Interview with Photobook Designer Elizabeth Avedon
I first met Elizabeth Avedon when she was the Gallery Director at photo-eye. Since the time Elizabeth departed Santa Fe, she established her own blog which has become a recognized voice in the photography community featuring portfolios and interviews, including my first interview about my photography. I am delighted to turn the tables on Ms. Avedon and allow her to discuss her profession: Book, Exhibition and Web Design + Curatorial Consultant. Here she discusses the photobook, print-on-demand, and some of her favorite projects.
Melanie McWhorter: At what point is it important to involve a designer in your project?
Elizabeth Avedon: There are different stages for a designer to step in for every project. It really depends on the artist/photographer. Some photographers will start talking to me years before they actually are ready to begin the layouts, others hand me a complete, finished edit when I first meet them. I can easily begin to sequence the work for them from that, but I think it's an important step in the overall process for the designer to be involved in the edit of the work from the start, to get a feel for the point of view of the photographer. Many times the designer will see an interesting "book" the artist hadn't imagined for themselves. Other times the photographer will be overly critical in their edit, second guessing themselves and their audience, leaving out images that may show important steps in the evolution of their work. Other photographers may not be critical enough with their work, unable to edit out images because of the people, place or action going on which may not actually come across so well in the image as they think. They are still visualizing the moment, but we don't see it in the frame. It's important for everyone to have an outside eye.
MM: Are most of your clients individuals and do you consult with them one-on-one or are most publishers?
EA: I'm not really a trade book designer, although I love the work I've done for them in the past. (Favorite was An Open Heart by The Dalai Lama for Little, Brown & Co). Almost all of my clients have been individuals or at least the projects start out as someone approaching me and then suggesting to their publisher they would like to work with me. I'm mostly asked to work on special projects. I recently had lunch with the son of a late great photographer to discuss a book of his father's iconic images. Fortunately I knew his father and many of these images are part of my own history, so it could work out well for both of us. We discussed whether to bring in a publisher at this juncture or design the completed book and package it to a publisher. Other times I'll design and print a 20-page dummy for someone to shop around to publishers.
MM: What do you feel is the role of a designer in a creating a photobook?
EA:
I think a designer is there to organize the work, whether through a
timeline, chapters, subcategories or just by the sequencing into a
narrative. The way the works flows from one image to the next, one
spread to another, should intuitively guide the viewer through the
photographer's world - his or her intention with their work. It's really
fun to do a very creative design, with crazy fabulous typography and
collage the images and show off as a designer, but that isn't going to
showcase a photographer's work. I try to let the work dictate what
kind of book it wants to be and stay out of the way. Let the work
speak for itself. I've worked on several long-term projects that began
as one kind of book and when they were completed, I could see they
wanted to be an entirely different kind of book. The work needed to be
organized into its first incarnation, to see it was meant to be as an
entirely different kind of entity...read more here
Photographer Melanie McWhorterhas managed photo-eye BookStore, the best online Photography Bookstore in the world, for over 13 years. She is a regular contributor to the photo-eyeMagazine, co-founder of FiniteFoto Magazine, curator and lecturer.
Larissa Leclair teamed with Flak Photo's Weekend series featuring photographs by Zwelethu Mthethwa. Larissa corresponded with Zwelethu as he prepared to travel from South Africa to the U.S. for the opening of “Inner Views” at the Studio Museum in Harlem, July 15-Oct 24. They talked about his monograph, his Sugar Cane series, the South African photography community, and about the current show at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Below is an excerpt from their Interview courtesy of Larissa Leclair.
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LL: Your work as a whole addresses the economic and political reality of marginalized communities primarily in South Africa. Can you talk about your personal interest in these communities and professions (miners, sugarcane workers, etc.). Are you personally an outsider or is there more of a connection to these people and circumstances -politically, economically, culturally?
ZM: The work is about my personal history and personal observation. I grew up in contact with these different communities all the time. I was always interested in how the migrant workers would be ostracized from the main community, which was the community that I came from. The migrant workers were always seen as “the other” – they looked different, talked different, dressed different – they were just so different. As a kid I was curious to understand the dynamics of these differences, mainly because we were all black, I assumed we were all the same. Growing up as an artist I came to realize that I was also an outsider because with my views on life I probably didn’t belong to any of the communities, even the mainstream community.
