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Steven Seidenberg: Gallery Photography and the Art of Seeing | The Visual Historian Podcast · the Visual Historian - "A Photographer's Journey"

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: Alright, you guys, welcome back to the visual historian.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's another Monday.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: Beautiful, beautiful Monday.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's a wonderful time to get creative in your life.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: First day of the week.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: I know sometimes it can be hard.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's like, uh, it's Monday.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna say it that way, man.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I have an amazing guest on the phone.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: I got him in the board.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna introduce him right now.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: First of all, I love having all different kinds of creative people on the podcast that are also um in business.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're earning a living, they're earning some money.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because there's always two sides to our artistic craft, which is uh the craft itself, whichever that is of you, and then there's always like the business side of doing things.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I find that there's a balance of both that loves to be discussed.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: So um, so ladies and gentlemen, I have the distinct honor and pleasure of introducing to you guys Mr.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Steven Sidenberg.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I know it's Seidenberg.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Seidenberg.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: I just said that to you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I even just clarified how to how to say that right.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: Seidenberg is I love it.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm German too.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm German too.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, my last name, uh, we say Kuschler, but real Germans will say Kugler.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: And um that was very insightful.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so just uh just to highlight really quick, um Mr.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: Stevens' work crosses photography, poetry, and philosophy, which are like my jam growing up.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: My my my philosophy ways of thinking about life and seeing things in many different angles can annoy some people.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then I get the one or two that love to go down that that path, and it's and it's a joy seeing everyday life in a new light.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: And um, that's the one I took philosophy like two or three times in college, actually.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I loved it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um poetry, I've always poetry was always it mixed and mashed with my music side, you know.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so are you kind of the same?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: What did you kind of grow up like this already, or did things happen to you that got you here?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, no, I uh from a young age, I was interested in this literature and I was and and then I went to I so as an undergraduate, I yeah, I was and before that I was interested in philosophical literature and also in making art, both as uh in drawing and painting and photography.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then as an undergraduate, I did all of those things and poetry and such.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh then I actually went to graduate school in philosophy after uh my undergraduate life.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So for nice uh some some part of my life I was an academic philosopher.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and really just making my artistic work as a as a sideline while I pursued that other career, at least until I, you know, decided that really my life as an artist was the was where I wanted to be and what I wanted to spend my time doing.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, interesting.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because um, I see here at your photographic projects, you know, they include architecture of silence, uh Pipe Valve, Berlin, and Kanazwa Vacancy.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's a name.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Those are those are the three.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Kanazawa Vacancy uh is uh that's the those are the three the two the two you first mentioned are uh projects that have resulted in in books that have come out in recent years since I don't know over the past decade, those two, and then Kanazawa Vacancy is a project that uh the uh a book of that title and of the images, those images which are of uh vacant lots essentially in the coastal uh Japanese city of Konawa, uh is coming out in the new year.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, I'm I'm excited to see that just because I've I've always wanted to go uh to Japan and it's a beautiful country.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's that's just awesome.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: So one of my when I first was introduced to your email and I was look look looking into you and I noticed that you were in PPA and a whole bunch of other things, um, editorial-wise, I'm like, man, for me, this is gonna be great because it's it's the other, it's probably one of the only few things of photography I have not ventured into at all.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like you being in galleries and um published on this kind of a um eclectic level is rare, I would say, in today's world, you know.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean if you say what photographers are doing, none of them are saying they're in galleries, you know.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I love that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: I just thought that's the coolest thing ever because um I'm sure your journey when you were younger, you know, how it bobbed and weaved and got here, got to where you are.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: The journey is either, you know, um a stumble and a fall, and you recover and you go with it, or it's just like this passion that just keeps taking you the right way.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, was did either does that make does that apply to you?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess so.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I I mean, I'm not sure if it's exclusively one way or the other in that respect.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I you know, I have many passions, and uh the ones that have worked for me in a certain way are the ones that I continue to pursue.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think it is true, you know, the the uh the world that I'm in is a fine art photography world, obviously.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not uh so and that's what you're describing.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's one where you know my goal is so just to say my goal is to make prints, it's not to provide files, it's not to have online content, uh, which to me is a different it's a it's a different pursuit.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that is uh that's that's a uh uh and it's a different art really.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's one that I'm I I don't uh I don't have particular interest in.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh I admire people who who do it well.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's just uh it in a sense it's not photography.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's content creation.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: It could be doing anything, it could be making little videos, it can be yeah, photography is the thing you do, uh is the activity that results that has its final result in a print, a photograph.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so that is, and and you know, this is one of the questions is what happens with a photograph?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you're you know, people do journalistic photography, they do uh fine art photography, and and for me, there is some documentary character, there are some documentary characteristics in my work.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is still uh uh a project that is meant to say something about the world that it's photographing and to reveal through photographic, uh through composition or uh other kinds of repetition in a series, how uh how the world works or what the world is like, as it were.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it is also something that I envision as uh either or I I guess, or I should say both, in book form, where the series can be seen in a kind of a full way, uh, and or in uh in gallery form, where perhaps it's uh there's a transposition of images with another series.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the in both cases, one is in uh kind of uh an interesting and I think uh compelling and generative uh collaboration.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: It could be with the gallerist, with the curator uh of a show about how they want to mount a show, the images they want to have in the show.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And with a with a book, it's the book designer, the the the publisher, and how they want the images to be ordered, how they want the book to feel, and you know, it it's always it's always an interesting conversation how that works.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the the kind of collaboration, I'm sure it gets deep, you know.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yes.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh like I was looking into so um so if you go to his website, everybody, stephen uh seidenberg uh.com, um it it's it's a great website.