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Interview: Martin Parr

Boundaries Merely Exist in People’s Minds

by Maarten Dings and Joachim Naudts (2007)

On the 25th of October of last year, Magnum photographer Martin Parr was a guest at the Profiles event at the Antwerp FotoMuseum. He gave a reading and participated afterwards in a roundtable on the ‘Photographic Magazine as Medium.’ FotoMuseum extra Magazine had the chance to talk to him earlier that day.

Just like his work as a photographer, Parr’s work as a curator and editor stands out thanks to his unconventional take on the medium. He cultivates his role as an outsider but does not shy away from commercial interests. In 2005 for instance, he made a series of photos for Sony Ericsson with the camera function of a cell phone, while recently surprising friend and foe by acting as a judge on Picture This, a show in search of photographic talent on British commercial tv station Channel 4.

As a photographer, Martin Parr is more than happy to keep his distance from the pompous, academic approach to photography. But whereas his own visual work is quite often tongue in cheek, he provides a much more nuanced perspective as curator and editor. Martin Parr seems to be on a mission. He puts all his weight behind photography in general by making it more accessible to a wider public. According to Parr, it is in this light that his participation in Idols for Photographers should be viewed. He gave in because he maintains that “the photographer’s art isn’t valued in Britain in the same way it is abroad.” In Parr’s own words, photography should crawl out of its ghetto and explore the limits of the medium.

Extra: As a documentary photographer, you don’t seem reluctant to get involved in the commercial scene.

Martin Parr: No, not at all, photography is a commercial activity. Even high art photography wants to be commercial, because everyone wants to sell prints. I mean, the wealthiest photographer in the world is probably no longer fashion photographer Steven Meisel, but Andreas Gursky, who is at the top end of the art market. So it is interesting that the art market, financially often regarded as the poor cousin of commerce, is now way ahead of the commercial fashion industry. You can ask any photographer what he or she wants and they’ll probably answer: I want to do my own work, I want to sell my work as prints. Ultimately that is a commercial goal. So we’ll never be far away from the notion of commerce.

Extra: But don’t you think you can react to this dominance of the economic in the arts by rejecting it?

Martin Parr: I don’t see why you would want to reject it. Commerce makes things happen. One doesn’t want to be in the publicly subsidized ghetto, speaking to one percent of the population. Photography has the ability to be democratic, promiscuous and easy to digest. If you get out of the ghetto you have to get involved with the commercial end. With fashion people, advertising, posters, billboards. These are of course also ghettos. It’s just a bigger ghetto. You could say that visual culture is a ghetto, but that we’re surrounded by it. If you live in the western world nobody is exempt from that. Whether it’s advertising or family snapshots, we are surrounded by images. Everyone is a photographer now, remember. That’s the great thing about photography. Its audience should be growing all the time and as soon as people start using photography, why not apply some intelligence to it.

Extra: A lot of these ‘image flows’ are clichés or, a word you often use, propaganda. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Martin Parr: Most of the images we see are a form of propaganda because they have an agenda. Although all photography has an agenda, photography in the advertising and commercial world in particular is only good for selling an image. Or in case of a family snapshot, it is to sell the notion of the perfect family. I am not saying that independent photographers don’t have an agenda, because they certainly do: you can send two photographers to the same city and they would come up with entirely different pictures. One a very positive, one a very negative.

Extra: So do you think it’s important that independent photographers go through this fashion or advertising area, because it could give them a different point of view?

Martin Parr: No, I am not telling people what to do. But when I look around I feel it is all too safe and predictable. And part of the fun and enjoyment of photography is the ability to push ideas and boundaries. Most people are quite comfortable in their little niche, and do not play with boundaries. Good for them, but I think a photographic community should have more ambition. It’s our job, if you like, to make photography more accessible and to expand the audience. And the audience is there. Photo sharing sites on the Internet for instance have millions of subscribers who want to approach photography differently. Flickr is only two or three years old and, in the uk, two million people have subscribed and are discussing their work in an intelligent way. That’s quite an achievement. So, the potential audience – I don’t know how big Flickr is in Belgium for instance – is huge. What’s more, nowadays everyone has a camera on their phone, so everyone is a photographer. That is why photography is in such a healthy state, because more and more people are joining in and are becoming fascinated with photography.

Extra: Do you consider these changes in photography today as the beginning of a new medium?

Martin Parr: No, it’s all the same. Photography’s central role is to be the absolute medium of the day. It is fantastic that there is no longer any technical intimidation. When I first started learning how to take photographs, you had to spend the first six months figuring out what an f-stop was. Now you just go and take pictures. Nobody thinks about technical issues anymore because cameras or camera phones take care of that automatically. On the other hand, you still have the option of controlling every technical aspect. It’s the most accessible, democratic medium available in the world. This has to be celebrated, and we must continually remind photographers of this.

Extra: Speaking of digitalization, behind the backdrop of the Internet and the way photography is currently undergoing such profound changes, it struck me that, at a time when the image is becoming increasingly non-material, you focus on the photo book, i.e. the photo in its printed form. Is that a kind of reaction to this new, immaterial character of photography?

Martin Parr: No, they are only slightly separate as today everyone can print a book with the help of new technologies. It is truly amazing: for forty Euros you can send your pictures to a company and they’ll send you back a book. Isn’t that fantastic? I love and collect photo books and I’ve been trying to compose their history, because their position has always been somewhat underrepresented in the history of photography while I think they are essential to its contemporary practice. With The Photobook: A History, I tried to redress that and I think the book succeeded to a certain extent. Although there are more books published now than ever before, the problem is that they tend to stay inside this photo ghetto. It is possible yet extremely difficult to find books that have a wider appeal, so in that regard it is very encouraging to see that Stephan Vanfleteren’s book Belgium has gained a wider audience. He has touched a nerve, and although he presents a very nostalgic view of Belgium that I don’t particularly like, it is great to see that his book is able to draw a crowd. I applaud him for making photography more accessible and it are these rare moments of triumph that show you that photography books need not indulge in high art. There is a slight contradiction in what I am saying here. I’m asking photography to get out of its ghetto, but at the same time I’m professing my love for the photo book, which is entrenched in that ghetto. But I am very happy to be a hypocrite (laughs).

Extra: Which photo books do you consider to be your personal favourites then?

Martin Parr: I would like to mention two books. To my mind, the most influential and radical photo book published in the last century was William Klein’s New York. Unlike Robert Frank’s equally influential The Americans, Klein succeeded in changing the way photographers created books. His radical approach to design, his ability to capture energy and dynamism in his photography, all the effects of his work rippled across the world; you could see it in Argentina, in Portugal, all the way to Japan. During the sixties and seventies, while Europe stuck to the conventions of the photo book – with two white pages and a picture on the right, such a hallow, respectfully beautiful format – Japan was throwing out those rules. Japanese photographers adopted Klein’s spirit and used it to change the way of presenting books entirely. Daido Moriyama’s Bye Bye Photography for example was as radical as Klein’s New York because he tried to tear up the rules of conventional photography. He threw away his negatives, he scratched them and made this energetic book, which took Klein’s idea one step further. So Bye Bye Photography is probably my favourite photo book. But we should always keep in mind how radical Klein’s book was in 1956, and how radical it still is today. It forever changed the way photographers make books.

Extra: There is another way in which you seem to turn to the past. You have worked with image archives, like the Lotz ghetto album or the Ed van der Elsken archive, found images and traditional genres like the self-portrait in commercial studios. In other words, in this digital era you are focusing on the photographic tradition and its specificity.

Martin Parr: I always look back to work from the past because I feel its contributions have been overlooked. By virtue of this platform I have, I feel it’s my duty to help promote neglected bodies of work. The history of photography is very subjective, and it is also, if you look at Beaumont Newhall for instance, very rigid. It just needs a bit of lightening up because certain people had a very narrow view on what photography should be. Today, we all acknowledge the contribution of things like vernacular photography which has become mainstream over the past twenty years. Previously, just like with colour photography for instance, it had just been sidelined. So we constantly have to reinvent and revise the past because there is no such thing as a ‘true’ history of photography. So when looking back at the past, I am just taking part in that ongoing process. Of course, my fascination with the past has as much to do with promoting upcoming photographers.

Extra: Do you think that your different positions in the field enrich each other?

Martin Parr: Yes, they feed off each other. It used to anger me that a lot of photography curators are so lazy, and just wait for things to be handed out on a plate: they hardly travel, they aren’t restless, they aren’t on the lookout for the new. Then it struck me: why not curate myself? That’s how I started. Like all the other projects I’ve done I just think: well, if I don’t do it, no one will. The same holds for curating: I have to do it, because if I don’t, things will not get a platform or receive the oxygen they need.

Extra: So you see curating also as a way of communicating?

Martin Parr: Yes, it’s like filling a gap. You look at what’s going on and you suddenly realize it is insane that this or that has received no attention. For example, I did a show this summer called Colour Before Color for a New York gallery, with ‘colour,’ in the British, hence European spelling, and ‘color,’ reflecting the us spelling. The exhibition examined European colour practice during the seventies, which had been largely ignored. The history of photography always taught us that American photographers such as William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and their generation pioneered colour photography. So my theory was simply to look at things in Europe and to focus on six European photographers who were also working in colour during the seventies. But because they worked in isolation and had no institutional support, they were largely ignored. So I formulated a counter argument to what is now accepted as received truth. Of course I am not trivializing the developments in America during the seventies with the MOMA show and William Eggleston’s efforts, but this is not the full story. It’s much more complicated than that. So part of my idea behind this is to single out anomalies and make a small contribution in correcting them.

Extra: You will also be curating a show at the New York Photo Festival. Can you tell us a bit more about it?

Martin Parr: The exhibition is entitled New Typologies. The working title was ConDoc, which stands for ‘Conceptual Documentary.’ To me, it seems to be one of the emerging genres. Some of it is typology, some is not. We live in a chaotic world and the rigour of the analysis that conceptual documentary brings can help make sense of the chaos of the modern world.

Extra: Like Hilla and Bernd Becher’s work for example?

Martin Parr: Yes, of course. They have been very influential in steering European photography more towards this dry way of looking, which seems entirely appropriate. So we have to give them credit for starting out on this path.

Extra: Lately you’ve been travelling to Latin America. Judging from your Magnum blog, you seem very enthusiastic about photography over there. Why is that?

Martin Parr: I actually just came back from the Latin American Photo Forum where I saw lots of books and magazines. Surprisingly, a country like Brazil has a very healthy publishing program since there is this law stipulating that companies must reserve five percent of their profits to endorse cultural projects. This money mostly goes towards the publication of books, but the downside is that they tend to incorporate safe images and ideas. If you have a project in black and white focusing on indigenous Brazil, you will have no trouble getting subsidized. However, if you have a more contemporary project, dealing with, let’s say, Saõ Paulo, that would be seen as too controversial. Big corporations tend to avoid such projects, so what you end up with is a publishing policy that it too nostalgic; Brazilian photography books give this impression. The country where things are really happening is Argentina, which has combined a European sensibility with this sort of inherent Latin craziness. There is some very interesting work coming out of Argentina at the moment.

PDF of the interview HERE

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Tod Papageorge

Tod Papageorge:

I have no real argument against so-called set-up photography, at least as a process. The fact that I’ve had many successful students doing it in different ways I think makes my case. I also think that the reason they’ve felt free enough to work in this way at Yale is because I profoundly believe in—and teach—the proposition that photography is inherently a fiction-making process. Don’t speak to me of the document; I don’t really believe in it, particularly now. A picture’s not the world, but a new thing.

That said—too briefly—my argument against the set-up picture is that it leaves the matter of content to the IMAGINATION of the photographer, a faculty that, in my experience, is generally deficient compared to the mad swirling possibilities that our dear common world kicks up at us on a regular basis. That’s all. Remember, T. S. Eliot made the clear, brutal distinction between the art that floods us with the “aura” of experience, and the art that ‘presents’ the experience itself. ANY artist, I feel, must contend seriously with the question of which side of that distinction he or she is going to bet on in their work. Obviously, I’m with Eliot—and Homer—in this, believing that the mind-constructed photograph almost necessarily leads to a form of illustration, the very epitome of aura-art.

Read the entire interview over at Alec’s archived blog HERE.

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Very sad news. Dennis Hopper died today. RIP Dennis! An amazing actor, Dennis was also a photographer. Below is an interview from New York Magazine (I added the images):

Before his self-directed performance in 1969’s Easy Rider made him the Dennis Hopper you know, he was but a promising young photographer documenting the sixties in all its cinematic glory. On display at Shafrazi through October 24 is his new show, “Sign of the Times,” a collection of Hopper’s pre-’67 photos of Warhol, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, and other twentieth-century art-world luminaries, along with a dozen of his never-before-seen “billboard paintings.” Vulture spoke with Hopper this week about the show, his career, and a job opening at the Vatican.

You edited down your collection of photos from about 10,000 to 400 for this exhibition. How did you decide?
It wasn’t easy, actually. Well, we first got it down to 600. First 800, then 600, then 400. There’s a lot of photographs not included, but most of them are ones that you probably know already, that you’ve certainly seen. It was hard. The most we’ve ever exhibited before was 130 of the stills. This is by far the biggest.

Do you have a favorite?
Nah, I like many.

Where did the title come from?
I just thought because I’m using billboards … signs of our times.

It’s amazing that you were doing films and taking these photographs all at the same time. Is there another medium you identify with?
Well, I never was a musician. I love music, I had a lot of friends who were musicians. I could never play guitar. I was forced into playing piano as a child, and I got away from that as quickly as I could. I had a LOT of friends who could play guitar. Why would they need me to go “dink dink dink”?

When you’re friends with Neil Young and Willie Nelson, there isn’t really a need.
Where are you going to sit, in a corner?

Obama is the first president to include abstract art, a Rauschenberg, in the White House’s collection. Why do you think it took so long?
Oh, really? That’s great! Why do I think it took so long? [Laughs] Because the Republicans were in power.

Weren’t you a Republican until Obama?
I was a Republican. I was a Democrat, then a Republican, then a Democrat again. I think he’s doing great things, if anybody knows what the right thing is right now.