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My first attraction to the sugar cane workers was that they were wearing skirts, and that they looked to me like Samurai warriors. I then found out that, not only were they wearing skirts, but also many other layers of clothing. This was odd to me because Durban is an incredibly hot and humid area. I thought they must be crazy to be wearing so many clothes and still doing manual labor. I discovered, through speaking with them, that the reason was to protect themselves from the burning ground and soot (sugar cane is burnt before harvested); from the very sharp leaves of the cane; and also from the many snakes that like to live in sugar cane fields. The most difficult part of taking these photographs was stopping them from working. These guys are paid according to the weight of sugar cane that they harvest; there is no hourly rate. I felt guilty that I was interrupting and taking their money away from them by asking them to pose for me. So this forced me to move in and out as quickly as possible, interrupting their flow of production as little as possible.
MONA KUHN NATIVE APRIL 9 - MAY 15 • FLOWERS GALLERY NYC ARTIST TALK APRIL 10 3 PM
One of my favorite contemporary photographers, acclaimed artist MonaKuhn, has an exhibition of her latest series of photographs in conjunction with her new book, Native (Steidl) opening this week at the Flowers Gallery in New York City. Kuhn will also conduct a Gallery Talk April 10th. "MonaKuhn, best known for her alluring figurative studies in a French naturist colony, returned to her birthplace of Brazil after a 20 year absence to produce this new body of work. While this personal journey home was an attempt to reconnect with her past, Kuhn soon found that only traces of it actually remained. Through the discovery of new people and places, Kuhn was able to create her abstracted dreams and desires of both the past and the present. The result is a sensual and pensive narrative depicting lush jungle landscapes, rustic interiors, and captivating nudes.
In these photographs, Kuhn encapsulates the emotions of living in Brazil through the personal memory of the green, yellow and pink palette of the landscape as well as her intimate connection with its people. By contrasting the vitality of the dense Brazilian countryside with the sparse interior of an abandoned apartment, Kuhn establishes her own fantasy of time and place. As in all of her portraits, Kuhn develops a trusting relationship with her subjects, allowing her to portray the complexities of human nature both tempting and provoking the viewer’s imagination. The intertwining of these aspects forms what one could consider Kuhn’s most mature work to date."–Flowers Gallery
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INTERVIEW HEATHER SNIDER + MONA KUHN
Curator HeatherSnider graciously allowed me to reprint her interview with Mona Kuhn about this new body of work and Kuhn's experience of returning home to Brazil after 20 years. HS: It has been a long time since you lived in Brazil; you’ve spent your adult life elsewhere. Though you undoubtedly expected things would be unfamiliar, what things surprised you the most as you dug under the surface and tried to operate in this new yet familiar situation?
MK: I wasn’t so surprised because it was very familiar. It was more like the re-occurrence of something you once knew but had forgotten. I was surprised by how connected I still am, emotionally, to everything there: the smells, the taste, and the feel of my own body in such a familiar environment.
HS: What were the biggest challenges you faced?
MK: My biggest challenge was finding the people that I wanted to photograph. I’ve been working in a naturalist community because I want to do nudes and I want it to be an authentic experience, where people are already in the nude. But Brazil is, despite the images of bikini beaches and Carnival, a Catholic, Latin American country, and not as open as you might think. Interacting with the people there, and old friends, took time. Trust had to be established. But once it all started rolling then it grew by word of mouth which is in the end most fulfilling. Through good fortune I was able to find a place where I could bring all the people to photograph, a place that had been empty for 20 years and coincidentally had the palette that I wanted to use. A friend of mine told me about an apartment, and offered to show it to me. When we opened the door I knew immediately that it was the place. In France I have my own closed environment to work in but in Brazil I didn’t have that place. I didn’t want to use my own personal house because it wasn’t about exploring my own attic. I wanted it to be more abstract than that, to be a fantasy and not autobiographical. I didn’t want the sepia reproduction photographs of my grandparents.