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna look through the kind of books he shows you a couple images, but man, you start to kind of understand um how the images are talking to you.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: And if you you know if you've ever been to these places, like some of a lot of the things that you're showing, I've never been there, obviously.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: But it hits you a certain way regardless.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: So when you kind of read what it's about and where the images are and the time frame and that kind of thing, I think that's the coolest part of where photography meets story, you know?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: So how so how you show what you are showing is just as important as how you it's not how you took the picture doesn't mean anything.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's what you're showing as the final product for what you're trying to emulate, you know, you know what I'm saying?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: So um hats off to you, man.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's a lot harder than people may realize.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: Much, much harder.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yes, I mean, you know, because many people are you people obviously, you and I, uh we established before we started talking that we're you know around the same age.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, so we started with film and we started, it's a very different process uh when you are yeah when you're a film photographer and when you are thinking about and so I think probably is true.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm assuming it's probably true for you too, but for me, you know, I still bring that sensibility to the work.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you can still have that film sensibility when you're shooting digitally.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I shoot digitally, but I still think about where uh I mean mostly I do a little bit of film shooting as well, but uh mostly shoot digitally, and I think about where how the print is going to work, how the print is gonna going to get so when I'm shooting, I'm thinking towards the print.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's you know, some it means that I'm thinking about uh I'm I'm shooting manually, I'm thinking about the parameters of exposure.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: These are all things that, in a sense, uh when we were coming up as photographers, you you needed to know about that to make a photograph.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: You could, you know, it wasn't a choice to not to not have that absolutely as part of how you approached exposure, you know.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I think that's a great advantage for us.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we you know, now we can automate however we want, but we know what we're we know what we're automating when we automate it.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, correct.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny you said that because I went on my three-mile walk this morning and I was thinking about some questions to have for you, but before I can even get any questions out, I was thinking about myself, and uh I was on TikTok watching another photographer talk about I don't know how many shots they take on a wedding day or whatever it is.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm sitting here going, having a flashback to 32 years ago, and what these this this newer generation will never understand is what it means to have 24 frames on a roll of film, or 30 if you were lucky, you know, 36 if you were shooting 35 millimeter.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: But to have so many frames and then and our you know, when we were learning in the beginning under some photography um educators, they would give you one roll of film and say, Okay, this is what we're shooting all day today, one roll.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll like, huh?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, You need to make every single shot have a purpose.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: Don't click it to be clicking it, don't give me something ridiculous.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: I want everything to have a story behind why you took it.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know why you took it when I see the picture.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: It needs to make that kind of a sense.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Okie dokie.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I was just thinking, uh, I would never forget.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: I had uh I was doing a wedding and I looked down to my camera and the bridesmaids are coming down.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: I looked down to my my my uh frames I had left, and there was like nine shots left.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, eight bridesmaids.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: You're right, you see, you know where I'm going with this.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: The average person don't get it, they just don't get it.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I have to like I had to decide on oh my god, am I just not gonna shoot them coming down the yard?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then I gotta get the bride and her dad coming in, you know.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I would shoot five girls, and then I would quickly pop off the rest of the roll.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: And as I'm walking back to the church by the church lady, you know, I was like, Don't send the next one down.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta change his roll of film.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, it was medium format, so you gotta close the roll, you gotta lick the tab, you gotta open the other roll, you gotta get the paper off dear.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: Don't leave any paper on the roll when you put it in the camera.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: That could be a problem.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: It goes over the back door, but uh, it's just it was so much.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: And she's like, she's like, Dawlin, just calm down.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I can't calm down.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: 200 people in this church are watching me change a roll of film right now.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: And and and you're trying to you're trying to smile about it, like it's no big deal.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: I do this all the time.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: We're good, we're good.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: But you're freaking out, you know.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: But but having that kind of of life, that that training, it it never has left me.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, um, I'm constantly getting asked what settings am I shooting at, and I'm always laughing.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, guys, there's only one.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: There's only one setting.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: Who are you talking about?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's called M.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: M for master.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, M for master.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you you work this only, you're gonna master this one setting.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: I said, I said, y'all don't understand, man.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: When you when you only know the three things that make the camera work, it becomes back of your hand, and now everything you create, you're more proud of because you were a hundred percent involved in everything that went into that picture instead of a program mode, you know.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning and you know, yeah.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just and to be fair, uh, once you get once you understand those parameters, you can shoot in other modes and control those parameters, other parameters in other ways.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can have you can shoot in aperture priority and use exposure compensation to change the way the the shutter speed and and set uh have a uh a set ISO, you know.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can do it how you want, exactly, but you need to be controlling those parameters, exactly.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly, and that that's the whole point, you know, because um um good lord, I've photographed with with everything, and I've always told people, so dude, it's it's not it's not the equipment.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: I said, it is and it isn't.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Yes, medium format film is gonna give you a different look than 35 millimeter.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Of course it will.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, but you gotta understand something.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: A good photographer doesn't care about what's in his hands, he knows how to get it done, he or she.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's like you still gotta do the darn thing.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: So settings, eh.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I had a thought.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: This had not to derail, but I had a I had a I had a thought process here.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I feel like I feel like f stops we don't even need um on the camera, you know?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's like pretty much just three is wide open, you know, middle-ish, and then all the way down.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's really all you we were really doing.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: We're either keeping it in in focus or not in focus in the background.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Everything else is just because.