity is infinite. A friend of mine, a noted Magnum photographer, advised me to just go the workshop route instead, so before I went to grad school I took a workshop with another noted Magnum photographer. The other photographer also reinforced the feeling that grad school was for people who didn’t know what they wanted to do. This may be true. But for me, grad school was incredibly more rewarding than that seven-day workshop (though I am not against workshops at all—had a fabulous experience at the Missouri [Photo] Workshop, and am looking for a good one for this year for a little recharge). But in grad school (OU’s VisCom program does a great job of funding—I have no debt), I really became free. I shot medium format exclusively, when I could; I began my Consumed and Off-Season projects; I learned audio, multimedia; and I was free. Free! I drove all over Appalachian Ohio—I loved it! I loved the landscape, the people, the quirkiness, the accessibility. I was inspired by walking into class and being forced to come up with story ideas all the time. It was fabulous being in this cocoon of photography—I didn’t make the connections I would have had I been in NYC, but it was a nurturing, productive period in my life, to which I would return in a second.

Copyright © Susana Raab

So I don’t know what to say about grad school and photography, really. My time in grad school for English ultimately created a great antipathy in me about theorizing, etc. Words, words, words. I’m into narratives—in this sense, I like words. But this ivory-tower navel-gazing is not for me. And I don’t mean any disrespect by this. I am very much a live-and-let-live person, and I accept that much of contemporary art is entangled in this sort of theoretical construct that gives it meaning. I can’t fight it, nor am I interested in doing so. It is simply not for me. If I die obscure and irrelevant because of my refusal to participate in this process, so be it. I am what I am. So I don’t think I would have been a good match for more of an art school, in that sense, as I’m kind of a just-stop-talking-about-it-and-get-out-and-do-it person. Of course, the nature of my work is different from that of contemporary art photographers, so different bodies of work obviously have different modalities. I complete embrace the diversity of expression—I’m just not going to talk a lot of hooey about my work. (Kidding!) That said, I do employ metaphor and symbolism in my work. Living under the shadow of the Washington Monument, I am very phallo-sensitivo. Oh, sorry—off topic!

Okay, back to grad school. I mean, I think it really depends upon the individual and what they are trying to do. I think that the reason I went back is not a common one. And in my program, the majority of students just wanted to get into photography in the first place. I think what is helpful about going back as a more mature student (and I say this pronounced like couture) is that generally, you know what you want out of it, you have something to say, and you’re just trying to find the proper tools to employ in the expression. In any graduate school endeavor, I think it’s best to go and get some “real-life experience” and live a little (or a lot) before rushing into grad school. You do learn a lot along the way. Everything I have done informs me now.

Copyright © Susana Raab

L: What personal projects are you working on now? And what are you hoping to do down the road? Do you want to continue working editorially? Teach? Publish a book? Have a solo show at MOMA? Be copied by every young photographer?

S: I’m a bit pathetic in that I will continue to work on Consumed and Off-Season. I leave them for months—months!—and then will one day be inspired and go back to it. I would love to make Consumed into a book in a couple of years. Off-Season is going to be a longer endeavor. I am always in awe of these photographers who can pull these two-day projects out of their hat and make a fabulous book. This is not me, alas. I started this other project, an homage to my English background, A Sense of Place, on dead writers’ homes. Totally different, and doesn’t appeal to the same people who like my other stuff, generally, but you know, I got to mix it up. I’m a peripatetic person and that extends to my vision. Some projects are poignant, some ironic and humorous. I don’t wake up in the same mood every day. This is probably not the best career choice. But I gotta photograph for me.

Copyright © Susana Raab

One year, at Review Santa Fe, I was lucky to be reviewed by the remarkable Bill Witliff, a very generous soul. He looked at my Consumed work and said, “You have to keep shooting with your heart and not with your head.” And at the time, I thought I was shooting with my head, because at last I was putting something of myself into the photographs, rather than recording history (not that the two are necessarily exclusive—I was just not adept at this at the time), and then months later, I realized he was right, it was all coming from the heart. Every bit of it. So this is why I do what I want to do, because I struggled for a loooong time to realize what I wanted to do, and to deny it now would be ungrateful.

I’ve got a lot of project ideas rolling around the old squash. I’d like to do one in D.C. It’s so ridiculous to live in this town that is fecund with nascent projects and to instead spend five hundred dollars in gas getting to another idea a thousand miles away. Plus, I think it’s very underrepresented in a wider pictorial sense. Andy Cutraro did a nice project last year on the two faces of D.C. along Pennsylvania Avenue that put all us documentary D.C. photogs to shame. I think it’s pretty common for us to overlook our backyard.

