Interview: Allison V. Smith

I’ve heard Allison V. Smith’s name in the blogosphere here or there, and I finally spent some time on her blog and ordered her zine, and I am officially a huge fan. She’s seriously good. I had some questions for her, and she was kind enough to let me post our conversation here.

Copyright © Allison V. Smith

Liz: So, looking over your résumé, it seems like you had your start in journalism, and you’re now working as an editorial photographer and doing your personal projects, too. What’s your background? What’s your story? Where’d you go to school? How did you get where you are today?

Allison: I’ve known I wanted to be a photographer since I was fifteen. I’m the youngest of five and it wasn’t very easy finding my voice within my large, active family. As soon as I discovered photography, I had my own way to communicate. My tenth-grade photo teacher exposed us to Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Lee Friedlander, Walker Evans. She would give us assignments specifically based on photographers—“Go shoot a Cindy Sherman portrait,” etc. I could not get enough of photography.

Frustrated with college, I took a year off and studied at the Maine Photographic Workshops in the fall and then interned at the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald in the spring. It was a very important year for my photography. It was that year that I knew I wanted to make pictures for a living. Newspaper photography seemed to be the answer. It would feed my need to photograph daily and to be published. I finished college at SMU in Dallas and immediately started working for newspapers. I worked as an intern and full-time at seven newspapers over fifteen years. It was an amazing time to be a newspaper photojournalist—experience and knowledge that I will never forget! But I knew I wanted more.

In 2004, I quit to pursue freelance photography and my own personal artwork. Today my freelance work for magazines and newspapers supports me as a fine-art photographer. I’m represented in Dallas at the Barry Whistler Gallery, known for showing contemporary Texas artists. The Dallas Museum of Art and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, both purchased two images from my last show at the Barry Whistler Gallery in 2006.

Copyright © Allison V. Smith

L: Do you find that living in Dallas (i.e., anywhere outside New York), it’s harder or easier to get work? Does location even matter?

A: I am a half-breed. I am half-Texan, half-Maine. I hope to live both places someday. For now, Dallas is a wonderful place to live and work. I’m a laid-back Texan, and it definitely suits my personality—not to mention that the artists’ scene in Texas and especially Dallas is very supportive and a great place to be.

Copyright © Allison V. Smith

L: Do you shoot medium-format? Digital? Strictly film? Whatever works? Does that kind of stuff interest you, or is the equipment kind of ancillary? (I read an interview with Eggleston where he said he just picked up whichever camera was around when he walked out the door. Seemed really random.)

A: I shoot it all. I have digital for mostly freelance jobs. I shoot Hasselblad and Lomo and Widelux for myself. Occasionally, a client will ask me to shoot with one of my film cameras for an assignment.

Copyright © Allison V. Smith

L: I’ve been working a lot lately (in my mind, on my blog) on developing my vision (for lack of a better word), my style, my whatever you want to call it. I think this all relates to knowing what matters to me, figuring out what I want to photograph. It’s all tied together. Part of what I love about your zine is how cohesive it is. It includes a wide variety of photos, but they all hang together really well and seem to be talking the same language. Did that just happen for you, or did you work at it? Either way, how?

A: I think it is for sure something that has developed over time. I work hard at improving all the time. My ninety-six-year-old grandfather taught me that you never stop growing and evolving as a person or an artist. Part of my zine was an effort to loosen up my style, not worry so much about making the composition perfect. It has been a great exercise for me.

Copyright © Allison V. Smith

Copyright © Allison V. Smith

L: Do you feel like you get pigeonholed in a particular genre? I mean, are you known as an editorial photographer, or a fine-art photographer, or both? Do you feel like people are open to blurring boundaries? Maybe I’ve just been watching too much CNN, but I heard James Carville the other day talking about how if a politician doesn’t define himself, someone else will define him, so you need to control the message. I hate the way that sounds (Carville’s voice is ringing in my ears), but I think there’s something to be said for the fact that people do like to categorize and define each other. Is there a way to avoid that as a photographer? Or do you just say, “Fuck it,” and do what you want and screw what people think you are (or aren’t)?

