Interview with Karen Clunes

Karen Clunes is an artist currently living in Chile.  What I admire about her work is not only her ability to pay meticulous attention to the subtleties of line and texture, but the way with which she makes her work from the heart without analyzing it to death— this is something I wish she could teach me.

We went to school together at New England School of Photography.  What is one important thing that you learned in your time you were there, about being a photographer?

Is so hard to mention just one, that is why I will say at least 3, the ones that marked me the most.

I learned so many things at Nesop about being a photographer and not just in a personal matter, but in a community sense.

I learned about the importance of your peers in your professional and personal growth, the interaction, the discussion that makes you verbalize your images, your purpose and discovered, ruminate ideas, fly… in a way you can only do with others who share your passion and speak your language.

The second is that talent by it self is not enough. You have to work hard, then harder and then work the hardest in order to succeed, I might be quoting Marty with this…

And then last but not least :) Is something Luis said and came as a lifesaver in a certain point for me and stayed present in my mind. That is that once you become an artist, you will always be an artist even if you are not making art; you can not stop thinking as an artist.

What was the hardest thing about making the transition from being a full-time student to being out of school?

I think the discipline of making art, making yourself do “assignments” and have due dates for them. Knowing that you don’t have the pressure of someone else to look at your work . The pressure is with yourself and I tend to be very comprehensive with issues that might come up to justify I didn’t do my assignment..

The other hard thing that I had to deal with, and I am sure a lot of my friends did too, is the people telling you that you wont be able to make a living out of photography, that you won’t have enough, that you should get a “real job”. And even if you start strong and try to remain strong, little by little people’s comments get you somehow, and you don’t have the community support you used to have at school. But anyway, the fun part is to push and work as much as you can to prove them wrong! And more important, to prove to yourself they were wrong.

Your work seems to be a lot about line, shape, texture— what is it about these things that captures your imagination?

I think it is more like, my imagination captures the lines, the shapes, the textures in order to get out.

Through this is that I can truly express feelings, for me it is easier to represent complex ideas or feelings in a visual way more than verbal. I feel that even if words are wonderful, for me they are not able to enclose an idea, a thought or a feeling in a way an image can. Sometimes these emotions are so airy that words can’t touch them, but with abstraction you can reach them. With abstraction you liberate of all the preconceived ideas you might get from recognizable objects in the photograph and you just remain with a visual sensation.

And then it gets transformed, after the image is up to the viewer, it doesn’t belong to me anymore, even if it’s my idea or emotion that is imprinted in the paper, it can be thousands more, it can be also someone else’s.

For you, is art-making purely emotional, intellectual, a mix of both, or something all together?

For me is a mix of both, intellectual and emotional, although it is always the emotional part that moves me to do something in the first place,

When I see a scene, an image or a situation that makes my breath change for a second I might be up to something. So if it’s strong enough, I start playing with the idea, sometimes it evolves to something else, sometime it just stays as an idea to grab later, maybe it is just not the time for it to be cooked…

Ii is impossible separate emotion from intellect for me, but even so, I most of the time run on/by the heart.

Irrationality is so pure that makes you free…

What do you want the viewer to take away from your photos, to think or to feel or to learn?

Feel! Definitely feel! What ever they want, but feel….After they get over the “what the h….” while they turn their heads.

What are you working on now and/or what do you have plans to work on in the future?

Right now I am working building my website for the Chilean market, designing postcards, making mailing lists, networking. etc… everything that is related to starting to get photography jobs, here in Chile.

On my personal work I have being shooting a lot, nothing in particular, just experiences here, places, people… I have the feeling that in some point this will transform in something else, but for now I let go and I am going with my flow.

I also have a couple of projects in mind and I am just waiting for one of them to grow stronger than the others.

Do you think photography/art can make a difference in the world?

Yes, I firmly believe that photography/art can make a difference in the world, not only because of the transitivity that comes from art changing people’s lives, and then they can change cities, societies and so on, but also because art/photography rings the bell on certain issues, make us wake up, question societies, question values and ideals and this questioning creates big changes, like Andres Serrano and “Piss Christ”. Or the photographs from Abu Ghraib that were like an earthquake for the world, not just because of what they uncover, but because in a deeper level they make us question ourselves as a species, us as Humans.

Tell me something about you that I don’t already know.

This is so hard, you know me and I am very open with my friends. But if I have to say something I will say something you can peel off : When I am really angry or very very upset I listen to Beethoven’s 9th symphony at a very high volume and that calms me down, but this is used only in case of emergency :)

Whose work are you in love with right now and why?