I’m starting another one in Peru—was lucky to get an assignment while away that jibed perfectly with a project I’m developing there. I love working editorially, even though at times, I do feel like a waitress with a camera (in the sense that you’re fulfilling an order without a budget that gives you the gift of time to think). I’ve worked enough jobs I really hated to be grateful to be paid for one that, 75 percent of the time, is fantastic.

One day I would love to teach, too. I really enjoy meeting with students and fomenting ideas, inspiring and being inspired. I love sharing—it’s the basis of art, isn’t it? But I’m traveling too much right now to teach, so that will have to wait.

Solo show at MOMA? That’ll be the day! Wouldn’t say no, of course! But it’s not on my inspiration board, at the moment. I’m super-grateful to be working and have the time to do my personal work and have it get some recognition. It’s going to happen, but for me the most important thing is producing the work. Of course, you have to get the work out there. No use doing all this work and dying on the vine. But it’s just much more fun to produce.

Copyright © Susana Raab

L: I just got a US$37.50 store credit from photo-eye. What one photo book should I put that money toward buying? And why?

S: I have to say, I am often more inspired by reading the biographies of artists. Nothing like witnessing third-hand a good struggle to really buck you up and get you out there. For ejemplo: Did you know [Willem] de Kooning didn’t have his first solo show till he was well in into his forties? And you know, I love looking at others peoples’ work, photographers/artists, but I gotta say: Invest in yourself. Buy yourself some gas, film, or fund some time, whatever you have to do to make it happen for you.

If you insist on purchasing a book, I’d say Lars Tunbjork’s Office. Mundane hilarity. Making something out of nothing. The inseparability of humor and tragedy. Not taking the easy way out.

Classic

S. has a hot little Leica that he carries with him everywhere he goes. Today, we were on our way to Peet’s, and he saw something in an instant that he wanted a picture of. I asked if he wanted me to turn back, and he said, “Fuck, Weegee I’m not. I can’t get everything.” Classic.

Revisited

I’ve gotten some play (here and here) with this image from my South of Cota series, but the more I look at it, the more I think it could be better.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

I was looking for a marine layer day, and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to wait for June gloom to get one. Lucky for me, we were socked in with it this morning, so I tried a few more shots. I think I like them better than the original, but I’m still weighing it and also trying to figure out which of these two I prefer.

I don’t know what I’d do if these people ever trimmed their trees any other way.

Copyright © 2008 Liz Kuball

Copyright © 2008 Liz Kuball

Man, camera, fishing

Corey Arnold, fisherman and photographer extraordinaire, has been on my radar ever since he was in a Humble Arts solo show last year. He’s the real deal, as far as I’m concerned. So it was like Christmas morning when I heard about this audiovisual slide show from NPR. Check it out.

Copyright © Corey Arnold
via Amy Stein

Damn right

Lessons learned from S., on the five-year anniversary of leaving the door open

I’m not just a girl with a camera. I’m the oldest of three girls, and my younger sister Katharine just had her first baby on Saturday, and my youngest sister Cara is getting married in July. And I’m turning thirty-five next month. I’m old enough to be Shane Lavalette’s mother. Okay, so I would’ve had to get pregnant in the ninth grade, and I wasn’t doing anything in the ninth grade that would’ve even come close to getting me knocked up, but still, it’s biologically possible.

It’s really easy, when you’re starting something in your thirties, to focus on the numbers. It’s really easy when “emerging photographers” are almost always defined as being under thirty (or under thirty-one), to think you’ve missed the boat. It’s really easy to feel like you’re in a race against time. To feel like you have to shove your work out there in the world now, fast, hurry up!

When my mind starts going into that dark place, S. will say or do something that makes me realize that age makes no difference. He is decades older than I am, and he is always learning, always growing, always trying new things. He’s more adventurous than I am, by far. He faces challenges head-on, never shrinking from them or questioning why. He sees life as a grand comedy, and even in the most difficult times, he finds the humor in it all. He is confident beyond my comprehension, without being remotely arrogant. He has read more than I’ll ever read. He understands music in a way that blows my mind. He’s all curiosity and enthusiasm and energy.

I used to think it would’ve been cool to know him when he was a kid, but it occurred to me recently that I already do—that the person he was when he walked down the street, to the corner of Sixth and Cochran in Los Angeles, reading his Big Little Books and chewing on licorice, the remainders of which he would wrap in wax paper and bury, leaving them like a treasure to be discovered anew the next afternoon, is the same person I know now, except instead of Big Little Books it’s Richard Price and Junot Díaz and Jhumpa Lahiri, and instead of licorice it’s coffee from Peet’s.