A: I think about this all the time. You know people in the art world don’t quite appreciate newspaper photographers the way I think they should be respected. There are some amazing photographers out there—Damon Winter, Mona Reeder, David Leeson—all of whom I consider some of the best photographers in the country. Yet, you never see their names outside the newspaper worlds. Damon is hands down one of the finest portrait photographers there is, and besides seeing his credit in The New York Times, you never see his name. So this makes me mad and it kind of gives me the attitude of, “Fuck it.” I am just going to be who I am. I am going to continue working for clients who are wonderful to work for, who hire me for my vision rather than tell me how to shoot something. I am going to continue to shoot for myself, and I hope for more beautiful exhibits in the future. I am going to continue to make zines and postcards. I am going to continue to shoot for myself as often as I possibly can because, in the end, I love photography. I love photographers and photo books. It’s who I am, what I am.

Copyright © Allison V. Smith

Now is the time

A while ago, I turned off comments on my blog. I was sick of them, frankly. Sick of the reminder that people were out there reading my words. That seems naïve, I know. You publish a blog, you post regularly, and you get readers—that’s the way it works. But nevertheless, I started finding even the most innocuous comments an intrusion, as awful as that sounds. (I should be so lucky to have readers—how could I turn on them in this way?)

I realized yesterday—or maybe the realization finally crystallized—that my desire to turn off the comments was less about turning off the comments and more about stepping away from the blog and the world of blogs.

It is so easy, when your Google Reader is always full of excellent photographs, to feel as though the rest of the world is producing constantly, consistently, at a level you’re simply incapable of. It’s almost as if all the photographers whose blogs I read have become one photographer in my mind, and that one photographer never stops, never has to work, never gets sick or lacks inspiration. I know this isn’t true, of course—know that they all have their own struggles, that they all work hard to produce the work they do. But when all you see are the beautiful photographs, it’s hard to keep that in mind.

When S. and I were first together, I clung to him. Not literally, but so figuratively that it was almost literal. I was afraid that if I passed up one opportunity to spend time with him, one of two things would happen: (1) He would find someone else, or (2) he would die, and the last memory I would have would be of my saying no. The first fear came from years of insecurity, plus a cheating boyfriend or two for good measure. The second came from early losses in my life, as well as the very real fact that he’s simply an age at which people die without eliciting shocked gasps from those who read their obituaries. The why—on both counts—is less important than the what, and the what is less important than the effect it had on me, and on our relationship.

At some point in the past couple years, and honestly it’s been more of an evolution than the result of some turning point, I realized he loved me, and that I didn’t have to hold on so tight, that if he found someone else, well, that would be his loss, and if he died, well, that would be mine, but either way, I can’t control it. And it’s been so much better, in every way, since.

All of which is a way of saying that I’m feeling clingy with the blog. Feeling lucky to have drawn in some readers, and not wanting to lose them by not posting regularly. Feeling lucky to have gotten a tiny bit of attention for my work, and not wanting to lose that by not producing more. And not only that, but what if I don’t read all the other blogs out there? What if I miss out on something brilliant, something important, something crucial to my education as a photographer?

It’s time to let go. To stop focusing on the quantity of work that’s out there and focus on the work that matters to me. (Thanks, Ben, for that reminder.) To have faith that, if and when I start back up—whether that’s a week from now, a month from now, or longer—you’ll find me again. And if you don’t, I can’t control that. It’s time to focus on what I can control—my work—and nothing more.

I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Keep me in your Google Reader (or add me if I’m not already there), and chances are, my name will be bold all over again someday, and I’ll have something new to add to the conversation, some new light to shed, some new work to share. Until then, I’ll make like Alec and leave you with some words—Eastman, though, not Whitman:

Now it is day.
The sun is up.
Now is the time
for all dogs to get up.

“Get up!”
It is day.
Time to get going.
Go, dogs. Go!

—P. D. Eastman (from Go, Dog. Go!)

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.

Farewell, 2007

When I was a kid, a year seemed like forever. But in the past decade or so, every year has seemed to move faster than the one before, one year bleeding into the next. I always thought this was because, when you’re younger, one year is just a larger percentage of your life—a relativity thing. But 2007 has been the longest year I’ve had since I was a kid, and that’s forced me to revise my theory: I think the reason time seems to stand still or move much slower when you’re young is because you’re learning so much; every day is full of possibility and excitement and there’s none of that days-running-into-each-other stuff. And that’s why 2007 has been so long for me.