What would you be your dream subject to photograph?
I started out shooting flat, on walls, so that it had no depth of field, because I was being photographed all the time as an actor. And if you notice, there aren’t a lot of photographs [in the show] of actors — Dean Stockwell, Paul Newman. I thought I was an imposition to the actors who were being photographed all the time. I really wanted the flat-on-painter kind of surface. I did that for a long time. Then the artists. I really started taking photographs of artists. They wanted me to take photographs. They wanted posters and things. I was hanging out with them. I photographed the ones I thought were going to make it. I wasn’t really working as an actor during this period, and I thought, Well, if I’m not going to be able to work as an actor, I might as well be able make something that’s going to be credible. So I took photographs of Martin Luther King and Selma, Montgomery, as history, and selecting artists that I thought would make it. I met most of the Pop artists before they ever had shows.

Are you still shooting? Do you have an ideal person in mind to shoot now?
I haven’t changed much. I carry a camera around when I remember to. I take a picture every now and then.

Do you still shoot artists?
I recently visited David Hockney, Anselm Kiefer in Paris. Damien Hirst, when he was at the Lever House, I spent a morning photographing him. Jeff Koons. Julian Schnabel, people like that, friends. Prince. Artists are more willing, they’re gung ho. They’re not used to it. They like hanging out.

Do you ever shoot landscapes or anything?
Yeah. This exhibition is all photographs before Easy Rider. The billboards were done more recently, but the images were shot in 1961, ‘67. I started writing Easy Rider in 1967 with Peter, and we shot in ‘68, and it came out in ‘69. These are all 1961 and 1967, and I never took any photographs after that until I was in Japan, I think in ‘89. From ‘69 to ‘84, it was ten or fifteen years that I didn’t take any photographs.

Because you were so busy acting?
No, because I wanted to direct movies. I couldn’t direct and shoot. I had to put my camera away. I don’t crop my photographs. Then I had Easy Rider, and I couldn’t get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn’t take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again, and then I went digital.

What year was that? Were you initially resistant to the switch?
When it first started, it was inferior and the inks weren’t archival. As soon as the inks became archival, I went digital. To me, it’s like the difference between developing something in chemical or being able to spray the light. It’s like painting with light, and the computer is reading the light. When a digital photograph looks right, it looks like it was painted.

We remember when you modeled for Adam Kimmel. Are you still doing
any collaborations like that?
I modeled originally for Boss, and I had a couple of shows with Hogan in Italy. My oldest daughter was the fashion director at Elle for ten years, and now she works for Tod’s and Hogan, so that’s how I got involved.

You recently lent your voice to a GPS device. How’d that come about?
They approached me. [Does a voice]. “You’re going the wrong way!” I think it was hooked into some sort of charitable thing.

Bill Viola was recently approached by the Vatican to be part of an initiative to restore the relationship between faith and art, and he declined. If the Pope approached you, would you do it?
I don’t see a reason to say no. I don’t know what the difference would be between working for the Pope or working for a rabbi, or working for a Wall Street bank or a TV commercial. I think going from Pop art to Abstract Expressionism in America erased those barriers — “I can’t do this because the Pope is a terrible person.” Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, whether they had happy relationships with him, did work for the Pope. I’m certainly not Catholic, but I wouldn’t see any reason to turn it down. I love Bill Viola’s work, and certainly, if he doesn’t want to do it, he should turn it down. It’s his prerogative. But I can’t find anything in my life that says, “Well, you can’t work for the Pope.” That hasn’t stopped me from doing commercials. If you’re in fine arts, you can’t do commercials. If you work in television, you don’t do commercials — if you work in television, you don’t make movies. With all these barriers, I just say, “Come on. This is ridiculous.”

Are you working on any films now?
I’m writing a screenplay and I’m working on a series in Albequerque, New Mexico. I’ve been there since May, and I’m there through October 18, so I’ve been there six months. We did thirteen episodes last year, and now we’re on the tenth. It’s called Crash. Paul Haggis, the director of the Academy Award–winning movie, is producing it. People are making a series. We’re on the Starz network, and we open September 18. Next Friday at 10 o’clock.

What’s the screenplay?
All I can say is that I have financing. It’s the first time I’ve had it in sixteen years. I can’t talk about the subject matter, it’s too much — I’m not telling anyone, it’s not you.

On the monograph for the exhibition outside, there’s a quote from you in Lifemagazine from 1970, where you say that “We’ve become a new kind of human being. We’re taking on more freedom and risk.” It’s a really broad statement. What about the cultural moment right now? Do you think we’re changing again?
It’s hard for me. I don’t know if it’s a thing of getting older, but I don’t get out as much to see as much work as I used to. I’m involved in my own work and trying to catch up in trying to do stuff I wanted to do 30 years ago. I’m just catching up with the sixties now. Now I’m looking at what I’ve been doing the past twenty, fifteen years. I find that most of the things that I walk into that I see, I saw in the sixties, and it’s not new to me, but it’s new to other people. There’s so much of it. Because in the sixties it was a lot easier. You’d go into a show, and you’d never seen anything like that. And you could make a judgment if you wanted to, but you’d never seen it before. It’s not the original idea, it’s the next — the post-. There was an underground, but maybe there were twenty people. It wasn’t thousands. It was obvious who they were to me. In New York, being in the communication capital of the world at the time, helped.

But I don’t see any big changes. I see individual artists who I think are really interesting. There’s a young man, Robin Rhode — he’s a performance artist who photographs himself doing these things in the street. He does a lot of chalk drawings. He’ll photograph straight down, so it looks like he’s throwing a basketball, but he’s really lying down. He’s wonderful. I just bought one of his pieces. Hirst, Koons, Schnabel. I have some really good friends. David Hockney I admire. Anselm Kiefer I just met and spent a day with in Paris.

Do you consider yourself more of an actor-director or a photographer?
I think, in the end, it’s how you’re perceived, I guess. I love acting, I love directing, I love writing most of the time. I love taking photographs. I don’t have a favorite, but I would hate to give up acting, because if I give up acting, my livelihood and the rest just falls into place. I’m a compulsive creator.

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Interview with Dorothea Lange
Conducted by Richard K. Doud
In New York, New York
May 22, 1964

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Dorothea Lange on May 22, 1964. The interview took place in New York City, and was conducted by Richard K. Doud for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview

RICHARD K. DOUD: This is a tape recorded interview with Dorothea Lange in New York City, May 22, 1964. The interviewer is Richard K. Doud. Now I have read, and I don’t remember where, that you decided to become a photographer when you were about seventeen years old. I wanted to ask you first, why, if you were interested in a visual communication medium, you picked photography rather than say, some form of graphic arts, or something like this. It seems to me that at that time photography would be a very unlikely choice for a woman to suddenly decide to pursue, because I don’t think that photography was really that commonplace when you decided to become a photographer. I was wondering why?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well, I have no convincing answer to that. Many of my decisions, I don’t know where they came from. I can’t really place them-all of a sudden I know what I’m going to do. I was young, and faced with the question of how I was going to maintain myself on the planet. I had to earn my own living; my mother was a librarian, taking care of myself and my brother and seeing us through, and the family thought that the quickest way for a woman to earn a living was to go into teaching, which I didn’t want to do at all. I didn’t argue it; but my mother and grandmother used to use the phrase, “But it’s something to fall back on,” you know. And that, I think, is a detestable phrase for a young person. I decided, almost on a certain day, that I was going to be a photographer. I thought at the time that I could earn my living without too much difficulty. I’d make modest photographs of people, starting with the people whom I knew. I had some sort of a general idea. This was before I even owned a camera. I had never owned a camera, but I just knew that was what I wanted to do. Maybe I was one of those lucky people who know what they want to do without having to make these hard decisions, but I didn’t know any photography.

RICHARD K. DOUD: What did you do then? Once you decided this was it, how in the world would you go about getting started?

DOROTHEA LANGE: In what free time I had-I wasn’t yet through school-I got myself a job at a photographer’s and I worked in quite a few studios, commercial studios, where they did portraits. And I got some very valuable experience. I did spotting, and I did retouching, and what you call it when you-solicitation, I did telephone solicitation all day sitting at the telephone. I can give you the speech, you know. I went on jobs, and arranged the bride’s veil, and changed plates, was a receptionist, dark-room girl, all kinds of things. That’s when I was quite young. Which was a lot for me. It was interesting, it was exciting, and I learned much about people’s foibles and their vanities, which the professional photographic portrait business teaches you very quickly. And so I got a-I guess the word is grass-roots experience. Yesterday I was at the Museum of Modern Art looking at the exhibit that opens Monday night, that big opening of the new museum. They have the new enlarged photography department and they have on those walls the finest photographs that have ever been made. They’ve been selected. There are some that aren’t there, and some maybe that shouldn’t be there, but anyway this was the basis of the collection. On those walls I saw photographs that I remember poring over in the library when I was a kid in high school. I remember one special day when-here I am, you see, looking at a portfolio of work, and there on the wall yesterday I saw it. It took me back in a minute to this half-baked kid that I was, but I understand this at that time in the same way that I understand them now. Certainly they were great pictures then, and they are today.

RICHARD K. DOUD: After this initial experience, then, they have written about you that you and a friend decided to work your way around the world with a camera, and wound up in San Francisco and lost your money or something, and you started a studio out there. You were taking portraits, I understand, until you became interested in the people on the street.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well, it wasn’t in a direct line. I did get as far as San Francisco, and I did get a job the next morning. I would go, of course, to something that had to do with photography, so I went to a store on Market Street, which is like Broadway, and got a job in a kind of, not a variety store, but they had luggage and umbrellas and stationery, and a photo-finishing counter where the people brought in their things and took them out at night, developed and printed, you know. I got a job there right away. I got interested in the snapshots and I realized that at that time something that’s never left me, and that is, the great visual importance of what’s in people’s snapshots that they don’t know is there. I mean, what great photographs that there are in snapshots. I’d say that many great photographs are in people’s top drawers, with deckle edges, you know, pictures of their relatives, and they never see them in any way but personal. One of the things that guided me finally into documentary work as I see it now, I didn’t realize at the time, but from that over-the-counter experience, I worked making photographs of people whom I met, doing the work in the San Francisco Camera Club. Through the San Francisco camera Club I met a lot of people. There was one young man there who was a very talented fellow, better than most of the people that you meet in camera clubs, and he suggested that I go in business as a photographer with him. I thought this would be a very fine thing. I was just about to do it when I was offered the opportunity to do it alone. My first backer said, “All right, you go ahead.” And I did. I was a portrait photographer in San Francisco for oh, well; I still occasionally do it for some of those old customers. It was a good little studio, it was a fine little studio, and the things that I made there through that period were not empty portraits, they were not. As I look back, I struggled hard with it, and some of my longest, hardest working years were those years, up to the limit of my strength. I worked to maintain that place. It was quite a venture because it was a rather expensive place and I had what they called the cream of the trade. I learned all this, you know, in my early days. It was no-I could have gone on with it, and enlarged it, and had a fairly secure living, a small personal business, had I not realized that it wasn’t what I wanted, not really. I had proven to myself that I could do it, and I enjoyed every portrait that I made in an individual way, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I wanted to work on a broader basis. I realized I was photographing only people who paid me for it. That bothered me. So I closed that place, and dismantled my darkroom and took it to another big, empty, loft -like place. There I settled down to work for a year, where I wasn’t caught up by all the excitements of that business, and so on. What I’m trying to say is, I really had to face myself. I was married in the meanwhile and my first son was born in that period. I didn’t live there, I worked there. Edward Weston subsequently used that same place. In fact, he used it two or three times while I was away. Then came the Depression. Meanwhile I had moved my work downtown for other reasons. But I was still sort of aware that there was a very large world out there that I had not entered too well, and I decided I’d better. I never had any sense in making a career out of it. It was more a sense of personal commitment; in fact I have never had a conscious career. People hand it to me, but I don’t feel that way.

RICHARD K. DOUD: That’s strange.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I don’t feel that way at all. I feel myself more like a cipher, a person that can be used for lots of things and I like that. But I don’t feel that I personally stand for anything so great, you know. That is the way in which I kind of slid into this. You asked me about deciding to be a photographer, but over everything, I think, all my decisions right along, even working in the field when I was doing documentary work, have been instinctive; and I trust my instincts. I don’t distrust them. They haven’t led me astray. It’s when I’ve made up my mind to be efficient that is when I have gone wrong.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Maybe too many of us don’t follow our instincts.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I have, I have.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Might be better is more of us did that. I want to ask you about when you somehow became involved with the problem of the migrants-I think before you started working for the government. Is that correct?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Yes.

RICHARD K. DOUD: And I wanted to ask you, in connection with this, whether or not the work of Louis Hine had any influence on you, and did Hine make you aware of say, the sociological implications of photography?

DOROTHEA LANGE: No.

RICHARD K. DOUD: You weren’t aware, consciously aware, of any influence at all? That’s interesting that you would start up there, what he had done pretty much, I think, along the same-

DOROTHEA LANGE: No, that’s nothing. I later saw the connections, as now I see connections between what other people do: I understand their work, but I-it may sound like an immensely egotistical thing to say, I’m not aware photographically of being influenced by anyone.

RICHARD K. DOUD: That’s very interesting. Particularly in this case.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Perhaps I would have done better had I been. But I haven’t. Not now, either. It’s my own handwriting. Sometimes it’s a very weak statement that I make about something but I always have the feeling that it’s mine. It isn’t anything that I got from anyone else. That’s why it’s very easy for me to enjoy other people’s work as much as I do.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Sort of look at it with fresh eyes, and you feel it-

DOROTHEA LANGE: yes, I feel it. I don’t say I’m highly original, but after all these years of work, I have a certain, well, not exactly a style, but a tonality that I recognize as my own. Now, I begin to recognize it. I’ll say, “Well there’s a Lange for you.” I’ll show you one. I just did one that I know is.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Good.

DOROTHEA LANGE: But it’s only lately that I have begun to recognize this quality. People have told me about it. But I thought, well this is more of a, you know, as the Arabs say, “caloose caloose caloose caloose,” that means talk talk talk talk.
RICHARD K. DOUD: I think other people certainly can recognize a Lange.

DOROTHEA LANGE: They tell me so, but I couldn’t. Now I begin to be able to.

RICHARD K. DOUD: This is part of your growth. Well, how was it, if you were working with the problem of say, the lower one-third, how then did it happen that you became aware of what these people in Washington were trying to do along these lines?

DOROTHEA LANGE: They weren’t.

RICHARD K. DOUD: This had not started yet? When did it start? What part did you play perhaps, in starting it?

DOROTHEA LANGE: I’ve listened to many accounts of this, and none are the same.

RICHARD K. DOUD: We want your account of this.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I assure you that I don’t say that this is the way it was. This is the way it seemed to me it was. And of course there were many things that were going on that I, in California, was not aware of. But I had made some photographs of the state as people, in an area of San Francisco which revealed how deep the depression was. It was at that time beginning to cut very deep. This is a long process. It doesn’t happen overnight. Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it. But this particular section was not far from the place where my studio was and I observed some things that were happening. My powers of observation are fairly good, and I have used them; I like to use them. Sometimes I’m aware of what’s going on behind me, you know. My angle of vision was almost 360º. That’s training. But I have done some photographs of this. One of them is my most famed photograph. I made that on the first day I ever went out in an area where people said, “Oh, don’t go there.” It was the first day that I ever made a photograph on the street. I made the old man with the tin cup first, but that was life.

RICHARD K. DOUD: The White Angel bread lines.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Yes. I had struggled along for months and months with this material, but I saw something, and I encompassed it, and I had it. Which was an impetus. I put it on the wall of my studio, and customers, people whom I was making portraits of, would come in and just glance at it. The only comment I ever got was, “What are you going to do with this kind of thing? What do you want to do this for? What are you going to do with this thing?” That was a question that I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. I knew I had to earn my living. I knew that I wanted to earn my living, put it that way. I was married, I had two children, and I could have stayed home. But I felt differently. I wanted to earn money. You know, I was independent. I wanted to help. So that was the question: How was I going to do it? What was I going to do? But I knew my picture was on my wall, and I knew that it was worth doing. Well, there were Communists, and mass meetings, and demonstrations going on at this time. There was a good deal of social ferment. And May Day came along, and I heard there was going to be a big-you see, I’m doing exactly as I did on that other tape, you didn’t ask me this, did you?

RICHARD K. DOUD: If it’s relevant, if it ties in, we want to hear it.

DOROTHEA LANGE: But I’m talking about myself, not about Farm Security. Does this tie in?

RICHARD K. DOUD: I think it does. This gives us a background picture of why you were doing the kind of work you were doing.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I thought I better go there and see why these people were demonstrating, what it was about. I had more confidence then, because I had gone down with the dregs. This was a social demonstration. So I said, “I will set myself a big problem. I will go there, I will photograph this thing, I will come back, and develop it. I will print it, and I will mount it and I will put it on the wall, all in twenty-four hours. I will do this, to see if I can just grab a hunk of lightening that is going on and finish it.” I couldn’t run two things together consecutively, and two sides of my life. I couldn’t, but I could take this piece and isolate it, which I did. A friend saw these photographs and said, “They’re valuable, they’re useful,” and made some connection with a magazine called Survey Graphic. Survey Graphic was what the Reporter magazine is today. It was more a social welfare magazine, more connected with settlement houses and social welfare problems, not political commentary so much. It was more, you know, of that time. And they bought one of that series of photographs and they printed it full page. It was a street speaker talking into an old-fashioned microphone. It’s still printed occasionally, I see it. Underneath they put the slogan, “Workers of the world, unite!” Which was no favor to me. But that’s what they did. Made me a Communist right away, quick. It accompanied an article made written by a man who was a professor at the University of California. I’ve forgotten the subject of his article. At any rate, he telephoned me about this picture. I can’t remember exactly what he said but at any rate, he suggested that if there was any possibility that I could do field work, he had a grant from the state of California to investigate agricultural labor, and he’d want photographs as visual evidence to accompany it. This was beginning to become a political issue. He asked whether I could do this. Well, a way would have to be found, and a way was found. I was offered a job on the state payroll as a stenographer. He knew they couldn’t get it through as a photographer, and I, who can hardly read and write-that isn’t true, but I mean to say I’m no stenographer. At any rate, I was taken on as a stenographer. I went on several field trips to photograph what this social scientist and his crew were investigating. And that was the first time I saw how trained people in a field like this operated. That was the way, and they made a report. The report was illustrated, and it was that report that fell into Tugwell’s hands in Washington as he was setting up the Resettlement Administration. Roy had already been invited to go to Washington to do a graphic history of American agriculture, as I understand it. And somehow or other these-Roy, who is a natural picture-lover, saves pictures like some people save string. Right in there, I don’t know exactly what happened, but it was being set up and the next thing I knew, I was married to the man who was the head of the team, and from then on I was connected with more formal ways of using-now how can I put this?-not working way off somewhere unrelated to the uses of such materials. There was a connection, you know. Which is a hard connection to make for many photographers. Now in New York I see them struggling, what to do with what they want to do? Where can they place it? The market is no market.

RICHARD K. DOUD: You didn’t have this problem then.

DOROTHEA LANGE: At that time they weren’t felt. I had sort of initiated it. It was new. There was no photo-journalism. Photo-journalism, they tell me, grew out of this work we were doing. You never-I mean, the fellow who can trace these things in a direct line and make a neat little graph or a neat little pattern of it, he’s apt to prune off the truth, you know.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Yes, very often.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I can’t tell you just what happened there, but I know that I was asked whether I could do this work in California but with a federal connection. In the early days of the New Deal, all manner of unprecedented things were done; things that now would have to go through the works. There, it was a decision that: we’re going to do this, and they found the way.

RICHARD K. DOUD: What were your first impressions of doing this job under the Federal government? Did you personally disapprove of what might be considered a propaganda device, your own work being used perhaps with any particular slant?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Never. There was no question of that at all, and I was very grateful for the openings that I saw of an expanding world, and it never had that kind of a reaction, it never entered into the picture at all. With me, I was active, interested, and responsive, and I found myself-I wasn’t in Washington as much as some of the others because their headquarters were Washington. Mine were, formally. Informally, they were not. I had five children and the center of my life was in California. I came to Washington but I operated more in the west. Though I did work in the East. Roy arranged it, as much as he possible could, that I’d work in the west.

RICHARD K. DOUD: How did you feel about the organization of this thing? I’m not quite sure of what I’m trying to get you to say. For example, on your first trip to Washington, when you were first introduced to the people who were going to do this; perhaps a good deal of discussion about what was to be done, and how it was to be done, what were your reactions to the whole thing other than your initial excitement that something was to be done along the lines of photo-journalism perhaps? How did you feel about the actual organization of the work, being a part of Farm Security or Resettlement Administration at the time; working for a man who wasn’t a photographer, who was an economics professor, working in conjunction with other photographers whom you might or might not have known, or heard of?

DOROTHEA LANGE: You’re describing something that I can see logically that you would expect to be that way. I mean, your good sense tells you that this situation must have led to that situation. You know, it wasn’t like that at all.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I was afraid of that.

DOROTHEA LANGE: For me, it wasn’t like that at all. You speak of organization, I didn’t find any. You speak of work plans, I didn’t find any. I didn’t find any economics professor. I didn’t find any of those things. I found a little office, tucked away, in a hot, muggy, early summer, where nobody especially knew exactly what he was going to do or how he was going to do it. And this is no criticism, because you walked into an atmosphere of a very special kind of freedom; anyone who tells you anything else, and dresses us up in official light is not truthful, because it wasn’t that way. That freedom that there was, where you found your own way, without criticism from anyone, was special. That was germane to that project. That’s the thing that is almost impossible to duplicate or find. Roy Stryker was a man with a hospitable mind, very hospitable. He’s not organized, but he has a hospitable mind. He had an instinct for what’s important. It’s instinct. And he is a colossal watchdog for his people. If you were on the staff, you were one of his people, and he was a watchdog, and a good one.

RICHARD K. DOUD: O.K. We’ll talk a little bit more about this aspect of it, but before we do that, I want to get back into the work you eventually did in the field. I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that you people could go out in a part of the country that you’d never seen before, you knew nothing (or very little) about, and could do such a sensitive job, and such an all-encompassing job of photographing it. I’d like to know a number of things. First, how did you approach a specific assignment, and once you were there, and this is hard to say, I know, but how did you decide what pictures to take? You couldn’t take everything; you couldn’t take every person. Yet it seemed that each of you had a knack of always taking the right things. Was there a secret formula there, or was it again your instinct you mentioned before?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well, you’ve put your finger on the heart of the Farm Security Administration venture. Because it’s almost inexplicable, that particular-you know there is a word élan. There was something that I would understand better myself if it applied to one of us only. But it didn’t. It caught. And it caught like it was contagious. When you went into that office when it was a little office and later on when it was a big office, you were so welcome, they were so glad to see you; did you have a good trip, was everything all right? What you were doing was important. You were important. Not in the way in an organizational chart, not that way at all. Which made you feel that you had a responsibility. Not to those people in the office, but in general. As a person expands when he has an important thing to do. You felt it. When you were out in the field – you asked me the question of how you went about it, because you were almost always alone, unknown, very often unprepared for, turned loose, really, with a background where something is expected of you. Not too much. You found your way, but never like a big-shot photographer, not as the big magazine boys do it now. Not that way. We found our way in, slid in on the edges. We used our hunches, we lived, and it was hard, hard living. It wasn’t easy, rather rough, not too far away from the people we working with. We had better food, and we slept in better beds and so on; we weren’t deprived, really, but you didn’t ever quit in the middle of anything because it was uncomfortable. And with the actual people, you worked with a certain common denominator. Now if they asked who you were, and they heard you were a representative of the government, who was interested in their difficulties, or in their condition, it’s a very different thing from going in and saying, “I’m working forLook magazine, who wants to take pictures of you.” It’s a very different thing. That is, your whole, I would say the key in which it’s written, like a musical sheet, is different. We were not spotlighting, but more unobtrusive. That applies to me and I’m sure to the others. We photographers were somewhat picked at random, we weren’t hand-picked. We were educated on the job. The United States Government gave us a magnificent education, every one of us. And I don’t know any that’s really fallen by the wayside, do you?

RICHARD K. DOUD: No, I don’t.

DOROTHEA LANGE: They all remained distinct people, every one of them. For the education they had- the government invested that in us, you know.

RICHARD K. DOUD: This I wondered too, since looking at it today, the people ho worked in the group then have done very, very well in the field, and I have often wondered whether- sort of which came first, the chicken or the egg?

DOROTHEA LANGE: That produced it. And the genius of Roy Stryker is somewhere in there. But it’s not the way it’s generally spelled out. He didn’t hold the seminars you read about. He’s incapable of that. It’s a question of attitude. You see, I’m back with that, still. But I’m now in the throes of trying to find someone who can take his place on another project, dissimilar to the Farm Security, but based on it. And that particular genius is something you can’t write specifications for. It was unsatisfactory in many ways you know. I mean, the letter follows and the letter never followed, and he wrote you lots of very cheerful notes and said, “Now when I get time I’m going to write you an analysis of this, that, or the other,” and so on and so forth. But it did take, and the people who worked for him couldn’t help being loyal to him. He was a protectivist at everything. If there was a blight, or if there was trouble or something, Roy took it on, we never could. We were like his children.

RICHARD K. DOUD: An amazing relationship.

DOROTHEA LANGE: It was. It was. And that is the real one. The one I’m spilling out to you now, or trying to, not very well, that is the heart of the matter that I don’t hear anyone else remember. They remember it the way the reporters have told it back to them.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I think this is part of our whole trouble. It’s been what- close to thirty years, twenty-five years, and they’ve read so many little accounts of this thing, and pretty soon fact and fiction start to blend. It’s really a gray area. It gets so many people. Well getting back just for a minute to your working with the people on field assignments, I’ve always found it rather strange that you could photograph individuals in some of the distressful conditions I know you found them in. Were you ever refused permission to photograph?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Oh yes. Oh yes.

RICHARD K. DOUD: you found certain areas of resentment toward-

DOROTHEA LANGE: Not areas, individuals. Naturally that couldn’t be avoided, but you almost always sensed that, before it became explicit. I mean, you go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome. You- well, here I am talking about instincts again. But you find your way. Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around, because hostility itself is important.

RICHARD K. DOUD: That’s right.

DOROTHEA LANGE: The people who are garrulous and wear their heart on their sleeve and tell you everything, that’s one kind of person, but the fellow who’s hiding behind a tree, and hoping you don’t see him, is the fellow that you’d better find our why. You know, so often it’s just sticking around and being there, remaining there, not swooping in and swooping out in a cloud of dust; sitting down on the ground with people, letting the children look at your camera with their dirty, grimy little hands, and putting their fingers on the lens, and you let them, because you know that you will behave in a generous manner, you’re very apt to receive it, you know? Those kinds of things. I don’t mean to say I did that all the time, but I remember hat I have don’t it, and I have asked for a drink of water and taken a long time to drink it, and I have told everything about myself long before I asked an question. “What are you doing here?” they’d say. “Why don’t you go down and do this, that, and the other?” I’ve taken a long time, patiently, to explain, and as truthfully as I could.

RICHARD K. DOUD: And people generally would accept that you were trying somehow to help?

DOROTHEA LANGE: They know that you are telling the truth. Not that you could ever promise them anything, but at that time it very often meant a lot that the government in Washington was aware enough even to send you out. And there were timed along then when the photographers were used in Congress, so that you could truthfully say that there were some channels whereby it could be told. Not about them, but about people like them. So it wasn’t- but you didn’t have to do that all day long. People are very, very trusting; and also, most of us really like to get the full attention of the person who’s photographing you. It’s rare, you don’t get it very often. Who pays attention to you, really, a hundred percent? You doctor, your dentist, and your photographer. They really look at you, and it’s nice, you know.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I’d sort of like, if you don’t mind, and you might, and I’ll understand if you do, to ask you to recall just one or two really memorable experiences, or the first thing perhaps that comes to you mind when you think of Farm Security in relation to the experiences in the field, or whatever experience might pop out when you think of Farm Security now, and what it means to you in retrospect. Is this asking too much?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well, I think I’ve been doing it in a way. There are so many levels on which I could answer that. One of the weekends that I find I think of often with some satisfaction, is a weekend in April of 1934 or ‘5, I don’t remember which now, when I went down to Imperial Valley, California, to photograph the harvesting of one of the crops; as I remember now, it was the early peas or the early carrots. The assignment was the beginning of the migration, of the migratory workers as they start there in the early part of the season and then as they moved op. I was going to follow it through. The story of migratory labor in California is an old story. I had completed what I was going to do, and I started on the way home, driving up the min highway, which was right through the length of the state, and it was very rainy afternoon. I stopped at a gas station to get some gas, and there was a car full of people, a family there at that gas station. I waited while they were getting there gas, and they looked very woebegone to me. They were American whites. I looked at the license plate on the car, and it was Oklahoma. I got out of the car, and I approached them and asked something about which way they were going, were they looking for work, I’ve forgotten what the question was at the time, And they said, “We’ve been blown out.” I questioned what they meant, and then they old me about the dust storm. They were the first arrivals that I saw. There were the people who got up that day quick and left. They saw they had no crop back there. They had to get out. All of that day, driving for the next maybe two hundred miles- no, three or four hundred miles, I saw these people. And I couldn’t wait. I photographed it. I had those first ones. That was the beginning of the first day of the landslide that cut this continent and it’s still going on. Don’t mean that people haven’t migrated before, but this shaking off of people from their own roots started with those big storms and it was like a movement of the earth, you see, and that rainy afternoon I remember, because I made the discovery. It was up to that time unobserved. There are books and books and books on that subject now.

RICHARD K. DOUD: This was the American exodus?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Yes. It’s still going on today. The war came, and the war of course gave another big jolt, like an earthquake jolt. But I went home that day a discoverer, a real social observer. Luckily my eyes were open to it. I could have been like all the other people on that highway and not seen it. As we don’t see what right before us. We don’t see it till someone tells us. But this I discovered myself. This thing they call social erosion. I saw it. It was a day. That was a day.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Indeed it was.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Oh, I could tell you many things, but no one helped me, and no one told me. It was unexpected, and it was so severe.

RICHARD K. DOUD: How long then did you have this working awareness of this? I’m sure that it stuck with you always, but from this time on, how long were you actively working with this particular problem on California?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Oh, on and off. Every time I went home I worked on it again. There were a few positives where Roy said, “I think we have enough on that, Dorothea.” And I argued with him on that. This business, this movement toward the West which eventuates in migratory labor, has been a very revolutionary thing in this country. Not revolutionary. I mean, a major upheaval, if the population of this country and Roy now sees that, too, and he saw it quite come time ago. But there were periods where nobody here in the East was particularly interested. This was a Western problem, you know, California problem, California economics, and that’s the way they were solving it, and that was it. Now it’s taken a different pace. But I’ve watched it all the way though. But I wasn’t on this all the time. This was one of the themes we had, when you work under a theme which is a theme that you almost chosen for yourself. It has many contributory, contributing- I’m not speaking of like facets- but many things go into it and it had tributaries, many tributaries. The art under which you work of course was people in trouble, that was the big art and you can’t do people in trouble without photographing people who are not in trouble, too. Because you have to have those contrasts.

RICHARD K. DOUD: These migratory projects you were doing and perhaps other people were doing, have always impressed me perhaps more than some of the other areas that were covered. I think possibly because during the early thirties, mid-thirties, I was growing up on a mid-western farm and conditions were generally bad in the mid west, the rural mid-west at the time. They weren’t as bad where I was, as they were in Oklahoma, Arkansas, northern Texas and all this. Still, things were tough enough as I recall that I seem to feel more of an empathy, perhaps, with the people photographed. I can see how close perhaps I came to being one of these people, and I can understand my strong attachment or attraction to these pictures. I’m not sure I can quite understand how someone who was born and raised in a city could do as sensitive and powerful a job of photographing these people as you did. I’m very sensitive to what you did, but I can’t understand how you could have been as sensitive to the situation as you obviously were.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well, I declare, I didn’t know a mule from a tractor when I started.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Exactly. But who could tell it? Who could possibly tell it from looking at these pictures?

DOROTHEA LANGE: I didn’t do very much on the technology of agriculture. I did some; I got interested in it because I got interested in the way in which it was being mechanized. It looked as though that was the way out, at the time. In a way, it has- what I didn’t foresee, what I see now is the mechanization has brought about enormous problems.

RICHARD K. DOUD: At that time it was part of the problem.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Yes, but now, the problems are enormous. There is no place for people to go to live on the land any more, and they’re living. That’s a wild statement, isn’t it? And yet, it begins to look as though it’s true in our country. We have, in my lifetime, changed from rural to urban. In my lifetime, that little space, this tremendous thing has happened. These people on that rainy afternoon in April were the symbol; they were the symbol of his tremendous upheaval like an earthquake. Now of course, the job is just to photograph rural life. Those photographs don’t exist. That what I want to set up if I can.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I’m sure it would be a much different set of photographs than what happened in the thirties. It’s a completely different social and economic structure.

DOROTHEA LANGE: But still, it deals with our American people.

RICHARD K. DOUD: It’s part of the picture. An important part of the picture.

DOROTHEA LANGE: And all are people. And we’ve built our own world. We have built this world, we’ve made it.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Quite often, we don’t know what were building. We go ahead and build and build- well, let me turn this off a minute. Again another question that you might not particularly want to answer, you don’t have to. But, in an attempt for me to understand or know more about other photographer on the project, I’d like to ask if you would care to say something about what you consider their outstanding characteristics or their major contributions were to what you people were doing. It’s pretty hard sometimes to say to a man like John Vachon, “John, what did you contribute to Farm Security?” These people will not hear you answer; they will not read your answer to this, if you’d care to tell me what you think some of these people did, how they helped make the file what it is today. What did they have in common other than this inspiration, and this élan you mentioned?

DOROTHEA LANGE: In common, what they had in common so far as I know was the ability to work. They were all workers. Nobody lazy. Arthur Rothstein is a rather commonplace guy. Not an unusual fellow, but he has all the sterling qualities of a good, sound, solid fellow in the middle. Very much a city boy, and he had the ability to get in a car (and he learned to drive to do this) and go out in the country which- he’d been brought up down here on the east side, east side immigrant product, second generation, with the ambition to get to Columbia- you know, that’s an achievement. And then he had a chance, he bumped into Roy, and found himself driving in the wilderness alone. A very challenging thing for a fellow. But he didn’t turn turtle and come home, he stuck it out. Now he didn’t go out for the long period that some of the others did, because he went alone. But he did do things which were a fresh look from a fellow who didn’t grow up in the country, you know. And also, when he came back, he- one of his contributions was that he pursues the techniques of photography. Roy knew nothing. Arthur was always interested in the technical side of things. He introduced that. He talked cameras, he talked lenses, he bought cameras, he bought lenses, he kind of maintained a technical standard. That was a by-product, that wasn’t a main contribution. It made him valuable, if not as sensitive as some of the others. Not as sensitive; but enough, enough, because it was new to him. I don’t think he would have done it for years and years. You know, his career has demonstrated his ability that he’s able to. John Vachon is a very, very sensitive young man, and sees things, different things, in a different way. I don’t know how I can explain John Vachon’s work, but his work is much more interesting than Arthur’s work is now. Arthur’s is pretty local, pretty ordinary. Arthur is very proud of his Farm Security days, but he hasn’t pursued it. John Vachon has kept it. He’s always John Vachon, and he only can do what John Vachon can do. And it was there in the beginning. I would refer you to some photographs he made in Baltimore churchyards and some street things in Baltimore when he hardly knew hot to operate a camera. The exact imprint of what made it John Vachon I can’t tell you, but I can tell you its sensitivity. Sometimes it gets to the place where it hurts a little. John can do that. Not Arthur. Arthur’s pictures don’t hurt you. Russ Lee is a great cataloguer of facts great. And he knew how to do it. He had one flash gun on the camera and he fired that flash gun, and got things in the greatest detail, and enjoyed the detail. And the detail is valuable. And Russ Lee did it, and did it for months on end, indefatigable, too. Just- he’s an Illinois farm boy, you know, so- and he’s rich besides, he didn’t have to do this. He wasn’t doing this for a living, he’s a very wealthy guy, he owns lots of farms. He was doing this because of a great interest, personal interest, and did it with gusto, and with appreciation. A man said to me yesterday at the Museum of Modern Art, a man who has been getting some things together for the opening show- you should go and look at the rooms called “The Photographer’s Eye.” The other rooms with the classics are interesting, but The Photographer’s Eye- that man said to me, “in collecting the material for this show I came to appreciate Russ Lee.” Never really registered, seeing a little something here or a little something there, but the bulk of his work is- how solid it is.” You know, it’s the fact of revealing the facts, not putting them down. It’s opening them up and saying, “Here, look at me.” You know that kind of thing?

RICHARD K. DOUD: This is interesting. Going back to something that Ben Shahn said that at that time, at least, he felt that he himself was pretty much a purist about this whole thing of photography, you know, the use of a flash was almost immoral because it did expose things that the eye ordinarily would not see, and it’s interesting that you feel that Russ, by exposing everything, by opening up something that you wouldn’t ordinarily see, has contributed.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Indeed he has. I couldn’t use it. It isn’t for me. It isn’t for me at all, but I appreciate the way he did it. Because that’s him. I’ve used flash but very reluctantly, very reluctantly, and when I do use it I disguise it, and try not to. Arthur helped him in working out that flash formula. These are the early days, the relationship between the amount of light and the amount of development, it was a very fine relationship, and they used to work over that. For weeks, they’d work, and fuss around, and make experiments, and do things, and everything.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I was wondering how- what the relationship was between the photographers at that time. Whether there was any, oh, perhaps feeling of professional jealousy, or any antagonism, and that doesn’t seem possible. I never felt anything of it, nor did I ever hear, from any of the others. Now you may get a very different tale otherwise. I’m not insensitive to this, and I know you could say, a family, its impossible for a family to live without quarreling. I never got any. I know that when- MacLeish did a book at one time, called, what was the name of MacLeish did a book at one time, called, what was the name of MacLeish’s book?

RICHARD K. DOUD: Land of the Free?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Land of the Free. MacLeish announced he was going to do this book and use photographs, and he went up to his place in the country, and he took hundreds, maybe thousands, of photos. And there was a great deal of excitement about the fact that he was doing it. When finally the book came out, eight percent of the pictured were mine. Now, that was a situation, and I recoiled form it though because I didn’t like it and I remember Arthur coming up to me in the hall, and he said, “Have you seen the book?” And I said, “Yes, I’ve seen it.” And he laughed, and said, “Lots of pictures of people wandering.” He walked down the hall. In the best good humor. And he was absolutely right. They were all pictures of people wandering, and I contributed the people wandering. That just happened. And when they opened “The Bitter Years” at the museum a year or so ago, that was the big thing, as I say of what happened. Eight percent of the pictured were mine. Now, the night that show opened, I was in California, and they all called me up. Every one called me up and said how fine the pictures looked and how glad they were. And the reason for that they understood, because Steichen put the exhibit together, and he has a special affinity for that kind of thing, and thought it was especially necessary at this time to show the American people to themselves again in that light. That was the explanation. That file is capable of a hundred interpretations. It had happened again, but I think that’s true, that there was no jealousy. I’d just love to know if I’m not right about that. I’m sure I am. I don’t think I would have missed it.

RICHARD K. DOUD: As far as I can find, you are right about it, but it just seems too remarkable to be true, you know?

DOROTHEA LANGE: I don’t know how it happened.

RICHARD K. DOUD: What do you know about Walker Evans? If I may ask about Walker Evans… What do you know about the work he was doing for Farm Security, for example? What seems to be the problem of his short, relatively short tenure there? What he’s done since? He’s sort of-

DOROTHEA LANGE: A problem child. But I don’t know whether he’s a problem child to him- self. But when anyone asks me what I know about someone who’s an artist, I can only answer, “Please, look at his work.” Because if you want to know anything about a person, doesn’t his work tell you? I mean, how can you know more? Walker Evans is, in my opinion, an extraordinary man. He had extraordinary eyesight. There is always a little twist in it somewhere, there is a bitterness, not always, I take that word out, and there is an edge, a bitter edge to Walker. That I sensed; and it’s pleasurable to me. I like that bitter edge. He seemed very straight and very true. I don’t care if he’s a son-of- a-gun. He isn’t very polite, doesn’t know how to put himself out, but he wrote some of the finest criticism of Cartier- Bresson that I’ve ever read; Walker Evans could put down on paper. And a couple of years ago, he was asked to participate in a program on the subject of James Agee? I say, if you want to know what Walker Evans is, read that. He may be nasty, and a fop, and a dandy, and intolerant, all right, that what he is really is. Now on Farm Security, before I ever met him I heard Roy complaining – Walker had been out in the South for six weeks and they’d never heard from him, they didn’t know where he was- “We haven’t gotten a single thing, he’s been out for six weeks, and when he comes back to the office I’m going to tell him!” Well, nobody paid any attention to that, because that was just Roy blowing off steam, just like a big whale spouting, you know. But Walker would do that. He just would be completely oblivious to the fact that this was an office struggling to get established, and to justify its existence, and he just took his pay checks and disappeared. But where was he? He was down there with Agee, and the result of that was Let us now Praise Famous Men. You see? Walker is a small producer, he’s not a big producer, he’s small, slow producer, and I think he’s a good American photographer, by Jove, I do.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I think he is too. That’s why sometimes it’s hard to – well maybe it isn’t…

DOROTHEA LANGE: Did I answer….?

RICHARD K. DOUD: Yes, very well. I think it takes a lot of different approaches to see any subject.

DOROTHEA LANGE: He’s personally an unpopular man. I don’t know why. Maybe he finds life easier not having to associate with so many people, so he lops them off as he goes along. O.K.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I’m sure a lot of us would like to do the very same thing. Since you’ve sort of at least partially answered what I want to ask you next, it’s a dual question. You said earlier that there was no organization to this thing when you’d go back, things just sort of went along, and I know there was no big plan of expansion, or an operational chart, this sort of thing, and yet, from a fairly humble beginning this farm Security file grew into a tremendous thing and what proved ultimately to be a very worthwhile and even popular thing. How do you explain the success of this operation that had no plan and had no organization? It had a purpose for being, sure, but it didn’t have a purpose for being hat it eventually became. What were the ingredients other then maybe a dedication on the part of a handful of people? What were the ingredients that made this a success? I’m sure it was a success. Even then at the end if the depression period, I think it would be called successful. What made this a going concern, and how much of a part did Stryker ply in this thing? Could this have been what it was with any capable man at the head? Could this have been what it was with any capable man at the head? Would it have been anywhere near what it was say, with Roy Stryker, had he had other photographers than the ones he had? This is too much of a question.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well, it’s a question I have asked myself, and you know, during the years it was being formed it was not a success. Did Roy ever tell you of the many, Many trips he made to New York, with the pictures under hi arm, trying to peddle them to periodicals and to publications, and didn’t make it? Did they never tell-

RICHARD K. DOUD: No.

DOROTHEA LANGE: That’s the truth. It was a staggering load he carried, of building up this huge thing that he so believed in but nobody else wanted. And finding places where they would use the pictures, finding outlets, there were no outlets for those pictures, and they piled up and they piled up and they piled up, and Roy used to disappear and not come to the office. He made the rounds. He never told you about that? That’s a little bit humiliating, and embarrassing to him.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I think he would want me to know, but I think he would want someone else to tell me.

DOROTHEA LANGE: There in Washington he was a big shot. But he had the courage to go up and try to do this. Either he was no salesman- but nobody cared. Nobody. Now, in the years since that has become the source material, used and values by people not for its immediacy, but by the kind of people who had a different sense of the values of things. He took the things, so far as I know, to the periodicals and so on, where it got mixed up with news, and current matters and so on. This was a state and a condition we were describing and had no appeal. But time of course is a very great editor, and a great publicist. Time has given those things the value, but he had none of that. As far as the importance that the photographic world places on this file, I dare to say that it’s that the photographic world has not progressed. They cling to that file for want of anything else dignified to attach themselves to. Photography is an exploited thing and it isn’t being handled by people with a mature point of view and insight, sufficiently. And young photographers and people who are interested in photography grab onto this. This is at least a talking point. And it is a reflection on what has happened to photography.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Was this the “Golden Age” of photography – the 1930’s?

DOROTHEA LANGE: No, no. It wasn’t the “Golden Age” but something was done about it. The record was made. We’re not doing that now. Young photographers are jumping onto civil rights and it’s a bandwagon, like jumping onto the bandwagon. And poverty. That is the big thing everybody’s photographing now, it’s almost a new style because the President’s program to abolish poverty. All the young photographers are coming to me- “how do you photograph poverty now?” You know it’s pathetic.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Well, why don’t these pictures they’re taking now, why don’t these pictures that certainly should mean more to me than pictures of something that is long since gone, why aren’t these pictures reaching me the way your pictures did? Is it because I feel there’s a deliberate attempt to exploit the thing, or is it bad management, poor captions perhaps or is it- what is it? I see the pictures that people are taking of the distressed areas through the Appalachians, and I’m a little disgusted I think. I’m not touched with the poor that are shown, or I’m not moved by the conditions in which thy live. The pictures are more disgusting than they are, well, appealing to my sense of charity or something. Why aren’t they successful? Maybe they are to other people; maybe I’m directly comparing them to something else.

Two children of the Mochida family await evacuation in Hayward California. May 1942

DOROTHEA LANGE: I feel the same way. There’s no bridge. I feel it many times. I suppose I would answer you, but it would be such a long answer, and such a difficult one. I’d like to postpone that answer. If I come to it so I can clearly state it to you, I’ll write it to you sometime.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Well I’d like to know, because-

DOROTHEA LANGE: If I can do it. I have the answer in me, I have it in me. But if I try to do it now, it’ll come up in so many words that I’d want to take back. You see I’ll be feeling it out, and I have to some time on that.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I will wrote you and remind you that I have this problem that you’re going to answer for me.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I have it too, and that is the importance of recognizing that we have that problem, that we share it with millions of others. It takes a lot to get full attention to a picture these days, because we are bombarded by pictures every waking hour, in on form or another, and transitory images seen, unconsciously, in passing, from the corner of our eyes, flashing at us, and this business where we look at bad images- impure. I don’t know why the eye doesn’t get calloused as your knees get calloused or your fingers get calloused, the eye can’t get…

RICHARD K. DOUD: I hope were not losing any of our sensitivity.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I think we are. I think we are. We are misusing the language of picture, and I tell you, it’s an exploited medium. It is not a developing medium; it’s being destroyed. That’s what I meant.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Well I think it’s the responsibility of people like yourself to do something about it.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well I’d like to. I’d be willing, if I had the ability and the strength to do it. I’m going to try.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Do you think that the file as it was growing and as it was being used- to whatever extent it was being used- was more successful in the thirties that the type of thing we’re seeing today in making people aware of the condition, or -

DOROTHEA LANGE: It wasn’t used in those days. The file was not used. Not much. Not much. It was one of the problems, that it wasn’t used. I tell you that Roy was a watchdog. He kept that fact away from a lot of people what actually came out was a trickle for what became a pretty big organization and quite expensive- for those days, not expensive now, but for those days the budget came pretty high, and what came out was not much.

RICHARD K. DOUD: How could he justify this thing?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Pure old fashioned faith. Enthusiasm. It’s his hobby. He believes in the visual image. He believes in pictures, and he was right. He didn’t fail.

RICHARD K. DOUD: It’s hard to understand though how, especially in government, perhaps government was much different then, I’m sure it was certainly not the same as it is today-

DOROTHEA LANGE: You remember, it was New Deal.

RICHARD K. DOUD: But it could go on and go on and go on with this thing and it seems to me that he would have been thrown out on his ear after a couple of years.

DOROTHEA LANGE: He never dared to leave that desk in Washington. He never went in the field. He didn’t dare.

RICHARD K. DOUD: He had to be there?

DOROTHEA LANGE: He had to be there. You know in Pakistan they have a man- if you have a house and you live in Pakistan you have what they call a “chokidar” Roy was really a royal chokidar. A chokidar is a fellow whom you employ, he never steps foot in the house, he is supreme yard man and gate man. No one can get through the gate but the chokidar. And the chokidar sleeps at the front door at night like a big dog. He’s on twenty four hour duty, and watches the back fence, he watches the front fence, he watches everything only outside. What goes on inside nobody knows, because the chokidar is there. And Roy was a chokidar.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I don’t know whether he would approve of that-

DOROTHEA LANGE: No I don’t think he really would, but I’ve often thought of it. But an awfully good chokidar. Because he understood his people, you know. Oh, he understood those congressmen.

RICHARD K. DOUD: He must have been a politician of sorts.

DOROTHEA LANGE: and he loved it. He loved it.

RICHARD K. DOUD: He keeps saying he’s retired, but he’s not really, he can’t retire, you know, he can’t keep out of the mingling with people and problems and projects.
Well, you sort of talked about some of the good things, the personal relationships, personal satisfaction, and things like this. I’m now going to ask you what were some of the things you didn’t like about the project, the way it was run, what things would you have changed, had you been able to- supposing you were in charge, what would you have done differently? What were the weaknesses that were there?

DOROTHEA LANGE: It was full of weaknesses. But that’s what made it- this sounds just nonsense- but it was so full of weaknesses that it would have done something utterly different, but what I would have done wouldn’t have had that stroke of genius, streak of genius, that Roy brought to it. I don’t use that word lightly. And that cannot be unraveled. I can’t unravel it. He had it. Now he was not paternal I didn’t feel his hand on my shoulder, but I also didn’t feel his eyes on my pictures either, like a critical editor. You never had any fear that, oh, well Roy wouldn’t like this or this won’t suit or this will get me in trouble. Never. Well that takes a really great administrator to bring that about. No matter what the other stuff was like, no matter how top- heavy or lopsided or what, or disorganized it was. Because the files got to be in a terrible condition, terrible condition, but then what did they do? They brought in Paul Vanderbilt. And Paul Vanderbilt did a beautiful job. There’s only one in the whole world like Paul Vanderbilt for a photo-librarian. He’s also an oddball but he was a great photo-librarian, boy!

RICHARD K. DOUD: This whole thing, then sounds likes a series of happy accidents. You had in each slot the one individual that would make it go.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Call it that if you want to. I have a little thing here to show you. I think that happy accident is an expression that we are apt to use very lightly. But it’s a very meaningful expression. I think that my filing system is excellent, isn’t it? I’m looking for something I’d like to show you, which of course I can’t find. It’s a handbill that I got in the mail the other day from somebody, it’s the influence of Paul Vanderbilt on the State Historical Society having a photography exhibit and I can see Paul Vanderbilt’s hand in it, and you would too if you could see it. But it’s a long time ago for me to answer what I would have done differently or what I thought was a weakness, what I would have changed had I been able to.

First day of evacuations from the Japanese quarter in San Francisco. April, 1942

RICHARD K. DOUD: Well let me ask you something then that might be easier…

DOROTHEA LANGE: I could probably dig up something on that, but I don’t have right in the front of my mind what I would want to say about that, because I myself view this all as a very extraordinary and quite wonderful thing. You know, there is a man by the name of Henry Allen Moe, whose America’s president of the Guggenheim foundation. Now he’s another man who has methods like no other. His foundation is conducted on the basis of simple faith, and talented people. No questions asked ever if you get a fellowship. Never. And you never get a line from him that questions what you’re doing, but you’d get a line encouraging you, and you get these forever if you’ve ever been a fellow, he keeps you a fellow for life. He’s a most extraordinary man, with a most wonderful pair of ears in the world, best listener in the whole world. You’re not bad as a listener. Henry Allen Moe is a very good listener. No one else could run a foundation the way he could, and this foundation has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, and more and more important. But always that way. And he says, “Our big successes have been where we placed our bets on uncertain qualities.” That’s what he says. He’s given me courage in this, you see. I mean, I operate my life on that basis. I’ve learned that. I’ve learned that this is the way to do it.

RICHARD K. DOUD: What do you feel, since you did have this opportunity to travel the length and breadth of the country in the thirties to see people at their best and at their worst, to see the good times and the hopeless conditions, what do you think is the most significant thing you learned about Americans, or about man in general? Are there any qualities that were more or less exposed to you that you hadn’t been aware of in Americans before? What did you learn new about the country?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well, I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I’ve heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal. There is no other. I’ve heard that. I think it was Mr. Freud. No, Mr. Jung. One or the other of early psychoanalysts. Alfred Adler or somebody. Well, I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it. Though that, I dealt with people in a very sharp extreme. I am not sure that that quality is not dissipating in us as a people. I think there’s been a nig change. I sense it. Now I have no proof, but if I were to go out in the field again, I sense that the quality that I might find would be a different one. The predominant quality would be a different one. But I did experience to then. I would like to go out in the field and see.

RICHARD K. DOUD: It might be disappointing to you.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I’m sure it would be. I’m sure it would be. I’m not very optimistic right now about the directions in which American people are going. I’m baffled by it. Maybe I’m just old, but I don’t think it’s my years that are troubling me, I don’t think it is.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Let’s hope you’re wrong. I’m not sure that you are, but it’s not a very bright picture you’re painting for us here.

DOROTHEA LANGE: Well, you see, I’ve lived abroad a lot in the last few years. I’ve lived all over the world since, and I have a third eye in my head now, which living in Asia and the Middle East gives you. I see the different perspective, and I see us in a different relationship than I did when I was working just within the country. This was the world. And Paris was a place where you went on a vacation, if you were lucky enough. I didn’t go, but now I have been all over.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Did you find courage a universal quality?

DOROTHEA LANGE: Not in Asia.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Is that right?

DOROTHEA LANGE: well, you’re asking me two big questions right there.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Well, listen I’m sure I’m taking up too much of your time. I’m not quite through but you do have a dinner appointment, and I want to ask you one last thing, which in a sense you started to answer before. And that is, I’m very curious as to what you think of another project. Not another Farm Security, but the value of another project to photograph rural America, and what do you feel are the main obstacles to such a project, and what you feel are the biggest hopes for this kind of thins. Can it be done again? Should it be done?

DOROTHEA LANGE: That’s why I’m here in New York. To see if I can find a way, and I think it can be a very important matter. I believe it should be done. I very much believe it should be done. I think the focus should be urban life, and it should not be patterned after or a repetition or a rerun of Farm Security. The Farm Security Administration’s file is a proof of the value of such an undertaking, if that is necessary. But a resource file on the way the American people lived for a period of five years, then it ends! We should take a period of time, so that what has preceded it is measured against this, and what follows is measured against it. If it begins on June 30 of a year, it ends on June 30, and it becomes the property of the United States government, but in the meanwhile it’s not used. It is developed, and built, and it is protected against any onslaughts of use by anybody. That keeps it clean.

RICHARD K. DOUD: That’s a very good point, too.

DOROTHEA LANGE: And the difficulty is to find a director and also to find the money. In that order. And the reason that it’s difficult to fin the director, I think you will understand from what I’ve said about the Farm Security Administration director. This was a very special kind of person. Not to fund his duplicate, but find someone with quality. To find the photographers is, in my opinion now, not a problem. It may be- it may take time, but it’s not a problem. I very much think we need it in this country. No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually that I know of. How well we could use that abroad. I know, because I’ve lived abroad. I know what use we could make of it if people if only thought we could dare look at ourselves.

RICHARD K. DOUD: It might surprise a lot of us. Well, I want to wish you every success-

DOROTHEA LANGE: If you encounter anyone who is an extraordinary pictureman, let me know.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I’ll do what I can. And I want to thank you -

DOROTHEA LANGE: It doesn’t have to be a photographer.

RICHARD K. DOUD: Thank you very much, it’s been most enjoyable, and I think you’ve made a real contribution.

DOROTHEA LANGE: I hope it will be useful.

RICHARD K. DOUD: I’m sure it will. Thank you.

See the original interview at Smithsonian Institute HERE.

Also Check out this interview with photographer Jason Eskenazi.

And this interview with Peter Bialobrzeski.

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Christian Boltanski, “No Man’s Land,” 2010. James Ewing/Courtesy Park Avenue Armory

Christian Boltanski’s Lost Island

by Anthony Haden-Guest

“No Man’s Land,” a new installation of clothing and recorded heartbeats, showcases the French artist’s fixation on death. Anthony Haden-Guest spoke to Boltanski about preserving art.

No Man’s Land, the new installation by the French artist Christian Boltanski, which occupies the 55,000 square feet of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory, centers around a ceaselessly altering 30-ton mountain of cast-off clothing. A giant red claw picks up the clothes and drops them again in a monotonous symbol of futility. The piece goes beyond pathos. Photographs can demonstrate what it looks like, but not how it sounds, a deep ocean-pounding of many hugely amplified human heartbeats. I spoke with the 65-year-old artist about his view of art and the questions that have shaped his life.

Anthony Haden-Guest: You once said that if one tells stories too often they become like fiction.

Christian Boltanski: Yes. Absolutely. That is the reason politicians are so bad. They tell always the same story. And they don’t believe it. There is this Irish story. This man goes around all the pubs saying “I killed my son!” And there’s another who goes around and says “I killed my father!” Everybody gives them drinks. “You killed your father? You killed your son?” The job of each of them is to tell this story. And they meet in the middle! “I killed my father! I killed my son!”

You know, in the States people are so strange, because they always want to have the truth. I am a liar. And I think it is very important to be a liar. A long time ago I made a work I said was 220 photos of dead Swiss. But one photo was of a Swiss who was not dead yet. It was only a question of time. So at the beginning it was a lie. But after some years it was the truth.

Haden-Guest: There are visible erasures in your book of interviews. You erased a whole section about Marcel Duchamp.

Boltanski: I think that I said that I don’t like Duchamp. But that is totally stupid because I know that Duchamp is a very important man. In conversation I can say, “Oh, Duchamp is the son of a lawyer, he’s so clever, and so perfect, and so French.” And I don’t like it! You can say it on the radio because you have the voice and the intonation, but that is totally different in print. That is why I refused to read this book made from my interviews before it was printed. If I read it I shall also change it. Because when you read your interview you always want to say something which is not dangerous, something which is a little clever—and that is awful. I made a lot of interviews with alcohol. In Scotland I made a very good interview drinking a bottle of whiskey with the critic.

Haden-Guest: And getting a bit drunk?

Boltanski: Totally drunk! And the end of the interview was very good. If I am drunk I am going to tell the truth, or something different. After that, I try an interview with vodka. But the interview was not good at all, because the critic was really totally drunk. He was too drunk.

Haden-Guest: Is this true?

Boltanski: Totally true! [Explosion of mirth.]

Haden-Guest: You have said that art always remains the same.

Boltanski: Yes. I have had very few ideas in my life. And I think an artist must not have too many ideas. If you work in fashion design you must have a lot of ideas. If you are an artist you must repeat and repeat. But when you become older you are going to repeat in a different way. I think most artists have some kind of problem in the beginning. And we try to speak about those problems. We can do these in different ways but they are the same problems. I had one type of question when I was very young. I had another type of question when I lost my parents. And I also had another type of question becoming older. But if I had [only] three types of questions in my life that is enough. That’s a lot.

Haden-Guest: Your questions remain. But the art world has changed?

Boltanski: When I began to work what was important was the critics and the curators. Now you have the auction houses and the rich people. I think that is something sad. Before what was important was to have a beautiful article in The Times. Now what is important is to have a rich man say I love you. I was very happy for the crash. I thought it would be cleaner. I hoped that a lot of galleries were going to close. But in fact they did not close. It hasn’t changed.

Haden-Guest: What are the three questions you’ve had in your life?

Boltanski: When I realized that my childhood was finished I can remember exactly the time, it was in Cannes with my parents. And I was very sad that all of this was going to disappear. After, when my parents died I realized that, even at my age, it was possible to die tomorrow. And you see all your friends who are dying around you. Why are they dying and not me? And now the work is more or less about that. There is a beautiful story that when Pollock died there was a meeting. Somebody said “Pollock is not dead! His art is with us!” And a friend of Pollock who was drunk said “He is dead! I saw him in the coffin!” We can preserve nothing.

I love life and also I know that I’m going to die. My new work is an island with a library of heartbeats. I am going to make this project in Japan. I collect heartbeats. But this island is going to be an island of dead people in a few years. And if somebody goes there he is not going to see the presence of the person. He is going to see the absence of the person. Each time you attempt to preserve something, you fail. But I think that’s the beauty, to fail.

via THE DAILY BEAST

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Whitehall Magazine, Volume 6 2007

Thomas Struth

Gil Blank: I’d like to begin by asking how you perceive the nature of subjectivity within contemporary imagemaking. The concept of subjectivity, and even the word itself, is a loaded one within current artistic discourse, so I think it would be a helpful point of departure for us to tease apart the conflicts that it presents to someone attempting a means of making images now.

Thomas Struth: Well first of all, in terms of an artistic practice, I can clearly only comment on something that exists, or that I encounter by direct experience. I think that my switch to photography from painting, for example, came about because I realized that I was more interested in working on things that resided out in the world, and were not restricted to my own psychological field. I realized I was more of a social and political person, and that I was more fascinated by analytical processes. It also bears saying that every part of my work reflects the position of a human being who actively takes part in life, which maybe sounds very banal and general to say expressly, but that is nonetheless what I’m interested in.

In the beginning I was also interested in the relationship of the individual to the larger historical time span into which he’s born, and the responsibilities of what might be called one’s heritage. So, for instance, my specific experience at that time entailed an analysis of urban structures in the postwar German landscape, or the result of all that came after the Holocaust at that time, or more specifically, of being a witness to the emblematic structure of postwar German cities.

This led to a curiosity about other places and other patterns of historical heritage, and then more or less by intuition or accident, to looking at another type of structure, that of the family. Those pictures were a starting point for an analysis of the social group, of the way individuals learn about the group dynamic or group activity. Because this family unit is the elementary social structure, it sets part of the patterns for how you behave in life, where you learn your first steps as a social being. Essential to the function of those pictures though is an understanding that they are only emblematic, that in making family portraits I was seeking something like an emblematic platform for a play of thought about something common, that we all share. Even if you look at the narratives of families as different as from, let’s say, Ghana, Finland, Mongolia, or Germany, the fact of a family dynamic built through a history of generations is a shared experience.

GB: But you specifically avoided the kind of examples that Steichen populated The Family of Man with, or rather, the larger assembly of your family pictures do not tend towards that kind of didactic illustration.

TS: Viewed as a single group of pictures, The Family of Man always seemed to me like an uncomfortable strategy for casting a net of illusions over peoples’ heads. One such illusion portrays the world as a miraculous place of coexistence of human beings and natural phenomena, which is understandable in retrospect as a reaction in the early 50’s to the atrocities of World War II and the Holocaust. The photography of that time was presumably apolitical and “subjective”, but we can understand it in actuality as being highly political.

With my family portraits, I try to examine the transition between the subjective/personal and the historical/political dimensions.

GB: You’ve said that you always operate in acknowledgement of the vast archive of images that already exist in the world. And I do think that an awareness of that archive not only informs the creation of your images, but requires of their viewer a more evolved understanding of them as well.

It seems to me that your work emphasizes in particular the operational complexity of the oeuvre, proposing a corollary between the formal and organizational structure of your accumulated life’s work and the social patterns you attempt to analyze by it. So that ultimately, its greater architecture does not present a chain of interrelated depictions, but rather a functional model of experience—not merely an accumulation, but a code, one no less perceivable for being unspecified. I refute the reading of your work as a traditional body of discrete series.

TS: Yes, I hate that too. The word “series” is a diminutive attachment. A series is something that pretends as if one picture has no value and you need the series to give it that value. You wouldn’t say, for instance, that James Joyce wrote “a series of books”.

The oeuvre’s construction is indeed like that of a larger, complex building. While each room has a different size, quality, and function, and may be considered independently, all have reference to each other, and an expression and aim as a total. Every part in its own way serves the total, and without that inherent connection, it remains a merely personal statement, a matter of taste.

Thomas Struth

GB: We can however say that there are photographs of yours that are iconographic, that exist self-sufficiently and leverage the hermetic features of pictorial space, such as the image of the façade of the cathedral at Notre Dame. Its reading is beneficially complicated by considering it alongside the equivalent but differentiated flatness of, for instance, the Paradise pictures. Or, oppositely, beside the earliest street pictures, which convey a receding formal depth but the wholly evacuated sense of a social void. This wider view is critical to the possible range of meanings attainable in any single image you’ve produced, though it might not seem so far removed from the established capabilities of standard photo editing.

Yet I differentiate this from the conventional understanding of the series in two ways. The first is structural, which I’m proposing as the creation and reception of your images as a model of contemporary social experience, rather than its literal illustration. And the second is the ontological fabrication of meaning in the photographs: in contrast, the conventional imperative of the series, rooted as it was in modernist photography’s ideas of transparency and attainable objectivity, was often documentary, and at times unabashedly didactic. We could cite the photojournalistic essay as the defining paradigm of that.

You’ve rejected that teleological inclination out of hand: an equally valid positioning of either the Paradise or street pictures could be the absolute denial they propose of cognitive or emotional access to their subject matter, a result made all the more pointed in fact by the surfeit of information they provide. Eventually, an open-ended permutational understanding of the oeuvre emerges as an articulated group-of-groups, a formal summa.

TS: I would say that my interest, or my hope, or my intent, is to address something which has a larger scale, a larger value, than the specific details or locations shown. The photographs must ultimately be driven by interests on a more general level.

GB: You’re not trying to infer any conclusions about the rain forest in Peru, for example.

TS: No. That’s why I called it Paradise; it was meant somewhat to irritate the spectator. By choosing that title I wanted to ensure from the beginning that no one mistook it to be about botany, for example. That’s not my interest.

When my retrospective exhibition debuted in Dallas in 2002, I asked myself what function the room with the jungle pictures had in relation to my other bodies of work. Going to a very dense forest was an intuitive idea at first, but once I started to make the images, to show them and maneuver the pictures within a larger exhibition context, I realized that one of their abilities was to confine the individual in a meditative space. There’s no political or social context to the images. At least that’s been my own experience, which has surprised me.

It’s a bit hard to put into words without being too personal, but some of that comes from my experience with meditation practice or T’ai Chi Ch’uan. Similarly, in the course of a therapeutic workshop, you can have a moment when you look at the gestalt, or the “whole picture”. You release your detailed vision of, for instance, your partner, or your wife, or your assistant, of all the things you constantly do, of the media, the war in Iraq, the explosions in Baghdad, and the Japanese minister who offends women’s roles by saying that they’re all birth machines, of all these kinds of everyday things. You come to a certain distance for a moment, and perhaps you can try to see the basic struggle of being human. It can sound very kitschy, but there is the attempt to see the whole picture in some way.

Those results were very surprising for me, because after a number of years when there hadn’t seemed to be anything new for me to do except to expand the street subject matter to China, the idea I initially generated was to make pictures of extremely dense information, so that you could not in fact read every detail in them. When you look at one of the street pictures, you can spend time analyzing them productively. Similarly, when you look at a Walker Evans picture, you can see that there are two cars, and three houses, and the landscape, so that the hierarchy of meaning that you can relate to your own experiences is quite clear. Most of the time. But what I wanted to do was to make pictures that you couldn’t completely read in that way.

Thomas Struth

GB: Which is why they so often appear as a wall of impenetrable data, so visually flat.

TS: Yes. I was thinking of how to increase the depth of field, or how to make it such that even if you look at only one square foot of the picture, it would still take you a long time to see, or to absorb. My point though is that what ended up happening was that I photographed something that seemed, at first glance, to have no direct or obvious sociopolitical or historical contexts. At least in comparison to the other stuff that I’d been doing, they more or less left you alone.

GB: Let me try to state it in another way: by directly implicating the viewer’s encounter in the cognitive formation of this work, it once again seems that the primary action of the photograph is not a depiction, but a modeling of experience. So that if the traditional operation of photography has been to document, to point towards, or to frame, it seems that in seeking the far-off or exotic example in this case, you did so not as a consummating illustration, but rather as a way to neutralize that same territory. In making the pictures, the integral halves of the project—your actions at these locations, plus the viewers’ subsequent interaction within the newly neutralized spaces of image and exhibition—combine to synthesize or activate what I would refer to as the subjectivity.

I position this directly opposite other contemporary retreads of archly traditional notions of photographic subjectivity, such as that of Nan Goldin. The crucial distinction to be made here is between the continual replenishability of the neutralized space and the temptations of mere solipsism, or the dangers of mistaking subjectivity with one’s life story. By suppressing the local, you not only imply the global, but further, you solicit the participation of the viewer.

TS: With Goldin, and also Wolfgang Tillmans, I find it so highly personal that the door is open to just about anything. It’s all interchangeable.

GB: Precisely because it’s so specific, because it’s in a specifically diaristic mode?

TS: Yes. Besides the necessary personal involvement, the crucial question is: What’s in it for everybody? Even if it is beauty, for example, which is in it for everybody, it has to be embedded in a context, through which it can touch the viewer.

It’s true that for me things are only interesting when they’re fed by my own passion and will to go out and do them in the first place. Furthermore, it has to be something that I know by experience, because otherwise one can always just invent things, in which case nobody will be interested. But it’s always essential to address something that includes the experience of the other person, of the viewer in general. It’s crucial.

Thomas Struth

GB: It may be crucial, but you can’t assume that the nature or force of that motivation is self-evident. It seems from your earliest days when you put aside painting and a more overtly expressionist mode that there was created instead an affirmative belief in the making of pictures, in photography. But that belief was also tempered by the limitations your generation experienced collectively as postwar German artists. So that now, that super-structure of the oeuvre seems to have provided a vast architecture within which new experiences might be proposed, if not expressly retold. Subjectivity need not reside in the metaphoric expression of one’s life story, but the material enaction of that life.

TS: That’s also why it’s complicated: at the moment I’m wondering what is missing, or what the next thing is, and I don’t see it yet. It’s a bit of a strange moment actually.

You spoke earlier about this idea of the super-structure, and about how it created its own context within which anything was possible, that potentially any photographic action would fit into or connect with or dock onto that structure. That’s an interesting question and something I’ve been thinking about over the past one or two years. I know, for instance, that the museum photographs will come to an end with my current work at the Prado. I feel the pictures are complete, or that they’ve fulfilled their function within the whole system.

The Paradise pictures are another example; that pillar of the larger building is nearly complete. I did two more pictures in Hawaii recently, and could already hear myself thinking “That’s all”. When you work on a building, as with your entire body of work, there’s no reason that one of the walls or segments has to be sixteen feet thick, because then the whole architecture just becomes comical.

The question I’m asking myself now is what the nature of that structure is. Is there another part of the palette of existence which I would like to and would be able to make pictures about? Again, I’m embarrassed to talk in these terms, but is there another element to one’s existence for which photographs could provide an emblematic expression?

To put it a different way: I remember that when I stopped teaching in 1996, the internet was a very tiny and new sort of thing. Now it’s begun to influence patterns of social activity—you have, for example, the Second Life website—and I think the effectiveness of that influence is only going to accelerate. Which makes me question your proposals of subjectivity at all, and what subjectivity will look like in, say, twenty years from now.

GB: Are you specifically questioning photography’s viability as what you call a relevantly emblematic expression?

TS: As a more general question, you could ask why photography became so popular in the 80s and 90s. I think Hilla Becher would probably say that once photography was invented, painting lost some of its previous functions. And as a direct result, there was an explosion of painting, though on a more scientific, or experimental, or analytical level. It tested all the possibilities of the medium at that time. Maybe photography now has also more or less lost its function, or its credibility in a certain way. There might be another two or three decades during which the whole course of practice can be reformulated in a different, more expansive mode. That could be one thesis.

Thomas Struth

TS: Mmm. . .

GB: What are the conditions as such for one who would propose a subjective system? For years, such attempts were either strictly disavowed, or else took repressed forms like Arte Povera, or Otto Steinert’s near-abstractions, forms which held themselves aloof from concerns that were at all socially contingent.

TS: Yes, that’s. . . [sighs]

I had already made the decision to photograph streets even before I knew the Bechers. But once I did come to know them, and saw the work, my first thought was “Great system. . . wrong subject matter”.

[Both laugh]

Because in the early and mid-70s, the Becher’s subject matter had for the most part lost its visibility in the landscape, and my postwar generation had a totally different turn on history, art, and politics.

I felt like the problem there was that the passion and the love that they had for these things was . . . hidden under the blanket. In order to make work like that, it’s clear that you have to love it, that you have to really love water towers and blast furnaces. But they also have. . .

[Pauses again]

You know it’s amazing, their love is really for. . . how can I say it?. . . an understanding of historical contexts in the most profound manner. . . it’s like advertising for historical awareness, in a way. If that sounds too dry, we can also think of it as a passion for the dynamics of human existence, which I definitely share. It’s so. . .

The austerity of the structure, of that archival order, it’s such a strong expression that what they mean, or what they really want to do, is kind of. . . it’s almost hidden.

GB: But what is hidden?

TS: Well, I know them very well, and what I find most inspiring when I talk to them is that they always talk about, for example, Proust and French politics and blast furnaces. They do have a very specific analytical reading of historical processes, but in the pictures. . .

GB: . . . It doesn’t come across.

TS: No, that doesn’t come across.

GB: When they first formulated their work, a diagnosis of that conflict was not permitted, or at least unavailable.

TS: Totally. I remember Hilla saying that in the first decades, in the 50s and 60s, what was forbidden as a notion in Germany was to really look at something. To simply open your eyes and look at something and talk about it. That’s what they wanted to do, so they used these different kinds of objects that could come to life, or that have a particular design without openly demonstrating a design intention. That was their choice.

I felt that making those comparisons or providing that bigger structure was a great idea, but that it was so exotic, and so far away from most people’s life experiences. . .

GB: By “exotic”, you’re referring to their designated topics or ostensible subjects. The blast furnaces and coal tipples, for example.

TS: Yes. Perhaps they’re not necessarily so exotic, but. . .

GB: Obscure.

TS: They’re obscure examples, not inclusive; they’re specialized. It’s like collecting butterflies, or snakeskins and so on.

Thomas Struth

GB: Perhaps there’s another point here by which we can orient ourselves, another teacher of yours, Gerhard Richter—both the Bechers and Richter seeking a way, to, as Adorno said, cry without tears, to seek some mode of expressionless expression.

TS: That’s it, yes.

GB: And I would add to that another viewpoint, from Camus, speaking in postwar France about the refusal to capitulate to the simpler urge for vengeance, or, in the larger sense, the easier cynicisms that ultimately dehumanize each of the actors involved. Any existence of dignity requires of its participants that they be “neither victims nor executioners”.

So that within the space marked by each of these limitations, there is still the insistence within the impossible to proceed. I don’t believe that this is a uniquely German position, though I do think that German artists of the last generation or two have addressed its conditions with exceptional candor.

It’s possible that because of the Germans’ unique historical circumstances during the last century, they have a greater wariness of the kind of persistent documentary fantasies that even now so many Americans abide by: that it’s still feasible—if indeed it ever was—to seek out distant territories like an island off of Japan or a Ku Klux Klan meeting, to pursue the quasi-mystical journey for informative subject matter. When you did in fact go to Yakushima, you closed the picture off in a way, and organized its space as visual white noise, at once plentiful in data and emptied of connotation. The point at which the photograph ceases to function as a metaphor is the point at which it is free to propose an experiential model.

Despite at first appearing as a breakdown of possibility, the greater structure effects a continual insistence on finding a tenable means, however elusive, of defining pictorial value and meaning. Now. At this moment. Here.

TS: Of course.

GB: But how can you say that, as if it was just a given?

TS: No. It’s very difficult actually. [Laughs]

Maybe the most honest thing I can say is what I said earlier, that at the moment I’m in a difficult situation finding a reason to take photographs. I’m testing myself, thinking about whether it could be necessary to go to a problematized place—say Iraq or Israel—to try to photographically capture something that’s going on there. Would there be any possibility there, is there any way to address something problematic, or would it be more generalized? I’m thinking about what’s missing, or what kind of construction could be addressed.

My goal has always been to address something more generalized than a specific historical moment. I would consider it a disadvantage if people looking at my street photographs were to think “Oh, right, that’s a car from the 80s”, for example. I’m always more interested in making a picture the central message of which is still valid in fifty years or so.

I’m sure that there were similar questions during periods of transition in the past. But it’s also important that I feel it myself. You’ll be able to see it too if I felt it, if I know it. If none of my skin has felt it, how can I judge or how can I say anything about it? It would be only voyeurism.

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Zwelethu Mthethwa

Photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa in conversation with Okwui Enwezor. Buy Zwelethu’s monograph from Aperture HERE.

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Josef Koudelka

Frank Horvat and Josef Koudelka

First interview, January 1987

Frank Horvat : You ask if I have made good use of my vision. I believe I have used it too little. Photographers like Henri (Cartier-Bresson) always have a camera with them and are looking all the time. I don’t know how to do that. Right now, for example, I am not looking, my mind is occupied by words.

Joseph Koudelka : What do you mean by “I am not looking”?

Frank Horvat : I am not looking with the idea to make a photograph.

Joseph Koudelka : How are you looking?

Frank Horvat : I am seeing only a few of things around me. Only those that I want to see.

Joseph Koudelka : But to see what you want to see, you have to look. And to choose..

Frank Horvat : It seems to me that, to see “photographically”, I have to prepare myself in advance. Possibly for a long time. For instance it would be difficult for me, on my way out from here, to make photos of Paris. To see, I would have to go to another city, say to New York, live in a hotel room by myself and start walking through the streets, at first without a camera. And little by little I would begin to see. In the same way, I wouldn’t know how to make a portrait of a woman, just off the hip. I would have to think about her, to imagine her. She would have to prepare herself or to be prepared with someone’s help. And even then, when I would eventually be facing her, with my camera, I might not feel ready. It could take me two or three hours to understand her, little by little, through the viewfinder.

Josef Koudelka

Joseph Koudelka : Perhaps because you want to understand. Me, I do not try to understand. For me, the most beautiful thing is to wake up, to go out, and to look. At everything. Without anyone telling me “You should look at this or that.” I look at everything and I try to find what interests me, because when I set out, I don’t yet know what will interest me. Sometimes I photograph things that others would find stupid, but with which I can play around. Henri as well says that before meeting a person, or seeing a country, he has to prepare himself. Not me, I try to react to what comes up. Afterwards, I may come back to it, perhaps every year, ten years in a row, and I will end by understanding.

Frank Horvat : You prepare yourself in your way. I imagine that when you find a subject that interests you, your photo is, in a way, already prepared within you. As if you had set up a place into which it fits.

Joseph Koudelka : What’s “my photo”?

Frank Horvat : Your photos often are recognizable, which is to say that they have something in common. Maybe the space between the figures, and the tensions within that space.

Joseph Koudelka : I don’t know. But I interrupted you, you were speaking about yourself.

Frank Horvat : If I have used my eyes well? I fear not having used my time well.

Joseph Koudelka : That is the gist of my question. Your time, not only your eyes.

Frank Horvat : Look, I met you in person only about an hour ago, though I am familiar with your photos and I remember a few things that I have been told about you. If I had to express the idea that I have of you, in a single sentence, I would say “He lives out of a sleeping bag.” That would sum up your way of using your time, which is different from mine, and probably more efficient. It’s not that I am dissatisfied with my own life. But I know that too often I have done things that didn’t really interest me, or that distracted me from what I thought was my real purpose, because I forced myself to respond to the ideas or the desires of others. I believe that if I was allowed to move back and to relive some hours of my life, the moments I would choose would be those when I was photographing for myself, in the streets of New York or in India. Or even some moments in the studio, when making portraits.

Joseph Koudelka : Personally, I have had the good fortune of always being able to do what I wanted, never working for others. Maybe it is a silly principle, but the idea that no one can buy me is important for me. I refuse assignments, even for projects that I have decided to do anyhow. It is somewhat the same with my books. When my first book, the one on the gypsies, was published, it was hard for me to accept the idea that I could no longer choose the people to whom I would show my photos, that any one could buy them.

Frank Horvat : What are your points of reference – I mean in literature, in painting, in music?

Joseph Koudelka : There are a few things that I like very much, but that I do not practice. I have always played music, and I would like to listen to it more than I do, but I don’t have the opportunity, due to the lack of time and place. When I was a kid, I did a lot of reading, then a little less during my studies, and hardly any since I left Czechoslovakia – always for the same reason, because I do not have a place of my own. When I travel, I don’t even know where I am going to sleep, I don’t think of the place where I will lie down until the moment I roll out my sleeping bag. It’s a rule that I’ve set for myself. Because I told myself that I must be able to sleep anywhere, since sleep is important. In the summer I often sleep outdoors. I stop working when there is no more light, and I start again in the early morning. I do not feel this to be a sacrifice, it would be a sacrifice to live otherwise. As for my points of reference, I don’t know what they would be.

Frank Horvat : But, in the world, what seems important to you?

Joseph Koudelka : Questions about the world are difficult for me. I mistrust words. I come from a system where words have no value. I got used to not listening much to what people say. Or rather, I listen to them, but I give less importance to what they say, than to the way in which they say it. When someone declares: “I am a communist”, (or a socialist, or an anarchist), that means nothing to me. What counts is what people do.

Frank Horvat : But what else counts for you? Is it important that your photos be preserved after your death?

Josef Koudelka

Joseph Koudelka : It never seemed important to me that my photos be published. It’s important that I take them. There were periods where I didn’t have money, and I would imagine that someone would come to me and say: “Here is money, you can go do your photography, but you must not show it.” I would have accepted right away. On the other hand, if someone had come to me saying: “Here is money to do your photography, but after your death it must be destroyed”, I would have refused. Do you understand?

Frank Horvat : What matters is that the photos exist.

Joseph Koudelka : Absolutely. Not that they be published or that people admire me. To be known can even be a nuisance. I don’t like to feel like the center of attention. I often travel to a horse market in the north of England, where I know just about everyone. When they see me they ask: “Your book, when does it come out? I will never see it, I will be dead before then.” And it may be true, some are dead already. But I can always bring to a son the photo of his father, to an old man the photo of when he was not so old. What counts is that the work exists. Besides, I am not someone who likes his own photos very much.

Frank Horvat : But I have been told that you put them on the wall to see if you can live with them.

Joseph Koudelka : I did that in Czechoslovakia, and I would do it again if I had a home. I lived all the time with the photos of the gypsies. If you live all the time with a thing, and you go on looking at it, you end up either by getting tired of it, or by being sure that it satisfies you. For me a good photo is one that I can live with. It’s like living with good music or a good person.

Frank Horvat : Maybe because photography is made essentially of time. I often think that what we show is a point in time, more than a window onto space.

Joseph Koudelka : The philosophic aspects of photography don’t interest me. What interests me are its limits. I always photograph the same people, the same situations, because I want to know the limits of those people, of those situations, and also my own limits. It’s not so important that I succeed in making a photo the first time, nor the fifth, nor the tenth.

Frank Horvat : I know that when you were photographing the gypsies you often went back to the same places, to the homes of the same families.

