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 the 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 $40,000 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 30 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.
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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 $500 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 $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 thirdhand 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 40s? 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.
Labels: age, Amy Stein, Andy Cutraro, artists, Bill Witliff, blogs, books, day job, debt, education, interviews, Lars Tunbjork, photographers, portfolio reviews, Review Santa Fe, Susana Raab, Willem de Kooning