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's just because was that 5.6.7?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh god, I don't know.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you don't need to know that.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you you just need to, I mean, you you're adjusting it, you're seeing, and obviously we have the luck now often of having you know EVFs and that all will show or other other kinds of uh mechanisms in other kinds of viewfinders that will show us what the depth of field will be.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're shooting with, I don't, you know, I don't know if you ever shoot with say like a digital cameras or shooting with a like a digital camera, you know, you are if you're shooting with an M, you are not really uh and you're looking through the rangefinder viewfinder, you are not seeing uh depth of field.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You are having to intuit in depth of depth of field based on your experience with that particular lens.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: With the particular, you know, it's it but uh that's the thing.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't care what kind of camera I'm using, but I care what kind of camera I'm using.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not I I I'll tell you, I never use I just I just don't use my cell phone as a camera.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you could I could have a cell phone with no camera, it wouldn't matter to me.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know because I am totally uninterested in it.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uninterested in that kind of photography.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, you know, if I can't control the aperture, then I'm not interested in in how it and every other parameter, but especially if I can't control depth of field, then I'm not interested in what the camera's gonna do.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm certainly not interested in it as as uh as a throughput to my life as a photographer.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um it and uh so you know that's it it's you don't have to be shooting all the time, you know?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Shoot when you're one, as you said before, you know, you have this this this attitude that we come from, you know, that where you know you have uh the 24 or 36 exposures or whatever you have, and you are you make the most of that.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it means you're not just shooting and shooting and shooting, you are thinking about everything you shoot.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: And and you know, I think I would I would imagine if I was starting off in in this decade, you know, of where we are now.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um man, I I really honestly think that's more important than most anything people are looking up on on YouTube and all, is I like I'll never forget years ago.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: I forget when I was when I was with PPA and they changed their tagline to um the world's greatest storytellers.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not gonna lie, when that happened, and I was already in business, I was already in it maybe six, eight years or something like that, when he when he reframed their phrase, their their thing, and and their mantra.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I would I'm not gonna lie, there was a little bit more pressure on you, like you felt that weight of oh, we are the greatest storytellers of the world.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, that's that needs to be that needs to be purposeful, you know.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's yes, it's like, oh, what does that mean?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: And and the reason why I was so excited to have you on my podcast was because um you we don't hear from this generation of photography that often, unless you're like really in that world.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, 90 something percent of photographers out there, um, you know, like myself, who are portrait and event and you know, everything else you can think of.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, nobody's putting their brain on the way of everything is intentional.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: And is it good enough to hang in a gallery?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: More or less, is it worthy of a book, you know, at the level at right where you are?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm very thankful for you to be here because I would love to hear um my next question.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: I actually wrote this down.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, your journey has moved through photography, poetry, and philosophy.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: Was there a particular experience or turning point when you began to see yourself as an artist?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: And what sustained you before galleries and publishers recognized your work?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um I probably, you know, I I was a student, I was first really exposed to fine art photography by one of and uh one of the great American photographers of the uh uh still alive of the second half of the 20th century and the the the uh first part of this century, Stephen Shore is his name.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he really and he uh and and others at my undergraduate institution, which is a Bart College, uh in upstate New York, uh, you know, it it was through exposure to his work and then through thinking about the history of photography, looking at other uh other photographers' work, seeing the work of the uh that came out of in the in the 70s.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: There was uh um an exhibition called the New Topographics, which involved Stephen and uh Lee Friedlander and Robert Adams and and Barrington and Hilda Bechier and a few a few other photographers whose work at Lewis Baltz, people whose work is in is uh was quite important in informing my way of thinking visually, uh and understanding what was possible as a visual maker.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and you know, I'll say that uh for me, uh photography and painting are on the same kind of continuum.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: They I and sculpture, you're thinking about uh the ways, modes of composition, basically.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and of course, photography has some things that are specific to working in that form.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as you start to understand what other artists are doing, um, and and I was actually never drawn to the business side of photography.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I never wanted to photograph an event, uh, and I never wanted to do photojournalism, any of that kind of stuff.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was always uh just this kind of work.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it is a it's a slug, you know.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's all all of it is a slog, but you are there are years and years where you know you you you don't find a pathway for the work, you know, and it's still a slog.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of hustle.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's true.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you're doing events photography, it doesn't matter what you're doing.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you're working for yourself, no matter what, sure, you are you you're at to hustle all the time to get the work and to get the work out and to find the the outlet for it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and and for me it it really um it was just it's just really pushing over over decades and and sticking with it and continuing to try to find uh both the to find and then and and then own my voice as a photographer which is of course uh one of the important things to do uh if you're whatever kind of work you're doing as a photographer but especially in fine artwork and then to find places and outlets for it I mean you need to have while you're doing that I mean it it's not a steady it's not steady income you have to have another way to make a living right you have to be able to do other things.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and and you you have to have a you know if you have a partner you have to have a supportive partner who understands that you know and understands those struggles and maybe it helps if you have a partner who has like a steady paycheck so that you know your ups and downs are kind of uh uh uh evened out by the the the what's sustaining income through some other uh yeah a paycheck you know so uh yeah it's uh it it it's it's not for it it's it can be very frustrating yeah uh needless to say and that's true for any artist uh doing any it's true if you're a painter it's true if you whatever you're doing you you're going to struggle to find outlets for the work uh it's true and you know uh you you but and and some of it is just sticking with it and some of it is luck and so you know there's so much that uh is hard to describe about how it how you come to a place where you can actually kind of make a life out of it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah whatever that amounts to agreed i I have said this for so um so I have three children uh two girls and a son and uh the I call him the boy because he's he's last so he's had mom then sister then sister so he's got a kind of uh ladies around around his life and now I'm he's the last one and I'm kind of pulling pulling him aside explaining to him what how he needs to be as a man to um give have forgiveness and yes they're the boss just you know whether they're they are or you're letting them believe that doesn't matter women rule the world period just straight up period right he's like got it you know um but I tell you there's one thing that I've always told him I said look man I'm not gonna lie to you here I said I've never I don't believe in the word best like that bothers me the word best because now you're you're telling me that there's a bar and I don't know about you but every record always gets broken somehow.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't like best and then there's like different eyes on you and there's a whole thing that happens with the word best I said look your father is damn good at what he does.