fototazo: Joshua Dudley Greer

Showing posts with label Joshua Dudley Greer. Show all posts

12.03.2015

Outtakes: Victoria Sambunaris

Outtakes is a series of interviews with contemporary photographers who have been asked to share alternate versions of some of their most meaningful, successful and celebrated images. By looking at these outtakes along with the final image and by hearing from the artist directly, we hope to examine the different working methods and criteria that photographers regularly employ in an effort to push past the romanticism of the singular, iconic image and learn more about the way photographs are really made.

Outtakes comes from photographer Joshua Dudley Greer and continues today with images from Victoria Sambunaris.

Victoria Sambunaris was born in 1964 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and received her MFA from Yale University in 1999. Her large-format photographs have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Nevada Museum of Art and the Rubin Center at the University of Texas, El Paso. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts among many others. Her first monograph, Taxonomy of a Landscape, was published by Radius Books in 2014. She is currently represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York and James Kelly Contemporary in Santa Fe, NM.

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Untitled, (Man on Horse in Rio Grande) Big Bend National Park, Texas, 2009 © Victoria Sambunaris

Untitled, (Man on Horse in Rio Grande) Big Bend National Park, Texas, 2009

Joshua Dudley Greer: When I first approached you about doing this interview, you revealed to me that a large number of your images (including this one) did not have any outtakes, that in fact you often make just one photograph of a particular scene. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach making photographs with such restraint?

Victoria Sambunaris: Shooting large-format film is an entirely different animal. It demands acute observation and patience for all circumstances to be aligned before taking a picture. It's easy to become caught up in a moment and snap away when, for example, the light is bad or the season is wrong. Too frequently, I have come home after months out on the road with a load of film and whatever was compelling did not come through in the photograph. I have learned restraint.

With this particular photograph, there was one chance - the encounter, the bright light, the white horse, the milky water and the man crossing the border. I had witnessed people crossing here before in canoes and horses, including this man. I asked him if he would wait five minutes in the middle of the river when crossing. We negotiated. I got one shot. We were going to meet again for another photograph. I waited, but he never came - it's the way things go. I returned many times and even later in the year but everything had changed, the river was deep, the light glaring, so there is just one photograph here.

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Untitled (Houses) Wendover, Utah, 2007 © Victoria Sambunaris

Untitled (Houses) Wendover, Utah, 2007

JDG: With that patience and reserve in mind, and given the fact that these next two images are so similar, can you recall what encouraged you to make another negative of this particular view?

VS: Simply, the train. If you notice in the background, a train is approaching so there were two shots with the train in different positions.

JDG: Clearly trains are important to you, we find them throughout many of your photographs. In this particular image however it seems like a fairly minor shift in one of many details contained in the overall picture. I know you don't use any kind of digital manipulation in your work so you're very particular about waiting for that moment when everything aligns. But I'm wondering how you don't often make multiple versions when a similar shift occurs in other details - maybe it's the placement of a cloud or a slight breeze blowing a bush, anything really. Was it just that the train was of particular importance to you in this photograph?

VS: Trains are significant in my work and a recurring theme bridging each individual "chapter" or body of work. The trains are ubiquitous in the West and are part of the infrastructure that connect systems to each other. They connect the past to the present. They also represent trade, commerce and consumerism and are part of my overall interest in the American Dream that I have been probing for over fifteen years.

There is so much information in this photograph unaware to the viewer. It is the minute details about a particular place that will spark my interest and curiosity. The state line splits the town of Wendover with Utah laws applying to the Utah side and Nevada laws applying to the Nevada side. Interstate 80 also splits the town. In this picture, the outcrop signifies the geologic past and our future, a reminder of our fleeting time here; the housing and sprawl portend a possible future and our development; and the emblematic train appears, once again, moving our resources from one place to the next and spans the history of the American Dream. This photograph tells a conflicting story in geological, cultural, political and economic terms. To answer your question, in this instance, I was consumed by the particular details about this place but when the train came through, the timing was perfect and there was only one photograph to be made.

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Untitled (Potash Mine, Distant View) Wendover, Utah, 2004 © Victoria Sambunaris

Untitled (Potash Mine, Distant View) Wendover, Utah, 2004

JDG: We see here three different views from what I assume is the same basic vantage point taken over a period of some time as the weather and light changes. Can you give us a chronology of the pictures and articulate some of the key differences in terms of what you were hoping to depict?

VS: It was over ten years ago and difficult for me to remember the particulars, but I most likely shot the overcast image first, then returned to shoot the final image when the light was different, probably within the week.

I searched long and hard for access to this shot and a local eventually led me there. I was ecstatic once I saw it, but the circumstances were not perfect - the light was wrong and I was distracted by the person that led me there and stayed with me. It's crucial that I am alone when I work in order to focus on the small details of what I am doing and seeing. Do I want more of the ponds? The highway? The small development on the right? I need to observe and make decisions about the framing, the changing light, the cars coming down the highway and when someone is standing behind you chatting, it can throw off your concentration. I obviously cannot multitask.

There were 7000 acres of solarization ponds and I wanted to capture that vast, organized quality they imposed on the landscape, but was obviously too far away. I photographed extensively at the potash mine but those images were too close, ground level and not interesting. It was not the potash mine that I was interested in specifically, it was the anomaly of the potash mine situated in this landscape. Revisiting these photographs ten years later, I lean towards the overcast shot. But at the time, I wanted the distinction of the blue ponds in this white desert landscape.

In the third image, the edge of the cliff is apparent. The shot over the cliff and the shot including the edge of the cliff establish my place. It is one of those moments that I'm overwhelmed by the experience and take the shot of where I am standing. Once I find that perfect location that incorporates all I want to see, I'll return multiple times even over the course of years to reinvestigate. What becomes most interesting is how the landscape is transformed by development over time.

JDG: It seems like many photographers are in such a hurry to develop some kind of conceit, make pictures, share them online, publish books, all in a race to some kind of imaginary finish line. It's interesting how often you speak about time and to learn about how slow the process of making and finishing a photograph is for you. In terms of content, many of your photographs deal with time on a vastly different scale - that of the physical history of the earth. By comparison, ten years is absolutely nothing and yet there must be changes that you find to be significant and meaningful.

VS: There are startling changes after revisiting a place time after time over the course of many years. I am observing the intersection of landscape and industry and any kind of economic expansion or decline becomes manifest on the landscape. There are places that I have a distinct memory embedded in my mind. But after revisiting the same place a few years later, it is unrecognizable. A boom or bust situation such as a mine opening or closing reflects in its landscape. At this moment, I am in Galveston, Texas. The current slowdown of oil extraction has resulted in a glut of petroleum ships lined up along the Gulf. And gas prices below $2 a gallon and declining is reflected in more cars on the road.