Joseph Koudelka : I had a specific circuit, where I found the same type of situation again and again. It is what I still try to do, but now it’s gotten more complicated. I have neither a car, nor even a driver’s license, though I hope to get them. When one works as I do, health problems can become a limitation. Some years ago, I suffered from back pains and the doctor told me: “That comes from your lifestyle.” So I took care of myself and recovered, but I know that there will be a time when I will no longer be able to live as I do. When I was thirty, I kept telling myself that at forty a photographer is finished. Possibly this was only to force myself to take advantage of my time. Now I am almost fifty. I still make some good photos and I hope to carry on. But I believe that the truly creative periods are those when you live with intensity. If you lose intensity, you lose everything.

Frank Horvat : But is it a matter of age? The portraits of women, that I made these last years, are perhaps the project into which I have put the most intensity.

Joseph Koudelka : For me, there are few portraits that I truly admire. One time, a funny thing happened : I was near Rome with a pilgrimage of gypsies from Yugoslavia, organized by some Catholic priests. Not actually priests, but some kind of laymen, they earned their living and were nice people. In talking with me, they found out that I was the author of the book about gypsies. They told me that they had a copy of it and that they had cut out the pages, to put them up on the walls of a shack that they used for a chapel. And under each photo the gypsies wrote the name of someone they knew.

Frank Horvat : They knew the actual people that you had photographed?

Joseph Koudelka : No, they knew others, in Yugoslavia, who resembled them. “We know you very well” they said to me, “we call you Iconar”. That reminded me of something that I had said to Henri, one of the first times we met, and that made him really laugh: I said that rather than a photographer, I was a collector of photos.

Frank Horvat : Is that your reason for always going back to the same places?

Joseph Koudelka : It’s the reason why photography was easier in the beginning. It’s like a dart game: at the beginning, you can toss them anywhere, they will always be well placed. Wherever you hit is the right place ( in English in the original). But once you start building something, you realize that certain pieces are missing.

Frank Horvat : So, when you return to those same places, it’s with the idea of completing a series, of which some pieces are still missing?

Joseph Koudelka : I have a general idea. But as I cannot go everywhere, I limit myself to a few countries in Europe that I feel are close to my way of being: like Spain, Ireland, Italy, Greece. I often return there and I hope to continue returning until I will feel sure of having reached the limits of my possibilities. But I would rather not talk about projects.

Frank Horvat : Will this work be as important as what you did in Czechoslovakia?

Joseph Koudelka : I don’t know what’s important to the people who look at my photos. What’s important to me is to make them. I work all the time, but there are only a few of my photos that I find really good. I am not even sure that I am really a good photographer. I think that anyone working as I do could do the same. But my purpose is not to prove my talent. I photograph almost every day, except when it’s too cold for traveling the way I do – as in this time of winter. Sometimes my photos are OK, other times they are not, but I think that eventually something will come out of my work. I don’t worry about it. I also take photos of my own life, such as those at the beginning of the small paperback book: of my feet, of my watch. When I am tired I lie down, and if I feel like photographing and there is nobody around me, I photograph my own feet. They are not great photos, some people dislike them. For a similar reason, I always photograph the places where I sleep, and the interiors where I spend some time. It’s a rule that I have given to myself, because these are things that one forgets. Maybe one day I’ll make a book with them, nothing but those little photos. It may upset some people who know me only as the photographer of gypsies, and who don’t want to see me any other way. But I don’t care about what people think, I don’t try to change people. Nor to change the world.

Josef Koudelka

Second interview, March 1987

Frank Horvat : You said that you were not very happy with our first interview. I re-read the text, and also I re-read my earlier interviews with other photographers. This made me realize that in the course of these meetings, I partly lost sight of my initial purpose, which was to talk about photography, rather than about photographers. Nonetheless, I would like to begin with a personal comment. I know several people who consider you somehow as their conscience. I know that you are not trying to play the role of guru, but it is your severity toward yourself which leads other people to look at themselves with less indulgence.

Joseph Koudelka : You say I am a conscience. That’s the last thing I want to be. It sounds as if I judge others, as if I feel superior. I have only been lucky. Because, at the beginning, I was an aeronautical engineer and was able to do photography without the need to be paid. Later, I continued to be lucky, by having the opportunity to work for eighteen years, without having to accept even a single assignment. But this is no reason to make anyone feel at fault, because my way of doing photography is only one among many – and perhaps not even the best.

Frank Horvat : I would like to see some prints of your work, for example some from the last year, that you said were not quite satisfying to you. And I would like you to explain why.

Joseph Koudelka : I don’t see any reason for doing that. If I am dissatisfied, it’s simply because good photos are few and far between. A good photo is a miracle.

Frank Horvat : But it may be is easier to explain why a photo is not so good, than to explain why it’s good.

Joseph Koudelka : But what if almost all are bad? For you, making photos is different, you like to direct. In my case, all depend on what happens, I have to find a situation that interests me. That is why I keep coming back to the same places. But often what I expect doesn’t happen, or it happens without my being able to make a good photo.

Frank Horvat : But what do you mean by “good”?

Joseph Koudelka : “Good” is when a situation is at its maximum, and when I myself am at my maximum. It may happen that I reach that maximum the very first time, by chance, and that I return to the place another ten times, over ten years, without being able to do any better. Or that in looking for a certain maximum I find something else, that I hadn’t imagined. What matters is my search, my motivation to go further. But I can not sell this way of working to a magazine, I can’t expect them to send me ten times to Lourdes, and to have me come back with some photo that has nothing to do with Lourdes!

Frank Horvat : Was the Prague Spring a maximum? It certainly was an event for which you couldn’t prepare yourself and that had little chance of happening again.

Joseph Koudelka : It has been the maximum of my life. In ten days, everything that could happen in my life did happen. I was at my own maximum, in a situation at its maximum. That may have been the reason why I “covered” it better than all those professional reporters, who had come from all over the world. I wasn’t even a photo journalist. Someone – who in fact knew me rather well – had written about me that I could succeed in any kind of photography, except reportage.

Frank Horvat : Were you aware of it being a maximum, while you were living it? Did you tell yourself every morning: “These days are my maximum, too bad if they cost my life?”

Joseph Koudelka : I wasn’t thinking about danger. Later, some people who had seen me in front of the tanks said that I could have been killed. But I never thought of that. Even though in ordinary life I am far from brave.

Josef Koudelka

Frank Horvat : Actually, I was mistaken in saying that you were not prepared: the work that you had done during the ten preceding years had been a kind of preparation. Without that work, you wouldn’t have been able to photograph the Prague Spring as you did.

Joseph Koudelka : Certainly not. But I do not agree with what that person had written about me. I don’t care what people think, I know well enough who I am. But I refuse to become a slave to their ideas. When you stay in the same place for a certain time, people put you in a box and expect you to stay there.

Frank Horvat : What seems important to me, is that during those days you knew precisely how to see, because you had spent the ten preceding years in training your vision.

Joseph Koudelka : I agree with that. But I don’t pretend to be an intellectual or a philosopher. I just look.

Frank Horvat : And you spend your life looking and saying “yes” or “no” to what you see, by releasing or not releasing the shutter, by choosing or not choosing a contact. It is like the binary system of computers, except with many more a “no” than a “yes”. What seems interesting to me, are the ten years of “yes” and “no” that prepared you to make, at the moment of the Prague Spring, photographs that others didn’t make. Even though the events were the same for all.

Joseph Koudelka : Another reason was that I hadn’t been parachuted into Prague, like the rest. I was a Czechoslovakian, I was photographing in the country whose language I spoke, whose problems were my own problems. And I was working for myself. Too often people with some talent go where there is some money to be made. They begin to trade a bit of their talent for a bit of money, then a little more, and finally they have nothing left to themselves. In Czechoslovakia we didn’t have many freedoms, and particularly not the freedom to make money. But that led us to choose professions that we really loved. I always photographed with the idea that no one would be interested in my photos, that no one would pay me, that if I did something I only did it for myself.

Frank Horvat : I understand. But what seems the most important to me is what you just said about the maximum. Someone else might have made a few well composed photographs, from behind a tree, and then gone home. You went forward, to search further. Because you had a certain idea of that maximum.

Joseph Koudelka : The maximum was in the air. I knew that all the things that could happen in my life were happening. There was a girl I kept running into all the time. At first I was suspicious of her, I imagined KGB spies everywhere. Then that girl approached me, opened her bag and said : “I meet you all the time, you must not have eaten for three days.” So I fell in love with her. Everything that could happen did happen. I met all the people whose existence I had imagined. The power of the situation was so great, that it created all those possibilities.

Frank Horvat : Yes, but if you had not been prepared by the work of the ten preceding years, the situation might have brought you the same intensity, the same love story, but not the same photos.

Joseph Koudelka : That comes from my way of working. After having seen my contacts, I do not only print the good photos, but all those that seem to me of some interest, even if I know that they are botched. And I keep looking at them, so as to integrate that experience into my system. Now I can almost photograph without looking through the viewfinder, I have mastered it so well, that it’s almost as if I were looking through it. What I want is to find a passage from the unconscious to the conscious. When I photograph, I do not think much. If you looked at my contacts you would ask yourself: “What is this guy doing?” But I keep working with my contacts and with my prints, I look at them all the time. I believe that the result of this work stays in me and at the moment of photographing it comes out, without my thinking of it.

Josef Koudelka

Frank Horvat : Like a computer program. You spend a lot of time preparing your program, so that at a given moment, in front of a very complex situation, that program permits you to react instantly and correctly.

Joseph Koudelka : I would have liked to show you a kind of catalog that I made ten years ago, where I classified my photos according to their composition. If there is something that you like and that you are interested in, and if, in addition, you have some ability and a little energy to spend, it’s bound to work. The program will function. But what is important, afterwards, is to leave the program behind and to move ahead. It would be too easy to let yourself become a prisoner of what you have built, to let the results come out automatically. At some point, one must destroy the program, and start a new one from scratch.

Frank Horvat : Yes. When I was doing my essay on trees, I realized that as my work was proceeding, my program would get more and more precise, to the point that in the end it became a limitation, making me do the same photographs over and over!

Joseph Koudelka : I am not interested in repetition. I don’t want to reach the point from where I wouldn’t know how to go further. It’s good to set limits for oneself, but there comes a moment when we must destroy what we have constructed.

Frank Horvat : I agree that we should change the program, but I believe that there are some principles that we shouldn’t touch.

Joseph Koudelka : Which principles?

Frank Horvat : If only I knew! If I do these interviews, it is precisely to find out. One principle could be to always aim for a maximum, as you say. I know photographers who have given up on that. They do a good job, showing what they choose to show, and what indeed is the representation of some reality, but to me that is not enough.

Joseph Koudelka : And why do you think some people give up searching for the maximum?

Frank Horvat : I only know one answer, which scares me: because they don’t have enough energy left.

Joseph Koudelka : That scares me, too. We already talked about it in our first meeting, and I told you that the limit could be around forty. It happens to all of us.

Frank Horvat : On the other hand, Titian made some of his best paintings at eighty. And so did Renoir, Rodin, Picasso. But painting may be a different matter…

Joseph Koudelka : Possibly. It’s also true that Kertesz made some beautiful photos in his last years – but those were not the kind of photos we are talking about, which demand a certain physical fitness, if only to seek out the situations. It seems to me that in painting there is less difference between a masterpiece and a work that is not altogether a masterpiece. Or at least less difference than in photography: because in painting technique is more important.

Frank Horvat : Whereas photography depends on the intensity of the moment. I have great admiration for people like Munkasci, who worked with large format cameras, which allowed them to make only one photo in a given situation. He could never give himself a second chance.

Joseph Koudelka : You may be right. But I am the product of a different era. If I couldn’t shoot lots of photos, I would not be the photographer that I am. Still, the cost of film has often been a problem. At times, to save money, I had to work with remainders of movie-film, and even to buy film that was stolen. But when I have only three rolls of film left in my bag, I panic.

Josef Koudelka

Frank Horvat : I understand that. Sometimes I shoot fifteen rolls in two hours, just for a studio portrait. But that does not keep me from feeling that each sitting is a unique event, which can never be repeated.

Joseph Koudelka : When I wake up in the morning, and I feel good, I tell myself: “Today may be the last day of my life.” That is my sense of urgency. But I keep wondering about what you just said, that I am a conscience. People have told me that. People much younger than myself have told me: “I would like to work as you do.”

Frank Horvat : Only they don’t.

Joseph Koudelka : Perhaps because they have an idea of me that doesn’t correspond to reality. When I left Czechoslovakia, I used to live on milk, bread and potatoes. It became something I was known for. So much that once, at the home of some friends in Holland, whom I was visiting, they put in front of me a plate of potatoes, while they treated themselves to goulash. I don’t want to be the slave of my legend!

Frank Horvat : You refuse to be the slave of money, the slave of your legend… Are you the slave of something?

Joseph Koudelka : I am the slave of my mind. I travel alone, I sleep outdoors. Even when I get a lift in someone’s car, I separate myself from that person in the morning, and only join up again in the evening. When I arrived in the West, I didn’t speak the local languages, so even when I had the money I didn’t know how to get served in a restaurant. I’m still unable to write French, I feel like an immigrant worker. I have spent much of my time by myself, with the result that I’m stuck with certain ideas, that may not always fit with reality. I am the slave of these ideas.

Frank Horvat : But don’t you think that the real slavery is the one that we choose? Being a slave to money, as I am, is to some extent the result of a choice. The limits of your mind may be something that you have chosen.

Joseph Koudelka : I was born with this mind. It comes from someone who was there before me. But in a certain sense, I chose to be as I am, and it is to this degree that I do not feel it as slavery. It may seem slavery to others, who see me from outside-but for me it’s freedom. Which doesn’t mean that it couldn’t change: now I’m the father of a little girl, and I have to earn money like everyone else. I am fifty years old, it’s the time of reckoning. I have done what I wanted, now I have to make good use of the time and energy that are left. Look: all these files contain my contact sheets – which doesn’t mean that they contain many good photos, only that I have done a lot of work. It will take years to really look at all that. Even if I fall ill, or if I am immobilized for some other reason, there is plenty of work to be done.

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If you’re interested, read the interview HERE.

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