I love a year that seems to last forever.

I spent 2006 taking photography classes, learning some of the technical stuff that I needed to know, and though that was important, it wasn’t until I made the decision in December of 2006 not to return to school in January that things really took off for me. Suddenly I was in charge of my own education, and in my opinion, there’s no better way to do it.

I had no idea then that blogs would become my greatest teachers, or that so many of the photographers I’ve met through blogging would become such good and true friends. I went from starting the year without any real sense of what I wanted to photograph to ending the year so full of ideas that the trouble is, I don’t know how I’ll fit it all in.

My work appeared in A Field Guide to the North American Family, and online at the Humble Arts Foundation, FILE Magazine, White Wall Collective, and a variety of blogs. I was part of three group shows (in New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit) and had my first two-person show, in L.A. I received Honorable Mentions in the International Photography Awards and the Hey, Hot Shot! competition (and was featured on the HHS blog twice). After being afraid to go out and make portraits, I ended the year with my own self-proclaimed Portrait Month. And best of all, I got to hang out in person with Shawn Gust, Shawn Records, and Amy Stein, all of whom I met through blogging.

All in all, 2007 was a wonderful year for me and my photography. Not one to be easily satisfied, though, I’ve spent the past few weeks looking ahead to 2008 and trying to figure out what I want to do differently. I recently read Stephen Shore’s letter to a young artist (excerpted from Letters to a Young Artist, published by Art on Paper magazine, and available for purchase here). Here’s the bit that gets me:

I’ve been teaching at Bard College for more than twenty years. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet graduate students at several institutions over the years. More and more, I see students who are driven by a desire to have a show in Chelsea and be a successful artist. Certainly not all students, but I’ve seen a definite shift.

This is understandable, of course. However, for me, it has little to do with why I make art. I believe that art is made to explore the world and the culture, to explore the chosen medium, to explore one’s self. It is made to communicate, in the medium’s language, a perception, an observation, an understanding, an emotional or mental state. It is made to answer, or try to answer, questions. It is made for fun. In short, it is made in response to personal needs and demands.

A student might see a great work of art and say to himself, “This is a great work of art. I want to make a great work of art, too.” And so, the student sets out to try to do so. And if he has some talent, he might produce something that looks just as though it were a great work of art—almost convincing. If one didn’t know any better one might actually mistake it for a work of art. The only problem is that the great work of art that the student so admired was not a product of these same motives. It was the by-product of these same motives. It was the by-product of the artist’s personal quest.

And so my goal going into 2008 is to carry these words with me: to ask myself over and over again why I’m a photographer, and whether what I’m doing is in keeping with the answer to that question.

Although I got a kick out of looking at people look at my work on gallery walls, that feeling doesn’t begin to compare to the feeling I get when I’m photographing. So I think worrying less about who’s seeing my work and concentrating more on the work itself will be key to my happiness in the year ahead. It won’t bother me one bit if, one year from now, I’ve had no other gallery shows. But it will bother me if I don’t make significant progress on my In Store series (if not complete it), if I haven’t started working on one or two of the other projects I have in mind, if I haven’t better defined for myself what I’m trying to say, if I haven’t discovered the work of photographers I hadn’t known about before, if I haven’t spent time with some more of my blog friends, if I haven’t grown as a photographer, and most important, if my photography has not improved.

There is so much to try, so much to succeed at, so much to fuck up. Attention for my work would be great; but I can live without that, easy. What I can’t live without is photographing.

My peeps

In what was my first non-electronic communication with a photographer whose work I admire (to put it mildly) and whom I met through this odd thing called blogging, I had the pleasure of talking on the phone this afternoon with Amy Stein, who, when I e-mailed her with a question about photography last week (as I’ve done before) suggested that it would be easier just to talk than to e-mail. After a few days of phone tag, we finally connected, just as S. was due to stop by after a long day at a writers’ workshop he was leading, and I kept him waiting for forty-five minutes while I was on the phone. (I mean, S. is great and all, but I wasn’t about to put off a chance to talk with Amy Stein.)