It’s really easy, when you’re starting something in your thirties, to focus on the numbers. And it’s really easy, when you have S. in your life, to let that all go.

Molly, Ofer, and the bar

Sometimes when I lose out on something—a contest, an award, a grant—I can’t figure out what I did wrong, I play hostess to a glorious pity party, and I throw chairs.

Often, however, the winner’s work is so obviously superior to mine that I know that, even if I were the only judge, I’d have given it to him, not me. That was my reaction upon learning that Ofer Wolberger won the Humble Arts Foundation’s Grant for Emerging Photographers. His project is beautiful, his photographs arresting. Congratulations, Ofer!

Copyright © Ofer Wolberger

With Molly Landreth and Ofer Wolberger as Humble’s first two grant recipients, the bar has been set very high. Which will make clearing it all the better.

Copyright © Molly Landreth

Interview: Michael David Murphy

Today’s interview subject, Michael David Murphy, is the guy behind 2point8, a great photo blog with an emphasis on street photography.

Liz: When I first found your blog, I fell in love with the Ways of Working posts that you did. I was terrified of photographing people, especially strangers, and you laid it all out there in a way that made sense to me—almost like a playbook. Have you always been a street photographer? Or did you have to work up the courage to photograph people on the street?

Michael: Ways of Working came about because I didn’t know anyone in San Francisco who was as fired up about photography as I was, so I figured I’d shoot and take notes and share my thoughts with whoever might find them valuable, and maybe I’d learn something myself along the way. I was hoping they’d read like a playbook, of sorts.

Photography guards its secrets, and I’m pro-transparency, especially when it reveals failure. So I was photographing a lot, and failing, and that led me to textually explore the hows and whys of what worked and what didn’t. I was teaching myself how to photograph in two ways: on the street with my camera, and after, in words (and at the library). Each helped me grow, equally.

On the courage front, I’ve fabricated a kind of bluster, which works in a pinch. Courage implies a fear of something that needs to be conquered. If you don’t think things are scary, there’s no fear. So generally, I don’t consider any of it scary, so I don’t have any fear. This did not come naturally, though.

I like people enough, I suppose, but I came to photography via big love for Ross McElwee, the Maysles, Chris Marker, Les Blank, and Barbara Kopple. I like dealing with people when they’re filtered by incredible editors, be they filmmakers or photographers. Up close, we’re a difficult and squirrelly bunch. The rub is, to get gold, you have to get in there and at least try to play the social game, even if you’re dressed like Joel Meyerowitz. [Michael provided a link to a post in which he pointed to a video of Meyerowitz shooting. I liked the video so much I’m posting it here. And if you’re a real Joel junkie, you may be interested in listening to an interview that Ibarionex Perello did with him.—Ed.]



L: What is it about street photography that you like? What are you looking for on the street? Which street photographers do you admire most and why?

M: Street photography is sport. Not like duck hunting or archery, more like soccer, or basketball, or even boxing. At its root for me, it’s a physical exploration. I may not run all over the place bobbing and weaving, but the success of street photographs has everything to do with getting your body in the right place at the right time so that your skill as a photographer can do the rest of the job, whether it’s a perfect-moment kind of picture, or something slower, borne of conversation with a stranger.

It’s about your eye, but it’s also about your ability to haul yourself through space so you can use your skill, dumb luck, and foresight to get the picture. It’s like catching a pass—you plan it out, predict where the ball’s going to be, make last-minute adjustments, and hope you’re not going to run smack into the fullback.

Accordingly, I started photographing on the street after sustaining three concussions playing soccer. I think there was a bike wreck in there, too. The concussions slowed me down, and my little Nikon digital was beginning to interest me. I enjoyed photographing, but I wanted to push myself to shoot more than the typical photo fodder of dogs, flowers, and fireworks.

My favorite pictures from then (2001–2002) were from photographers who’d begun publishing on the Web. (This is the first round of “photobloggers,” who will always be the real photobloggers, to me.) Eliot Shepard, Lucas Shuman, Todd Gross, Mark Powell. The more I looked at Eliot’s and Mark’s work, the more I knew what I liked, and the more inspired I became to take a wide look at the whole history of photography.

I’m most impressed by photographers who’ve cut their teeth on the street, but have “graduated,” like Mitch Epstein. My favorites shoot like I do (vice versa, most likely), and embrace the imperfections of flux. [Lars] Tunbjork, [Tod] Papageorge, [Mark] Steinmetz, [Martin] Parr (at times), Rosalind Solomon, [Larry] Fink, [Brian] Finke, [Susan] Meiselas. I look at [Garry] Winogrand’s Public Relations more than most. Some Meyerowitz. And then there’s [Joel] Sternfeld, whether or not he fits that mold.