HS: The whole process of working in Brazil was quite different from how you have been working for the past few years, yet you achieved a remarkable consistency in your imagery. How much did you have to consciously work on this? What were the parameters you set to make sure you stayed within the rather specific visual language you have delineated in your work up to this point?
MK: I like researching. When I realized I wanted to do something in Brazil, something that would interpret my own feelings about Brazil now, as an adult, I looked at things that had been done. I knew what I did not want to do: Carnival, the beaches, the poor people in the streets, and the images of happiness and Bossanova. I started narrowing my thoughts, becoming more and more personal, and realized my interest was in the internal, the emotions of living there. l wanted to use colors that I always felt were part of my life there, the greens the yellows and the pinks. The way I worked with the people was similar to how I usually work, it was just a bit more moody perhaps. But with photography, inside your parameters, you have to leave it loose and open, to allow for the spontaneous and let life be what it is, so that was an important part of it too.
HS: Would you say you were searching for something in particular, or wondering what you would find? If so, what was “it?”
MK: There is a quote of Eugene Smith’s that has always been important to me: “You must be lost before you can find yourself again”....that thought was often in my mind. When you go back to your childhood place, certain things seem so mundane, but you have to remind yourself (that they might be wonderful to someone else) and try to see things with new eyes. I was working intuitively, not knowing what was going to come out, letting myself react, putting myself into situations. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, which was good, because my antennae were open to everything. When I found the apartment it started coming into focus. The first trip I made was very broad and open, but it was like being a cat: you throw it and it has to land on its own feet.
HS: Would you say that this series is more about yourself than earlier work?
MK: It is about myself because it is my homeland, but I’d say that my other work is equally about myself in other ways. I also still go to France to work and that work is a big part of who I am and have been for the past 15 years. Native is about my first 20 years.
HS: Was this work done mostly in São Paolo? Can we talk about choosing to portray only interiors and nature in the midst of one of the biggest urban environments in the world?
MK: I worked mostly in the state of São Paolo, though some of the forest regions were further out, in different areas. But many of these portraits were taken in the city, in the very heart of the city. I didn’t really want to capture reality. I wasn’t interested in portraying where it was, more in entering the thoughts. In the editing, the way the apartment photographs and jungle photographs work together, my intention was to be inconclusive. It’s not meant to be about São Paolo. It is about a mood, about Brazil, about a bird returning to a nest in the forest. Just like my work in France is not about the Medoc region. It is about a fantasy place.
HS: Jungles are such potent metaphors: thick, dense with life in a dangerous sort of way, a fecund, untamed environment. As a child growing up in Brazil, what was the jungle of your imagination, or real life experience? What is your adult perspective on the jungle, and on the Brazilian jungle in particular?
MK: When you enter a forest, deep into a forest, and walk under very tall trees, you realize how overpowering nature is. It has a spirituality that draws you into it. It is also a place where you can escape and create your own reality. For an adult, it has the power of bringing your instincts out. You have to be aware of what’s happening around you, your instincts are turned on, and human nature comes out. This is a different set of instincts than those of day-to-day street life. It is humid, you can smell your sweat, and feel the moisture in the air, your senses become more acute. The Brazilian forest is also very sultry, and makes your sexual senses more acute. There is also a feeling of adventure, and fear, balanced by a sensual element.
HS: Were there any artists you had in mind when you set about photographing, artists that you had in mind either for the idea of returning home or who portrayed similar environments?
MK: I was definitely looking at Rousseau, whose forests look like paradise, idyllic with beautiful fruits and so full of detail. But one thing I did not want to do was to pose people in the forest setting. I wanted the forest to be separate, a psychological atmosphere more than a real place. In the instances where I did photograph people there, it was because I happened to find them there or I was walking in the forest with a friend and we just decided to try it. I also looked at Gauguin, particularly a painting titled Where Do we Come From: What Are We? Where Are We Going? Gauguin was looking for clues, learning about life. He submerged himself in Tahiti and it became part of his life.