The question was regarding when and whether to apply to Review Santa Fe, given my perpetual sense that I’m trying to run before I can walk. The answer, in the end, was yes. But the most compelling reason for me was the relationships Amy made with other photographers while she was there. As someone trying to go this without the context of a formal education, the more of a sense of community I can build for myself, the better. Showing your work to other photographers is nice, but it’s more than that: It’s having people to turn to when you have questions; being able to help those same people in turn; and learning from their work (how they edit their images, how they arrange them and present them).

Blogging has given me a taste of that community—well, maybe somewhere in size between the free taste on a pink plastic spoon you get at Baskin-Robbins and a single scoop on a sugar cone. (Mint chocolate chip.) The very fact that I was talking with Amy, and planning to get together next month when she’s out in L.A., is testament of that. I’ve e-mailed Susana Raab more than once and been met with nothing but generosity and honest advice (plus, she put up with my fawning over the fact that she’s friends with Simon Roberts, whom she met at, yep, Review Santa Fe). Andrew Hetherington, too—about as open and honest as you can get. Armando Bellmas, the kindest guy in the world—plus, his enthusiasm for photography is like a drug: addictive. And I consider Ben Huff and Shawn Gust true friends. These are people I know only because of blogging, and that sense of community I have with them is, for me at least, real. But still, I’d love to be able to sit and talk with these people—and with other photographers—and that’s what something like Review Santa Fe can offer. No, it’s not the only way to meet up with great photographers—and it’s really tough to get in, so this may all be just be a bunch of talk. But applying is worth my time. And if I get in, all the better.

P.S. Thanks, Amy!

Julia Dean

I know I’ve said this before on this blog, but it’s worth repeating: If you’re anywhere in Southern California, go to www.juliadean.com, look over the wide selection of courses and the phenomenal instructors, and sign up for a class. What the hell are you waiting for?

First of all, Julia Dean is the coolest person you’ll meet, and a wonderful photographer and teacher on top of that. And she surrounds herself with the best group of people—from the instructors she brings in, to her office staff (shout out to Natalie!), to her volunteers. And come on, she’s on the boardwalk in Venice. Can you beat that?

Plus, the students there are consistently good. Everybody is there to learn, there’s none of that competitve bullshit you get at so many places, and you walk away from classes feeling you’ve made some lifelong friends.

Can you tell I like the place?

Teachers

For reasons that I honestly can’t seem to recall, this morning I found myself thinking of Bloomington, Indiana, the small town where I went to college, a place I haven’t been back to since graduating in 1995. Indiana University is big—no bigger than many of its Big Ten counterparts, but still really big for a kid who grew up in a town of fifteen thousand and could walk into the local grocery store and say, “Charge it to my dad’s account,” without having to tell them who her dad was, because they just knew.

I’ve since lived in places much bigger, but when I got to Bloomington, full of expectations for what my college years would be, it felt huge and fell short. There are myriad reasons for this. I don’t think I really knew, as a senior in high school, what I wanted in a college. And I went into it passively: I assumed it would teach me, but I didn’t realize I would have to work so hard to learn, and I hadn’t yet learned how to work hard.

I.U. is a good school, and Bloomington is a great town, but I had trouble finding my place in both. Again, myriad reasons. If I knew then what I know now, it would be different, and I might even love it there. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t, and so much of my time was spent counting down the years, months, weeks, and days until graduation.

So would I choose a different school if I had it to do over again? No. Because I met three teachers there who changed the way I look at the world.

One was Barry Kroll, whose Vietnam literature course (with texts like Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried) formed the basis for the political beliefs I hold today. We knew, throughout the semester, that Professor Kroll had served in Vietnam, and we all speculated things like, “Hey, do you think he ever killed anyone?” (What else would a bunch of eighteen-year-olds wonder about?) But when he stood up on the last day of class and put on a green military jacket, we cried, and I have tears in my eyes just thinking of it today. I didn’t think much about war before I took that class, and I haven’t seen war the same way since.