Copyright © Michael David Murphy

L: I think I read that you were working for Atlanta Celebrates Photography. Do you want to talk a little about what that is and what you do there? How do you fit in your own photographic work with the day job?

M: We put together a city-wide, monthlong photography festival in Atlanta at nearly two hundred venues during the month of October. We have lectures, openings, public art projects, portfolio reviews, a film series, educational programs, and more. I’m the program manager there. We’re a two-person nonprofit, with volunteers and a fantastic board of directors. October’s an exhilarating whirlwind. Ya’ll should come down, or over!

As a photographer, I’m lucky to have a schedule that allows me to shoot when I need to shoot, which is a luxury after a corporate career. I owe it to Jason Fulford, who curated the public art project Paper Placemats (ATL) for ACP last year. He chose a picture of mine for the project, and gave me the heads-up about the organization. I was new in town, came aboard, and it’s all worked out nicely. Check out ACP Now!, our corner of the photoblog universe.

Copyright © Michael David Murphy

L: Where are you going with your photography? What’s on your wish list in terms of your photo work?

M: Street photography is a hamster wheel. It’s a limitless game of limitations. I’m as fascinated by it as I was by poetry, because it’s both proscriptive and infinite. It’s what you make of it. Because it’s fairly prohibitive here in Atlanta (pedestrian culture: slim to none), I’m heading in other directions, which has been a surprise bonus since leaving San Francisco.

I’ve been shooting the campaign trail here through the South, since November. I have a few Atlanta-specific projects in process that I’ve been shooting with a 4 x 5. Portraits, even!

Wishes:

• Find a unique, original space to hang So Help Me. . . on election eve in November. I’ve been recording speeches on the campaign trail, while shooting. I want to hang a show of all the campaign work I’ve been shooting, and flood the space with swirling audio, red/white/blue bunting, TVs showing election returns, all held together by fantastic prints. My inner military brat might rupture after an evening like that. Go, team!
• Publish the book version of unphotographable.com.
• Build a new project called blinding.us.
• Long term and impractical; write the book that needs to be written about Winogrand, with or without permission.

Copyright © Michael David Murphy

L: I just got a US$37.50 store credit from photo-eye. What one photo book should I put that money toward buying? And why?

M: Cancel the credit and spend it on home or renter’s insurance! Take an hour and write down each and every serial number for every item of equipment you own. When we were robbed a few months ago, I wished I had one sheet of paper with all that info, so I could get on the phone with insurance and start demanding replacement cash, stat.

If not insurance, get Sternfeld’s On This Site. There are good books, and then there’s that book, which is so good it’s frightening. That book’s a long, satisfying punch in the face. Every time I have a copy, I give it away to someone and have to find another. It’s my photobook hot potato.

Bobby and me

via Patrick Romero in a comment here

Of note

I threw a chair across a classroom at the University of Southern California tonight. I should throw chairs more often.

Knee socks and saddle shoes

I posted today congratulating a variety of photographers whose work I admire, respect, and in some cases love, all of whom were included in A Photo Editor’s Flickr pool. Over a thousand people submitted two images, and on the basis of these two images, Rob Haggart chose 276 people to be featured in a slide show that he’ll advertise to photo editors and buyers. Any way you look at it, it’s a great opportunity. And my congratulations to the people I mentioned, and to everyone else included, were sincere.

Here’s where I need to come clean: Sure, I’m happy for them. But as I said to S. in the parking lot of the Summerland post office today, “I’m sick of being everybody’s runner-up.”

On the drive down to L.A., I second-guessed my choice of images, and when I was done with that, I second-guessed myself. By the time I was getting off the 10 at Normandie Street, I was actually scouting locations for that cardboard box I’ll be living in someday. The refrain running through my mind: I suck.

I’m not looking to be propped up with support or “Hang in there, Liz” or “What does Haggart know?” (This is not like my mom saying, “I guess I’m just a horrible mother” so that my sisters and I would say, “No, Mom, you’re great!”) So don’t even bother with comments like that. I just want to be honest: I’m not all “Rah-rah! Go team!”, at least not all the time.

And yes, I know, it’s just one guy’s opinion. Today Cara Phillips quotes from Jezebel, where a former model says, “My shoulders, too broad for one client, will be criticized for their narrowness by another,” and that’s a good analogy for photography (and much of life). But I’m starting to feel like my shoulders aren’t to anybody’s liking except my own. Yeah, yeah, I’m the only one who matters. But let’s get serious: That’s bullshit, and we all know it. Sure, we photograph first to please ourselves, but we do it as much, if not more, for other people. Otherwise, we’d all be content to keep negatives in shoeboxes or RAW files on hard drives. And we’re not. I’m not.