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: I said but I'm gonna explain to you what I'm actually better at doing than photography.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: I said the camera was just a tool between me and the other human in front of me.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like when you can relate to another human being on a a large more emotional level about life you'd be surprised how that ripple effect affects you and the person that you're with and I'm like I have always I've always seen photography that way like that's my poetic that's my poetic side the philosophy of you know what was it that I loved about photography so much.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_03: And at first it was I mean come on when you're young and you're single early 20s it's like I get to photograph pretty girls and they smile for me.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: Cool this is amazing and I'm a rock drummer so it all kind of like goes you know with the whole territory of look at me look at me but then I would have these jobs where I was connecting with the people on a completely different level and that got me like it just it just did.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then I'll never forget the first time I got a phone call from um a bride after like a month after the wedding she was like George I need you to um make a lemma 14 of my uncle and I was like which one was he goes well you actually got him sitting down at the table with my aunt I said okay she goes he passed away you're the last person to take a picture of him and I was like oh wow so two things happen first of all I was like you see covering everybody at the event is a big deal because you never know yeah you know right and now we're going back to like what PPA said we're the greatest storytellers well there's weight that comes with the ability of what we can do with this tool you know with this thing that's just a it's just a device man but when you have more love and passion into why you're doing what you're doing I really believe it comes across in your work and I think you as a person being a certain way it pushes it even more.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah you know like I I'm looking at your work and I've been reading your stuff here and there and I've been honestly like dying to talk to you.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's like man I'd love to know this guy.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like he sees life way beyond just where light hits the wall you know you know what I mean and that's been me too so even though I am in the rut of um all the kind of events that I do I mean I do good lord anything but anything photography related I can do it pays the bills helps me get all three of my kids through private school um all that good stuff.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: But I I'd be lying though if I didn't tell you um what you're doing has always been in the back of my mind as far as man will I ever produce something good enough to even be in a gallery because I I don't know because I'm not doing anything towards that goal right now.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm doing something completely different.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: But as a right as a photographic artist I think all of us who have been in this game long enough appreciate anybody who can hang anything on a wall that's in a gallery and just be appreciative of what you did beyond the fact that a client paid you to do work.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like this was your personal thing that was good enough to hang.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: So my hat's off to you literally yeah well uh you know I I I think you you know I I you're your the one the one place I'll take exception is you thinking about it as will it be good enough to be in a gallery you might ask yourself will you like it enough to try to have it in a gallery and to think of it as that kind of work but there it as you as you were describing to your son it's not it's not a competition.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it it you make the work you make uh and you know okay when you're doing event photography or other kinds or say product photography any of this kind of stuff you know you you may be able to channel your uh your craft into that work but you may not have a passion for this or you may I mean it's not it's certainly possible that there are sometimes you're at events when the the work you're doing does feel like part of your passion and there are other times I'm sure when it doesn't feel that way but uh the it's the question is will you ever make work towards that end?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know it's not whether or not it will be good enough to get there.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's you can't make the work thinking asking yourself that question.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can't you can't know the answer.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know and there are too many factors involved in it.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: There too too much has to do with uh how your aesthetic and your vision meets up with the people you are in contact with as an artist and the way in which you make those contacts and and where you are in your life and everything else there's just too many other factors that will determine how and where the work gets shown what it and what it means to show the work you know so uh I you you you have to I so the question I mean I guess the question for you then and uh you know if I were interviewing you I would say like okay is this something is it an ambition and if it's an ambition are you pursuing that you know is there a a a way in which or a part of your photography practice that is focused towards your vision as an artist and what it is that distinguishes your vision as an artist from the way that other people make pictures truth truth I read I read that about when I was reading the uh the the PPA article you were on you were explaining to the person asking you questions um which I completely still believe in today honestly which is um if you're only capturing or showing off things that everybody else is already doing then what makes you unique you know so having having that what is your I think so many people are in the copycat mode right now you know algorithms and what's quote unquote viral I hate that word um yeah you know what I mean is this things got so cloudy over the last couple of decades and me coming from the pure er way of doing all of this craft and you're right man if you didn't know how to do this work you were not charging money for your work just straight up I mean I even told people I said look I'm cheap for a reason I'm still learning you know I'll do your wedding for five hundred dollars and you know you got to grow your clientel you get better you raise your prices wash rents repeat but eventually you get to a a point where you you start respecting your own time your own thought process your own effort you've done all the work to at least be able to now start doing pro work I swear to god I thought it I think it took me close to 10 years of me being in business by the way 10 years to feel like I have a look and I kind of sort of know who I am as a photographer now and yeah you know you know what I mean it takes a while people people think people think you get Leico or Nikon or can and a Sony and because it's in your hands you become like this thing that's not what it is at all.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right you know whatever you have whatever whatever combination of lens and camera you have and whatever your process someone else is uh there there's someone else with the exact combination and the exact the question is how do you what how do you see differently yeah when you make a photograph and how do you express that photographically uh in the capture and uh and you know as you say it can take a very long time and a long time of trying you know it's a different thing when you're when you're uh in again in a in a different era you would and I think this is true if you're as a painter and as a writer also you know for me you you begin by emulating the the the work of people whose work you love you know and uh and you say like well I I wonder if I can do something like that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I wonder if it and and you try it and chances are that emulation is not going to work and if you're lucky the ways in which you find yourself over and over again varying from the thing that you're trying to emulate actually can turn into what you understand to be your own voice and your own vision.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah absolutely man it's like um I have a friend of mine that you know they they make a living as a band you know playing covers and my my band um we haven't played together in in a little bit but we write our own stuff we don't play any covers and the the two cause and effects are very different.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: They can play anywhere and have a crowd because everybody knows the songs you know I mean you're only playing the hits of all these people right so you're playing the best of the best of the best of all these people and um you're either good at doing it or you're not original work is a lot more wow we can't play everywhere because nobody knows who the heck we are we don't they don't know our songs it's so much longer but I can tell you this I love like love I love how all my songs have stories on how they got written you know there's so many things to pack into this one thing that we created you know and I love that and the funny thing is when we were opening for like another band or two here and there we didn't play out that that much but when we did the other guys would always tell us bro you want to play another 15 minutes we cannot play our own songs we're jealous that you guys are doing what you're doing and we're like you're the ones getting paid we're not getting paid but as as the artist side you respect somebody who puts in that kind of love into your craft and that is sure 100% crossed over photography wise also you know because um because you're right there are other photographers and and images that I see where I'm like can I even do that and you do it and you get good at it you're like huh and then you copy another one you do another one but then something happens along the way where it is there's is there's a style there's a way that you do things as a way the light looks there there's something I don't know it's it's weird it it it affects everybody differently and I really honestly believe that as you grow older in your craft those little banana peel layers of what you were copying to get to where you are kind of start peeling away you know and it's neat because the longer you do it as long as you keep on trying to be genuine that's the key you know um something happens man something happens where you just own yourself and it feels so good to be where you are and um I don't know man.