Another was James Madison, who taught American history, and who made it come alive for me in ways it never had before. I still have a clipping in my file cabinet of a letter he wrote to the editor of the Indiana Daily Student, in response to an article about rewriting history, in which he said, in part, “The past is up for grabs—always. It’s not static, it’s not dead, it’s not even past, as one pretty smart American once said. Rather than one and only one way of seeing it, we are free to see it as we see, struggling through reading, thinking, observing and talking to understand in our own way. That we all will differ in what we see is what causes such confusion and what scares those who perhaps haven’t yet looked hard enough at the past.” Madison was it, you know?

The third was Scott Russell Sanders, who taught an English class called “A Sense of Place,” and who once, on a beautiful afternoon walked out of the classroom and asked us to join him, as he led us on a walk through Dunn’s Woods, silent all the way. Some of my classmates were whispering to each other, asking what the point was, whether this would be on a test, where we were going. I was first in line behind Sanders, and I was willing to follow him wherever he led me. And where he led me, where he led all of us, was to that sense of place that he cared so deeply about. I don’t think I fully grasped it when I was 18. But I think of him often, and I’ve come, over the years, to understand. (If you’re interested in reading an article by Sanders about Bloomington, and his devotion to and care for that place, click here.)

Can you imagine anyone who makes a greater impact on the world than a teacher?

Pancakes

This weekend I was up in Carmel at a workshop at the Center for Photographic Art, attending a workshop led by David Gardner and Chris Pichler. Gardner is a master printer (think Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, etc.) and Pichler is the publisher of Nazraeli Press (think John Divola, Todd Hido, etc.). The workshop was on publishing the photo book, and I learned about it on Mary Virginia Swanson’s blog (here).

Beyond making some friends (check out Charity Vargas), the real benefit for me was in getting to show my work to both David and Chris, as well as the larger group, and getting such a positive reception. I thought I was on the right track with my In Store series, but when you’re just showing your work to your family and friends, it’s hard to feel like you’ve gotten an objective assessment. Hearing everyone respond to my work was kind of wild—sort of like the first time you see your name on Conscientious. (“Hey, that’s me they’re talking about!” Freaky.)

I think the most important thing I got out of the weekend was the understanding that I should trust my own instincts. It’s always nice to get some outside recognition, but when it comes to validation of my work, only one person matters, and that’s me.

Meanwhile, I’ve been shooting up a storm—a storm of pancakes. Damon Bishop, my sister Cara’s boyfriend, is sponsoring the first International Pancake Film Festival in their Chicago apartment in a week or two, and he’s asked me to supply photographs of pancakes to be used as the background of the title cards in the DVD, which will include all the short pancake films that their friends have entered in the festival. (Damon is a master DVD maker. I think Rump Shakin’ is my favorite of his.) So I leave you with photos of pancakes. Yum! (Except for the blueberry ones—just looking at them makes me want to puke. I like mine straight up, with pure maple syrup. None of that fruit and whipped-cream bullshit.)

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Faculty

I’m sure there are all kinds of wonderful benefits that come with getting your education formally (i.e., in art school), but I am so thankful that my photographic education is coinciding with the burgeoning of blogs and that I’m able to use those blogs, along with my own work and reading and study, to cobble together an informal education for myself.

In the past few weeks I’ve been increasingly overwhelmed with all the technical stuff I don’t know about photography (lighting, in particular). My god, how can I be a photographer if I only use natural light? Entire categories of my lack of knowledge were growing in my mind; subcategories were being created. Why? Because I now have several ideas for projects that I’ve either just begun or am planning to begin soon, and I want to get them right. What if I’m missing some key piece of information, some critical technical expertise, that could make all the difference?

And then tonight, I read Alec’s post about lighting setups and Mirrors and Windows and The Americans, and I was relieved. I don’t have to know all that lighting shit. I don’t have to do anything but follow what interests me. I can learn it if and when I want to. Or I can never learn it. But where did I get the idea that that was necessary to make great photographs?