I want to be on the field, not holding pom-poms on the sideline.

Congratulations . . .

to all the people who made it in to APE’s Flickr pool! I quickly scrolled through and found among them Timothy Archibald, Amy Elkins, Andrew Hetherington, Rachel Hulin, Kate Hutchinson, Shane Lavalette, Jennifer Loeber, John Loomis, Colin Pantall, and Cara Phillips. Way to go, guys!

Interview: Greg Wasserstrom

One of my all-time favorite bloggers I’ve never met is Greg Wasserstrom. As I told him when I e-mailed my list of questions, I see him as part of a younger generation of photographers, many of whom seem Serious (with a capital S), and he doesn’t. I don’t mean that his work isn’t serious or that he’s not serious about his work; I mean that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and I dig that.

On to the interview.

Liz: I love your project The Doldrums. It feels really cohesive in its disjointedness to me, like there’s a madness with a method underneath. Is that intentional, or does it just come out that way? I tend to be worried about drawing connections between images, and you seem not to be burdened with any of that, and it works so well. I guess I’m curious how you do it, if that’s even answerable.

Greg: I’m really happy to hear you say Doldrums feels cohesive. Having lived through all the moments the series presents, it certainly feels cohesive to me, but I’ve shown it to a couple gallerists who didn’t agree. But I do feel that these images are inherently tied together and that they are part of an ongoing body of work. The series is about the last few months before I moved from D.C., so I added the subtitle “A Fractional Portrait of the Nation’s Capital.” I think that helps make sense of it for people who don’t see what I’m getting at at first (or second) glance.

At the same time though, I kind of don’t give a shit about traditional organizing principles. Not that there’s anything wrong with creating work in a more project-based way. If that was a process that came naturally to me, I would assuredly use it. But I don’t think like that. I just shoot, and then the art is in the editing. So, in a certain sense, they all are just a bunch of one-off snapshots thrown together. But they create a sort of nonlinear narrative about me and the space I inhabit. If that doesn’t appeal, I don’t blame you. My life isn’t exactly the most fascinating.

But I hope to make work that that’s both personal and socially revealing. Looking at my life and what’s going on around me always makes me think that it’s totally insane that we live in a system that can support kids like me. So I want to try and do things that are sort of self-conscious chronicles of this particular historic moment; something that’s immersed in it all, but always cognizant of the giant thundercloud that’s hanging over this entire period of history.

But even if you don’t buy that, I think that my way of seeing comes across loud and clear. It all serves as a chronicle of depression if nothing else. So one way or another, I think it’s the autobiographical nature of what I do and the inescapable point of view I bring to it that links my work together—at least in my eyes.

Copyright © Greg Wasserstrom

L: How did you get started in photography? What made you want to be a photographer? And you write, too, from what I read on your blog, so how do you mesh the two interests in your life? Do you see yourself more as a photographer or as a writer? Do you want to find a way to combine them more directly?

G: Oh, gosh. I really have been using a camera in some form or other since I was a pretty little kid. I always loved taking pictures when we were on vacation growing up and practically begged my parents for my own camera. They were always really hesitant to give me anything of the sort because I’ve never been very good at keeping things nice. I went through quite a few. I have no idea what happened to all the pictures. I would love to take a look at them now, especially since my way of working has come pretty much full circle.

I got into stop-motion animation when I was ten or eleven, which developed into an interest in video art by the time I was going into high school. I got into still photography around the time I was graduating. The common thread here, I think, is that these are all ways to make art without having to have, say, fine motor skills or other abilities demanded by other forms of visual art. Also, I’m an incredibly analytical person, and I think I’m drawn to the photograph because of its capacity for symbolism. Photographs are interesting, I think, when they add up to depict something much larger than what’s within any individual frame.

That’s how my photography relates to what I write; I’m a political blogger, so my job is to provide commentary, which is what I also try and do with my pictures. So I don’t really see myself as some hybrid of a writer and photographer. I think of myself more as a kind of social observer working across a couple of different mediums. I would love nothing more than to combine these two things directly; they’re the same thing as far as I’m concerned, so I’ve been experimenting with different ways to do this in a kind of interesting or innovative way. To that end, I’m sort of looking to Wolfgang Tillmans and Dash Snow and the way both incorporate news clippings and other text into their work. I’m getting closer, I think.