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: So uh so let me read you let me read you my second question I had written down here.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um okay okay your photographs often find meaning in abandoned places overlooked objects and traces of human presence which project has been the most personally important to you and what changed in you while you were creating it um you know I don't know it's hard for me to say I don't I I I feel like I there isn't one project in particular that uh that that has greater weight to me in that respect.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: There are there different projects have had different kinds of weight.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: So and and part of that has to do with the way in which they have resonated with other people or led to other projects uh for instance so uh I I can say like the project that it resulted in um the architecture of silence that we were talking about earlier which is uh uh uh a series uh uh imaging the abandoned farmhouses of a of a post-World War II land reform movement in southern Italy right so uh basically these houses were sponsored by the Mars money from the Marshall Plan and uh appropriating uh for some of the the uh allied political forces for uh to the US interests uh uh some of the agendas that the communists uh in Italy had at the time about uh land redistribution uh and it but they the the program was implemented in a way that was problematic and essentially resulted in people moving through these houses uh without being able to permanently stay in those houses.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: So uh in a sense they are uh mine and they're these cast concrete houses in the middle of agricultural fields so really impossible to remove so there the fields are just kind of plowed around them now and the fields are all aggregated into large agribusiness so but the the so the houses and their contents remain people often left their objects behind and uh it's a monument to uh a a kind of uh tragedy uh and the the the the hopes and uh of of uh that were uh scattered and lost of people who were uh who who had uh a particular vision of of uh of you know self-sufficiency as it were yeah and of uh in in this context and so uh the question is how to capture that and and you know so my project uh there are all kinds of ways in which i approach that and and and uh you can find that in the book or you can see some of those images on my website too for those listening but uh that project then and I've shown that obviously it it resulted in a book and it result and it's resulted in a number of shows but it also uh served as a as a kind of introduction for me to different uh communities of of unhoused people squatting in abandoned buildings in and around Rome the city of Rome uh and in terms of the and and as an in an entree into uh housing rights activism and other kinds of things within uh within that community uh which helped me to get access and to be able to have an another project which I've also subsequently shown but which has a lot of meaning to me of uh of imaging the domestic spaces of people who are living in these squatted in these abandoned buildings and have remade them into contemporary housing for themselves often illegally but in ways that are that are inventive and and and uh extraordinary right uh and i uh I've also done this in uh uh uh what was for a a little while a tent city uh that was uh uh it uh behind a train station in Rome as well of uh that was uh uh largely but not exclusively occupied by um by migrants who were trying to get a full a foothold and find work and things like that in Italy at the time.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh and and documenting how people live in these ways and and one of the uh uh characteristics of my practice as a photographer uh this is uh in contrast to what you do is I I I never I never and have never photographed people.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Really all yeah no people no people so um yeah and I know you know it's obviously uh people it's it's uh many photographers do and do uh uh in ways that are interesting uh but for me I I can't I've never been able to find a way to do it that doesn't put me in a position where I feel like I am objectifying the person uh by virtue of my photographing them.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: So uh and again I'm not applying this to other people it's just that it's it's on a personal level.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's so the there's that problem and then there's the for me compositionally uh once you put a face in a photograph the photograph is about the face.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about anything else.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: So uh and I find that uh uh compositionally far too constraining and I feel like there's a lot more to be done so I uh uh and uh in the case of these projects in Italy it it it and and uh uh uh there are some uh possible expansions of this project to other other places as well in Europe uh uh but uh the the the fact that there are no people in the photos is one of the things that allowed me to access these domestic spaces because those the people don't want to be photographed in these contexts.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know they're doing something that's technically illegal they are you know even if they're proud of their spaces and proud of the things that they're doing and and and have an interest in in having people and having uh uh someone like myself have a vision of showing their uh the the ways in which these forms of life are have developed uh and forms of domestic life have developed they don't want to be in those photos so yeah if I had been a photographer of people I you know it's a project that couldn't have happened uh if if basically I'd ever done a project with people in it.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, so that's just one of the that's an example of how your one's life can sort of move from project to project, building the projects building on each other and talking to each other in many ways.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes a kind of holistic vision of what one's practice is as an artist.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And can still, I think, read as my work, though, they are really the series, the the kind of uh conceptual constraints that that uh that determine the limitations of the series are are have nothing to do with one another.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's so true, man.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because as I as I'm reading, like I was looking at your uh pipe valve uh in Berlin, and yeah, that's something us over here in America don't know what these things are that you're you know fascinated with, and then kind of diving into it's like, oh, that's cool.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, everything has history, everything, and this is this is the cool part, I guess, is that everything has a story, but nobody knows the story until sometimes they even see it, they hear about it.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's something passed down from generation to generation.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: But somebody like myself who doesn't know anything about these pipe valves, um I have no idea what the story is, you know.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_03: So you have responsibility to kind of share the story and the history beyond this, it's kind of interesting because the more you read about it, the better sense the images do, you know?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right, right.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's like that that's just very, very cool.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: I was um so me and a family uh maybe maybe 10 years ago now, we're over um by the Smoky Mountains, and we went to go check out Dolly World just because we figured it was gonna be the last time we're gonna be in the Smoky Mountains for a couple years.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: So we used to do it a couple of times in a row, and it's like, let's do something different.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: So we did Dolly World, wanted being really cool, actually, by the way.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but they had this this um uh for the Titanic, it was uh a museum and it was a walkthrough museum, and it was really neat when you when you get in line to get in, they are they give you a card, and that is like your character, which was a real person that was on the Titanic, and they can go from the kid to the captain to the person.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, every single person who was on a boat is basically on a card, and as you walk through the whole you know, exhibit, it goes everything from there's a tank of water that was as cold as it was that day, and uh you can kind of get a feeling, like literally feel it and get a gist of um reading this card and the story.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_03: Now I have something physical that's gonna be etched in my brain of wow, that was way colder than I thought it was.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: And you can't, you know, you you kind of keep going.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're at the end, and there's this um little wall of black and white photographs, and I'm and I'm gotta be honest, I'm not a big reader.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not a big reader.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: My wife is the big reader, but little details and I don't know, some things I maybe maybe she's just things I enjoy reading, but you know, like when you go through a museum, you don't read every single little thing written on everywhere.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: At least I don't, and you know, most people kind of kind of peruse, I guess you can say.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but this last this last wall of photographs, I was a little intrigued, and I'm reading it, and then it hit me, and then I walked out kind of a little more quiet.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: And she was like, Man, my wife's like, Man, were you affected by the person you had?
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, No, that wall of photography, the black and white pictures.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: The story says there's this priest that was interested in photography, and he was invited to walk on a ship that like the day before, today's before.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: It was something, it was something very weird to just you know go take pictures.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: Wasn't for a magazine, wasn't for anything.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_03: It was just somebody that knew of him or helping out the priest.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: I forget what it was, but those pictures he took were of the deck, and it's you know, just like you and I going up and going, Oh, there's the bow.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Click, you know, you're looking this way.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: Look at this, it's kind of cool.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, there were no people on it yet because it wasn't set to sail until the next day or two.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_03: So he has these pictures of just the boat, and I couldn't help but and and the story goes something like they found the role of film later, kind of thing.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't like immediate, yeah.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was like way later, and then it dawned on him.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: Holy cow, this guy was on the boat before anybody else was actually on it to sail, yada yada yada.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: That to me, those pictures with nobody on the boat knowing the story of the Titanic, those images to me were so important, you know.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_03: They just kind of hit me differently.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like I understood the meaning, like he didn't know the meaning, he was just taking some cool pictures of this big boat.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but then this thing happened, so you don't realize how important one role of film could be, and he was intentional with with each of his frames, he was intentional in what he wanted to capture.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we get to see it in these little black and white pictures, but at the same time, kind of like the uncle who passed away, and I was the last one to take his picture.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: This priest took the last pictures of the freaking Titanic before it went down.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_03: Is that yeah, that blows my mind that life life should just life should just be lived intentionally because you never know, you know?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I was I was all philosophical when I was younger.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think I'm worse now because I'm older with kids, and I don't know.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: I just yeah, yeah, it just all snaps quicker to me of the relevancy, you know.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: I could just put these pipe valves in Berlin picture.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, yeah, it's pretty cool.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Love that.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Then you read some of the story, and you're like, okay, that's really kind of cool.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like who would know these stories?
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody if you don't tell them and show them, and you know, that's really neat.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I like how you uh just how you how you uh describe becoming more philosophical as being worse.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I do right I commend you in thinking of it as being worse.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: You could describe it as being better, you know, as you like, but oh man.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, do you do you take on that like when you put a we're probably not putting film in your camera too much anymore, but um what is your not as much, yeah.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I was just curious because somebody was like, Do you have a shoot film?
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like I could, but why?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Well, you I do occasionally.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I i it's been a little while, but I I enjoy it.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, uh mostly I shoot digitally now.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I guess it's and mostly mostly medium format digital is what I do.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Which one which which camera do you face?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Both.
• 51:27
  unknown: Yeah.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: I my favorite is the Hasselblad, is the X2D.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I was gonna rent that one.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna rent that one.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great camera.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: I like the GFX too.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I use a GFX uh uh you know a fair amount, but the X2D is uh it's it feels more like uh it's uh it feels more like a the kind of uh camera experience that uh that we're used to uh that you from our generation.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it feels it has the feeling of a film camera, the haptic film camera in a certain way.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I do need I need I need to rent it.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um I did rent the um GFX 100 uh th twice actually for some big jobs, the commercial jobs that I had.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_03: And um for those of you for those of you out there that have never held a meeting format camera in your hands, in general, film or digital, there the film cameras were definitely bigger, there were larger cameras.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and it and the wear and tear on you was a lot more wear and tear the longer you you you were working.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: So a nine-hour day that you were doing an event or whatever it was, those cameras man gave you some biceps.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um but having to change that role of film was its own little little beast, and we had a little thing.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: So digitally, um, it's a very large sensor, it is a medium format sensor, or it's or it's extremely close to that size.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um but the 100 megs per file is incredible.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: And as the geeky nerd that I am, that I grew up on tech, and I love it when things always get better, things get better, things get better, things should always get better.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we have the same Apple iPhone for 20,000 years.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I'm ready for the next thing, y'all.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, photography, photography-wise, you're used to looking at your 23 meg files on the computer screen, you can only zoom in so much until they quote unquote fall apart.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, the 100 meg file from those cameras, from the Hasselbled or the GFX that I personally used.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my lord, when I tell you you can't zoom in enough for it to completely how can I explain this to you?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I got hired to photograph this um uh air liquid plant.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_03: So we're talking metal and pipes, and it's big, it's huge, it's huge, it's like a half a city block.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: So you've got you've got images from far away to where you get in the entire plant, you know, and then you get closer and you get your angles, and this device here is connected to these pipes.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: And okay, here's the cool part that you cannot do on your little Sony, okay?
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_03: You take a picture of the entire plant, you zoom into one of the pipes.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: What is that?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: A is that a piece of paper?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: Is that a tag?
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: Is that a sticker on the pipe?
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: You zoom in, you zoom in, you zoom in, you can read what's on the sticker.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh wow.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_03: This where do you go from here?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like, where do you go from awesome?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of latitude in those files, and and I'll tell you the the thing that uh I appreciate most, uh, in particular in the in the medium format, uh the files from that sensor, it's essentially the same sensor and same Sony sensor and the GFX and the X2D.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh the the latitude you have uh in, for instance, a pulling detail out of blown highlights as an example, uh, is just the extraordinary thing.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's just another compositional tool.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh so you know it just gives you a lot of different options in terms of the ways in which you can use light or use dynamic or or it expose with a wide dynamic range within a within a particular photo, within a particular cap capture.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_03: I've rented the um the the the 50 meg version also with the 50 S sort of also a great sensor.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: So uh and the thing is that the the new thing, of course, they're because they're mirrorless, they are relatively small.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they are not so much bigger, and the X2D, I think, really isn't bigger than a lot of DL D DSLRs, you know.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: What do they have turned off?
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_03: What which sorry, what what's turned off to where it's only capturing half the file size?
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I guess the same way you can go from raw to medium raw to large raw.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: Did they just design the camera to just be half of the hundred?
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: You mean with the with the with the 50?
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: The 50 is a different, it's a different sensor.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was a f an earlier sensor, yeah.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, because it is so then the then the 100.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's a it's a good camera.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it doesn't have and the the gl the glass is good for all of these camera, these systems.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: They they make nice lenses.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: So uh for photographers who who kind of hope to enter the gallery world, uh what what made the greatest difference in your own career?
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh developing a recognizable body of work, building relationships, publishing books, or attending uh events or whatever, or you know, simply continuing despite rejection.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: And what do you wish you had understood earlier?
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's a lot.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: What's the first thing?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_03: What's the first thing?
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: What one thing was, I guess, your your greatest difference in in your career was the one thing if you had a lot of people.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think you know, I think it you you do you the building a body of work uh is probably the most important thing, but building a body of work in relationship to an understanding of what that kind of fine art photography is and who you know who's come before you, what kind of images, uh in a sense, having coming to an understanding of what photography, there's a difference between photography as art and photography as merely aesthetic, uh, you know, it is something that for is something that's beautiful, or something that you you you need to understand the parameters of art practice that uh adhere to or within all kinds of art practice.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's the the and and so you you you have to think about uh uh about why art is effective and what makes one photograph powerful and why it might be powerful in uh in a a kind of discourse with other photographs uh and other other photographers in the history of photography, and the ways in which this works both discursively and as uh an immediate experience for the viewer.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you're it there's just a lot of uh much of that happens because of looking at and experiencing a lot of other art.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and some of that you know with respect to with with respect to photographs, also looking in a lot of art uh as of photography books, books that other photographers have have made uh and uh around their series, which have been you know incredibly uh are are a really important tool in I mean they're both uh it's also I happen to love photography books, so they're an extraordinary way of seeing work.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: But seeing work is a very it seeing the work of other people is of paramount importance.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing the and not just not if you're in a workshop or whatever, not just those people, that's fine.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Be in those see those people, and that can be that's helpful too, but seeing the work of photographers whose vision moves you, and then you know that's where you're that's the direction you want to go in as a photographer.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's great.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_03: This is I guess this is a question from from me, actually, which is how would you how do you how do you decide on what becomes the series?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because I because I have two angles like from where I am here in in New Orleans, you know, we have a homeless issue, you know, that's uh under the bridge, and then a downtown, and it's a whole thing.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_03: But I was doing a creative, I was doing a creative project for myself um on get these old shotgun houses, and then I noticed in a whole lot of neighborhoods, there's churches everywhere.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_03: There's a I mean, from Baptist to Catholic.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's more Baptist churches in down here than Catholic churches, I think.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I need to do you know what before I die, I need to do this.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: I need to go shoot every single, I need to go photograph, not shoot.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_03: I need to go photograph every church in this darn city.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because one, I've never seen a book of that caliber.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, like I don't know of it if it exists, it's not I don't know, it's not obvious.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm sitting and going, well, geez, it's a lot of time to do this project.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_03: So deciding on do I shoot for me or do I do something that's gonna affect the public more?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think the homeless would affect the public more than a bunch of old buildings, you know.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_03: So how would you personally kind of like decide this is this is what I need to do for the next six months?
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, uh I I both of those projects sound interesting.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on what you either and both of them could be completely uninteresting, right?
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on how you how you approach them.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, on a personal level, I think that uh the part of the the dangers of doing a project around homelessness is one can end up fetishizing people's poverty.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is one and objectifying people in in these situations.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, I always say that the goal in this kind of work is to elicit empathy, not sympathy.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: You want people to feel what it's like to be in the position, not to to pity the person who's in the position.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't you so it that's part another reason why it can be useful to photograph.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: So photographing the material circumstances of uh of the unhoused population in New Orleans might be uh one approach.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that would be the approach I would take, but rather than photographing the people, and I'm not saying that's what you should do, uh, you know, different the different people can the projects can move in different directions.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: I also think that, you know, photographing all the churches, to me, that sounds like a great project too, and one that might really reveal all kinds of interesting things about the city of New Orleans in in series, uh, in a way that any one photograph of one particular church doesn't reveal.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I also love the ways in which photographing in series, the series itself can be a kind of uh can can uh by virtue of the repeated uh the repeated subject matter, so to speak, or the repeated compositional elements, or both, as you were taking, as you're if you take on that project, as you approach the foot photography, you you you start to understand what is repeated in each of the photos and what you're emphasizing and what you're de-emphasizing.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that can really that's what ends up unifying in aesthetically the series, and that can uh be incredibly powerful.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: So in a way of understanding this kind of this material culture fact of this place, all of these churches.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because we have um because I one thing I noticed obviously, if you've ever been down here, our our architecture is definitely timestamped.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like you you can tell where the French were, you the the Germans did all the cobblestone roads, you know, right these churches, you know, the Baptists didn't have money like the Catholics do, so the Catholic churches have gold, they got gold up in those ceilings and stuff, and uh you're not gonna find that in a Baptist church, you know, or the Pentecost and sort of Protestant churches, or you know, they're all designed differently, and uh there's there's a story of that all by itself, too, I'm sure.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yes, interesting.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure I'm about to get somebody on here that can talk about the history of that kind of stuff.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like things, yeah, things that I don't know be quite interesting.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_03: There's got to be a historian that knows this stuff from here.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I'm sure.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a good I'm a good poking prod.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_03: I know I know a few professors at Tulane or Loyola.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody knows.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: So look, you and I are like like four years apart.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm I'm a rock drummer, but I mean I play everything, I love music.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm very passionate about life.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_03: The camera for me was an accident um in college, and it it just became an addiction to a wow, can I really do this for a living?