I read Alec tonight, and it was exactly what I needed. I am not in art school, but I have assembled, without setting out to do so, my own personal faculty for my photographic education. They include: Jen Bekman, Armando Bellmas, Lane Collins, Jörg Colberg, Mrs. Deane, Amy Elkins, Martin Fuchs, Shawn Gust, Raul Gutierrez, David Alan Harvey, Andrew Hetherington, Ben Huff, Shane Lavalette, John Loomis, Shelly Lowenkopf, Christian Patterson, Susana Raab, Justin James Reed, Kevin Sisemore, Alec Soth, Amy Stein, Zoe Strauss, Brian Ulrich, Greg Wasserstrom, and Shen Wei. Every day, at least half a dozen of these people open my eyes to something I hadn’t considered, introduce me to the work of a photographer I hadn’t heard of, challenge me to find my own answers to the questions they raise. Every day, they push me—most without knowing it—to work harder, be better. And this list doesn’t include teachers like Mitch Epstein and Joel Sternfeld, those who don’t blog but whose books I’ve learned just as much from as I have from the rest.

The best part about this school I’ve cobbled together for myself? There is no graduation. It never ends.

Paparazzi

I was in Venice last night for week four of an Aline Smithson–led class at the Julia Dean Photo Workshops. (Can’t say enough good things about Aline and Julia—if you’re in Southern California, taking a JDPW class would be a good move.) On the way home, my boyfriend and I stopped off at Hows Market on the PCH in Malibu so he could get something to eat. While he was examining Nutrition Facts labels on products he had no intention of buying, I was wandering around at the front of the store, camera over my shoulder. The checkout guy came up to me and said, “You’re not paparazzi, are you?”

“No.”

“Well, if you are, you just missed her.”

I laughed. Then as we were paying, he said, “Sorry about that. We have to be careful about paparazzi, and Paris just left three minutes ago, so I thought maybe you were one of them. They can put their cameras up to the window, but they’re not allowed in the store.”

“Paris Hilton?” I asked.

I think that’s what finally confirmed for him that I wasn’t paparazzi. That, or my boyfriend’s laughter.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

The Americans, and Calle César Chávez

For a while now, I’ve heard and read many photographers whose work I admire mention Robert Frank, and particularly The Americans, as being an inspiration. (Shane Lavalette wrote earlier this month about Frank’s Rolling Stones documentary called Cocksucker Blues, a post definitely worth checking out—click here to read it.)

I’d known about Frank for a while, and I’d seen some of the photographs from The Americans online, but I hadn’t ever seen an actual copy of the book. As far as I can tell, it’s not currently in print — last I checked, the least-expensive copy at Amazon.com was listed for $199.99 and Powell’s didn’t have it. Found a copy at my local public library, though, and picked it up today.

The three that stand out for me now, after a first look, are Television studio—Burbank, California, because looking at it from this vantage point, over 50 years later, it seems to foreshadow Americans’ obsession with watching ourselves and each other; Movie premiere—Hollywood, because it’s all glamour and heartbreak (I don’t know whose face is sadder: the woman on the left with her hand up to her mouth, or the movie star); and U.S. 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho, because it shows that sort of intense focus that comes from staring at the road when you don’t really know where you’re going but you just want to get somewhere far away from where you are. Of course, now, having chosen just three to mention, my mind is swimming with others, and I realize that’s the point.

Television studio—Burbank, California. Copyright © Robert Frank

Movie premiere—Hollywood, California. Copyright © Robert Frank

U.S. 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho. Copyright © Robert Frank

In LIFE magazine (November 26, 1951), Frank said, “When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” I don’t think there’s any doubt that he succeeds at this. And I like, too, the connection between photography and poetry. It made me think of Alec Soth’s Friday poems, which seem so natural a fit for a photographer like Soth, whose images are as much poetry as Frank’s are. It all ties together.

I remember being in high school and reading a book that made reference to a character in another book, by another author—a book I had read. I can’t remember now which books they were, but I remember the feeling I had, that sense that it was all coming together, that I was learning the vocabulary of a society, that I had insider knowledge. That’s when it all clicked for me, that this was a hell of a lot of fun, this learning thing. And even today, whenever I make one of those connections, it feels like I’ve found a piece to a puzzle and the picture is becoming clearer.

I got into it with a Republican at the Y the other day, and his brilliant retort was, “I don’t know how old you are, but you’ve got a lot to learn.” He’s right—and thank god for that.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

I heart L.A.