HS: There has always been a certain artifice to your photographs, of subjects being posed or placed, which is tempered by the very natural atmosphere of your work, the relaxed lack of self-consciousness. In most of these new images, your subjects weren’t found in the environment, they were introduced for the purpose of making photographs. How did this change your working process and the photographs that you ended up with?
MK: I wanted to create a narrative, and it was important to put parameters in place as we mentioned earlier. Unlike Avedon traveling across America, or Irving Penn’s use of a backdrop in many settings, I didn’t want to isolate my subjects from their environment, or to photograph them as the “other” or the exotic. I wanted to photograph contemporary people that are part of my generation in Brazil, the people I might have been if I were living in Brazil today. The apartment we worked in was in the very center of downtown São Paolo, one of the oldest areas of the city. At one time it was a prominent neighborhood but now it is a marginal area, decayed and empty at night, not really a residential area. It took some time to get there from other areas of São Paolo and more than once the people I was photographing mentioned that the long drive getting there helped them to detach a bit from their everyday. Visiting this place we wouldn’t normally go helped to enter a different state of mind, to abstract the moment.
HS: The interiors have a distinctive atmosphere, suggesting decay, abandonment, and to me are quite unfamiliar and mysterious. Are they, or are certain elements, particularly Brazilian? Do you think they would resonate differently to a viewer from Brazil than to someone who has never visited or lived there?
MK: I guess they are very Brazilian because there are hints about what the culture has gone through. The green walls reference the geography, the forest, and also the militarism in Brazil’s history. There is also the decayed matte gold curtain, a sign of the early Euro-baroque influence and a light fixture that is very 1950s, an era in which Brazil was letting go and having their own cultural enlightenment. This was when Brasilia was built, and Brazil developed a tropical Modernism. There was this girl named Veronica who is wearing a crucifix. When she came to the apartment she asked if she should take it off but I thought it was perfect, just a hint. All these things made sense to me, touching on the symbols of culture without entering it completely.
HS: I spoke with you the night before you left on one of your first trips for this project and you described to me a dream you’d had filled with anxiety, about the fears you had of the real dangers present in Brazil, and your concern that you might be putting yourself in harm’s way. How did this anxiety work its way out in the process?
MK: I was very afraid, because I had experienced dangerous situations when I lived there and there is always the threat of random criminality. It was an anxiety about destiny. I was wondering what it meant for me to be returning and if I was tempting fate. Part of my creative process, a big part of the project, was to throw myself into unknown situations. Especially working in downtown as I was, and even in the forests there is the possibility that people can be hiding there. I did everything alone. I didn’t have an assistant. I didn’t have security. I was putting myself into situations and had to be aware and alert, but the work is not about that. There certainly were risks, but I was not interested in documenting or portraying any of that in the photographs. This was just part of the territory I was working in. It did manifest itself twice while I was working there, but it wasn’t part of the work.
HS: Will you go back to photograph in Brazil? Do you feel that this project is complete?
MK: It feels complete now. If I went back, I would do something else. My curiosity about coming to terms with the past is resolved. I was searching for the past but it was an oxymoron because you can never find the past. You can’t go back. The people I met there represented the present.
HS: In one of the essays in your new book, Wayne Anderson mentions the quietude and silence of your photography. Do you agree with this observation? How did this change in regard to the above project, when you were literally working with sound?
MK: I do relate to the idea of slow motion, a pensive state, and the moments in between thoughts. Though my photographs show nudity, they are quiet as opposed to sexy. In making the video we weren’t really working with sound, it was placed afterwards. We knew we had a five-minute space we had to create and I knew the music and the lyrics, but it was a visual process.
HS: Are you already working on your next project, what ideas are next on the horizon?
MK: I have been working on a side project for the past couple of summers in the Bordeaux region of France, that one is a collection of portraits over a long period of time, all taken in the same room. It is quite traditional, and it may take as long as wine to reach maturity. Meanwhile, I’ve started researching my next active project. I’d like to do it about my present time and place, which is Los Angeles. I’m still defining it, but it will be about my present, where I am now.
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Mona Kuhn has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe and South America. Steidl published her past two monographs Photographs (2004), Evidence (2007), as well as her most recent Native (2009).