Mmmm there are so many but I will have to mention first Uta Barth who oddly enough I just discovered a few weeks ago. Her photographs talk to me on so many levels, her imagery is so ethereal, they feel like memories.  I adore her lines and her palette.

Also Mona Khun… I found her after losing her a couple of months ago, her images are so sensual and idyllic. They feel like first love or a dream, which is almost the same…

I came back also to Nan Goldin; I think I needed to see her rawness to liberate.

When the time is right

I was reading September’s American Photo on Campus and came across 5 mini-profiles of curators to know.  Deborah Willis, Ph.D, Chair of Photography at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ profile had this little tidbit:

…Willis believes that if you spend enough time printing and editing your work, you’ll know exactly when to show it to the outside world. [...] “Only when an image has all the qualities a photographer is looking for is it ready to present.”

I know something along these lines in another interview recently, but I can’t remember where.  Basically, I need to remind myself that even though other people may judge my work ready to be presented in certain contexts, only I know when the time is right.  And though the message of “just get your work out there!” is meant to combat the urge to sit on one’s work, to fight the idea that one’s work will ever be perfect, to encourage taking risks, getting one’s work out there for the sake of doing just that rather than doing it when the work is ready seems like a poor way to go about things.

Oh, I remember!  Alec Soth over at Two Way Lens says it perfectly:

…I find it aggravating that so many young photographers busy themselves with self-promotion when they should just be taking pictures. Let’s use the analogy of the young novelist. When you are writing your first novel, you don’t try to get it published based on a single chapter. First you need to write the book. Too many photographers are shopping for galleries and publishers with unfinished portfolios.

It is a long process getting the first project together. And it often leads to failure. Not only does the novelist need to finish the first book, she might need to write two or three before she hits the target. But here is the thing – when the work is good, you will know it. And when you believe in the work, you can promote it. In the end, good work will find an audience.

Ahhhh, just what I needed to hear.  Yes, yes yes.

Interview Week(s) may be on hold as people prepare for various holidays and breaks and the like— for now, here are some great links to very recent interviews (and there have been a lot!):

Chris Buck @ A Photo Editor – [Part One] and [Part Two]

Graham Miller @ Amy Stein

Todd Selby @ A Photo Editor

Ben Lowy @ What’s the Jackanory

David Behringer @ Art Fag City

Steph interviews Dana Tarr

I admittedly know next to nothing about fashion, but I do really enjoy the images of friend and fellow NESOP grad, Dana Tarr. So I asked him a few questions.

What are you up to now that’s you’ve graduated? What kind of work are you doing? Since school has been over, I have been doing a wide range of work. I have had gigs including a television commercial for a fur store, a bunch of fashion/editorial gigs for model and boutique development, promotional shots for Miss Teen Massachusetts, as well as head shots and CD covers, including working with Scott Ross from Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and Ricky Bel from New Edition and Bel Biv Devoe.

How are you finding commercial work/paying gigs, and what are you doing to promote yourself?

As far as self promoting goes, I haven’t started my marketing campaign, however I joined an online directory for Boston-based photographers which has gotten me a gig or two.  I also have friends in a pretty successful band I photograph, so through them representing and promoting me, I have met many people including some really great boutique owners, other musicians, models and club promoters.  The most important thing, thus far that has gotten me jobs, aside from limitless support from my friends telling their friends about my work, is just being confident and able to target important people at the events I attend, socialize and talk myself up to them. If you believe in the work you do, you will be able to talk about it and just as easily get others to believe in it and eventually hire you for gigs.

Photos © Dana Tarr.

A few more interviews to check out

To add to the great list of interviews Caleb posted last week, here are a few I’ve really enjoyed recently.

Alec Soth – Big World, Large Format

In History: Susan Meiselas, at Foto8.com

I’ve actually been looking at a lot of Susan Meiselas lately. Her work often reminds me of what first brought me to photography.

Caleb Interviews Steph, Part 3a

What are your thoughts on how multimedia fits into photojournalism and documentary work, what sort of effect it has on the work and how it might differ from still photography alone?  How does/might multimedia work fit into the documentary stuff you’re doing?
The biggest issues that come to mind for me are conflicting. I think using multimedia has huge potential and is a progressive step in telling the stories that documentary photographers and photojournalists want. I think it makes the work more accessible in a way, and can also add a lot of voice because you can include more of your subjects, or even more of yourself. But I’m wary about multimedia being appropriate for every body of work. I still believe strongly that there’s a lot of power in a single image or a collection of images that can be stared at, sat with, held/hung, etc, for as long as the viewer wants. I think some aspects of multimedia — mainly audio and video — take away a lot of the mystery or (critical/creative) thinking on the viewer’s part. So while there are certainly many stories I want to tell as a documentary photographer, and just lay flat out what I think and what my version of the story is, part of why I entered photography was to engage with people. And video isn’t always engaging — to me it’s more like telling. I think some of the most successful multimedia pieces I’ve seen take into account what information photos leave out (which makes them successful), and model that same sort of composition in the piece. They include some mystery, some awkwardness, some imagination. That’s what I want to see continue and that’s the only way I see it fitting into my own projects.