Superbrief comments for the evening: Went to the first afternoon of a two-day course at The Julia Dean Photo Workshops, and, man, is she good. I learned so much in just four hours. Back there again Sunday afternoon, and then Monday for the first of six monthly meetings for another workshop.

Bottom line: If you’re in Southern California and you’re into photography, get yourself over to the boardwalk in Venice and take a workshop at Julia Dean’s. It’s money (and time) well spent.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Peter Parker

My boyfriend and I spend a lot of time in the car, and with my vow to take and post a new photo every day, he’s gotten used to being in the middle of a conversation with me—one or the other of us talking—and hearing me shout out, “Stop!” I think he’s almost gotten to the point where he starts to hit the brakes before I purse my lips to say the p. Today was one of those days, and the result is the photo you see below. I think all the adults were inside watching the Super Bowl, and there were just a few kids in the yard. I learned from one of them—a boy, maybe six years old?—that it was his birthday and that his cousin’s birthday is in eight days. That’s why they have Spider-Man in their yard.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Next weekend, I’m taking a two-day course at The Julia Dean Photo Workshops in Venice. And that week is also the start of a six-month workshop I’m taking there called “The Long-Term Project”—that’s the one I’m really eager for. I have a couple different project ideas, but the one I think I’ll start with involves the Los Angeles County line. I don’t know that I can articulate my plan just yet—I’m still thinking and researching and figuring out why I’m drawn to this in the first place—but I think it’ll have something to do with following the county line from where it starts just west of Malibu all the way up past Santa Clarita, east through the Antelope Valley near where David Hockney did his Pearblossom Hwy., and then down past Disneyland and toward the beach again.

This will be my first long-term project, so I’m not sure how it’ll play out. I’m assuming (and hoping!) that the project will evolve as I get into it, and that when I start I can’t possibly know what I’ll find. I’ll still post daily photos to my blog, but I’m sure you’ll start seeing some from this project instead of just the one-offs I’ve been posting so far. So stay tuned. It should be fun!

Conceptualize this

I’ve spent countless hours—hours that I’ll never get back—in literature courses, and it’s taken me years to return to a place where I enjoy reading. There’s nothing like picking apart a great book to ruin it completely. Marxism, feminism, postmodernism, historicism, deconstructionism . . . the isms were, for me, a killjoy. When I got out of literature classes and started spending a lot of time with writers—at workshops, conferences, and in grad school—I discovered that lit crit lives in an entirely different dimension from the people who write the books that are being dissected. Writers generally don’t set out to write something with those isms in mind; they set out to tell a story. The isms come after, and they often have nothing to do with the writer’s intention.

I’ve recently noticed that this same dichotomy isn’t as distinct in the art world. The academics seem to have a stronger hold on artists than they do on writers. Artists think and talk in terms of critical constructs that you just don’t hear writers using. It’s not just about the artist creating; the artist has to have a concept for her work. Concept, schmoncept. It’s as though the scholars and critics have gotten into artists’ minds, and the artists have bought in to what the critics are saying. Don’t get me wrong—I think there’s a place for the kind of intellectualizing that academics groove on. I just wonder whether it has any place in the realm of creativity. How much can you possibly produce when you have all that theory—all that stuff that should come after you’re finished with your work—floating around in your mind?

When their last album was released, I heard the Dixie Chicks say that whenever they’re not sure what to do, they ask themselves, “What would Bruce Springsteen do?” Well, whenever I’m not sure what to do, I ask myself, “What would Joan Didion do?” There is a place in this world for the Susan Sontags. But give me Didion any day. I would argue that both women were/are brilliant, but where Sontag was entirely in her head, Didion volleys back and forth between her neuroses and her heart, with curiosity as her compass. I can’t imagine Didion saying, “I think I’ll write an essay about my existential angst as exacerbated and illuminated by the Santa Ana winds,” or “My concept for this piece is a postmodern look at The Doors waiting for Jim Morrison.” I think she wrote, and writes, to try to answer her own questions and to make sense of the world. After Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, died suddenly and unexpectedly on December 30, 2003, with their daughter, Quintana Roo, in a coma at Beth Israel, Didion wrote to cope with her own grief, and the result was The Year of Magical Thinking, a road map of grief that made me feel, upon reading it, that I could now handle any loss, any death, because at least I would be able to turn to this book and know I was not alone.