Copyright © Greg Wasserstrom

L: When you think about photography, do you see it more as a craft or an art? I’m thinking of woodworkers, for example—they can make beautiful things, but they probably still see themselves as craftspeople more than artists. Maybe it’s a moot point, actually. I don’t know . . . scrap this question if it doesn’t do anything for you.

G: I don’t think I could dare to classify an entire medium as one thing or another. I’ve seen wedding photographs that I’ve really loved. And I’ve seen photographs on the walls of museums that make me vomit in my mouth a little. I suppose it has a bit to do with what kind of pictures are being taken and the attitude of the photographer about her own work. All the boundaries are really blurry. But when I think of photography as craft, I think of the guy who takes pictures at Little League games for the newsletter or something, all the way up through certain approaches to photojournalism and some commercial photography. But things are what we make of them, really.

Copyright © Greg Wasserstrom

L: Do you have any specific goals for your photography? Where do you want to go with it? (I sound like a college admissions counselor all of a sudden.) I mean, are you thinking you want to remain in the art world, focus on gallery shows, maybe a book someday, teach, etc.? Or do you think you’ll go the editorial/commercial route and try to make a living from your photographs? Or maybe neither?

G: Yeah, I mean, I have all sorts of grandiose fantasies about where I hope all this will go. I was just at Ryan McGinley’s opening at Team Gallery the other night and it was ridiculous and, of course, I'm sitting there thinking, “I could see this for myself.” So that’s pretty silly and is akin to wanting to be Radiohead or something. In real terms, I don’t have a specific plan for where I’m going. I know I want to be in this for the long haul, I want to get an MFA, I want to teach. I would love to make books. Regular editorial work would be fantastic, though I’m not comfortable enough to start seeking it out just at the moment. And if someone were to pay me to do commercial work for them, I would have no qualms whatsoever. (McGinley just did a big shoot for Heineken, I hear.) But I feel like I have a couple of questions to answer before I go full throttle after my dreams of riches and international superstardom. As soon as I feel like I have a little more control of the kind of work I produce, I’ll be hot on the heels of destiny, or whatever it is they say. I hope to be on much different footing a year from now.

Copyright © Greg Wasserstrom

L: I just got a US$37.50 store credit from photo-eye. What one photo book should I put that money toward buying? And why?

G: I flipped through Brian Finke’s new book, Flight Attendants, when I was at The powerHouse Arena the other night and I would probably pick that up. He takes some pretty well-established archetypes (the pilot, the flight attendant) and does a masterful job playing with them and looking at them in very fresh ways. Also, the images are gorgeous.

Interview: Raul Gutierrez

Raul Gutierrez in the house. Read on.

Liz: So as I mentioned to you, what I love about your blog is your mix of words and photographs. It’s unlike anything else I’ve found online, and in this day of everybody posting the same stuff, that’s remarkable. I’m curious about the role of blogging in artists’ lives. Why did you start your blog, and what does it do for you as an artist?

Raul: I started this particular blog to let friends and family know what was going on with a move I was making from L.A. to New York. It began as a typical “I ate cornflakes for breakfast” blog. But the move happened in the same year as the birth of my first child, and becoming a parent sparks all sorts of internal machinery, and soon I found I was writing posts about the emotional reality of being a new parent—posts like this or this. But the idea of turning into a daddy blogger horrified me, so I tried masking all the papa posts with other stuff—posts from old journals, random thoughts, and travelogues. Becoming a parent meant spending much less time in galleries and museums and more time looking at photography on the Web, which led to making posts about photographers I found along the way. The blog evolved and still evolves, but it’s getting closer to resembling me. A friend told me recently that she thought the blog was a decent proxy for the letters I used to write to her. That’s sort of how I look at the entries these days: as open letters to friends.

As for the role it plays in my life, it’s a creative outlet, but it’s an outlet that talks back. Through the blog, my circle has grown larger and more varied than it ever would have been offline, through the blog I can get instant feedback if I want it, and through the blog I’ve received artistic support that I never would have had otherwise. Blog audiences are self selecting, so if you write about photography, your readers tend to care about photography. So when you meet blog readers in real life they tend to become insta-friends.

L: Much of what I like about your posts is the minimalism—like the one about the lies you told your three-year-old recently. You reveal so much of yourself in these posts, in very few words. How do you see that approach applying to your photographs, if at all?

R: In L.A., I worked for a movie producer at Paramount. In post-production, he would often repeat that old editing aphorism “Arrive late, leave early,” and time and time again I saw scenes improved by cutting both the beginning and the end. So, in theory, I like the idea of economy in storytelling. And when blogging, it’s sort of a necessity, as people have no attention spans. But I’ve rarely been accused of being a minimalist photographically speaking—in fact, probably the opposite is true. I shoot with wide-angle lenses and often try to cram as many stories into a frame as possible.