Artist and sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, born in Paris December 25, 1911, died at home May 31, 2010 at 98 years old. She began her career as a draftsman at 12, providing drawings for the missing pieces of tapestries for her families business. At 15 she studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, then began studying painting at the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-Arts, later working as assistant to Fernand Léger. After moving to the U.S. with her American husband, art historian and Director of the Museum of Primitive Art of New York, Robert Goldwater, she studied at the Art Students League of New York.
Robert Rauschenberg, Greek Toy Glut (Neapolitan), 1987 Metallo Asemblato (c) Estate of Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg, West-Ho Glut, 1986, Metallo Asemblato
(c) Estate of Robert Rauschenberg
I think of the "Gluts"series as souvenirs without nostalgia. What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its possibility might be. –Robert Rauschenberg
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The following text is from An Interview WithRobert Rauschenbergby American Art Critic, Barbara Rose, published under the imprint "Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists" by Random House(Here):
BR: There's a lot of recycling and reuse in your work. You believe that you don't have to throw something away just because it's old. There's always a possibility for a use. This isn't a common idea. People are really into "new" today.
RR: The only thing I like to keep out of a work, no matter what the materials are, is the history of the process of putting it together. I don't bring that into it. I think of the "Gluts" series as souvenirs without nostalgia. What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its possibility might be.
BR: Your art has certainly always been available. You don't need to have an enormous background on Rauschenberg's history to relate to his work. There is always something there to which anybody can relate. That's why it's popular. You may not contrive to be popular, but you are.
RR: When I see the sorts of things you are referring to, I try to destroy them. I'm sure that I haven't been able to avoid developing some "classic" qualities, and I don't mind them being hidden. I just object to their being the subject.
BR: You prefer a composition that is not obviously a composition.
RR: I prefer not to brag about it's sophisticated anatomy.
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BR: I have watched you work, and it is an interaction–it is your encounter, and you interact with this material or this image or whatever, but you never plan your work. There is no plan or sketch. It's absolutely pure process. Which comes, I believe, from abstract expressionism. It's the process. You don't know until it's finished what it is, and it's done when you've decided that that's it–I think that's an aspect of your work.
RR: Actually, when I'm painting, I think that my mental attitude is to drive with the brakes on, and when I sense a funny smell, then I turn off the ignition.
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RR: For me, Tibet was a living relationship with people. It was a reaffirmation of the fact no matter what the language is or the customs are, there is a general love between human beings. I know it sounds simplistic, but you could see it in Tibet. Some places it's harder to break through that. These people–perhaps because the air is so thin, or their life is so hard, or because they are so religiously rich–have love all over the place. I mean, every step, no matter how cold it is or how hot or how muddy, is still part of the palette of friendship.
An InterviewWith FrancescoClemente. Front Cover Photograph (c) Richard Avedon/All Rights Reserved. "She and She"Back Cover Painting (c) Francesco Clemente /All Rights Reserved.
Sky and Water, Watercolour on paper
Painting by Francesco Clemente /All Rights Reserved
"...about the publication of your book of poems, Castelli di Sabbia. (Naples: L’Arte Tipografica, 1964) "I had been reciting it to my mother since I was five or six, and it was published against my better judgment. It was enormously embarrassing, and it made me into a painter, actually, because I decided that to be a poet was too embarrassing; it was too revealing, and I wanted something more obscure to deal with. I thought of painting that way. That was when I was eleven or twelve years old."
"Paintings are simple things. They are important not so much for what is in them as for what is not there. When we talk of the Renaissance we talk of something fragile; the surprise is that at a certain point, after a thousand years of Christianity, Renaissance artists looked at their bodies again, and looked at their faces, and looked at the world as a sensual place. This feeling of surprise happens again in Tiepolo's skies, and even down to de Chirico's earliest painting. If we talk of Piero della Francesca, what comes to mind is the light. There are two lineages of light in painting. One is a secular light: from Caravaggio to de Kooning. The light is outside; it comes down on things, and makes them what they are. But if we talk of Piero, or talk of Roman paintings, or of the Pompeian paintings, we talk of a light that comes from within and that has nothing to do with the history of man. It is a light that is before the history of man. Giotto is unique because you don't know exactly which way the light goes: his is already a completely secular point of view, but still the light is treated as an inner flow. There is really no one else like him; that degree of mystery is nowhere else. We have to talk in terms of light, because if we talk in terms of formalities, what can we get out of it?"