And that’s what I want in my own life, in my own work. I want it to be about my questions, my answers, my fears, my opinions, my vision, my voice. I don’t want to get caught up in intellectualizing it—I’ll leave that for other people.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

The unchecklist

I’ve just finished a year of photography classes, and with the spring semester set to begin in two weeks, I’m wrestling with myself over whether to take the two classes I’ve signed up for.

I’m not in school to get a degree, so it’s really about what I think I’ll get out of the classes and how I want to spend my time. Of the three I’ve taken so far, one was fantastic, and the other two were good. I’m sure I’d learn things in these two. The question is: Where would I learn more—in class or on my own?

I don’t know . . . I’m excited about what I’m doing on my own, and the thought of having to do assignments somebody else imposes on me right now isn’t all that appealing. If I expect to make a living as a photographer someday, I know it’ll be important to approach assignments or commissioned work with the same enthusiasm and intensity I put into my personal projects—and I’m confident I’ll be able to do that. (I’ve never been much for ennui.) But for now, I want my photography to be about my exploration of what matters to me and what doesn’t. Lately I’ve just been going out with my camera and playing around, noticing what grabs my attention and what I pass by. The more time I spend doing this, the sooner my own visual style will start to emerge. At least that’s my theory.

I’d rather let the classes I take spring from what I’m curious about, instead of being dictated by what classes the school offers and which ones I haven’t yet taken. I’m trying to get away from that checklist approach to learning—it feeds into my anal nature a bit too easily, and easy isn’t what I’m going for.

So I guess I do know.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball

Welcome

New year, brand-spankin’-new blog!

To kick things off, here’s a bit about me and what I hope to do with this blog.

I got my first camera, a Kodak Disc, for my tenth birthday, in 1983, and for the next twenty years, I always had a camera around. Maybe more important, I was always aware of photography and photographers, sort of like when you have your heart set on a new car, it seems like every time you turn around, you see someone driving one. It’s as if your senses are heightened when you want something that much, and I wanted to be a photographer more than I’ve ever wanted any car.

As I got older, though, and started thinking about a “career” in a more concrete way, I didn’t have any context for what it would mean to be a working photographer, or how to get there. I didn’t know any photographers, and the ones whose work I’d admired as a kid seemed out of reach. Plus, I wasn’t a fan of uncertainty—the thought of not knowing where I was going or how to get there drove me crazy. So I ended up majoring in English and taking a more traditional path, one that led me far away from photography. Sure, I kept my camera, and I took the occasional darkroom class at the local art center. But that was the extent of my involvement with photography, and I thought that’s the way it would always be.

After undergrad, I spent six or seven years working in a job I didn’t love—cubicle, gray walls, fluorescent lights, The Office minus the comedy. In my late twenties, I moved to L.A. (shout out to Angelenos!) and picked up a master’s degree in writing. School was like a Linus blanket for me, all blue and warm and fuzzy, and I thought for sure this degree would change everything. And it did—just not in the way I thought it would.

I didn’t write the Great American Novel or become the Voice of My Generation. But for my master’s thesis, I wrote a collection of essays on photography—and the more I wrote about photography and thought about how much it had mattered to me ever since I got that Kodak Disc camera and wore the collars of my Izods turned up, the more I wanted to be out taking pictures. I started to remember what I’d wanted to do and be when I was ten, before I started telling myself those things were out of reach. I finished my thesis and walked away with $40,000 in student loans—and the decision to be a photographer.

Everything had come full circle.

Today I’m taking some amazing photo classes—not to get a degree, just to learn—and I’m letting my curiosity lead the way. Right now, I’m most interested in documentary work, but I’m open to other possibilities. I’m still growing as a photographer—finding my voice, my style—and I don’t want to limit myself.

In this blog, I’ll post images I’ve taken that same day (like the one below). I’ll also write about the photographers I’ve always admired (and ones I’ve just discovered), photo books that have made me think, lectures and exhibits I’ve attended, projects I’m working on (or hope to work on someday), successes I’ve had, mistakes I’ve made, things I can’t figure out, and anything else that’s on my mind—because if it’s on my mind, odds are, it has to do with photography.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball