[EV +/-] Exposure Compensation » Dialogues/Interviews

Q/A with Photographer Dustin Fenstermacher

Miguel Garcia-Guzman — Fri, 30 May 2008 04:07:49 +0000

Few weeks ago I disocovered the work of photographer Dustin Fenstermacher. His series portraying cat shows are excellent. His photographs have many qualities that I like. Besides having original compositions, what works extremely well is the storytelling, the sequence of the images. I can feel myself at the cat show, it is photography that has the quality to involve the viewer. But it is not only about cats … look at his portfolio and you will see quite interesting photography there.

His work picked my interest to run few questions and learn more about Dustin.

Could you tell me what drove you into photography? Why did you become a photographer?

Honestly, I really can’t quite recall what compelled me towards photography. Growing up I always enjoyed taking photos but thought it was a bit too difficult of an undertaking to learn the mechanics and intricacies of an SLR. And don’t even get me started on how expensive it was to develop all of that film.

During college I attempted to take a photo course, but the introductory class was available to art majors first and all other students – I was a communications major – had to get permission from the professor. Needless to say, the class was filled to capacity every time I made an attempt to join.

After college I made an impulse buy at a Kmart that was closing, picking up a two megapixel point and shoot made by Canon. Outside the occasional photograph taken at a show, the thing collected dust. Then, a little over three years ago, I found myself with a lot of free time after my band dissolved. I began documenting my walks around Carlisle, a town in central Pennsylvania. Friends of mine who went to school for photography gave me pointers and kept urging me to take photos. I guess I had some kind of unique vision that would come out at some point. I just took note of the world as I saw it.

So, one could say that I became a photographer because I was bored. But I felt like my entire life was preparing me for this endeavor, as I wouldn’t have the perspective I have now if I would have seriously gotten into photography even five years ago.

You describe yourself as a self-taught photographer, what were your influences for your work?

Because I learned photography through trial and error and picking up tips from my friends, I was initially influenced more by my friends and surroundings than famous photographers. I will be forever indebted to the likes of Clint Baclawski and Laura Kicey for their roles in shaping my photographic sensibilities. Filmmakers like the Coen Brothers and Wes Anderson emit a certain feeling that appeals to me; the Coens for the slices of Americana permeating in each of their films and Wes Anderson for the whimsical nature, color choices and his aesthetics.

Photographers that tickle my fancy nowadays include Martin Parr, Chris Buck, Jill Greenberg, Jan Von Holleben and a multitude of others. Or you can just disregard everything I’ve just said and believe me when I state that I’m solely influenced by the Nintendo-64 classic, Pokemon Snap.

Tell me about the Cat show project? It looks like a photojournalist project … was it commissioned?

While I intended to do a series on cat shows, the project as you see it began as an entirely different animal. What I originally wanted to do was photograph owners and their show cats, so I attended cat shows with the intention of shooting cute cats and sending the images to the show owners. I figured that would be an excellent way to break the ice.

Unfortunately, of all of the cat breeders I messaged, only one got back in contact with me about getting their portrait taken. While I was disappointed by lack of a response, this turned out to be better in the long run, as I found the photos produced by going to the cat shows to be far more interesting to me than any portrait I had in mind. Thus, I kept going to the exhibitions, discovering new subtleties during each excursion.

My intent with the series was to go beyond just shooting photos of cats and the surroundings, which some people might think is ridiculous. No, I wanted to do photos that looked at the items and surroundings found at cat shows, twist them a little and create little stories or critiques out of them. Honestly, when I’m at these things it is as if I’m a child with a toybox the size of a football stadium.

Which type of commercial works are you trying to do? Do you also like to explore editorial work?

In a perfect would I would get commissioned to go to out of the way places and photograph what I find. I’ve been getting the opportunity to do just that as of late, covering the presidential primary campaign in Pennsylvania by meeting people on the street and exploring places that are somewhat removed by modern culture.

I really enjoy taking a wide variety of work, be it portraiture, reportage or shooting found objects. Inspiration can be found anywhere, and I just love being able to shoot and make a living doing it.

I find very interesting how you juxtapose -different- images in the website, it works very effectively. Do you do the editing yourself? Which criteria do you use to select which images to show and how to juxtapose them?Well, the first edit is done all by my lonesome, but friends and fellow photographers provide input and are always invaluable with their ability to help me distil my work into something manageable.

During this process themes begin to emerge and visual puns become apparent. Some of my favorite pairs of photos happen via happy accident, other pairs were conceived after taking a photo at one place and thinking of something that would best match it at a later date. I’m fairly casual with my picture taking, noticing elements that connect disparate photos after the fact. The unintentional focus of my personal work is intentional, as it allows me to take photos of things I wouldn’t shoot had I possessed some sort of strict criteria for what I could take photos of.

The photos of the non-cat show variety are a mix of things I’ve done both for pleasure and editorial/commercial work. To be honest with you, I’m a bit slow in placing new commercial images on the site.

You are using Wonderful Machine to represent your work. Please tell me what is the key advantage you see of having someone representing your work and the caveats? Is this something you recommend to all artists seeking commercial work?

I don’t know if I have enough experience working without a rep to weigh in. My professional career is still in its nascent stages. I have gotten a bit of exposure and work through my association with Wonderful Machine, and would recommend representation for people who seek commercial work, but it definitely isn’t for everyone.

Thanks very much Dustin.

I found at PDN pulse a nice video interview with Dustin Fenstermacher about this projectthat adds more information about his work.

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A Dialog with Photographer Johanna Warwick

Miguel Garcia-Guzman — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:46:15 +0000

It is my pleasure to post here a dialog with Johanna Warwick, an emerging photographer whose work I find extraordinary. Creative, diverse and exquisite work. Her photography represents both the lived reality, and perception of relations between figures and surroundings that define a layer of reality that usually escapes our perception.

In this candid dialog she shares her background, artistic drivers for her work and her approach to photography. I am certain you will find this conversation very interesting. I like to thank Johanna for sharing her thinking and for taking the time to build this conversation.

Please tell me about your beginnings as an artist, when did you feel attracted to art?

As long as I can remember I have always been drawing, painting, making things. My older brother was always drawing from comic books when we were young, and I always did what he did. So when time came for high school, it seemed natural for me to apply to a School of the Arts – where my brother was. I don’t ever recall even sitting down and thinking about what is was that I wanted to do, I just knew I wanted to do art without question.

What drove initially your interest to photography?

I went to Cawthra Park School of the Arts for high school and majored in art. It was here that I was introduced to photography. I think it began around grade eleven and I instantly was hooked. With painting and drawing I always felt a certain level of frustration that I couldn’t quite get what I wanted, with photography I could. I could create pictures exactly how I wanted to.

Was there a personal influence in the family, friends?

I’m not too sure where my brother’s and I artistic skills came from (he’s now a computer animator). Neither of our parents are terribly artistic. The closer I can think it that my granddad loved and collected old cameras. He gave me my first camera at six.

You decided to go to art school at Ryerson University. Was this a natural progression of your interest in photography, did you feel the need to get formal training?

Ryerson was very much a natural progression – it was the only school I could get a degree in photography in Canada! For me, at the time it was Ryerson or nothing. I knew I wanted photography. I loved it.

In high school and had a lot of support from teachers and my family to pursue it. I wasn’t ready to move further away from home than Toronto (I’m from 45min outside), and I didn’t want to go to college because I wanted a degree to keep more options open later.

It is interesting to hear that you had so much support from the start. I see art as a very intimate experience. The early moments when the artist is exploring, when it is trying to find a language and a voice, are very “fragile” moments. They can be decisive to build or break the wit to communicate with art.

Tell me about your experience at the School. Do you think that the education was fundamental for your evolution as an artist? Were there any artists/teachers that had a particular influence?

I loved Ryerson. It was very much essential to my learning. The continual feedback from teachers and peers is priceless. It was a small community of ongoing support that gave you a safe place to try things and fail and be encouraged to keep going.

Don Snyder, Don Dickinson, Bob Burley and David Harris all made a difference to me. They were and are always available to talk and go out of their way to help students achieve. I think discussion about work is the most crucial thing in its development. Hearing what other people see and talking about it, what’s working, what’s not working, how to proceed – for me school was about the dialogue.

Speaking about education in photography, you have a very particular way to compose; your photography is aesthetically powerful and different. Do you think that the ability to see photographically can be taught or it is innate in the artist? Do you think that your ability to see evolved and changed while attending art school?

I do think the way that one sees is something innate in them – it can’t really be learnt. School definitely helps to shape your work; I think school best teaches you how it is to successfully express how it is that you see. School takes what’s in you and helps you to explore and define it. I don’t think you can take a person with absolutely no artistic inclination and turn them into a great photographer, no. They may be great technically, but I have trouble believing anyone can just learn the “it factor” that is in a great photograph. Sometimes what makes a great photograph is intangible. I often have a hard time explaining why I love an image I took, there’s just something there. That, I don’t think can be learnt.

I don’t know if my ability to see really changed in school. I just learnt better how to express or represent it. I think what I see changes in my life as things happen and time goes on, but I don’t really think the way I see it changes.

One important step for an emerging photographer is the creation of a body of work that is cohesive, where single images not only hold their own aesthetic merit but also reinforce each other to create the core of a portfolio. When did you start working on projects and what were the challenges you faced?

I’m not sure it was really a challenge, more just a natural progression. When shooting sometimes you take lots of great one off images, and then sometimes you take one great image and know there is so much more to it, and that’s where a series can grow. I first started doing series pretty soon after I started photography. In high school, very quickly a body of work became that expectation. I think the challenge in series is to create work where you do truly need and want more than one image.

In my final critique for “The Weight of the World” this question was posed to me -what do we gain from having more that one photograph of a ceiling?

My response was that with so many different ceilings, I hoped that it helped to convey my belief that this feeling is universal. Anyone under any of these ceilings can fee this way – as different as we (and they) all are.

In “As Lonely As This Sea”, I am very aware of working on this as a series and am purposefully trying to find a way to fit photographs of all different things into one series. I’ve become afraid of series in that they have come to feel formulaic. Once that first image is created, the series is easy – you now have the formula to create the rest of the images. “The Weight of the World” is this exactly. I don’t think this is bad – I just need to see if I can do a successful series that isn’t built this way. This is partly why “As Lonely As This Sea” is still a work in progress.

Your projects are very beautiful and creative, not only because they cover very distinct topics, but also because your approach to composition is so diverse. How do you visualize images? Do you photograph following your instincts –like an impulse- or you pre-visualize the scene before shooting? Do you have in mind to achieve a defined aesthetics for the image before making it or it comes as a discovery after the image has been captured?

Every project seems to take on its own particular way of forming. I started out shooting in a much more controlled and planned way. I would have an idea, almost story board the image and then make it. Slowly though, this has become much less the way. Projects, more so, have grown out of an image I took – and then from there I built the idea upon it and continued to shoot. Pre-visualized or instinctual, I don’t believe that one way is more successful than the other. Right now I tend to work more instinctually… perhaps this occurs over time with more experience?

Let’s talk a bit about some of your projects. If I may, I like to learn more about a project that fascinates me, the “Weight of the World”. How did you come to that project … what did you like to convey?

This series came out of finishing up school and entering a definite question mark period in my life. I was searching and it came naturally to create work reflecting on this. I really wanted the images to have the feeling of being lost, in a way that hopefully viewers would recognize and relate to. Staring up at the ceiling is what I was doing. Laying and being lost, staring off into space. Once I got to think about it, that’s where the work came in.

Your new project, “As Lonely as the Sea”, is still in progress. It appears to be a very intimate experience for you, a sort of discovery of your roots and culture.

This is certainly one of the most personal bodies of work I have done, and I still haven’t figured it out yet. I immigrated to Canada as a child and have always had certain nostalgia for my first home, England. I never really went back and visited much, so it always held an air of intrigue and longing for me. I went back in 2006 and started this work photographing in Brightlingsea. For me the pictures fit together in their feeling – but I’m not sure how to talk about this yet. The photographs seem to have the ability to be about closeness and distance, nostalgia and separation, familiarity and loneliness. To be honest, I think I still need to understand more of how I feel, to understand this work.

Perhaps the project that surprised me the most is “Gray Area”. It is an example of photography without subject. Only the essence of pure visual experience is what drives the project. You have an ingeniously humorous manner to find relationship between seemingly unrelated things. Is this an approach you like to explore more in the future?

I definitely want to continue this approach. How to make photographs that are about something intangible – a feeling? a thought?

I think all of my work really is trying to do this. Gray Area was certainly my most abstract attempt at it. It’s what the title says – trying to represent that gray area! The things that are between everything else.

See … I’d still like to be able to talk and photograph it in a more cohesive way than I do!

The series “In Place” looks like a “game” where you are playing with a visual imagination of what can be discovered without really knowing what to expect; beautiful series of images of yourself; beautiful perspectives, lighting, tonality.

This project has always kind of amazed me – this is one that came completely out of intuition. It was out of frustration or not knowing what to do next, and just locking myself in a room with my camera. It was a complete experiment, and it took me a very long time to realize that the project itself was about the experiment.

When I first tried to write about it, I was plagued with trying to figure out what these images “meant”. Not until recently, that I realize that their meaning is in what I was doing. I was trying to figure out how to control and represent my body without seeing it. I was completely challenging myself to compose a photograph without seeing it. I had to become both the subject and the photographer when I shut myself in that empty room.

The other series, untitled, are totally different, both beautiful and interesting: indoor spaces and portraits. Is portraiture a field you intend to explore more in the future? What are the differences between approaching to photograph a person versus an object?

I first started out always shooting people. It was all I wanted to do. But honestly, I grew so tired of it! I hated being dependent on others, arranging shoots, organizing models – it really was making an ordeal when I simply wanted to take pictures. I’ve learnt since that I love to take photographs when by myself. So, when I began the “Gray Area” series it was a very conscious decision to make a body of work without people. And it was a new challenge.

How to make meaningful work out of inanimate subjects? I had no idea…. and I think that it is what took me to photograph the “in-between” in “Gray Area”. I didn’t know how to photograph meaningfully an inanimate object, so I focused on a meaningful inanimate subject. It was what I could photograph once I ruled out people and objects.

I like to ask you one question about composition … it is assumed that the key aspect of a good composition is to exclude the elements that are not necessary. I think this idea ignores a key step of the composition: the action of including rather than excluding. Often times, it is more difficult –contra intuitive- to include some elements rather than exclude them. Adding unusual elements can create very unique compositions that surprise and intrigue. What are you thoughts about this? What do you find easier for your compositions, the act of including or excluding?

I don’t think I’ve really ever thought extensively about this? Perhaps this is something that comes intuitively in my work. It has always seemed a natural conclusion for specific bodies about what to include or not.

Say for the series “That, Which is Between Us”. This was a very specific series that I did story board out, and knew very carefully what I wanted to include in the image. I put visual hints to the relationship between the figures, their uneaten dinners, the TV being on, the broken glass. Very clear visual elements that I included purposefully.

But in “Gray Area”, it was a decision in what not to include. Obviously any details to location, or really any signifiers to what these abstract images were (especially the pool photographs). So, I suppose in answer I don’t find it easier either way – its more just dependent on each individual work.

What comes next for you? Are you planning to explore the fine art market as a key priority for your work or perhaps you intend to drive your career into commercial/advertisement and editorial?

Currently I am in the process of interviewing for Grad school. I’m hoping to end up either in London (University of Westminster) or Boston (MassArt). I want to do my MFA to further develop my practice, as well as become better at writing and speaking about art and photography. Eventually, I would love to be able to teach. My main focus in my work now is definitely exploring the fine art market, but editorial work is always great to do along the way! For me, my photography has always been about ideas and trying to express/question things. Editorial work is much more about the process of creating the photograph (by someone else specifications). I think it is great to get to do both!

I always find interesting when artists describe the work from other artists that they find particularly creative. Would you mind to refer a photographer (or any other artist) whose work you find particularly interesting?

I recently saw the work of Nicolai Howalt at a gallery in New York and I am fascinated by his work. The piece in New York was How to Hunt, which he did with Trine Sondergaard. This series, along with his other works, are so incredibly beautiful. They are large scale prints that are layered multiple exposures representing a hunt.

I think what I’m drawn to with this series, and his others (especially the Boxers) is the duality he creates between the beauty and brutality of what his work is about.

The boxer series is incredible. Howalt capturing these young boys before and after a match and seeing how they change – even through the slightest difference in their glare. His work has an incredible subtlety that I would love to achieve.

I like to thank you very much for this candid dialogue. I am looking forward to following you career and seeing your wonderful pictures in the coming future. Best wishes for your next steps.

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What makes a great portrait?

Miguel Garcia-Guzman — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:27:21 +0000

What makes a great portrait? What are the elements that make a portrait really special?

Few weeks ago, a reader initiated a conversation about these interesting questions with Jörg Colberg [from Conscientious] and myself. Our discussion about the features that define a good portrait lead to the inevitable realization that any interpretation is subjective and that emotional reactions to the image are often summarized with unclear statements like:

Great pictures have “it”!

But what is “it”?

Even when we acknowledge that this is a subjective topic, we thought that it would be very interesting to explore it with other people whose opinion could provide informative perspectives.

This post, that is published in conjunction with Conscientious, illustrates the opinions of a number of great photographers, editors, curators and bloggers when they try to define “what is it” that makes a great portrait. All of them were extremely generous to take some time to share with us their views on the following questions:

What makes a good portrait?
Could you provide us an example of a portrait that you really like and explain why the portrait works so well for you?

What follows is a very interesting and charming article that combines their opinions. Before you read it, I like to express my sincere appreciation to each contributor, to Frank Gross whose questions triggered our interest to pursue this project and to Jörg Colberg for his cordial collaboration.

Timothy Archibald

Trying to really pinpoint what makes a great portrait is almost like trying to figure out why it feels good when someone smiles at you or why it is disturbing when someone yells at you. There are these rules, this structure, and then there is this human intangible element that is the wild card. Everyone seems to know how to play by the rules and follow the structure, but as far as the intangible goes, this third element, that’s where it all falls apart or comes together, it allows the portrait to sink or swim or really transcend.

How to describe this intangible third element? I really can’t, but like a lot of things, you know it when you see it. Arbus’ work has it for sure.

When trying to come up with someone contemporary who exhibits this quality, I kept coming back to the work of Judith Joy Ross. Looking at her work, there is no filter, the viewer isn’t really aware of all the mechanical decisions that the photographer is making, it is simply a direct transference if emotion and information, going directly from the subject to the brain of the viewer. The photographer somehow was simply a conduit for this information to travel through.

The Stewart Sisters, 7th Grade

The Stewart Sisters, 7th Grade demonstrates this intangible. The girls are being photographed, communicating with the viewer, being self aware and being all of these things and more, nothing is very dramatic, nothing heavy handed, but the end result feels utterly profound. The result seems to be a picture of these girls, but then seems to be communicating something universal as well.

Timothy Briner

This is hard. Because I do have specific ideas of what a good portrait may consist of, but I am often amazed at the portraits I come across that do not abide by any of these “rules.” Many of these images are truly spectacular. And it further reminds me that good art is made up of many things, and this question can almost never really be answered, at least not with any certainty.

I believe many things go into the creation of a good image. But sometimes, nothing at all, except luck and patience.

Nathan, Boonville, North Carolina, 2007

This image is made up of many of the elements in which I strive to make all my portraits. It has meaning, it is graphic, it is telling, and has strong lines and light.

I first met Nathan at a diner and he invited me back to his place. While taking a few portraits, Nathan asked me if I wanted to see a deer head that had been in his freezer for over a year. This was the luck part.

We spent a few hours taking pictures with it, and when I went home, I started to analyze the image in my head, and even had a graphic dream of it that night. I returned the next day, took more shots in the same spot, and again, I went home, analyzed the image, and realized that it still wasn’t perfect. The image I had taken on the second day evoked touches of irony, and that was not my intention.

On the third day I created this image. I wanted to tell the story of both the lives of this young man, and the deer; their connection to each other, and to nature.

The lines and light, and meaning of this image mean a lot to me. The meaning may only be known to me, and may only be beneficial to me, but If a portrait can create a strong and moving story during a viewing, and furthers itself with great use of light, lines, and framing, then that to me is almost always a great image. Of course there are exceptions to every rule. But I am very happy with this image, and believe that the story is in the image. But it is mine, and I am strongly connected to it, so I am surely biased.

Thomas Broening

I think for a portrait to be great it needs to say more about that maker of the image than the subject.

Avedon said that all portraits were accurate and none of them were the truth. They are all in a sense a postulation or an argument. Every-time a photographer points the camera a another person he is making a judgement. The grander the judgement the greater the lie.

Look at Eisenstaedt‘s menacing portrait of Goebbels or Kelly Krabill‘s portraits of the girls at her neighborhood church. Eisenstaedt made the picture because he had something he wanted to say about Goebbels. The image is more of an indictment than a likeness. In Krabill’s case she is exploring her own anger through images of the young women from her church. In both cases the photographers make strong imagery because they were both willing to take stand and make a statement about their subjects and themselves.

Chris Buck

A great portrait can have beautiful lighting, a curious location and a pleasing composition, but it’s a sense of vulnerability that really makes a picture exciting for me. Vulnerability and awkwardness are access points for the viewer, and a suggestion of real humanity.

David Burnett

A great portrait?

So many possibilities.

In painting, I’m drawn to the Flemish of the 16th and 17th century. The great painter Bartholomeus van der Helst‘s enormous canvas “The Militia of Amsterdam in Celebration of the Peace of Munster, 1648″, we see nearly two dozen burghers, each perfectly arranged, perfectly lit, placed in a way that let’s you understand immediately who is in charge. Someday I would love to be able to mimic the look, the lighting, the posture of this painting. It is truly a masterwork, and when I think of portraits, it hits me right between the eyes.

Translating such a look to photography is much more tenuous (not to say that it was ‘easy’ for Van der Helst). Of course we can control our subjects, lighting, situation, though perhaps not with the ease that a painter can leave out or add some element. In the end, what strikes us is the feel we have for the subject, and not, strictly speaking, how the photographer ‘shot’ it. There is a full visual combination – texture, light, expression, the eyes and regard of the subject – those are the pieces that attack our senses as a viewer.

Do I feel something inside – a reaction which I cannot express?

Do I sense a moment of tension, humor, a subtle knowing flutter when I connect with the eyes of the subject. Does he, does she speak to me?

Do I want to know more about them?

That is, in the end, the point: take me to that person, that group, and make me want to know more, more, more about them.

Doug Dubois

About a month ago in a hotel room in New York, my father looked at my book of photographs about our family.

It’s a small volume of taped color laser prints, mostly portraits of my mother, brother, sister and him made over a period of twenty years. He’s seen many before, but not sequenced, edited and carefully placed on a page. It’s his chance to see everything before it goes to press. I watch him turn the pages.

The book begins with my father packing a suitcase in a hotel room twenty years ago. I am almost as old as he was then, and can’t help making comparisons. If I didn’t shave my head, our hairlines would be pretty much the same and I recognize the pattern of creases on our necks. He wears a white t-shirt with a handkerchief neatly folded and tucked with the corner sticking out of his back pocket. This affectation marks a difference between us. His t-shirt will disappear under a button down shirt, and a suit jacket will meet up with the pants while my t-shirt hangs out over jeans, the usual uniform of my age and aspiration.

He remembers the trip fondly and lingers on this opening image. He notices perhaps, how the morning light reflects off his suitcase to make three dots of an ellipse on the wall and again, although he’s really not that observant, how the water spots on his t-shirt do the same. Most likely he simply sees his younger self: a man packing his suitcase, in a hotel somewhere between home and work.…

Several of the photographs were carefully framed by my father and displayed in my parents’ home before their divorce. I often wondered how they negotiated their division. He kept the photograph of my sister turning at the mirror and the image of him at the train station. My mother kept only the photograph of my brother at Christmas. Rescued from the trash is a print of my parents in a bar in London. It hangs in my brother’s apartment in New York.

My father pauses at this photograph – she looks happy, he says. The alcohol from the drink in her right hand mixed with the reflected light from the table provides a glow to my mother’s face and a gleam in her eye. My father leans towards her in conversation. My mother stares down at the table but offers a slight, flirtatious smile. The frisson between them is plainly visible. My father remembers this with a measure of fondness. My brother, who sees the photograph every day, must share his nostalgia. But for my mother the image is best left behind.…

My mother lies on a bed in a hotel room. With one hand oddly poised on her head and the other gently holding her elbow up at a right angle, she stares at the far wall. This photograph is new to my father. He sits looking at the image on the desk by the bed not realizing that it was taken in the very same hotel on a bed identical to the one he has just slept in. I point this out and watch his eyes move from the window, the curtains, the bedding and back to the photograph. These banal details animate the room with an uncanny presence – as if my mother was just there.

My parents have not seen each other since their divorce more than five years ago. It’s been long enough that the changes rendered in the photographs are apparent and surprising to each. These images serve, in a sense, as their only contact. Despite their close proximity within the book, the photographs of my parents offer no solace or reconciliation. At best the portraits mark the growing gap between their former experience together and the nascent conditions of their respective lives. What occupies this space is opaque to my camera and too intimate for me to trespass.

Joakim Eskildsen

A good portrait for me is something that gives an insight into the portrayed inner universe, reflected via the surroundings and the mood of the light and the person’s mental state. It must somehow also have a secret that you want to take part in or that makes you wonder. Also, it is great if it puts your own feelings into this universe by looking at it, and reminds you of this feeling.

This picture is of István in Hungary. The color and the light and the cracked walls, and the mood of István make me interested, and I am able to recall the feeling of the moment by looking at it.

Rob Haggart

A great portrait is surprising and insightful for the viewer.The insight comes from learning additional information about the subject beyond what they look like. It can be subtle (expression, body position, bits of context) or it can be dramatic but it should never be obvious.

The surprising part can come from making an unlikely context to subject pairing or creating an unexpected situation for the subject to react to.

I really like Chris Buck in this regard.This is one of my all time favorites from Chris.

Bruce Haley

These days we have cold, detached color portraiture oozing out of photography’s very pores… it is almost inescapable… while I quite like the landscape and architectural work being done in this manner, the portraiture leaves me, well, cold and detached… I find myself flipping through this stuff almost as if I were going through the telephone book…

Call me a dinosaur or whatever, but for the most part I like portraits to be engaging, not chilly – and sympathetic, rather than demeaning or cruel… I would much prefer looking at Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother for the umpteenth time, as opposed to the latest garishly-lit and insulting photographs of everyday folks on holiday at the seaside (after all, most of us can be made to look crass and stupid if photographed during public rituals like shopping or vacationing)…

So to make a sweeping generalization – and place a subject with infinite gradations into the simplest of nutshells – I would say that my preference is for portraiture that imparts dignity as opposed to stripping it away (yet on the other hand, who can deny the power, and the worth, of Avedon’s portraits of his dying father, or Arnold Newman’s sinister portrait of Alfried Krupp?).

One of my favorite examples of portraiture would have to be Edouard Boubat’s stunning Lella, Bretagne, 1947… here we are presented with a real person, one who has been captured in two dimensions yet leaps off of the paper and right into our world, a living, breathing woman… she is both unique and intimate (we know this woman), yet at the same time she is iconic and archetypal and timeless… she is strong, she is determined, she is a modern-day Jeanne d’Arc heading into battle – and yet she is vulnerable, emotional… she is a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, and it is achingly apparent that she is to Boubat as Jane Morris was to Rossetti…

And what do we glean from the small amount of information concerning her surroundings? I see her on a boat, or a ferry, and I can hear the waves lapping against the hull and smell the water and feel the wind that is blowing through her hair… and I can taste the salt on her skin….And I can ask no more from any portrait……

Bill Hunt

In his essay for “Close Encounters, Irving Penn, Portraits of Artists and Writers” currently on view at The Morgan Library & Museum, curator Peter Barberie writes, “If the fundamental task of portraits is to capture subjects differently than they present themselves to the world, Penn has succeeded admirably. He enters into hard negotiation with every personality that stops in front of his camera. Very often he wins.” This seems like a reasonable spot to begin a conversation about portraiture.

My own take on this genre, after many years of looking at and collecting photographs, most always images of people, is that portraiture by and large fails to connect the viewer and the sitter in any sort of revelatory and meaningful way. I have collected many hundreds of images of people in which the eyes are obscured. They can be closed or veiled or hidden. The photograph must also have a magical impact on me.

With the collection, I have always been fascinated by what happens when the photographer does not attempt to capture some poor soul, literally through their eyes, but by denying that or by offering parts, not the whole. I am engaged when information is withheld. When the artist insists that I collaborate on the meaning or significance or power of a photograph, when I am brought into the work, it behaves much more powerfully.

The first work in my collection, Imogen Cunningham’s “The Dream”, 1910, has a marvelous Sphinx-like quality. I don’t know that any real information is revealed, but I do know that she captivates me consistently.

Some of the better-respected portraitists like Stieglitz for instance underline this phenomenon. The O’Keefe nudes with a detail of hands or breasts are incredibly timeless and evocative as opposed to the “straight” portraits.

In the large MoMA retrospective a number of years ago, I remember the blazing eye whites that Stieglitz achieved in the darkroom using potassium ferrocyanide. This is an old photographer’s “tool” used to open the eye highlight to grab our attention, wanting to create that Mona Lisa-like eye contact that follows you around the room. There also seems to be evidence of this in the Penn exhibition. But then compare the power of the Jasper Johns portrait with that of Ingmar Bergman. I think the Bergman wins.

There is another element in portraiture that I think is worth commenting on which is evident in the Penn show, the notion of caricature. Penn’s “corner portraits” work in quick strokes, much like sketches. The enormous and merited success of Annie Leibovitz’s earlier celebrity work behaves like this too. Her iconic Whoopi Goldberg, bathing in milk, and Meryl Streep peeling off her mask/face are brilliant short takes.

As a gallerist with HASTED HUNT, I am the first one to acknowledge the irony of our current exhibition of Martin Schoeller’s “Recent Work”, additions to his ongoing portfolio of “Close Up” portraits. The typological consistency achieved through the artist’s rigorous tight framing and lighting is astonishing. The genius comes in his ability to elicit real life in these sitters. He seems to connect with them, and this shows up in the images. Of all this work though I am most drawn to his portrait of Joseph Mosner, an Iraq war veteran whose ravaged face presents a complex, hard and unknown history. With the celebrity work, you bring a great deal of familiarity to the subject. Schoeller’s technique has the potential to offer a fresh take.

My overall take on portraiture is its overwhelming failure to transcend its basic information gathering, to offer more than the most superficial report, the well lit ID photo. How rare and surprising to find the powerful and transcendent.

Kalpesh Lathigra

When I first starting taking photographs for The Independent Newspaper in London, I subconsciously was shooting the “house style”…… it was only when I stopped and made a decision to move to magazines and long term projects that I began to immerse myself in looking and exploring authorship of the photographer.

For me it is a matter of “what were they thinking”… the moment the shutter is clicked, both of the subject and the photographer…… I want to try to capture at least a moment where my subject transcends the expectation of being photographed and moves from posing to a state of grace, obviously I am not naive enough to think that the subject is not directly interacting with the photographer, but what I say to my subjects “is to focus and concentrate on the most important thing in their life, whether it is a moment of happiness, sadness or indifference to the wider world, just a very personal moment, from there the interpretation of capturing that is down to me.

I would say that the portrait that resonates with me is Nadav Kander‘s David Lynch for the New York Times, there is a stillness and detachment but still emotion and a question, whether Lynch has been styled or not I don’t know but hair and the simple shirt collar sticking out make all the difference to the photograph, almost an ordinariness to the man yet there is emotional strength in moment.

If you look at Kander’s portrait of Armani, the same applies yet it is a complete different style but the link is the authorship, detachment yet emotion.

Olivier Laude

I’ll have to admit that I am not a big fan of portraits as a whole. They are over valued as works of art or as general gallery and magazine fodder. Portraits usually feel staged and temporal, because they are, by their nature meant to be illustrative and propagandistic. The myth that the portrait, the good ones, the bad ones and everything in between, are an important and enlightening window into the soul of the sitter is just as much of an insipid cliché as the soul itself.

In a vacuum, what makes a portrait interesting and successful is the subjectivity of the photographer towards his or her subject. The idea that a great portrait can, and should capture the essence of a human being, is as absurd and deifying as to ascribe god like qualities to any human being, photographer or subject alike.

Portraits for the most part describe an edited moment within a window of personal and theatrical opportunity. Nevertheless, there is a style of portraiture which comes close to achieving the portrait’s mythological goals and that would be the vernacular portrait. Those images taken without pretensions and with minimal expectations on the photographer’s and the subject’s part. These kinds of images are very rare and only seen when you see them.Like the old adage about pornography, which is that you know that it is, when you see it, the portrait works in much the same way, you see a great portrait when you see it, and then again that is as broad a description as the myth of the portrait itself. The great portrait is only as good as the last pair of eyes which gazed upon it, and where ever that may be.

There is an old trick in photography which dictates that in order to please the sitter with a portrait they will find pleasing or personally revealing, you should flip the image horizontally to mimic the image of themselves they would normally see as if gazing in their bathroom mirror. That trick says much about the portrait itself, as an artifice of photography, it manipulates reality to please, judge or deify the subject in order to aggrandize, demean or mythologize ourselves. To my mind, the portrait lacks depth for those very reasons and for these very real and incapacitating barriers.

As for myself, there is a great quote by Fellini which states: “Don’t tell me what I am doing, I don’t want to know”. Consequently, don’t ask me what I am doing, I don’t want to know. But it just so happens that everyone wants to know, present company excluded. Me don’t need to know. Experience trumps reason. I like standing on a summer day in the San Joaquin valley and feeling the sun’s rays; the way I loved light when I was six years old but did not need to think, or convince others, to think about it or profit from it.

Nevertheless, I am often accused of being a portrait photographer. A bit like accusing your reflection of being a mirror. My people may be staring at the camera but they are not portraits. They are not staring at you; I am.

Jason Lazarus

I have three answers that stem from my occasional impatience for the ambiguity found in portraiture.

1.- A good portrait can be made through expanding your commitment to your subject. In this way, I’d say that Mitch Epstein‘s project/book ‘Family Business’ is a great portrait of his father. It has an ambitious scope, as the book is a portrait divided into 4 significantly sized sections: store, property, town, and home… and even features video stills interspersed with more traditional large format beautiful color images.

2.- A good portrait can be made through the use of text to further complicate and expand an image, as in Jim Goldberg‘s ‘Rich and Poor’ project, where the dam breaks as people scrawl their most intimate thoughts, fears, and musings onto the negative space of environmental portraits of themselves.

3.- The removal of the subject, well illustrated by Christian Patterson‘s picture ‘Ernestine’s Portraits’… Christian does not make portraits, but this picture i consider a great portrait! Circumventing the conventions of portraiture, for me, often creates compelling possibilities

Colin Pantall

In Rineke Dijkstra’s Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, USA June 24 1992, a girl in an apricot bikini stands awkwardly on a South Carolina Beach against a drab grey background of beach, sea and sky.The foreground is lit. The young woman stands on her little patch of sand. Dijkstra photographs the girl with sympathy, but despite this sympathetic portrayal, the girl looks isolated and lonely.

Her isolation is accentuated by her appearance – she’s made herself up (this picture is an appointment picture, and thinking it would be some kind of a model shoot, the girl wears layers of make up). She also sucks her stomach in – because her mother is on the sidelines telling her she looks fat. And perhaps because of this, she has a look of anxiety on her face, an expression that is almost confused.

So the girl in the apricot bikini is uncertain of where she is and who she is. She exists in a Anglo-adolescent zone of darkness. The background landscape is a series of stratas of greyness, from the beach to the sea and, punctuated only by the turbulence of rolling waves, a sky of overwhelming greyness, and that seems to be where her future lies.

In terms of technique and lighting, it is not an especially complex picture. In terms of what it shows, it is. Dijkstra uses landscape, light, body, dress and facial expression in a way that reveals something about the girl that goes beyond the photographer. She leaves the image open to interpretation and uses factors outside her control in making the portrait – the finished article is a product of circumstance and chance, and not Dijkstra’s machinations. The picture has social, psychological, sexual and cultural layers to it, it has an emotional narrative and it ties in with a photographic tradition. Everything in the picture matters. It’s an image that has stood the test of time, from a series that has stood the test of time. And though it is a famous image, and many people have attempted to copy it, nobody has come close. It’s still original and it still packs a punch.

Amy Stein

“Make” implies that there are ingredients; that there is a recipe for a great portrait. I believe great portraits happen, but they only become great portraits after the photographer has parted ways with the subject, printed their contact sheets and found (hopefully) a diamond among many dogs.

The qualities that would make that single image stand out to the photographer are the same qualities that would hopefully translate to the viewer. The primary quality being the obvious and clichéd quality that makes all good art good; there is a tension in the moment. The tension could be there for any number of reasons: the photographer’s attempt to unsettle the subject with words or actions, the subjects desire to control the situation, a mutual trust that produces a raw and honest exchange, a chilly day, the cold water of a stream, etc.

I believe there’s no recipe, no replicable means to these moments. They happen and it’s wonderful.

The attached image is of Lewis Powell who was a co-conspirator in the plot to kill the leadership of the United States during the Civil War. On the night that Booth shot Lincoln, Powell attempted to kill William H. Seward but failed. The photo shows him in manacles after being apprehended and prior to his execution.

Bill Sullivan

I relish this opportunity to profess my undying love for one portrait – Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres‘ portrait of Louis-François Bertin: no other picture that I have ever seen is to me so much like physical thing. It has presence.

The framing is really counter-intuitive, there is a great deal of space between the top of the head and the top of the canvas which is the opposite of how you would frame it if you wanted the subject to appear to come forward. It gets its strength, and takes form like a real 3d object would from its base – using those claw-like hands to hold up the massive body.

But if the question is “what makes it a good portrait?”, I would have to say because “I believe in it” and I love its form. I think with Ingres portrait its believability though is crucial to its presence. It looks like a real guy who just happens to be a newspaper editor, who just happens to be sitting there, who just happens to be looking at you and who just happens to look like Zeus. It all just works. I believe it. I give myself over to it and suspend my disbelief just like I would with any good movie.

So believability becomes crucial, “do I want to believe in the picture?” It is the difference between Wall and Crewdson, they are both equally fake, but Wall is more believable so I give myself over to the reality of his picture in a way I can’t with Crewdson’s.

And the other element is form, it there something about the form that I like. And usually I like it because it crates a physical presence like Ingres portrait of Bertin. I had taken a photograph for an earlier series of work using a hidden camera that I was carrying around. It is an image of a woman sitting in front of a fountain looking straight ahead. It is one my own favorite portraits precisely because it has that Ingres sense of form or volume.

The other artist that I think often combined that sense of believability with a great understanding of form was August Sander. I am often struck by the Ingres-like nature of so many of works. His image of a pastry cook from 1928 , like most of his work, has that great balance between shape and reality. So ultimately I guess it would be the ability to create presence through the combination of form and believability.

Tribble & Mancenido

We cannot say we are not biased to such a question, as it is one we ask ourselves each time someone is in front of our cameras. A good portrait allows the viewer to momentarily step outside his or her own reality giving a glimpse of another. It is an emotional exchange between subject to photographer and ultimately to viewer, momentarily caught somewhere in between, experiencing a moment of visual sensory and curiosity from an immediate feeling of invitation.

As portrait photographers we find it only fair to use one of our own images as an example – Timmy, Jane Street Park, NY. We are always drawn to this image for we feel it invites the viewer to continue the visual dialogue started. Alluding to innocence lost, the man within the boy, and a confident youthful stoic gaze, his eloquent pose, gesture, boots, camouflage and gloves elicit questions to further discourse. Those same curiosities provoked us to photograph him again a year later.

Brian Ulrich

I’ve come to the conclusion that photographic portraits are some of the hardest photographs to make.In many respects the photographer is the lead in a crazed power dynamic; the sitter must lend themselves, their time, patience and likeness to the photographer in a relationship that has to have some degree of trust in how the photographer might represent them. The photographer, in some cases knowing more or less about the subject, has a opportunity to describe them in a number of ways. All this often leads to the eternal portrait question: From the sitter, “What do you want me to do?”.

It’s utterly fantastic to think of the psychological implications of all these goings on in some cases in a 2 minute meeting, in others a 1/2 a second. Certainly there is nothing normal in this act. Which might explain most people’s reactions to photography, “You want to take a picture of me….?”

To pick one portrait photograph that stands out to me is tough. So many make the process seem effortless (even if I know better). Dawoud, August, Diane, Alec, Katy, Chan, Lisette, Julia, Hawes (and that other dude Southworth), William, and oh my god.. Walker, among others seem to really understand how portraits are a ever changing recipe based on the ingredients, description and fiction. One though that never-ceases-to-amaze-me-since-the-first-time-I-saw-her-work is Rineke Dijksktra. Rineke seems quiet. She has no blog, no website. I don’t hear of her partying escapades at various international art events. I do see her pictures, a lot and there is always new.

A few years ago Bill Sullivan (another great portraiter) and I spent the day wandering through the Armory Art Fair. We wanted to see everything, especially photography. It became a bit of hunt and at the end of the we both came to the conclusion that Rineke is one of the few artists who really understands portrait photography. Her pictures deal in optics, fidelity and science so well, I am transfixed by this illusion of a person standing in front of me. The emotion kicks in and I’m done….

Peter van Agtmael

For me, portraits are pleasing as single images, but are best in the rare series that reveals a small piece in the puzzle of our existence. I’ve learned the most from David Goldblatt‘s fifty years of work in his native South Africa.

In straightforward images of ordinary people in their surroundings, he portrays the infinitely complex and contentious intersection of race, religion, wealth, politics, and history that define every human society. Although much of his work illuminates the divisions of Apartheid-era South Africa, the pictures aren’t relegated to a time and place. Instead, they force us to question the very nature of good and evil, while confirming that the qualities that make us human are enduring and universal. Photography’s sad seduction too often highlights the surface divisions amongst us. Goldblatt avoids useless cynicism and comes closest to discovering the elusive notion of truth.

Dylan Vitone

What generally makes a good portrait for me is the subjects gaze in the image. Whether they are looking outwardly at the photographer or turning inward in thought if the person has expression on their face that I can empathize or connect with the emotional state I get sucked in. It does not have to be a overly emotional or intellectual state.

August Sander‘s picture of two boxers is one of my favorites. One boxer serious and the other with a wide grin….. Like he just did something wrong. I always wondered what these two talked about. The serious one tall and skinny and the overly happy one short and stocky seem to have little in common. Each energizer their half of the photograph in completely different ways like their worlds never interacted. It was not until after several viewing that I notice the tall one looked like he had had his shoelaces tied together.

Maybe they did interact more than I thought.

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An interview with photographer – and filmmaker – Jennifer Loeber

Miguel Garcia-Guzman — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:40:11 +0000

[Limited series prints for sale at at the Humble Arts Foundation]

I am very pleased to post an in-depth interview with photographer Jennifer Loeber. Jennifer Loeber is a young photographer based in New York City.

Jennifer’s portfolio reflects the exploration of an evolving artistic vision, from documentary series to portraits that have the quality to bridge both the subject and the viewer with a unique sense of intimacy. Her work was exhibited at a group show by the Humble Arts Foundation in New York City.

Her latest series, Zeig Mal (Show Me), was featured in a profile on Gothamist.com and her first feature documentary, Fishkill Flea, is currently exhibiting internationally. Jennifer has also a personal blog.

Tell me about your beginnings as a photographer … when did you get into photography?

My background with photography began in high school when my homeroom was actually the school darkroom. Every morning in high school you would be required to report to your homeroom to get attendance taken- mine was not in a regular classroom but in the schools photography area and darkroom. I started each morning bumping up against enlargers and stop bath so it was natural to develop a curiosity about it. Prior to that I think I wanted to be a fashion designer, but photography got its hooks in me!The death knell for my future fashion career happened during my first semester as a freshman when the photography teacher showed us a slideshow of Nan Goldin’s work. Having recently discovered a love for all things punk rock and downtown, Nan’s work was a revelation to me. I had no idea photography could be so raw, so real. Her work seemed to embody all the outrageous, dangerous fun a 14 year old from Queens, New York could only dream about.

So, you then moved on to acquire formal training in photography …

I enrolled in the undergraduate program at the Massachusetts College of Art studying under Nick Nixon and Abe Morrell. Nick was a huge influence on me in terms of encouraging me to run with whatever ideas I had- like shooting with the schools 4×5 Crown Graphic in the middle of punk clubs.[note by Miguel: by the way check out the series of the Brown sisters, 25 yr, by Nick Nixon, stunning is all I can say.]

It is interesting that you studied with Nick Nixon. Besides encouraging your personal exploration -as you say- do you think that his work influenced your aesthetics to take portraits, snapshots of people?

When I entered college and started studying under Nick Nixon, I had only ever used a 35mm camera. Nick introduced me to large format cameras and the beauty of documentary work. I think he influenced my approach to composition much more than my drive to explore portraiture at the time, I spent most of college shooting a documentary style series focusing on my circle of friends and wasn’t particularly interested in formal portraiture.Nick encouraged the unexpected while showing us how to really focus in on the specifics of what you want to capture. Its that idea of creating a stand alone world out of light and space and gesture that I have carried through with me as a litmus test of what I deem a successful image. I am not a fan of narrative series that fall apart when the images are pulled out on their own. Nick’s guidance and influence can be seen in any image I can create that tells a story on its own as well as within a series.

Which path did you take to initiate your photographic career after finishing college?

After college I shot paparrazzi for a little bit, and completely hated it.

Why exploring work as paparrazzi? Was that driven to access quick money?

Shooting paparazzi seemed like a decent way to make money and use my camera everyday after graduating. I hated it almost immediately- I found it hard to be a big enough bully to force my way through crowds to get a shot and the whole process was just totally uninspiring. Instead of shooting for the agency I was working for I asked to just work in the office helping them archive.So I worked for a couple of different photo agencies until finally making my way into the photo departments at several big fashion magazines. Working behind the scenes was an invaluable experience that also taught me just how much I wanted to fully be on the flipside as a photographer rather than editor.

Which agencies you worked for?

I worked for Big Pictures and later for Retna and dealt mostly with fashion and celebrity magazines. That was my first real experience with photo editing and I learned a great deal in a short amount of time. I was eventually offered a job at one of the fashion magazines through a friendship I struck up with the photo editor.

Why you did not like to work as a photo editor?

Working at magazines both excited and depressed me- I was learning a lot about how to edit for narrative flow and seeing a ton of other photographers work, but I really started to yearn to be out there shooting as well. I eventually compromised and went freelance as a photo editor so I would have time to make my own work. It’s been an extraordinary learning experience but my passion is absolutely photographing not editing.

Who are the artists that have inspired your work?

As I mentioned before, I had huge crushes on the work of Nan Goldin and Sally Mann in college and shot black and white exclusively. I quickly moved into Eggleston worship and started shooting more and more color film. I recently shot a documentary film thats making the rounds at both national and international festivals and that experience alone dramatically impacted my methods and influences as a photographer.The films of Werner Herzog and Robert Bresson are influences. The color palette of photographer Evelyn Hofer’s portraiture and the gesturing of Rineke Dijkstra’s beach series are huge influences. I saw a show of Helen Levitt’s work while in Paris recently that just completely knocked my socks off. I’ve been traveling a lot this year and that in itself is an enormous influence- removing myself from the familiar has always been a huge creative impetus for me and has really played into my most recent work. The theme of doing the unfamiliar.

You have in your portfolio very interesting series and excellent portraiture. Could you please tell us about the conceptual process and purpose of your series and how did you get into portraiture?

Some of the series I have worked on (Fishkill, Coney Island) came about because of other creative endeavors I was involved with. Fishkill was a series I shot simultaneous to shooting of my documentary film because I really felt like the quietness of photography was a powerful tool in helping represent that space. It was also here that I really delved into portrait work- something I had not done much of before that.I began making more portraits- pushing myself to set up more formal shoots, something I had not really had any experience with as a more candid documentary style shooter. Shooting nude portraiture seemed like a natural progression of my ideas to continue pushing myself towards the unknown.

I like a lot your work series Coney Island … the images could be qualified within the genre of street photography … do you like to do street photography? Some photographers like to document the life of people in communities taking portraits of the individuals that they encounter in the street after approaching them and asking for a picture. It is more staged, and at the same time allows for better control of the portrait. Is this an approach you like to explore in your work?

The Coney Island series was a bit of a departure for me, as I don’t consider myself a street photographer in the classical sense. I was inspired by whether or not I could produce something interesting or unexpected from such a well-documented place. I tried to focus more on the mini tableaux playing out as I wandered around rather than attempting to stop and control the situation in any way.

Do you consider your FishKill series a “side product” of your film? Which media did you feel is more effective in conveying the decay of the Fishkill Flea Market?

I think they both help describe different aspects of the location and people. The film was a collaborative effort between myself and my other two co-directors and we had certain narrative threads we wanted to follow and explore within it. My photographs are focused more on my personal relationships with the people of the flea market and my own affinity to the space itself.The photo series was never specifically intended to be shown in conjunction with the film per se- we have used some of the images for promotional materials but the series came about because I had been interested in photographing there from the first time I visited. Due to interest in the project I just recently decided to publish a monograph of the photographs from the Fishkill Series through Blurb.com, which I’m very excited about.

Moving to portraits. What really drive you into portraits, a personal need to connect with the people, perhaps the need to document people’s? … what are the special challenges you felt while taking pictures of people?

My instinct to start shooting portraits was mostly based on my own need to explore the unfamiliar, challenge myself. I had wrongly assumed that portraiture was staid and unexciting. Once I began shooting them I realized that the scenario of two people in a room, staring at each through a camera was a surprisingly complex situation and rife with tension, anxiety and anticipation. That to me was exciting. I use that nervous energy to draw out what I think will make an interesting image. As a naturally anxious person, I’ve always tried to examine what makes others anxious and how that emotion affects interactions. Anxiety seems to stem from ones perception of the moment at hand so I was really interested in trying to visually capture that sort of concern in its different permutations. I use natural light and give very little direction, barring occasionally asking someone to hold a gesture I like. I prefer to let the scenario unfold naturally between us.

How did you get involved with them, how do you approach to a person to take a picture?

My subjects are a mixture of strangers, friends and friends of friends. Nothing in my approach is very complicated, I just ask. I’ve asked strangers at barbeques and parties and coworkers at some of the magazines I do work for, anyone I find interesting really. Most people are willing to at least consider it and almost all of them offer up friends they think might be interested as well.

Do you feel that your portraits of the Fishkill series portray the individual -as a key subject of the picture or they are just an element of the narrative of the story you try to convey?

In the Fishkill series, my subjects are all people I met during the course of filming and each image is both a portrayal of the individual as a stand-alone subject as well as a collective series about my experience of the place.

I find very interesting and intriguing that you are also involved in the making of films. How do you think that both media complement each other? How do you think that filming and photographic affects your approach for composition with both types of cameras?

I made my first film, a feature documentary, with two other people and none of us had any real filmmaking experience. Having a background in visual language as a photographer was incredibly helpful. Being forced to rethink how to make a composition work within the framework of a moving image both opened up my perspective and strengthened my eye. Shooting the film forced me to interact with strangers in a very direct way I never had before. It really taught me how well that risk could pay off.

Are you planning to combine both documentary film and still photography?

As far as combining the two mediums- I already have to a certain extent. Within the film we included a photomontage that acts more as a filmic moment rather than a more typical photography slideshow.

Your portraits are really extraordinary. Is this the main genre you plan to explore moving forward?

Thank you, and yes for the time being absolutely. I’ve only just scratched the surface in exploring what more I want to do with it.

Why do you think that nude photography was a natural progression for your work? Do you think that the challenges of nude photography are different from other types of portraiture?

Shooting nudes seemed to me to be the next logical step further in exploring the tensions inherent in portrait photography. One of the differences or challenges in shooting nudes is just finding people willing to pose. Men tend to be much more skittish about it in my experience. I think with all my subjects there is a certain level of trust applied to the situation but the normal feelings of nervousness and anticipation are heightened when you’re sitting starkers in your living room with a stranger! Each individual brings their own feelings about nudity to the scenario and that can very much alter the mood of a shoot and I think add another layer to the images.

What are the main challenges you have experienced as an emerging photographer and what are the main challenges you encounter at this moment in your career?

I think the biggest hurdle is simply getting eyes on your work. There are a lot of people all vying for the same galleries and contests and attention and you really have to find your own voice and stand out from the crowd. I’m still in the throes of feeling my way around self-promotion. My main challenges right now are just continuing to get my work out there. I would love to get into some smaller shows with the ultimate goal of a solo at some point. I’m also very interested in shooting editorial work.

Please tell me about one photograph, an image that is especial for you?

A photograph I shot of my husband standing in a motel doorway several years ago is very special to me. It represents the shift in my life back to photographer. After going straight into photo editing after college, I had abandoned shooting almost entirely. Around the time of that image I had just started to pick up my cameras again and feel the need to make my own work. We had also just begun production on our film at that point so it was a hugely creative period for me. That image encompasses all those feelings of hopefulness.

Would you mind to describe two photographers that you specially admire and you think influence your work, ideally one emerging photographer and one classic or established photographer?

I doubt she’s still categorized as emerging but a younger photographer I have always been incredibly drawn to is Katy Grannan‘s. Her work is both immediate and deeply thoughtful and I suppose I feel a bit of a kinship with her interest in disquiet and voyeurism. An established photographer I greatly admire is Helen Levitt, more specifically her color work. I was lucky enough to catch an exhibit of it while in Paris recently and it just floored me. Her wonderful sense of humor and affection for her subjects is apparent in all her work and something I deeply admire.

Do you feel that contemporary photography has evolved the aesthetics of photography in a significant manner from 30-50 years ago. Are we in a moment of evolution or revolution in photography?

The aesthetics of contemporary photography seems to me to be in a state of push/pull with the past. A new genre of digitally altered and manipulated imagery rubbing up against a resurgence of interest in view camera work. I’m not sure if that is indicative of an evolution/revolution or just a reflection on the seemingly endless choices our new digital age can offer. Old photographs look new! New photographs look old! 50 years ago the choices weren’t so vast.

How do you see digital photography affecting the photographic industry in the future?

The ease of digital is very democratizing, everyone can be a photographer! Unfortunately I think it also allows for a certain degree of laziness. It strips a bit of the thought involved out of the creative process and I think that can lead to a glut of sub par work, most specifically in the stock field. Will it change the industry? I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that as someone who recently made the switch back to shooting negative film!

Thank you very much Jennifer for your candor to share your thinking and experience as a photographer. I really wish you the best moving forward and take for granted that I will be very interested to see your progression as an artist in the future. I think you are an excellent example of the new generation of photographers that will have a definitive and lasting influence in the field during the next decades. Never stop pursuing your vision, it is a joy for us to see it turning into excellent work.

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Jöerg Colberg talks to documentary photographer Peter van Agtmael

Miguel Garcia-Guzman — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:05:02 +0000

Peter van Agtmael with a group of Afghan soldiers [abc news]

Over at Conscientious, Jöerg Colberg has posted a very interesting conversation with documentary photographer Peter van Agtmael [published also at PopPhoto.com].

It is refreshing to see new emerging photographers, some in their 20s like Peter, making a difference with their work. You can also read another interview with Peter van Agtmael at Smithsonian.com and an interesting photo diary by Peter published at abcnews. Some aditional images from Peter””””s can be seen here.

“I get really frustrated when I hear excuses about not publishing pictures in the name of protecting the privacy of wounded soldiers. With few exceptions, the folks I””””ve met have wanted others to see what they went through in their name. I think the real problem is that America has a guilty conscience and we don””””t want to see the pain caused by our folly.” – Peter van Agtmael

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Pursuing a carrer in fine art photography: a dialogue with photographer Timothy Briner

Miguel Garcia-Guzman — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:09:10 +0000

Because of my presence, regardless of the situation, I could never truly capture a scene as it was. Yes, I am creating a document, but it is flawed, mostly by that fact that I am there with a specific intention, to create something, therefore manipulating something. But there is more to it: The photograph itself is only an object; It is an object viewed and judged differently every time it is seen, therefore it separates itself farther from reality. – Timothy Briner

A young photographer breaking his path in fine art photography. His vision, his dreams, the challenges, the inspiration.

I had the opportunity to interview photographer Timothy Briner, and he shared a candid view of his work, projects and struggles as a young photographer.

After several personal projects and a brief exploration of commercial photography, Tim is now embarked in a project, Boonville, that intends to explore “small-town” America, its people and its cultural diversity across states. But this project is not only a journey through America but a discovery of his own path.

The Boonville project is a a year-long cross-country journey to six different towns named Boonvilles across the United States. Timothy will be living with families and individuals during his thirty-plus days in each town. The final product will take images from the six communities, juxtaposing them together to create a fictional town named “Boonville”.

The Boonville project project is really about the people living in modern America: the good, the bad and the indifferent. This project is a dream come true. Traveling across the country, working on what you wish, when you wish; It all sounds very romantic. And it is! But not without some debate. I am grateful and very excited to be doing what I am doing. But it gets lonely.-Timothy Briner

Read the dialogue with Tim after the jump.

When did you get into photography? Is there anyone who inspired or motivated you try photography or it came from your own curiosity?

I was a sophomore in high school and I got into the Photo I class. I went on to Photo II as a junior. Our teacher was always teaching us alternative processes and things that really invited me to open my mind. Failure and experimentation was encouraged. By photo II we were developing and printing our own color negatives and prints, all by hand. Craig Speiring, my teacher, and those two classes were really the beginning for me.

I thought to myself, if the people that Craig taught us about, Dorothea Lange, Edward Steichen, Keith Carter, and Jerry Uelsmann could make a living at it, I could too.

At one point you decided to join the Hallmark Institute of Photography. What made you take that decision? Do you think that education is important to develop a photographic career?

By the middle of my senior year in High school my mother and had I gone out to visit the school in Massachusetts. I had a small portfolio of work and they liked it. I was blown away with the facilities and the students.

The school is small. I graduated with about 80 people in 2000. The initial inspiration for Hallmark was the time frame. The school markets itself as putting two years of photographic (technical and business) education into ten months. I was never a big fan of school so it sounded perfect for me. By the time I was nineteen years old I was already living and working in New York; It was very exciting and challenging. I really had no idea what I was doing. Hallmark supplies a good support system for their graduates, often from the previous graduates living in your area. For the first three or four years we all looked out for each other.

I believe education is very important. But I believe that you only get out of it what you put into it. I really used my time there to make relationships with the people I came in contact with. And eight years later, some of the contacts I made are now helping to support my current project.

If you have to summarize the key three things that you learned at the Hallmark Institute, which ones those will be?

Other then the techniques of photography, I would have to say that the three key things were: Determination, perseverance and trust. The school was difficult and would often set you up to fail. It was part of their “real-world” education. You had to really want it and dig down and find something inside yourself. Also, you had to rely on others, trust was a big part of the program. We started out with something like one-hundred-and-twenty students, and we lost thirty or so by the mid-point. The ones that stayed really supported one another.

The Hallmark Institute of Photography makes an emphasis on the business aspects of photography. Are you interested in commercial photography? Which is the area of commercial photography that you intend to pursue?

When I began at the school I was really ignorant to the idea of Commercial photography. I was especially ignorant to commercial vs. fine art. I had no idea how I was going to make a living. Commercial photography is Hallmark’s main focus. I think it was in the mid-nineties that George Rosa III took over the school. He started to create amazing connections with Mamyia, Profoto, and many key commercial figures in NY. The exposure we had to that part of the industry was very inspiring. Editorial, advertising, and fashion photography was what I was interested in and where I was headed. A few years ago that all changed.

When I moved to NY, I started assisting a number of different photographers and a few years later I was burnt out. I didn’t love the hustle and the scale of things that resulted in something that would end up in someone’s trash a month later. I wanted my efforts to be remembered longer then just in issue #345.

I began working for two sculptors in mid-town shortly after September 11th. They were working on an interactive memorial project in Union Square. I had only been in NYC for a year when the attacks happened and I was lonely and scared. I attached myself to the two sculptors, Mike Kervel and Ted Lawson, and began working with them daily in Union Square. They eventually hired me and I was living in their studio part-time and acting as their assistant.

We started working on a project that blew me away, and I am very grateful to have been a part of it, as it changed my entire perspective on art. The project was real. It was something that would be loved and cherished by someone forever. That is the direction I wanted my work to go.

You are at the beginning of your career in photography. What are the main challenges that you notice for a young photographer?

Money. I think the hardest thing to get past is how much money it takes to survive in a major city (where most of the work is), not to mention the price of equipment. For the first three years I lived in New York I made very little. I lived in a four bedroom apartment with four other photographers. The rent was cheap, it is really the only way to survive in the beginning.

At one point I found myself living on couches for six months. I never left though, and that was the only thing that saved me. Really, I couldn’t go anywhere else. My mother is a big supporter of my dreams; Sometimes in a backwards kind of way. At one point she told me that I couldn’t come home. I really believed her. That moment made all the difference. Of course she would have let me come home, she saw how hard it was for me, but she believed in me. Sometimes people need that support system, or that push. It’s not always as romantic as it sounds.

All your work displayed in your website appears to be personal work. Is this intentional?

It is intentional, only because I don’t really have any commercial or editorial work. After I assisted for a few years I started to shoot commercially, but shortly after I stopped. The same issues that I mentioned previously started coming up: I was working too hard for my work to eventually be thrown away. I don’t mean to say that commercial photography is not rewarding or respectable. I fought over the decision for some time and started seeking out successful fine art photographers and commercial photographers to ask them their thoughts on the matter. Many of the commercial photographers said their intention was fine art, but they turned to commercial work because of the money. Many of them told me that if they had to do it over again they would choose one and run with it. It was after that that I quit commercial photography altogether and got a non-photographic job.

I was looking for a job that had no strings, meaning I didn’t want to take the job home with me. It gave me the energy to focus on my art. Although many of my friends were making ten times more then me, it always seemed like they were struggling to work on their own ideas.

In looking at your portfolios, they appear to have a narrative, like you intend to tell a story. Is storytelling you main interest in photography?

I think there are many interesting things about photography. The history and the questions that have popped up around the medium: its purpose, photography perceived as reality, etc. For me, storytelling has been the driving force behind the medium.

I was first introduced to Duane Michals‘ work at Hallmark. I had to do a thirty-minute speech about him for class. I took the train out to New York to visit him. It was my first time in the city. At that time he had a show at Pace-McGill. It was also my first experience seeing photography-as-art in person, and in that environment. It was beautiful. I remember not wanting to leave and roaming through the drawers of the gallery’s back room. I met Duane at his Brownstone and spent a few hours with him. It all seemed very romantic. When I first saw his early work from Russia and his celebrity portraits juxtaposed with his narrative storytelling projects, I was sold. His range and his mind is stunning. He has been a major influence of mine ever since.

What is the intent of your personal work, Vacancy and The Adventures of Dixie?

I think I first begin thinking of creating work as a series rather then a portfolio in 2003. It was the first “photo-excursion” that my good friend Jason Covert and I took together. Since then we have attempted to take at least one every year. We made our way to Boonville, NY, where an old girlfriend had a winter house. We spent ten days in Boonville, exploring the town and its people. The work that came from that series is what inspired my current project.

At the time my work was very much influenced by contemporary art and photography. I had no real art training and I was exploring things on my own. The specific people I was studying at the time had a large influence on the work, as did cinema/film.

Film Literature in high school was the first time I started to understand storytelling as a visual art form; The use of lighting, editing, context, camera work, etc. In 2003 I began to study old Hitchcock movies to the point of pausing scenes and drawing sketches of the light and the camera movements. I began to draw up the “rules” of my future work. I was solely working with diptychs at the time, something I continued to explore up until a few years ago.

Eve Sonneman and David Hillard’s works were also very inspirational when it came to the use of diptychs.

All of my projects that use diptychs are shot as horizontal images and then placed side by side. The intention was to create the long shot seen in cinema on the left side of the diptych, and the close-up shot on the right. Both images represent the same moment in time, seen from two different viewpoints. The result was a long horizontal image, representing the wide-screen or 16:9 format of film/cinema.

Next came Lycanthrope, 2004: Lycanthrope is a self-portrait series dealing with matters of duel personalities and anger. I was dealing with a difficult breakup and a new relationship. They came right after one another and I was very confused. That project is a bit of a stretch but it still means more to me then anything I have ever produced.

With Lycanthrope, I was very determined to create something new. It had been almost eight months or so since the Boonville trip and I had finally saved enough money to do something. It was meant to be a completely solo project. I went up to this camp for a weekend with a bunch of home-made shop lights and one strobe setup, and lots of Polaroid. I spent the next two days shooting different situations with the “wolf” and ‘Hunter” character. I had a blast with the human side of the story, it was the most fun I have ever had shooting. The “wolf” was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Shooting self-portraits with tons of make-up on and being alone in the cold/dark woods is not recommended. It made for a memorable project though. The meaning of the story really came to fruition during the shooting process.

Then came Vacancy: Between 2004 & 2005, I took three trips out to my hometown in Indiana to complete it. I still struggle with that series. The meaning changed a number of. I was itching to create something again. I was fascinated by old motels and their relationship with loners and lovers. I was trying to convey a message of love and lust in our current society.

The Adventures of Dixie came out of a solo trip I took to Maine in 2005. I was looking to get away. A friend from Hallmark had a cabin that was off the grid and a few miles outside of civilization. I spent four days doing nothing but reading, writing, drinking, and playing my harmonica. By the last day I was a bit depressed that I had not shot anything. There was a game pole on the property for hunting and a few huge deer-head trophies on the walls. Dixie was a present to my girlfriend and oddly enough we became very attached to it. So, I decided that a photo of it in Maine only made sense.

The cabin and the game pole became my inspiration. I took video of myself dressed up as a back-woods hunter tracking and hunting Dixie. They were ridiculous and fun, but didn’t seem to fit into the final product. At that time, I was thinking about the irony of hunting and hunters. But I am not a big fan of over-ironic imagery. So I never did much with it.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

My inspiration almost always comes from my surroundings. I am often persuaded by what I read and see. As a visual artist, I cannot help but “see” things on a daily basis – it can be very hard to turn off. But when I am ready to work, my surroundings are primarily what I look at and study.

Your current project, Boonville, can you tell us more about what is it about? What is your intent?

Boonville started out as a document of the current state of small-town America. It’s gone through a lot since I left Brooklyn in July of 2007. I had been working on the project in my head for four years. I created a very specific idea of what I wanted and where it would go. That quickly changed.

By 2005-2006 the idea became greatly influenced by the influx of photographers objectifying the ordinary and focusing on small-town and suburban America, and its death by globalism. Although none of this had such a blatant effect on the original idea in 2003, all of a sudden it was all over my statement and the project was sub-titled, “The Death and Life of America’s Small Town,” named for Jane Jacobs’, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and it turned into a project about the irony in America, the negative aspects of Americans and today’s society. I was being influenced without even really knowing it.

Shortly after leaving, and having a minor breakdown in Boonville, Missouri, I took some time and reflected about what I was doing and what this really means to me. The project has always had a subtle interest in the destruction of smaller societies by corporations and the government, as well as dealing with the current state of American politics and economics, but it is all underlining. The project is really about the modern life and times of these small towns, and the people that inhabit them, and my relationship to it. Of course I am focusing on certain points, and some of it IS about the power and politics in a post-911 society, but this project is really about the people living in modern America: the good, the bad and the indifferent.

A few months before I left on the trip I realized I needed to reassess my work. I was being influenced and finally became aware of it. I spoke to a few close friends and photographers. They helped me understand my concerns. I began to go out daily and shoot 4×5 Polariods of my neighborhood as well as taking my Mamiya 7II into the city and to parties. I forced myself to work everyday and to get ready for the trip and to work out my concerns about my shooting style. I’m happy with the work I was producing just before I left. It was inspiring to shoot everyday; a lot of things came up for me. The current work is different, but that solid month of shooting helped form new ideas.

Also before I left, I started looking at work I shot in high school and at Hallmark and for the first three years in New York. Much of this work was untouched by major influences. It was raw. I wanted to get back to that. I began putting a bunch of my work together, thinking about it all as one; Blending the old with the new. It has turned out nicely. I’m really happy with the direction I have chosen.

How are you financing the project?

Cannery Works, a 501 (c)(3) arts organization in New York came on board in early 2006. They helped me work on the project and focus it into a reasonable goal.

Working together we created a financial plan. We set limits and goals. By January of 2007 I had given George Rosa III at The Hallmark Institute of Photography a proposal to help support the equipment-and-film end of the project. By May I had met with him three or four times and by June the project was accepted. The equipment is beautiful. I received a new 4×5, portable strobe lights, etc. There is a lot of equipment, but because it’s light weight and smaller, it all fits into two bags and right on my back. It has allowed me to get my 4×5 and lights into places that I normal couldn’t have.

Cannery Works and I also worked together to create a package that contained a support letter, press release and support-opportunity options. This was sent to family and friends. It proved to be very successful.

Boonville, again, looks like a project where the narrative and storytelling will play a key role connecting the images. How are you planning to blend the images taken at different places so they communicate the message you intend to convey?

The project will unfold as a cohesive message. There are levels of story telling but it will not be as clear of a narrative as my other works.

The diverse geographical locations and range in population sizes are a major driving force behind the project. I’m using the six towns, their common name, locations, and sizes as a visual metaphor for small towns across the country. The project will represent my current views on modernity in America, the people in each of these communities and the details that make up life in small town America. I’m looking forward to juxtaposing the final images from all the regions into the finished product. The work will express my relationship to these towns and their residents. It is very personal, almost to the point of being biographical.

Do you plan to use text to explain the images of the work? Do you plan to integrate multimedia (audio, video) in the project to enhance the storytelling aspects of the work?

I am taking audio recordings of a lot of my experiences. They are personal notes as well as interviews with people, but as of now they will only be used as notes. I do plan on having some text involved. I am still not sure how it will be incorporated. Most likely that will be set into place during the editing and post-production process.

How do you approach to your subjects to ask for permission to photograph? Do you request any model release?

I do not request a model release. The approach often depends on the day and how I am feeling. Today I passed up a group of kids that I thought might have made an interesting image, I just didn’t feel up to it. But an hour later I walked into a man’s yard. He was burning papers and garbage and I simply introduced myself, chatted for a moment, then I slightly eased him into the idea of taking a photo. He was excited about it, more then happy. The people that you think would be turned off are usually really helpful and cooperative. Normally, I get full of fear just before approaching someone. I take a few deep breaths and just walk over, or get out of the car and make myself do it. Nine times out of ten it pays off big.

It is a process though. You have to really want to engage the person, otherwise they can see right through you. I read The Tipping Point shortly before I left for Boonville and there is a part in there about smiling. It talks about smiling being contagious and people who smile are more likely to be trusted. I tried it on the subway for a few weeks. I tried to engage in conversation and to get reactions from smiles. It worked.

I try to be cheerful without seeming odd. Introductions are the first step. It may seems obvious, but a lot of people wait to introduce themselves, they feel awkward or something. Once you establish a name and an association to their current surroundings, it can all fall into place. I do struggle every single time I approach someone. I’m not as much of a people person as some might think. I like being isolated more so then not.

Do you feel that the people feel at ease when you photograph them? It looks like many of them probably are not used to be photography with a large format camera, do they feel intimidated about that?

I don’t think people always feel at ease. I spent a good portion of a day, probably eight hours, with a woman who seemed jittery every time I took her portrait. But I spent the same amount of time with another woman who would have let me done anything. She was very comfortable. She actually told me things that she says she has never told anyone else, it was an unforgettable experience, and I think the image shows that.

I think that most people can connect to a large format camera much more then anything else. It’s often something that everyone has seen in the movies, their grandpa had one, etc. I get much more cooperation with the 4×5 then with the Mamyia 7II, people are intrigued, it keeps their focus a bit more.

I think it depends on the photographer and not the camera if people are intimidated. I often support intimidation in my work. If I have the time, I will usually start off with a longer image of the subject. I then chat for a bit and move in closer. This is when you get either no change in emotion, or people comment on the space between you and them and begin to tighten up. I think of Avedon. seeking out that awkward body movement. Those subtle hand changes and the moment of capture, it really set that work apart for me. My process is similar. I will spend a long time staring at a person while holding my shutter release, and them holding their pose. It messes with a person, they get tighter, then lose, then tight. I like those strange moments. I enjoy the more intimate ones more, but this process is often a game, and the confusing moments can be the ones that work best for a particular subject.

What is your aim when you take portraits?

My aim as a storyteller is to create a telling image. As a portrait photographer is to create something that is compelling and represents my interpretation of a person. I would say to reveal the truth of someone, but photography is full of lies. I am not attempting to create a “real” document of small-town America. I am interested in my relationship to these people and places, and this journey. This work has been straddling the line between fiction and non-fiction since the beginning. And I am continuing to explore techniques and options to remove it farther from the perception of reality.

What do you think are the most important aspects of a good photograph?

Personally, coming from a technical school, I believe that lighting and framing and the moment of capture are the most important aspects of a photo. But I also believe that the concept of an image or series plays just as important of a role.

Do you feel welcome by the towns you visit or it takes a while for the community to open their lives to you? What do you do to integrate within the community?

Of the three Boonvilles I have visited, I have been welcomed in all of them. Some gave me more of a warmer welcome then others, but they have all been really amazing in their own way.

I have been featured on the local radio in two of the three towns and I’ve been on the cover of all three local papers. This was weird, because now I am not an outsider looking in, the people know I’m there, therefore the type of work I choose to do could be affected. It has been a great help though. Certain people that may have been unapproachable are now open to the idea.

Do you notice a significant difference in how the different towns open the community to your photographic exploration?

Boonville, North Carolina took a few weeks to really open up to me. They have a population of 1128 people and are very close knit. The newspaper article about the project came out fifteen days into my stay there, so the beginning was slower. The beginning of my visits are often slow though, I usually don’t start shooting until the second week. Boonville, NC doesn’t have lodging and I couldn’t find a family to stay with at first, so I slept in a tent in the town park for a few weeks. After coming off of an overload of people to stay with in Missouri, it was nice to be alone.

When do you plan to complete the Boonville project?

Tentatively, we have a completion date of June 1, 2007. If time and money allows, and I feel I need to, I will revisit a few or all the towns for two weeks at a time.

How do you plan to show the Boonville project when it is completed? Do you plan to show it at galleries, perhaps publish a book, or sell it to media companies like websites of magazines?

A book is my goal. But showing in galleries and museums is where I would really like to see the final work. I think that it’s the greatest way to view art. It’s the perfect environment for it. Photobooks are amazing, they allow everyone who wants to, to see it in a beautiful package, but a finely curated exhibit can be something you will never forget.

What is the most difficult part of the Boonville project? Do you have a clear end for the project? Do you know how you like to finish it?

The project has been brilliant at times, other times It is a disaster. For a while I was having minor breakdowns every two weeks or so. The meaning of the project and the creative changes that were happening early on were really taking a toll on me.

I’m dealing with things better these days. I take days off when I need it. If I can’t work, or don’t want to shoot, I don’t force it. At first I was feeling guilty and made myself work, which made me tired and unsure of the work, and it just really messed with my psyche. I even lost two days of work because I unloaded film at a time I should have been sleeping. Twenty-Five sheets were exposed. Luckily, I turns out that a good portion of them are actually usable. I was completely devastated though. It set me back about two more days.

Overall it has really been amazing. The people I have come across are fascinating and genuine. It has been a lot of work, but worth every minute.

I do have a clear vision for the finished product, but I try not to conform to it as much as I used to. Projects evolve over time. I am shooting everything that peaks my interest. I am following a personal formula, but it’s loose.

Could you explain your editing process? How do you plan to select the images?

I’m not yet sure. I do believe that editing is very important and I plan to spend a lot of time in post-production.

Timothy at work, setting up his camera. [Boonville, NY, November, 2007]

You are shooting the project with a large format camera. Why is that? What do you think that the large format camera provides you for the creative process that you don’t get with medium format, 35 mm or even digital capture?

Since graduating photography school, I have only used my 4×5; it is really the only thing I know. I got a Mamyia 7II medium-format camera for the things I can’t easily shoot large format, but before that it was strictly the 4×5. It is all I know. I got out of the commercial end of photography just as Digital was getting really big, and frankly, I am just not educated on it, I’m lucky if I can get a decent scan.

Plus, I hate the computers, cords, discs, etc. I need something tangible, a polaroid and a piece of film.

The biggest reason though. I love looking through the ground glass. There is nothing like looking at an image with both your eyes while seeing your vision unfold under the darkcloth. And using my hands to tweak the rise and fall, tilt and swing. I love the finite control that it provides. It really is an amazing way to create photographs, and I wouldn’t know how to do it as well with anything else.

I got my original 4×5 at hallmark. The funny thing is that I don’t remember why I originally bought the camera. It wasn’t required. In school I loved using it cause I found the beauty of Polaroid Type 55. It was an instant image and negative. I guess It just seemed perfect to me.

What comes after the Boonville project? Any new ideas you are now exploring? Do you intent to continue to work on future projects describing the live in small towns across America?

I am thinking a lot about people and America. I want to create something stripped down and raw. My girlfriend is very supportive of me and this current project. But if I took off for another year right away, I might have problems. I’m not sure, I have some ideas.

Do you think that your style is influenced by the work of other photographers you admire? Who are they?

As I previously mentioned, I think a lot of the work produced in 2005 and 2006 was influenced in one way or another. The works beginning in 2003 were being influenced by Duane Michals and Philip Lorca-Dicorcia. There are many others but their styles really represent the two types of photography I was looking at.

Where do you see your career going in the next few years?

I plan on continuing on the fine-art path until I can’t anymore or until I want to do something different.

What are the biggest changes you see happening in the future in the field of commercial, editorial or fine art photography?

It’s hard to say. I’ve been out of the loop for a while, but I think that digital is obviously the wave of the future (and present). Eventually, I think it will be very difficult to shoot film and Polaroid.

When I first started shooting commercially in 2001, the smallest magazines would pay for film and developing and give a small day rate. From the word on the street, most of the smaller magazines these days pay nothing at all. And the larger ones pay very little for editorial work. If this is true, I think digital photography will be the demise of the editorial photographer. Why hire someone when someone else will do it for free? I have nothing at all against young photographers working for little or nothing to get out there, but the overall use and praise of digital seems likely to become the death of photographers working in editorial.

While I was in Boonville, Missouri I was very invested in the History of the town. I was seeking out old yearbooks from the 20s and 30s up through today. The images from the 20s through the 70s were amazing. The yearbooks from the last 10 years were terrible. Not only the design and layouts, but the photography. It was disgusting, I felt ashamed to be a photographer. They were obviously very low-res digital files. I’m sure a cheap photographer was hired. They did the job, but at what cost? Posterity?

Thank you very much Tim. I am looking forward to seeing the Boonville project come to fruition and follow your future career as a photographer. Best of luck in your pursue of excellence.

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