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Untitled (Distant Steam Vents) Yellowstone National Park, 2008 © Victoria Sambunaris

Untitled (Distant Steam Vents) Yellowstone National Park, 2008

JDG: This is probably one of the more iconic photographs you've made in a place that has been, and continues to be, well represented in art and photography. How do you approach making your own kind of picture in a place with this kind of pictorial history?

VS: True, Yellowstone and many other places I have shot have been documented extensively. Regardless, I am curious and need to investigate something there for my own purpose. The Yellowstone/Snake River Plain project came about in 2008 after I had spent the previous year following John McPhee's book Annals of the Former World, driving Interstate 80 and looking at geological features in the landscape. The McPhee project led me to a Wyoming geologist who invited me on an expedition to Yellowstone NP and the surrounding vicinity. The experience piqued my curiosity about the geology of the Yellowstone supervolcano and the impact that geology has had on the surrounding area and the Snake River Plain across southern Idaho. I spent 2008 following that geologic path in Yellowstone, around Yellowstone and across the Snake River Plain. I was not thinking about Yellowstone as a destination or its current cultural significance but rather tracing its geological significance. Our landscape reveals fascinating stories when you go beyond what it is today.

JDG: That seems to bring up one of the primary challenges of any kind of environmental photography. You have all of these ecological forces at play (some visible, some not) and the long history and study of those forces, yet the camera can only reveal so much on the surface of things. When you're in a landscape such as this, would you say you're being driven more by research in terms of the landscape and its underlying geology or are you allowing yourself to be seduced by the aesthetics of the place?

VS: The motivation to go out on the road and photograph is concept driven. There is a specific idea that gets me to a place where I can examine it through the lens. Then my aesthetics emerge. I am certainly trying to look at things aesthetically but there are times that it is difficult to let go of the concept, to relax and take a photograph of something that is strictly aesthetically pleasing that has nothing to do with the concept. Occasionally I take those shots which you might see in my contact sheets or even outtakes. But in addition to my 5x7 camera, I carry a Mamiya 6x7 that allows me to snap everything that interests me - the towns, the people, the scenery, the shots that are not concept driven. They are quick and easy and fulfill a need I have to shoot freely. When I'm back east editing the 5x7 film, there are many occasions where the concept overtakes the photograph and I have a difficult time adhering to my aesthetic principles. The concept has gotten in the way of editing work and ultimately curating my work; I find myself arguing for a photograph because of its meaning rather than whether it's a good photograph.

JDG: So would you say that all three of these images are conceptually on the same playing field and it's an issue of aesthetics that creates the final distinction for you?

VS: It certainly comes down to aesthetics, but also how the work functions as a whole aesthetically and conceptually. It is a bit of a macro/micro process when working out in the field and later coming home to put together a body of work or mounting a show or thinking about the entirety of the work.

In regards to these three particular photographs, two of the three are similar and ordinary. In the two photographs, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, they are more of what you imagine of YNP. You have seen this photograph before. The third photograph stands out, it's ominous. It depicts more of the overall idea in regards to the entire project. I'm thinking about the Yellowstone supervolcano that erupts every 650,000 years and will change the climate of the Earth, I'm thinking about plate tectonics, I'm thinking about what the Earth was like the last time this volcano erupted, I am thinking about locals I've gotten to know who have escape routes planned. There is something haunting about this photograph that relates to some of these ideas.

Once I am back East I make a first edit. That picture stands out and it makes the first cut. I make a larger work print to examine it at a larger size from the 5x7 contact sheet. I am scrutinizing the details - the white streaked sky, the glistening water, the spewing vents - while thinking about it in the greater context of my work. It needs to stand on its own while simultaneously relating to the other photographs selected for this project to create a cohesive idea that is visually engaging.

It's the beauty of photography, of being in the moment, site-specific, and thinking about the world on a grand scale; then coming home to take all you have seen, experienced and learned and producing something very personal - bringing the conceptual and aesthetic together - in a way that offers a truth - both surprising and apparent - about the world in which we live.

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Joshua Dudley Greer (b.1980 Hazleton, PA) received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002 and his MFA, with distinction, from the University of Georgia in 2009. His photographs have been exhibited throughout the United States in venues such as the Knoxville Museum of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Catherine Edelman Gallery. His photographs have been published in The Collector's Guide to New Art Photography Volume 2, Flash Forward 2010, Smithsonian Magazine and Le Monde. He has received grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, Tennessee Arts Commission and in 2012 was named one of the New Superstars of Southern Art by Oxford American. He is currently living in Johnson City, Tennessee where he is a visiting assistant professor of photography at East Tennessee State University.

12.18.2014

Outtakes: Simon Roberts

Outtakes is a series of interviews with contemporary photographers who have been asked to share alternate versions of some of their most meaningful, successful and celebrated images. By looking at these outtakes along with the final image and by hearing from the artist directly, we hope to examine the different working methods and criteria that photographers regularly employ in an effort to push past the romanticism of the singular, iconic image and learn more about the way photographs are really made.

Outtakes comes from photographer Joshua Dudley Greer and continues today with images from Simon Roberts.

Simon Roberts (b.1974) is a British photographer whose work deals primarily with our relationship to landscape and notions of identity and belonging. His large format photographs have been exhibited widely and are held in collections including the George Eastman House, Deutsche Borse Art Collection and Wilson Centre for Photography. He has published three monographs to critical acclaim - Motherland (Chris Boot, 2007), We English (Chris Boot, 2009) and Pierdom (Dewi Lewis, 2013). He is a European member of the photographic collective POC and was recently made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.

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South Downs Way, West Sussex, 8th October 2007 © Simon Roberts

South Downs Way, West Sussex, 8th October 2007

Joshua Dudley Greer: This was one of the earliest photographs made for We English and is one of the few that happens to be made with a medium format camera rather than the 4x5. Was this simply a reaction to this particular scene or did you start out using a smaller camera?

Simon Roberts: When I started out with the project I was experimenting with different formats to find the right compositional style for the work. I began with a Mamiya 7, the camera I'd used for my Motherland book, my series made in Russia between 2004-2005, but quickly moved on to using an Ebony 4x5 field camera. I'd actually originally planned to use a 4x5 in Russia but due to logistical reasons I decided on the Mamiya, which is much more versatile and can be used handheld, useful when temperatures get down to -40 degrees!

What appeals to me with the larger format is the additional effort and time it takes to compose an image. It's a natural camera for photographing landscape enabling a greater clarity and sharpness across the frame, which would be particularly useful with my decision to photograph peopled scenes where individuals are rendered relatively small in the frame. The theatricality of the camera is also appealing; people around me are momentarily intrigued by the camera, but get bored quickly, which is perfect because it affords me the surprising luxury of solitude in usually very populated areas.

Saying this, on the day I took this particular photograph shot near Devil's Dyke, I was close to my home in Brighton. I'd taken my daughter for a walk after school and when we got there I saw a large group of paragliders preparing to launch off the escarpment. Fortunately I had the Mamiya in the car and shot a few frames as the light dropped.

JDG: From frame to frame we can see that you're tweaking your composition as you're shooting these, specifically the proportion of sky to foreground. Is that typical of the way you photograph a scene as active as this, or are you usually fairly set on a singular composition?

SR: I'm normally much more rigid in my compositions and having decided upon a scene, and fixed my framing, I wait for something to unfold in the landscape. In this instance I didn't have a tripod with me and only had a few minutes whilst the paragliders were all in the air together. I was shooting instinctively, moving as I tried to refine the framing, whilst also responding to how the paragliders were moving in the sky.

JDG: In your final image, all of the gliders are contained entirely above the horizon line, which seems to emphasize that separation between the land and the sky. There is a sense of stillness and calm that may not exist in the other frames, despite the presence of some serious weather throughout.

SR: The fact that the paragliders are all above the horizon line certainly helps, but what I find particularly compelling about this final frame is their formation in relation to one another. It's as if they have created a synchronized pattern, with the group circling around the one glider seen in the centre of the frame; almost as if they are dancing in the sky. The cloud formation is much more dramatic here and there is a geometry created by the strata, which leads the viewer into the frame; with the paragliders it creates a feeling of a vortex. Finally, there is less of a distraction with the foreground of the hill, which cuts through the other two frames at quite a harsh angle. Having walked forward to take this frame, the foreground has fallen away and the landscape of the Weald of Sussex has opened up, providing more detail of the cricket pitch, village green and the patchwork pattern of farmland.

JDG: Even though it is one of the few We English photographs where the participants are physically separated from the land, it feels indicative of one of the core themes of the project - that of the landscape and its associations with home and memory. To me, it's an idea echoed at the very end of the book with a picture that shows the release of 20,000 homing pigeons. No matter where we go, we have to return to the land at some point.

SR: Yes I'd agree, but not only a return to the land, but a return home. The final photograph in the book was taken as I was heading back to Brighton, after nearly a year on the road traveling around England. The pigeons are starting their own journey home, flying back to their owners' lofts dotted along the Northumberland coastline 300 miles north.

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Blackpool Beach #1, Lancashire, 25th July 2008 © Simon Roberts

Blackpool Beach #1, Lancashire, 25th July 2008

JDG: These pictures were made in Blackpool, a seaside resort town a little more than an hour north of New Brighton, where Martin Parr made the pictures for his classic book, The Last Resort. Even though your photographs were made nearly 25 years later and there are obvious differences, I feel like they share things in common - the combination of concrete and sand, the detritus on the beach, the density of what Gerry Badger called, “…the hungry hordes looking to feed and amuse their kids,” even the obelisk in the background. You were obviously taken by this place, four different photographs from this vicinity found their way into your book. What do you think it was about Blackpool that led to such a productive few days for you?

SR: There is a long and rich history of documentary surveys by British photographers that have captured the social, political and cultural landscape of England and Britain such as Sir Benjamin Stone, Bill Brandt, Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr and John Davies. Work by all these photographers, and many others, was brought together in the 2007 Tate Britain exhibition How We Are: Photographing Britain. The comparative lack of contemporary studies over the past decade was encouraging, suggesting as it did that my project might be timely. I was also aware that I was following in the footsteps of this rich lineage of British photography and was something I couldn't ignore. In fact, several of the photographs in my book are a nod to this tradition. With this Blackpool image there is definitely a subtle reference to Martin Parr's work in New Brighton.

My time in Blackpool was rewarding, in part because it is so closely linked to ideas of leisure given it has experienced nearly a century and a half of predominantly working-class holidaymaking. It was the first mass leisure resort in the UK, attracting the mill workers of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The region has also seen a great deal of immigration over the past two decades so it reflects a wider change in the demographic of England. Saying that, the number of images in my book is as much based on rhythm as it is on where I garnered a strong set of photographs. The series of four Blackpool images halfway through the We English monograph slow the pace down and give a little geographical pause before we move on the road again.

JDG: For this particular photograph, you made two versions from the same general perspective and then two others just up the stairs a bit. Which of these views came first?

SR: I started photographing on the stairs (which actually function as sea defenses, and had recently been completed), but I found them too distracting. It was hard to find a composition that could encompass the stairs but without having a large blank slab of concrete. So I moved onto the beach. Here I was particularly drawn to the cast of interesting characters like the women in a sari taking a photograph and the guy in the middle of the frame with his hoodie on.

JDG: The vast majority of pictures in We English were made from elevated points-of-view, often working from atop your camper van. In this resulting image it does appear that you're slightly elevated, but I'm guessing not on top of the RV.

SR: Wherever possible with this project I tried to photograph from elevated positions, as you note, often from the roof of my camper van. The height would enable me to get a greater sense of people's interaction with the landscape and with one another; it opens up a rich seam in the middle of a frame, which is often hidden from view when photographing from the ground. Practically speaking I wasn't able to pull the motorhome onto beaches and parks! In these instances I had a stepladder to give me some elevation.

In addition to using elevation in this series, I would also concentrate on photographing the collective - groups of people populating the landscape. Additionally, I decided that the figures would be relatively small in the frame, although not always so small that you couldn't make out some facial expressions, what they were wearing and their activities. This way of seeing was influenced by looking at the work of 16th-century Dutch and Flemish landscape painters – particularly Hendrick Avercamp, Pieter Bruegel and Lucas van Valckenborch, who depicted winter scenes teeming with life. I liked the idea of what appeared to be predominantly pastoral landscapes becoming, on closer inspection, multi-layered canvases, rich in detail and meaning.

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Ladies’ Day, Aintree Racecourse, Merseyside, 4th April 2008 © Simon Roberts

Ladies’ Day, Aintree Racecourse, Merseyside, 4th April 2008

JDG: To the uninitiated, could you explain a bit of the cultural context of Ladies' Day? To me it looks like a cross between the Kentucky Derby, with its pomp and pageantry, and the Preakness, which is a bit more tawdry and perhaps better known for its alcohol consumption than its horseracing.