Copyright © Raul Gutierrez

I’m an emotional often undisciplined photographer. I shoot daily and have a variety of projects going at any given time. Most of my negatives never see the light of day. I file them in boxes and never even print contact sheets. Part of my initial urge to post photography online was to use the audience as a motivational tool to force me to make scans of work that had been unseen for years. The pictures I put online were essentially rough selects from rolls of film that were eventually edited down to a show.

When editing, I try to ask myself, “Where is the story here? Is this the best shot to tell this story? Does it tell the story well enough?” . . . and then the ultimate and most useful question, “So what?” If you can’t answer “So what?”, you should go home and call it quits.

Copyright © Raul Gutierrez

L: What are you working on photographically right now?

R: I’m working on a long-term project taking environmental portraits of fresh-off-the-boat immigrants in New York (usually in their apartments). I’ve been at it for two years and probably have two years to go. I’m planning on doing the same thing I did for Travels Without Maps—scanning and editing in public. I don’t want to start look at anything until I’ve finished shooting. I rarely look at negatives until I’m finished shooting.

L: Your show at the Nelson Hancock Gallery was called Travels Without Maps, and that fits with how I imagine you living your life—seeing where things take you, with few plans or road maps. You seem really . . . I guess “whimsical” is the best word I could find to describe the impression I have of you. You see the wonder in life, which is why I think your posts about your kids are so magical. I guess this isn’t a question so far. Hmm . . . okay, so why photography? You’re definitely good with words, so what is it about photography?

R: I’ve been making photographs since I was in elementary school. When I show up in my hometown, old-timers always say, “Hey, you were that kid with the camera.” So making photographs comes naturally and easily. I think in images. My photographic taste is binary. I pretty much love images or hate them (most things I hate). Words are much harder. I enjoy writing, but it’s a struggle. I always doubt my words.

Copyright © Raul Gutierrez

Six months after graduating from college, I lost my mother and youngest brother and then soon afterward I lost grandparents and some close friends. Tragedy can deaden people, but for whatever reason the opposite happened to me. You never realize how much a finger can feel until you have a paper cut and after all those deaths I had a thousand paper cuts. It was as if the world had been blurry before and had snapped into focus. It’s been years since then, and carrying a camera helps me maintain that feeling of clarity. I see more with a camera in my hand, and when I see something, even if I don’t get the picture, I see what the picture should have been and I imagine the story contained within the picture.

Don’t know about the whimsical thing. I’m a quiet man, who comes from quiet people. At parties, I’m the guy in the corner nobody notices.

L: Last question, one I’m asking of everyone: I just got a US$37.50 store credit from photo-eye. What one photo book should I put that money toward buying? And why?

R: For sheer formal beauty, it’s hard to go wrong with Andrew Moore’s Russia ($36), but then again you could also get a used copy of Helen Levitt’s Slide Show for $26.75, which would give you ten dollars left over to put toward something else like KayLynn Deveney’s The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings, which sells for $17.95. Of course, if I had that gift certificate, I’d probably put it toward something like Watanabe Katsumi’s Gangs of Kabukicho ($60) or anything by John Divola.

Women photographers helping women photographers

I’m one of the 1,313 people who submitted two photos to APE’s Flickr group. My background with editorial photography pretty much consists of admiring the photographs in my favorite magazines, but I’d really love to push myself in new directions, including editorial, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. So I narrowed my images to ten and then I was lost. I knew I wanted to submit one portrait and one landscape or architectural shot, but I couldn’t figure out how to pair them up in a way that would make sense. In my head, they were different projects so how would it work to include one of my portraits with one of my In Store photos?

Jennifer Loeber to the rescue. Jennifer is a photo editor besides being a great photographer, and I ran the ten photos by her and asked her what she thought. In a few minutes, she came up with three pairings of images that looked like they belonged together. This weekend, I’m pulling together my book. With what Jennifer showed me, I’m in a much better place.

All this is by way of introducing this concept: women photographers helping women photographers. Don’t get me wrong: Men are great. Hey, some of my best friends are men. But face it, women are confronted with an art world (not to mention a non-art world) with lower wages, sexist attitudes, etc. And too often, far too often, we’re our own worst enemies by being territorial or possessive, sniping about each other, feeling all competitive and unwilling to share the information and connections we have.