"It could be a step forward to realize that the rational picture of the world is also an imagination; it has the same reality as a myth. It is the product of the mind; it is not more substantial than the mind. When we talk about mythology we are talking about questions of history, of rational thought and rationalized memory of our past. History is the most tragic product of the rational mind–a picture from which there is no way to escape. The picture of the world that history gives us is the picture of a dead person who looks over his own life. It is as if we are all dead, and we are looking at the world in a glass case. How can we get away from this? I have no answer for it."
"I love the Interview with Richard Barnes...it really broadens an appreciation for the work and gives a real sense about its significance for the artist himself."– Photographer Lisa M. Robinson
Photograph (c) Richard Barnes /All Rights Reserved
AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD BARNES
“A curator, writing about my work, described the archaeological process as akin to the autopsy, in that it is simultaneously revealing and destructive of its object of study. I like the idea in my work of coming from a place that is both ambiguous and contradictory at the same time.”–Richard Barnes
Elizabeth Avedon: We met briefly at PhotoPlusExpo this past October. Were you giving a talk or a seminar there? Richard Barnes: I was at PhotoPlus to meet with Rixon Reed of Photo-Eye Books and Gallery out of Santa Fe, NM. We were discussing a limited edition artist book he’s proposed we do together on my work, which I’m excited about. EA: I'm curious to know how you got started in Photography. What were your first experiences? RB: I came to Photography through printmaking. I was a fine art major at the University of California at Berkeley in the mid 1970s and wanted to incorporate photographic elements into my prints. I was aware of artists like Robert Heinecken and John Baldessari in LA doing interesting work combining photography with painting and silkscreen and other media. I also was intrigued by the conceptual nature of their work. The art department at Berkeley, however, did not offer any courses in photography and after searching around I realized the only department that did, was in the Journalism school. So I transferred out and became the only photojournalist in the journalism department. This led me down the road to doing editorial photography, working first for the campus newspaper (which actually paid) and later I got a job working as a staff photographer for the Berkeley Gazette/Richmond Independent, which as a union job, paid great for someone just out of college. Photojournalism was a long way from the work I’d admired by artists and photographers who had been my influences in my years at university and part of me always hearkened back to that experience of when I was doing more conceptual, less journalistic work. In fact, the other staff photographers would joke that I was the only photojournalist they knew who carried a tripod on his assignments. Not that this qualified me as a fine art photographer, but after a year of riding around in the staff car with a police radio, covering accidents and sticking my camera in the face of people who least wanted me there, I realized I was no Weegee. I was burnt out and quit to preserve my sanity. I headed for Japan, where for the next year and a half I did nothing but teach English and work on my own photographic projects,which were primarily centered around photographing architecture. I have to say however that the experience of working in Journalism taught me a lot about the importance of access and taking what might seem an ordinary assignment and turning it into something larger and more personal. This early experience working in the trenches of day in, day out assignment work actually prepared me for the commissions I receive today from such publications as the New York Times Magazine and National Geographic. EA: I read in your bio that in 1995 you were commissioned by the NEA to document the renovation of The California Palace of the Legion of Honor as it was discovered the museum had been built upon what was once the largest post-gold rush era cemetery ever excavated. RB: Actually the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco applied for and received an NEA grant to commission me to photograph the excavation for new galleries and the renovation of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, out of which I created the exhibition, “Still Rooms + Excavations”. This installation examined the role of the Legion of Honor in particular, and by extension all museums and the role they play in curating and preserving the past. During the initial phase of the renovation it was discovered that the museum was built upon a preexisting gold rush era cemetery. Hundreds of burials were excavated from beneath its foundations. I worked at the site for 2 years, watching as the museum lavished great care and concern on the collection and the newly renovated building, as the human burials were simply tossed into cardboard boxes and sent away. This caused me to question the role of the Museum in deciding whose past was important and worth saving, and whose was expendable and considered of little or no value. This body of work was the first I did that examines the cultural role of the museum and the practice of collection, curation and display. Since then this has been a key theme in all my work. A selection of images from “Still Rooms & Excavations” will open in January, at San Francisco Camerawork in an exhibition titled “The Future Lasts Forever”. EA: How pivotal was the National Endowment for the Arts commission to the evolution of your future work (or future voice) as an artist? Hypothetically would your work have taken a different path if you had not won a grant for that project? RB: Well, I actually was only ever an NEA “alternate”. Which means somebody has to die or be accused of some heinous crime like pouring chocolate on themselves while appearing nude in Playboy, before I’d be able to take their place. That did not happen in the only year I applied. The following year they ended the NEA grant to individual artists. Later however, I applied forand received the Rome Prize (2006) and this year (2009) I was awarded the Sidman Fellowship for the Arts from the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. I can’t say enough about how important it was for me to have received these fellowships. They provided the opportunity of concentrated time and support, which was invaluable. Although I did not receive an NEA for the work I did at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, I doubt I would have been commissioned to photograph the excavation of the Palace of the Legion of Honor had the museum not applied for and received the grant. EA: How would you describe your work in ANIMAL LOGIC? RB: First, a little history. Animal Logic evolved over the past decade and grows out of work first started in the early 1990s when I worked as the excavation photographer at a place called Abydos, Egypt. I had traveled to Egypt with a former professor of mine who had worked there in the 1960s. He was a wonderful guide to the history and culture of the Middle East and I resolved that I would return as soon as I could find a way back. It took four years until I landed a position as the photographer with archaeologists on the Joint Yale/University of Pennsylvania excavations at Abydos. My interest in archaeology is two fold. On the one hand I have long been interested in the layering of history and memory which is visually expressed through stratigraphy; the building up over time of layers of sediment containing the artifacts and refuge of cultures which have risen and fallen over thousands of years. Archaeological practice has been used both as metaphor and myth by many artists who inspire me, such as Michael Heizer, and Anselm Kiefer and in some cases as direct practice, as in the work of Mark Dion. I also enjoy working with scientists and experts from disciplines outside of my own field. I have learned much over the past 15 years by associating not only with archaeologists but also with anthropologists, ornithologists, taxidermists and most recently, paleontologists. It was at Abydos that I photographed my first animal mummy. A dog, probably someone’s pet, no doubt buried with it’s master and destined to spend eternity in loyal service to him in the afterlife. That is until we came on the scene and uncovered them some 3000 years after they’d been buried originally. After a few field seasons in Egypt, I began to turn my attention to the places where the objects we were extracting from the ground were ultimately interred. Working first in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, I later became interested in how museum collections develop, specifically in the way they express our relationship to the natural world and our place, or the human presence within it. I then started to look at the evolution of the natural history museum as an embodiment of the process of collection, curation and display. These inquiries formed the basis for my book and exhibition, Animal Logic. EA: How did you arrange to work behind the scenes in the museums in these photographs? RB: Over the years I have photographed in numerous museums and collecting institutions, therefore it’s not difficult for me to figure out who to contact and more often than not, obtain access to photograph. Natural history museums are much more open to inviting artists in to work with their collections than let’s say a modern art museum. I have also done photography for several books on various art museums and that makes it easier, as I have a portfolio I can present to them. That’s not to say I haven’t been shut down on occasion. The English are particularly difficult to work with and the French just the opposite. There is this wonderful spirit in France; some might even call it quaint, whereby the artist, based solely on an interest in doing research, is granted access. It was great to work over there. EA: Are the photographs in your Animal Logic series meant to be carefully composed? RB: The composition of my images comes from my response to the order and attention to detail that the archaeologists, curators and technicians bring to a given subject. Of course I, as the photographer, ultimately compose the scene to express the idea I want to convey. There are images, such as the suspended giraffe in Animal Logic that I just happened upon. The technicians doing the removal were hovering around trying to figure out the best way to get the giraffe out the door. I first photographed it with all of them hoisting it in the air and measuring the doorway, etc., then I asked if they might give me a few minutes with it without anyone around. They decided it was good time to take coffee break and left me with this powerful, if forlorn scene. Ultimately the single image with the giraffe alone and suspended turned out to be the stronger. EA: How much research did you do prior to approaching the dioramas? RB: I look for dioramas and natural history museums for that matter, which are undergoing renovation. I would find out from curators and exhibition designers which museums they knew of that were upgrading their dioramas, or in some cases getting rid of them all together and contact them. It’s a sad fact but many, thankfully not all, of the museum professionals I talked to were embarrassed by the fact they had these moldering dioramas within their domain. They represent a different era for many institutions and either required substantial “upgrading” or being replaced all together. They certainly had good reasons, not the least of which is that the early dioramas and the animals within were made with lot’s of questionable materials and chemicals know to be toxic to humans. I often felt like I was an emissary from another century documenting these “ancient” theatrical set pieces for posterity. EA: What historical implications do you feel this body of work possesses? RB: As far as the historical dimension of this work I personally have always been interested in the theatre and what happens behind the scene or in the wings during a performance. “The Dresser” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” are two of my favorite plays. In the theatre, the audience enters into this implicit bargain with the actors, director and set designer, in which they are asked to “suspend their sense of disbelieve”, for the duration of the performance. It can be a very powerful experience, especially if it is well executed. It is this idea of “suspending disbelief” that one is also asked to do in front of a diorama. Louis Daguerre understood the power of illusion and the theatre and invented the first primitive diorama in 1822, long before he developed what would be come know as the Daguerreotype. The first Diorama I photographed was at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It just kind of clicked for me when I chanced upon a diorama that was being renovated. There had been a fire and this particular diorama suffered smoke damage and when I came through I was struck by this bizarre tableau of the animals covered in plastic and these tools spread all around the floor of what was supposed to be the savanna. But what I found most interesting was this man on a scaffold painting the clouds in the sky over the scene. It was this insertion of the living human element in what I had always considered to be the pretty static set piece of the diorama that intrigued me. It was as if the theatrical space of the diorama had been broken down and that this seemingly impermeable membrane between the viewer and viewed, the living and the dead, was made permeable and instead of the animals, the construction workers and backdrop painters took center stage. (continued after the jump)
Photograph (c) Richard Barnes /All Rights Reserved
Photograph (c) Richard Barnes /All Rights Reserved
EA: Is your work collaborative or do you work resolutely by yourself?
RB: I enjoy working collaboratively. While in Rome, I entered into what was perhaps the most fruitful collaboration of my career to date. I produced “Murmur” with Alex Schweder, an architect and video artist, and Charles Mason, a composer. “Murmur” forms another chapter in my book and is an investigation into the flocks of starlings which every winter fill the evening sky over Rome. No one is quite sure why the starlings stopover in Italy but before roosting for the night, they converge on the city from the countryside in flocks numbering in the hundred of thousands. This would be impressive enough in it’s own right, but they also do these incredible aerial displays that resemble drawings or computer animation written large overhead. The effect is awe-inspiring and although the Romans detest this “invasion of the starlings” each winter we as artists were inspired to create an installation. It consists of a 4 projector video piece, still photography and a 3 part sound composition that features the call or “murmuration” as its known, of the starling. First exhibited in Rome, it is now the centerpiece of my exhibition, also titled, “Animal Logic”, currently on view at the Cranbrook Museum of Art and the Cranbrook Institute of Science through December.
EA: There is a surreal quality to these images. Do you regard yourself as a Surrealist or feel an affinity with the notion of the images as a kind of dream?
RB: I certainly have an affinity for surrealist imagery. I don’t see how it can be avoided as it’s so ubiquitous in our time, from movies and books to advertising. What sets my work apart is that it grows out of a documentary tradition and from this straight ahead or forensic approach I subvert the document through either juxtaposition or de-contextualization of an object from its surroundings, thereby rendering it hyper-real. I believe real life is strange and surreal enough if one looks a little longer and harder than to attempt to make something surreal on purpose, which usually comes off as contrived. As far as my images conjuring up the realm of a dream reality in someone, I would take this as an indication that they are working.
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