SR: The Aintree Racecourse near Liverpool is famous for the Grand National, which is an annual steeplechase, and one of the toughest horse races in the world. And because the races take place over the course of a few days they've created a ladies' day, ostensibly a marketing ploy to try to get more people to come to the races. Its become a kind of fashion show where women wear glamorous hats and are normally quite scantily clad. Due to the demographic of Liverpool and the surrounding regions, it is more of a working class edge to this race than say, Ascot, another famous racecourse near Windsor and one of the Queen's favourite haunts. It's held midweek in April, so actually it's extremely cold. For me what was interesting is that women still wear these tiny little dresses despite the fact that in some cases it's just above zero. By the time I started photographing, a lot of alcohol had been consumed and I wanted to frame the scene with the detritus in the foreground.

JDG: Was this an event that you knew you wanted to photograph beforehand?

SR: I had a number of anchor points throughout the year of places and events that I wanted to visit. I knew I wanted to photograph this race and in some instances I was more interested in it than Derby Day in Ascot, which is so well documented and representative of the normal upper-class race goer in their top hat and tails. I wanted to create a counterpoint to that view of racing, and show some "real" punters.

JDG: You made about eight exposures of various scenes at the track that day and half of those focused on this trio of young ladies. Was there something in particular that initially drew you to them?

SR: Yeah, I started with those three girls – it was the colors, the way they were playing off each other. And I love their shoes! I think shoes say a lot about a person. The women had these quite extraordinary shoes, which play nicely against the debris of plastic cups and beer cans that they're stood within. I started photographing them during a break between races so you've got the three girls in the center but all the other characters are talking to one another, discussing the next race or how much they lost on the last race, and to some extent I found this less interesting as several of the bodies are facing inwards.

As for the frame with the woman smoking, I feel that it's quite difficult to get a sense of perspective and scale here. Because I'm slightly higher up, the crowd almost merges into one, you don't get the same sense of distance. Also, the guy in the green jacket is just far too distracting, he kind of closes off that corner of the photograph. For me it was just a bit messy.

The photograph that I chose for the book was taken during a race, this meant that everybody's looking over my shoulder, nobody's actually looking at the camera, they're concentrating on seeing who wins. As a result you can see their faces in this eclectic cast of characters and I've captured a sense of anticipation and drama. And of course what I particularly like is the fact that there's this one woman slumped on the ground in her expensive dress. Her legs are following the pattern of the spilled beer, which is draining down the concrete incline.

JDG: Right, the girl makes the photograph. To me, she's what Barthes might have called the punctum, that accident or element that shoots out from a scene and pricks the viewer.

SR: The thing with a lot of the pictures in We English is that there's a lot going on in them, so it's almost impossible to have one so-called decisive moment. I suppose the idea of the punctum is almost a slightly watered-down version of the decisive moment. In all of my frames I'm waiting for something key to take place, so there's always a little element that I'm concentrating on which determines the moment I take the photograph. Everything else, to some extent, has to take its own place and sometimes you just have to allow things to be where they are when you wouldn't necessarily want them to be there. So the "punctum" moment has to be strong enough to draw you into the photograph and over compensate for any other elements that might be somewhat distracting. I'm always looking for rhythms in the landscape, how movements of people and objects come together to make an arresting pattern.

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Gordon Brown, Labour, Rochdale, 28th April 2010 (Rochdale constituency) © Simon Roberts

Gordon Brown, Labour, Rochdale, 28th April 2010 (Rochdale constituency)

JDG: Following the success of We English, you were selected as the 2010 British "Election Artist" to create a record of that year's General Election. Trailing a number of different candidates across a variety of places throughout Britain, you continued with your use of the 4x5 camera, shooting from an elevated perspective with a removed sense of scale. Despite the unorthodox approach to what could be considered journalism, you were in some ways still operating like a member of the press. In general, how did this process usually work for you?

SR: This was an interesting project because I had to try to find a way of differentiating what I was doing from the scores of press photographers who were covering the same event. As we know, political parties are very good at orchestrating news events to try and create a particular image that they want then distributed. I decided I wanted my photographs to encompass entire scenes peopled by politicians, their campaign teams and the press. The landscape therefore becomes a theatre set for the myriad of nuanced interactions and dramas being played out in them, while the elevated perspective would allow me a wider field of view far removed from the up-close shots favoured by news media.

JDG: I love that idea of political theatre being played out in real spaces because there are always elements that can't be controlled. Can you talk about this particular image in that regard?

SR: The Gordon Brown image worked particularly well because up until this point he had not met any real people. He'd been doing these Tea with Gordon events where the Labour Party press office would control access to him through these meetings with Labour Party supporters in their homes. So that of course would immediately restrict the number of photographers that could cover that event. Finally the press office relented and created this setup event outside Rochdale in Northern England, where Brown would come and see ex-offenders clearing this tow path. They've set up a kind of sheep pen to herd the press into. As Gordon is interviewed on BBC News, a woman has walked down the street, she's called Gillian Duffy, she's wearing the blue jacket with the pink rim, and she has started heckling Brown on his policy of immigration. This is the moment I've taken the picture. We know that she is becoming the focus of the event because two other camera crews are filming her. What happened next was that Brown has a chat with Mrs. Duffy, he then gets into his car accidently leaving his microphone on and gets caught calling her a bigot to his press aide. The recording is played live on TV and causes a major news story. Brown ends up having to drive to Mrs. Duffy's house to personally apologise for his outburst. The event became know as Duffygate, which really killed his election campaign.

My photograph represents the kernel of the moment when the scandal began. What I've tried to do here is set this tableaux scene where you can see the cast of characters, from the secret service to the ex-offenders off in the distance, you've got the press, you've got Gillian Duffy, you've got the public filming on their mobile phones, all set within the context of a particular post-war architecture in this cul-de-sac in the orth of England. There are all these myriad elements that fill this scene of this news event, but we’re given a very different perspective from the news photographers – more of a birds-eye view.

JDG: So in looking at the outtakes here, it's really the presence of the woman that dictated your choice of which photograph to use?

SR: Yeah, with the three pictures that you selected it's really the fact that I needed Gillian Duffy in the frame. Her presence has made the photograph.

JDG: And when you show this work in England, people recognize the narrative that is taking place?

SR: In most instances people would know. It's interesting when I give talks abroad and talk about this photograph, it doesn't really mean a great deal because nobody knows who Gillian Duffy is. At home, the photograph takes on much more significance because it was such a big news event, which played out for days during the 2010 election.

JDG: There are some differences between this project and We English in terms of the visual sensibility, but also the technical apparatus behind the making of the photographs - a wider lens, faster film, etc. Was there a reason for those changes?

SR: I was using a 150mm and a 90mm. A number of the photographs, like the Gordon Brown image, were taken with the 90mm because I was so close to the action and I needed to have that wider perspective. In some instances I had to push the film a stop, due to lack of light and the fact that I needed to be able to freeze the action whilst also maintaining the use of a small aperture (f22 or f16). I was lucky in the three weeks of the election because there was no rain, which for England in April is quite extraordinary, and the light was mostly in my favor. However, it was still a right pain in the ass using the 4x5 camera in such fast-moving events.

JDG: Were you aware of where these events were going to take place ahead of time?

SR: With this event of course not, here I was just lucky because the only day I spent with Gordon Brown was the day where the biggest news event of the election happened. However, a lot of this work was about logistics because I had to spend time negotiating with the secret service to let me park my motorhome near the politicians. In some instances I'd use Google Street View to pre-plan particular streets around the country where I wanted to photograph a candidate on. I had also already chosen which candidates I thought were going to be interesting in the election, so there had been a lot of setup beforehand to make this project work. Because it was happening in such a short period of time, I couldn't just leave it to total chance.

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Equestrian Jumping Individual, Greenwich Park, London, 8 August 2012 © Simon Roberts

Equestrian Jumping Individual, Greenwich Park, London, 8 August 2012

JDG: In 2012, you were granted access to photograph the XXX Olympic Games, which took place in and around London. Your previous work seems (at least in terms of its process) to be completely incongruous with the fast-paced frenzy of athletic competitions. You had been working largely under your own guise with a large format, film camera on a tripod, shooting from a distance, etc. I imagine some things had to change with how you approached making pictures.

SR: I suppose the context for making this work is that I began in late 2010 making work about the economic crisis. The first thing that the new government implemented after the election was this series of harsh economic cuts. I wanted to carry on making landscape work about Britain but this time through the prism of the economy. And in some ways the Olympics played directly into this because ostensibly the Olympics is a mass marketing event for the host city. So here we were in the middle of a period of enforced austerity when we were also spending vast sums of money on a public sporting event.

Through a friend of a friend, I managed to get a link into the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland and I wrote to them saying I thought it was very important that they give access to a non-sports photographer to create a different perspective on the gamers. After some debate they agreed, with one stipulation: that I wasn't to use a tripod on any Olympic site. This meant I could no longer use the 4x5 field camera, so at that point I decided to try a Phase One digital camera system. That way I could still have a large file size, which I could use to make large exhibition prints and I could also use it in a relatively similar way to the 4x5 (I basically used a monopod and strapped it to my body to create a makeshift tripod). I went to every Olympic stadium and attempted to photograph from as high a vantage point as possible, thereby giving a sense of context of the sporting event within the landscape of London.

JDG: Yet, as we see here, you were still able to work within those restrictions to make pictures that had connections to your previous work in terms of the sense of scale, the relationship between the individual and the collective, the history of place, etc.

SR: I really wanted to look at how London was being branded - the iconography of London and its historic representation that were being appropriated. So this particular image it's one that works really well, I suppose it's one of the strongest in the set. It's playing on the visual history of Greenwich in London; a scene that has been replicated in art and photography for the last 300 or 400 years from J.W. Turner's watercolors up until the present day. It has this rich visual and cultural history that has been borrowed by the London Olympics. What I like about this scene is that it's very different from how most of us normally view the Olympics (through a 400mm lens) but we also have these small icons of Britishness recreated as horse jumps - mock-ups of Stonehenge, Nelson’s Column made out of plywood. The reason I kept the small black camera in the top of my photographic frame (its a tv camera which could hover over the top of the equestrian arena) is because I wanted to give the viewer the sense that this is one big stage set; a piece of theatre.

JDG: You made a number of pictures of this particular event, all from the same vantage point although there are variations in their cropping, composition and overall field of view. Obviously there are also other elements that are changing, but these are not under your control - the weather, the athletes, the fans, that camera in the sky. Can you articulate the difference(s) between those elements in the picture you use and the pictures you don't use?

SR: The second image is taken with a longer lens so everything is slightly flattened, in some ways it feels too compressed. And also it feels a bit more like a conventional sports photograph - the moment of action as the horse jumps, it's almost too good if you like. With the other image, the cloud formation was quite oppressive. It also felt like the photograph was too weighted on the left-hand side and with the horse running into the left of the frame it means that the eye-line of the viewer is being taken out of the frame rather than encouraged to study the photograph closer.

This first frame worked for me the best for several reasons: the colors, the clouds taking you into the center of the frame, there's a slight calmness about the rider that works, but also the two judges that are stood on the sand. They're like little plastic figures who've almost become part of the scenery. And the fact that Canary Wharf (the gleaming glass towers in the background) is in shadow is important; this is part of London's banking district, and here we are in the middle of a financial crisis created due to the banks. So I like the sense of these slightly threatening clouds overhead in the distance.

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4.28.2014

Outtakes: Richard Renaldi

Outtakes is a series of interviews with contemporary photographers who have been asked to share alternate versions of some of their most meaningful, successful and celebrated images. By looking at these outtakes along with the final image and by hearing from the artist directly, we hope to examine the different working methods and criteria that photographers regularly employ in an effort to push past the romanticism of the singular, iconic image and learn more about the way photographs are really made.

Outtakes comes from photographer Joshua Dudley Greer and continues today with images from Richard Renaldi.

Richard Renaldi was born in Chicago in 1968 and earned his BFA from New York University in 1990. Since that time, he has been traveling and photographing extensively for a number of different projects that intimately explore human identity and relationships. His first monograph, Figure and Ground, was published by Aperture in 2006, followed by Fall River Boys in 2009 through Charles Lane Press. His most recent project, Touching Strangers, was published by Aperture earlier this year and is currently being exhibited at Aperture Gallery in NYC.

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Scott, Laramie, Wyoming, 2005 © Richard Renaldi

Scott, Laramie, Wyoming, 2005

Joshua Dudley Greer: This first image is from the series that would become your first book, Figure and Ground, which was published by Aperture in 2006. That work is a combination of two classical genres of picture making - portraits and landscapes, but the vast majority of pictures are portraits. You're working with an 8x10 view camera and here we see four different photographs of the same subject. Was that common for you at that time?

Richard Renaldi: Actually not at all. Back then I usually used only one or occasionally two sheets of film per subject. I specifically remember making more photographs of Scott because I thought that he might fit into another project that I was working on at the time.

JDG: I can't help but sense that at times the places where these portraits were made have some significance. At least in my mind, Laramie, Wyoming will forever be connected with the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard. Was this something that you were thinking about when you encountered this subject?

RR: Very much so. I stopped in Laramie because I was curious about this place I had heard about in the news. I don't think I had ever even known of it prior to the murder of Matthew Shepard. It's very interesting that you asked this question because Scott was the one person I met in Laramie that I actually discussed the story of Matthew Shepard with. He told me that he had met him and that it wasn't actually a hate crime but a drug deal gone bad. I don't know about the veracity of that statement but I do remember talking with Scott about Reagan Youth and how they were an anti-racist band and one of his tattoos as you can see has a swastika with an X through it.

JDG: We see Scott in a variety of different attire - sometimes shirtless, with and without a hat. Would it be fair to assume that you are responsible for these differences? Did those differences factor into your selection of the final image?

RR: I am responsible for those changes. I wish I could say I get all of my subjects to undress for me ha ha, but as I said earlier I was working on another project at the time and wanted to show Scott's tattoos for the Tattoo Boys series I had been working on.

JDG: Is it possible that you would use another image of Scott for this other project or is that something that you would generally avoid?

RR: Yes, I have no problem with that.

JDG: So whether or not you find an image as successful as another is largely determined by the context in which you place that image?

RR: I don't think that is what I am saying. Context is certainly important but I think an image should also be able to stand alone and hold the viewer's attention. The exception to that might be when you are sequencing a book and sometimes you want a different type of image for a break or change in the rhythm. Sometimes those end up being quieter images or having some other quality that sets it apart from the majority of the work. That day I made more than one strong image of Scott and because I saw him fitting into another body of work I was able to take advantage of the fact that I made multiple images of him that were successful. This type of circumstance is pretty rare for me.

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Thomas, 2005 © Richard Renaldi

Thomas, 2005

JDG: This photograph was made the same year as Scott, Laramie, Wyoming and even though they're from separate projects they seem to share many similarities - changing up of the scale, removing the hat, etc. Is there something here that is indicative of how you approach a stranger you want to photograph?

RR: Good question Joshua. I think this is more of a coincidence than my general approach. However, when people are wearing hats I am often curious about what they look like without them. I think an alternative view of a subject's face other than how they looked when you found them has the potential to be more broadening. One other point that I do remember around this time is trying to be more diverse in how I approached the framing of my subjects. I was making efforts to step out of my habit of center framing my subject's full body - head to toe.

JDG: You've selected the tightest view, almost completely eliminating the context of his surroundings, and there seems to be a tension in his face that wasn't as noticeable in the other views. This image became the cover for your second monograph Fall River Boys, is there something about this particular picture that you felt best represented the entire series?

RR: Yes, the tension in his face felt like it told a part of the story I wanted to tell about growing up in a post-industrial, lower-middle class town like Fall River. Originally I had thought about something more seductive like the arresting portrait of the tattooed shirtless young man Craig with goose bumps all over his bare chest. When my designer Andrew Sloat presented us with an alternative cover I immediately took to it and felt it was the direction we should go with the cover image. TJ had some life experiences already at his young age and I think that shows in the close-up of his face.

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Ashtabula, Ohio, 2012 © Richard Renaldi

Ashtabula, Ohio, 2012

JDG: This image is from your longest running series, Hotel Room Portraits, which features you and your partner in a variety of hotel rooms all around the world. Is there something specific that is taking you guys to places like Cuba, Italy, Morocco, Thailand and all parts of the US?

RR: Usually nothing other than the love of travel and adventure. We have the traveler's bug!

JDG: I love the idea of traveling thousands of miles to all these extraordinary locations only to photograph the inside of a hotel room. It seems almost like a stance against exoticism.

RR: That's really well put and an interesting take. Being the photography addict that I am however, I am always making pictures when I travel. I only recently put together some of these other images I make while traveling into a series titled The Crossing. I think the hotel room portraits are not only about self-portraiture. There are many cultural signposts contained within these varying hotel rooms and those clues speak to cultural and national identities. The architecture of hospitality and class are additional themes that have emerged out of making these photographs.

JDG: Yeah, those things are so interesting to include in portraits such as these because they don't necessarily communicate anything specifically about you. We've become so accustomed to using the surrounding space of an environmental portrait to infer certain things about the people depicted within those spaces, but this kind of challenges that idea. So when we view this series as a whole, the context is always shifting, but you and your partner are the constants.

RR: We (as well as our relationship) are the constants. Although, the one thing that does change in regards to Seth and myself is our appearance. Our bodies have changed quite a bit over the years; from more boyish, to extremely worked out, to less so today. Additionally there has been a progression and increase in the amount of ink on my body. Seth and I have always imagined doing this project until we are no longer able to get around, so I imagine and hope that there will be images of us as grey, weathered shrunken old men by the time we are through!

JDG: You're well known for using the 8x10, but this work appears to be made with small format cameras, 35mm and DSLR. How does that affect your way of working, both in terms of shooting and editing?

RR: I am freer to shoot more liberally and try different things. That I can instantly see what I have made allows me to make sure I get it right every time we hotel it. That is not a luxury I always have with the view camera.

JDG: Right, there are many slight differentiations between these four pictures in terms of the lighting, composition, clothing, posture, etc. Do you think you wouldn't have all of those variations if you were working with a view camera?

RR: I would have variations for certain, but I suspect I would be more cautious if were I photographing this project with a view camera. As you know with digital you are able to photograph until the cows come home and it costs you no more than the time you put into it. With a view camera you don't have that luxury. I also can't imagine there would be the same quantity of images - I can easily imagine not having the time or energy to shoot large format at every single hotel we spent the night at and travelling with a view camera all over the globe every time we go somewhere is not a realistic commitment. The SLR lends itself to getting it done and with the scope and breadth of this project I think it is really a necessity.

JDG: Can you pinpoint what it is about the final image that you find more successful than the others?

RR: Small things like the position of our feet, our facial expressions, exposure, and I would say the overall harmony.

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Nathan and Robyn, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 2012

JDG: In your latest project and book, Touching Strangers, you're working out on the street and encouraging complete strangers to physically connect with one another in some way. How does this process usually work?

RR: I approach potential subjects and explain to them what I am doing, "making family portraits out of strangers," and then show them examples on my smart phone or tablet. If they have agreed to this, they have to wait until I can procure a companion for them. That's when the pressure is really turned up.

JDG: So in this particular case, which person was discovered first?

RR: Nathan, the police officer.

JDG: And then in your mind are you looking or hoping for something in particular to pair up with him?

RR: The pairs are so circumstantial that I can only hope that a suitable partner comes along. I don't think I often had a type of person in mind for the second subject. Sometimes I had an idea of a subject that I was hoping to add to the project but the partner was in almost every circumstance I can think of dependent on chance and serendipity. Sometimes on occasion a subject that I was "looking" for would end up as the second person in a pairing. That I found a pubescent girl with an American flag on her shirt to pair with this police officer in full regalia was probably due to my tenacious nature and a bit of luck.

JDG: It seems like one of the biggest challenges with this work would be managing the awkwardness in terms of the gestures and the physical interaction. I think the three images we see here are great examples of how those variations can affect our understanding or misunderstanding of the subjects' relationship.

RR: I think all three are actually interesting to look at and if I never made the image in front of the vertical wooden siding that is now the cover of Touching Strangers I likely would have included one of the other two in the book. Perhaps the outtakes feel a little more casual and familiar than the chosen image but I think the sentiment isn't that far apart between the three images. I am drawn to the image I chose because it has a pleasing formalism, it is a strongly graphic image, and has an elegance that might be missing from the other two.

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12.09.2013

Outtakes: Amy Stein

Outtakes is a series of interviews with contemporary photographers who have been asked to share alternate versions of some of their most meaningful, successful and celebrated images. By looking at these outtakes along with the final image and by hearing from the artist directly, we hope to examine the different working methods and criteria that photographers regularly employ in an effort to push past the romanticism of the singular, iconic image and learn more about the way photographs are really made.

Outtakes comes from photographer Joshua Dudley Greer and continues today with images from Amy Stein.

Amy Stein (b.1970) was raised in Washington, DC and Karachi, Pakistan. She holds a BS in Political Science from James Madison University, an MS in Political Science from the University of Edinburgh and an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Nevada Museum of Art, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and the George Eastman House. In 2007, she received the Critical Mass Book Award for her series, Domesticated, which was published in 2008 and went on to claim the Best Photobook Award at the New York Photo Festival. Her second book, Tall Poppy Syndrome, a collaborative project with Stacy Mehrfar, was published by Decode Books in 2012.

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Howl

Joshua Dudley Greer: In your series, Domesticated, you constructed scenes to be photographed based on actual interactions between animals and humans. Were these narratives just a jumping off point for your images or are you staying pretty literal with the information?

Amy Stein: The stories were often just a starting point on the path to the final image. In many cases the story details I had access to were very spare or rough, just a few lines in the local newspaper or police blotter or a quickly recounted memory told to me by a local resident. But I found these broad strokes enough to inspire the general theme and eventually the details of the image, which I was more than happy to fill in. I consider the images in the series to be fictions based on facts.

JDG: In the case of Howl, what was the narrative that inspired the picture?

AS: This is one of the richest and most bizarre stories from the series. Down the road from the center of Matamoras, PA, where the series is set, is a Target. Someone mentioned to me that the Target employees who work the late shift had spotted coyotes in the parking lot at the end of their shift. The coyotes were said to be running around in the parking lot yipping and howling. When I visited the parking lot (at dusk) I saw the standard issue overhead lights illuminating the lot. I became interested in the coyotes’ relationship with the lights and imagined them as false moons that were seductive and disorienting to the animals. After that the image just fell into place.

JDG: I love the idea of the artificial light acting as a surrogate for the moon and how that relates to some of the central concerns of this series about constructed spaces and the wild. In these three images, we get to see three different approaches concerning the light pole - one image shows it in its entirety, one image shows only the light that’s being emitted, while the image you ultimately chose strikes a balance between these two. Was it a conscious decision to imply but not fully describe the source of the light in the photograph?

AS: Yes, exactly. The final image was the obvious choice because in it the light is spreading, perhaps due partially to lens flare, in a spherical shape that references the moon. The two symmetrical trees also add to the graphic quality of the image and reinforce the reality of the manufactured space of the lot.

JDG: I think the image of just the coyote is quite striking, but is it lacking something for you?

AS: For me it’s striking in a different way. The expression of the animal is more visible and conveys stronger emotion, but the light as a distinct object is missing and its presence is less specific and more ambient. The final image works much better for me because of the concrete presence of the pole and light.

JDG: Ordinarily I think a lone school bus in an empty parking lot would seem like a real gift, but in this case, it seems like maybe it complicates the narrative in a way that you didn’t want.

AS: Yes, I love the way it looks in the frame but thematically it’s unrelated to the other elements in the image and as you point out, introduces the possibility of another narrative.

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Roman Candle

JDG: Naively, one might think that because these photographs are pre-conceived and staged to a certain extent that the final image was perfectly clear in the artist’s mind beforehand, but based on the variations we see here, it’s pretty evident that you’re still allowing yourself the freedom to make lots of different pictures.

AS: Absolutely. For this series I approached each image and scene with a loose plan that included the animal, sometimes a human subject and location, and the firm expectation that something would go wrong or would not work. I had to improvise to some extent on every image.

JDG: Plus you often have the added complexity of working with people in this series. I imagine that adds to the possibilities.

AS: Yes, of course. When working with subjects I give a general direction and then let them improvise to the extent that they’re comfortable with that. Then I move around a lot and we try a number of different angles and perspectives on the scene. For this series I really did shoot each scene until I had exhausted either the subject or myself, or both.

JDG: Do you ever make sketches or anything like that beforehand?

AS: No sketches. Just lists and scouting shots of the animals and scenes.

JDG: You made many variations of this particular setup. At times the children grow in number, get quite close to the raccoon and seem to be the obvious aggressors without much fear. However, in the image you selected, the distance is greater and the two boys seem more timid, possibly just as scared as the animal.

AS: I tried many scenarios with this image. I was lucky enough to find a group of young skaters who were willing to work with me to tell this story. I didn’t want the image to read simply as young male aggression toward a defenseless animal. That’s a story we’ve heard before that is tragic and sad for all the parties involved. But I did want to talk about a gut level mix of fear and response. I hadn’t considered the fact that the boys are equidistant to the raccoon. There is a nice symmetry to the placement of the figures in the trio that I hadn’t noticed before. I was more concerned with gesture and the believability and readability of the image. The additional figures in the larger groupings seemed to crowd and confuse the image.

The firecracker in the image, a roman candle, is important as well. I brought it to the shoot because I thought it could be an important element in the picture. The town of Matamoras is located at the border where New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania meet. I think it’s legal to buy and sell fireworks in Pennsylvania but not in New York and New Jersey. Consequently there are about ten massive fireworks outlet stores in Matamoras and the surrounding area. Many more than there are churches, grocery stores or restaurants. You see people playing around with fireworks at all times of the year. It’s sort of ridiculous. I wanted to include a firework in one of the images as a nod to their ubiquity in the literal and cultural landscape of the town.

JDG: It looks like the cast changes from image to image and at times you have one boy address the camera. That singular action changes the way I read those photographs – it seems like it implies an awareness of the act that I don’t necessarily get from the others.

AS: The choice to have the boy face the camera was very specific, and an outlier within the series. It involves and potentially implicates the viewer in a way that the others don’t. I eventually edited it out for that reason. The final image affords the boys a bit of anonymity, and focuses primarily on their body gestures as they menace the raccoon, which is where I think the tension of the image resides.

As an aside in the middle of this shoot it started to pour. These boys were kind enough to wait in a nearby baseball dugout with me until the rain passed and shooting resumed. We shot for hours and they were too shy or kind to tell me that they would be late for dinner and their parents would be worried. I wonder how they explained the afternoon to them.

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Peri, Route 64, Kentucky

JDG: While Domesticated was very much a kind of research-based project that involved quite a bit of preparation and planning, it seems like Stranded is at the other end of the spectrum. Are you just driving around hoping to stumble upon these motorists stuck in limbo?

AS: Driving, but not just driving. Usually I would fly into a city from which I would base a regional road trip. There I’d rent a car, plan a route and gather food, water and tools like jumper cables, motor oil, etc. I’d then set off along a major highway driving in the right hand lane at a slowish but reasonable pace while looking ahead for stopped cars on the roadside. If I saw anything I’d stop and investigate. I’d drive and shoot and talk to stranded motorists all day and then find a cheap hotel to crash overnight then start the process again the next morning. This would go on for days and days. Some days, when I intersected with breakdowns and was able to shoot, it was exciting, others, when I found no one and drove all day with little breaks, it was excruciating.

But back for a moment to your point that Domesticated and Stranded are very different in their conception and execution. They are. I shot the bulk of both projects over the same time period, from 2005-2009. I used those differences to give myself a breather from each project as I switched back and forth. So I was always able to make progress on each project without getting burned out.

JDG: How do you think being a woman has affected how people receive you in these kinds of roadside environments?

AS: I don’t think I would have been granted access to shoot in many situations. I had the sense that people were skeptical about my presence much of the time so I think a man in my situation would have been met with even more skepticism and perhaps absolute refusal. Many times I was alone with a stranded female motorist along an isolated stretch of road. Often I felt that while they were guarded with me they allowed me to shoot. Women tend to be even more guarded around men that they don’t know. It’s ingrained in us from a young age through womanhood: Don’t talk to strangers, protect yourself from strange men, if you feel uncomfortable get yourself out of the situation or call for help. While these assessments aren’t always fair they are absolutely understandable and often necessary. Even the most unassuming, well-intentioned male photographer wouldn’t stand a chance.

JDG: Could you describe the circumstances of this particular encounter?

AS: I came across this van at the end of a bad day. It was toward the end of the first trip I made for Stranded, in November 2005. I was exploring the Rust Belt by driving through Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. The process of stopping and photographing was relatively new to me and at this point I had driven all day and found little to shoot. I had just left Lexington, Kentucky and was pushing through until dark and the motel. On the right side of the road I saw the van and even though I was tired and discouraged, I knew I had to stop. The motorized wheelchair attached to the back was a promising sign. Perhaps because it was cold no one was outside the vehicle. I pulled up behind it and screwed up my courage to approach and knock on the door. When I did the driver told me that they’d run out of gas and that his wife had walked back to the last exit to find gas. They were local and knew of a gas station where they could get help. He was on oxygen and seemed to be the owner of the wheelchair so when I asked him if I could photograph him and the situation, I wasn’t surprised when he declined. But, he said, “my daughters are in the back, maybe they’d pose.” So I opened the sliding door and out peered these three young girls. They agreed to be photographed and we were off to the races.

JDG: What was it about this particular girl that made you single her out?

AS: There were a number of images from this shoot that had strong potential. I liked the three sisters grouped together, sort of clinging to the entryway of the van. But the more I studied the contact sheets it seemed that Peri had a quality that her sisters did not. Perhaps because she was the youngest, when I asked for the girls to come away from the van the older two demurred and pushed her forward. She stood awkwardly and because she was cold she pulled her arms into her shirt. First I shot her with the van in the background but then when I isolated her from the van and her family the image fell into place. The rest I think is obvious. When I saw the image on the contact sheet, although I liked many of the others from this situation, I knew this was the shot.

JDG: Was there a sense of that when you made the photograph or did the realization only occur afterward, when looking at the proofs?

AS: Not sure if I can remember that specifically. I do remember a feeling of relief when leaving the scene that I had the chance to shoot something that day and also feeling keyed up, like I may have made an important image.

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Gary, West Virginia

JDG: I think just about anyone can appreciate the tension inherent in approaching a complete stranger who is in distress in an unknown situation. Add to that, the fact that you’re there to photograph and not necessarily to help, and I think you have a truly awkward situation, one that many would shy away from.

AS: It can be awkward and in those first moments when I approach the person to ask if I can make an image it’s sort of excruciating. But that passes quickly and in the end the discomfort is often well rewarded.

JDG: These photographs seem to literalize the possible danger of the roadside, but in a very specific way. Could you describe the scene for us?

AS: It looks more nefarious than it was. Looking back, I was probably in greater danger during more mundane looking scenes. I made this image the day after photographing Peri, while driving through West Virginia on my way back to Pittsburgh. The day was so beautiful; the mountains were foggy and there was a bit of snow on the ground. I spotted the truck on the side of the road idling. Then I saw three hunters climbing up the embankment. I learned that their truck had broken down on the way to the hunting trailhead so they decided to leave the driver and walk into the forest. I spoke to the driver and he called them to come back down to the road. That’s when I made the images. I shot the group on the hillside and then along the road.

JDG: This is another example where you started out with multiple subjects and ultimately decided to edit out all but one.

AS: Yes, as with Peri, I think the stronger image includes only the single figure. There was really no debate with this image. This was the one. It’s the one that makes people gasp or chuckle when I show it during artists talks.

JDG: Although you do have variety in the series, I’m wondering if there’s something about a solitary person stranded alone on the road that appeals to you.

AS: Formally and conceptually yes, the single figure along the roadside is the most direct and profound part of the statement of Stranded. The series is partially about vulnerability and isolation in the moment, and in a way that bleeds into larger aspects of an individual’s life. So yes. It’s a scene I gravitate to consciously and probably a bit unconsciously.

JDG: But perhaps you’re going beyond being gravitated to it, you’re really cultivating it - you’re creating it. When we only see this one man alone with a truck, it’s a kind of fiction.

AS: In a sense, it’s all a fiction to some degree. All artists omit certain elements and include others to craft the story they wish to tell. The circumstances under which they find these elements may be concrete or "factual," especially within the photographic medium, but the results are almost always a fiction of some sort.

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