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: 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.

I’m back

In early January, I attended Review LA, a portfolio review sponsored by Center and held in conjunction with photo la in my old neighborhood, Santa Monica. This was my first official portfolio review, and I came away with concrete advice on places to send my work, images to cut from my portfolio, approaches to take going forward—it was everything I hoped it would be.

And yet, since then, I’ve been stuck in the doldrums. Just in the past few weeks, I’ve bemoaned my apparent inability to get anything done, thrown in the towel (at least temporarily on my In Store project), tried to get going on something else, all with lackluster results.

Today I realized that I haven’t been wasting time these past couple months. I’ve actually been processing everything I’ve learned—I just didn’t know it.

I went out this morning on my second shoot for a new project I’d been thinking about for a while (and on which I’d gotten some strong encouragement at Review LA from Kristine Wilson of Ogilvy & Mather). It’s the kind of project that looks good on paper but doesn’t hold as much promise in the execution. I may give it another try, but I identified some critical issues with it that just aren’t going away, so if you’re placing bets, I’d bet against my resuming it anytime soon.

The good news is that, while working on this new project, trying different approaches, thinking about why it wasn’t working for me, I defined more clearly for myself what my In Store project is about for me and why I am (present tense, not past) passionate about it. I’d gotten some feedback from people that they wanted to see more images of the items in storage, images with people in them. In fact, Portrait Month was all about my getting comfortable with making portraits, in an effort to prepare myself for incorporating portraits into In Store. I had so much fun in December, and I’m really pleased with some of the portraits I made. But I don’t think portraits belong in In Store, and here’s why: That project, for me, isn’t about the people who have stuff in storage. It’s about the places where we put our stuff. I say in my project statement, written before all this talk of portraits began, that for me it’s about “imagining what’s behind closed doors.” Imagining. Not literally finding out. For me, the magic of these places is more real when I focus on the buildings and structures themselves, telling myself stories about what’s there and why.

When this dawned on me this afternoon at coffee with S., I could feel the wind pick up and my sail caught that wind, and that was all I needed.

I went home and took a fresh look at the images in the project, and I could see that, of the forty-five images on my site right now, only about fifteen of them are ones I consider good. The rest are lacking in some way. But that’s okay—I’ll keep working on the project, swap out the images that aren’t working with new ones that do, until I have the project where I want it to be, until it’s done.

Another agenda item: Read more poetry. (Who doesn’t need more poetry in her life?) Step away from the television and PDN, and pick up a book, something that has nothing at all to do with photography. David McCullough’s 1776 has been on my shelf for a long time. So have Pablo Neruda and Coast of Dreams. Maybe I’ll start there.

I’m back.

Women will be paid

Last month, for my birthday, my boyfriend gave me a copy of Marc Joseph’s New and Used, and I haven’t been able to look at bookstores, libraries, or record stores the same way since. I wasn’t aware of Joseph’s work, so the birthday present was not just this lovely book, but also an introduction to the photographer. I highly recommend both. If you’re a fan of Alec Soth’s Friday Poem posts (as I am), you’ll enjoy the poetry mixed in with the photographs (not to mention the short stories and essays—Jonathan Lethem, anyone?). Makes me want to go out and buy American Pitbull, too.

Meanwhile, here’s a library shot from this afternoon.

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