This is completely the opposite of my experience, by the way. I’ve asked numerous women photographers for opinions, advice, suggestions, and every one of them has been generous. I know, though, that I’ve been lucky, and this isn’t always the case.

Cara Phillips posted Friday about the recent New York Times article on gallerinas, and about women and photography in general. (If you haven’t read her post yet, check it out here. It’s a must-read.) She e-mailed some of her fellow female photographers and bloggers and asked for their input, wanting to get a dialog going about all this. I didn’t know what I could do to conquer the Chelsea gallery scene or combat sexism, but I thought maybe we could do something to draw attention to all the women photographers who are generous and helpful and wanting to share their knowledge. I remembered those signs in the windows of some of the houses in my neighborhood when I was a kid, the ones that meant, “This is a safe house,” so that if you were walking home from school and some creep tried to grab you, you could run to the house with the sign in the window and know you’d be okay.

So I came up with the following badges, with input from Amy Elkins (who said my original color of pink did not equal girls and could we please have something else—the black, gray, green, blue, and orange look cool, and you have her to thank for the idea to move beyond pink) and Cara Phillips (who recommended tweaking the wording and made it much, much better). The idea is that, when you see one of these badges on someone’s site, you know that you’re free to e-mail her and you’ll be met with warmth and enthusiasm and a helping hand.

So here’s how it works: If you’re a woman and a photographer and you’re interested in helping other women photographers, right-click any or all of these files and save them to your own computer. Then upload them to your blog or Web site. The only rule: You have to be willing and eager to share your knowledge with other women photographers.

And if you’re thinking, “But I’m not an expert—what do I know?”, wipe that thought out of your mind. You know things, baby. And you’ve got answers.

P.S. If you want to create your own badge instead, go for it! This isn’t an official organization with a copyrighted logo. This is just women connecting with other women—and the more voices, the better!

Me and my nine-year-old self

Several years ago, my dad started converting to DVD the many hours of videotape he shot of my sisters and me, and the rest of our family, when we were growing up. It started with a DVD here or there, arriving in the mail without explanation or a note, and I liked that it didn’t need one. Then several weeks ago, a larger envelope, with six or seven DVD cases inside; he’d been on a roll.

The first tapes were shot with a video camera that was about the size of what TV news crews use today, complete with two or three light stands, set up around the room. Our Christmas mornings in Michigan were hot—red flannel nightgowns and Dad’s camera lights.

I’m grateful that he documented our lives in such detail. He got holidays and birthdays and vacations, of course. But in between are moments when we’re just riding bikes or reading or playing in the snow.

Tonight I watched a couple hours, starting with my ninth birthday. It is such a strange feeling, even still, to watch the younger version of me in action. I often feel like I haven’t changed at all, that I’m still that little kid with the buck teeth and the wild, chlorinated hair—until I see myself on tape and feel like that’s someone I once knew, not someone I once was.

§

Things my nine-year-old self and I have in common:

We both like opening other people’s presents.
We’re both moody.
We both think we’re shyer than we really are.
We both love Grandma and Grandpa so much it hurts.
We both like being alone.
We’re both curious.
We’re both stubborn.
We’re both a little sad whenever we’re happy.
We both know what we want and what we don’t want.

Me, after getting a blue ten-speed Schwinn from my grandparents

Can you hear the universe laughing at me?

In what can be explained as nothing other than cosmic payback, after putting that two-hundred-dollar 20x200 print on my credit card yesterday, I took my Jeep in for what I thought would be a basic oil change today, and as of the last call from the mechanic, the estimate is up to $845. Oil change, air filter, brake hose, brake pads, rotor resurfacing, PCV valve, rear differential fluid. . . . At least my cardboard box by the freeway off-ramp will be decorated with some lovely art. Look for me at Normandie and the 10.

Copyright © Google

Collect this: You Are Important

Oh, I have done a bad, bad thing: I just bought the medium-size print of this kick-ass photograph by Stephanie Cinelli from 20x200, and I know, I know, two hundred dollars for a photograph you love is really not a huge expense, but I am the same girl who, just last night, asked her boyfriend if he wouldn’t mind paying for dinner at Art’s Deli on Ventura Boulevard (even though she tries to offer to pay every other time and it was definitely her turn) because she didn’t know if she had enough money in her checking account to cover the bill. And I am the same girl who, at the age of thirty-four years and eleven months, has only $143.37 in her savings account. But come on, who can resist this photograph with all its sadness and humor, Listerine and Barbasol? This photograph is fucking it as far as I’m concerned. And besides, I’m just doing my job to stimulate the economy. Do yours here.

P.S. My trying-not-to-spend-money thing is going really well.

Copyright © Stephanie Cinelli

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