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: And it just kind of stumbled and keep going, and then I found PPA, and then that was basically the college of photography for me, was paying for all these PPA classes, and every time you go away.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, for you, music.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_03: What music did you love growing up to?
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what was your fave?
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, let's see, growing up, uh probably uh some there's some sort of odd jazz things I love, but then also different kinds of uh pop music.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: I particularly love Bob Dylan when I was younger.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love The Velvet Underground, and I love I love punk as that was happening and I was young.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then I also love country blues and uh and and I I I at some point I uh began to be more interested in uh contemporary classical music and uh in particular around uh minimalist composition that was.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: started in the 70s and continues to the present day and and that's largely what I listen to now is that kind of stuff.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and I play music too and and uh and and I compose that sort of stuff.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that not in a public way.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I mean not that I'm against it.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_03: I used to play in bands I played in in in in punk bands or post punk bands I guess you could say uh when I was uh when I was younger and I played out all the time and uh now I I I just uh it's a more of a private practice as it were but at least at the moment that's awesome man there's there's something that um so my son he he's a little drummer like I am but he's not he's not he doesn't have the artist brain like I do so he's more engineer boy in college when that happens okay in a couple of years I'm like you're gonna be a salary kid you're gonna get a 401k and they're gonna match you dollar for dollar you're not gonna be self-employed like your father this is a blessing that I created with not not knowing when you're getting paid is not fun I'm just letting you know right right right right but him being a drummer he has um dug into classic rock and and some other music that he's been bringing to my attention which which which of course I know all these older bands but I didn't like dump them on him he just he found these things and he's bringing me songs where I'm like look at you and then he hits me with the whole so how come um how come all the new stuff on the radio doesn't sound anything like this and I'm like uh okay um turn the radio on I want you to click your chest to the beat of the song okay when the next song comes on don't stop clicking your chest he goes why I said because the beat's not gonna change and I'm like the the the radio has an algorithm too dude I'm going back back in the day we all wrote cool songs with with you know poetic meaning behind the words in the story that we were trying to get across to you and these solos were so freaking badass it was ridiculous and they did all that live in the studio and then it and then before um before Kiss's live album or whatever um there wasn't any oh there was no way basically of hearing what a band sounded like live not to that degree right and then it became a thing of oh yeah they do this in the studio they better do this live or else they're not they're not that good and then they do and you're like oh my god you're amazing and and I'm like that's what you guys are missing like you're missing that part because now they're all using click tracks and they go on on the today show with no band the thing click tracks and she sings if she sings you know he or she's right I'm catching that all the time too by the way I was not impressed on the last uh today show concert outside I was like that the she's lip syncing she's lip syncing her own song come on man yeah so anyway photography wise I completely agree just because we're able to use digital equipment I still don't like how things look digitally you know it's just a tool it's just a tool and how you show people your your your work and your thought process is you know the game to me right right yes yes indeed man i can I cannot thank you enough for for being on here I think my listeners are gonna have a ear full and a lot to think about um I really have been thinking about that damn church project or the home yeah I think you should do it yeah like I didn't want to like show like the people like I knew I could shoot hands and feet and like how they're like how they're living and you know like I completely agree you bring a face into it that's a whole different dimension you gotta deal with and you know first of all for liability reasons second second of all you're right it it changes it changes the story from what you're trying to show because people are very distracted by the face you know because every everybody's everybody's face has its own story in the face you know that's yes that's just truth so it's very difficult to tell the story about how they're living when you see the face of somebody that looks like oh wow what is her story and it she she steals it that face will always steal the show from the rest of the image you know yes yes well listen I would love to have you on again in the future you know I'll uh it'd be a pleasure I'd love to heck yeah man I mean now that I know that we're only a couple years apart so there's a lot of history I love the fact that we both share this uh the the film experience because you're right there's a lot of um things that we had to do back in the day that we do now but we don't talk about it because it's just part of what we do it's just how we learned you know so um right I definitely appreciate that um man Steven thank you so very much I will put in the show notes how you can get to uh did did you want to talk about coda?
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have a new book right okay we can I have a new book of writing but that's fine.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_03: This is a this we talk we're talking about photography that's fine too he's got a lot of stuff you guys you guys and girls y'all need to go check out his website uh it'll all be spelled out with the dot com you can just click click on the link but uh I'll also have amazon um links for his books they're really cool and I gotta be honest I agree with Steven as far as you know you won't expand as an artist in any direction if you're not looking at other people's work that is beyond your comprehension in that field because if you hang if you graduate from high school and you don't go to college and you only hang around high school kids your mentality is going to stay high school and that's the whole thing that I keep telling people said man look you need to be hanging around people that are better or more different than you and that's how you grow.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know that's that's how you learn that's how you get inspired and sometimes there's things inside of you that you don't realize is inside of you because you haven't had a chance to unlock it yet you know so seeing other people's work that's beyond like like looking at your stuff when I was looking you up before on the interview it was really um you know lighting the fire under me to pursue maybe the church or maybe some way of the city and the homeless like I don't know there's just some responsibility we have as photographers and I appreciate you being on the show and sharing your time with me today man.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well yeah it's a pleasure and uh yeah let's do it again.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta man look in in in my exiting fashion I'm a rock guy so I gotta do it.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the outro Steven thank you buddy I'm gonna talk to you soon all right you guys