Where are you in the process of working on your farm documentary project?  Where do you see it headed in the future?

This is a tough question to answer right now, and I guess all I can really say is that I’m “shooting through it”. The farm is changing and so is my relationship to it. In the beginning when I started documenting it I talked about how I think a lot of people romanticize and idealize farming, and that it just isn’t always satisfying work. I set out in a way to disprove that but also to tell other stories as well, like about survival and following dreams and being close to land and animals. Now I look at where the farm is, further along in business, and how my father and his partner are doing, and I think to an extent even I’VE idealized it a bit.

It’s a really personal project to me because my family is involved, and I sometimes work on the farm now. And so I have insider information and background that I want to show in my images – stories I want to tell — and at the same time I struggle with it all and wonder if the photos I’ve made in the last 2 years are even representative at all of how I feel right now, with everything I’ve learned. And that feels like starting over. One thing I like a lot about long-term projects is that they are expected to change, and I also expect to be changed BY them. But right now I’m at a scary place where I don’t have any idea what I’d show if someone asked me to see the project tomorrow. I have a large collection of images, but ideas about my subject that have changed almost overnight.

I’ve said before that the project is about trying to find out if a specific way of life is possible in this world. If in the context of all the negative issues facing small farms today, some people can live off the land and have what they need and be happy. Or in the very least, survive. But now I question what it’ll mean if it doesn’t work out. If the toll it takes to make it as a small, natural farm ends up being too much. If it just can’t physically be done anymore. If my father’s health or sanity needs to come first. If it changes the relationship between the people doing the work. I clearly need to be flexible, and I love feeling so invested in both my project AND the farm in general, but I spend a lot more time thinking about it than I used to.

I’m trying my hardest to not predict the end and to just keep showing up and shooting with an open mind. With that said, working to pay the bills right now doesn’t allow me all the time I want to head up to NH and shoot for days at a time. I have to be more selective with my time right now and that’s a real pain. This is possibly something I should be looking for some kind of funding for.

Name 3 things you wish you had more time/resources to do right now.

1. This is very specific, but I really want to travel all over New Hampshire and Maine to photograph every single member of my family, and get to know each of them a bit better through the process. I’ve been recording and researching our family history for about 5 years now and have always had the desire to photograph everyone. I’m working out some logistics of this right now, but it’s going to go slower than I prefer to work. Mainly because of the time commitment and not having a car.
2. I want to spend more time on Twist of Fate Farm. I would move there if it would help the project, but I obviously can’t support myself right now while doing that.
3. With more resources I could spend more energy on becoming an amazing printer. While I’ve been shooting a lot, I’ve unfortunately been doing a lot of my editing on a computer screen, and that isn’t ideal for me. I enjoy editing my work with prints much more, and I’d also like to have the time and money to work on expertly printing my picks over and over again until I’m absolutely in love with them.

The other half of this interview coming soon…

Where We Were 2008 is up!

[click on the image to enter the site]

© d. yee
New York, NY
CNN’s Live Coverage in Times Square

too much chocolate

I just learned of too much chocolate, a new site created by Jake Stangel that “aims to serve and connect young emerging editorial/fine art based photographers all over the internet”. I’m excited about the 3 major areas of the site, which include a rotating gallery, discussion, and interviews. The process for the rotating gallery is that the photographer featured each week then has to choose and interview the next week’s photographer. Cool!

The first interviews are with Nich Hance and Trevor Graves. Definitely check it out and keep watching like I’m going to. I’ve discovered that I really enjoy interviews of photographers by other photographers. I’m also very interested in projects where emerging photographers take matters into our own hands and promote ourselves and each other. Way to go.

Links

+ How did I not know about the SPENE @ FIT – SPE Northeast Regional Conference until today?  It has William Lamson, Zoe Strauss, Amy Stein, Cara Phillips, Laurel Ptak AND portfolio reviews with more amazing people?  WHAT?!?  And of course, I can’t go.  I feel incredibly not on top of things at this very moment.

+ If I had any extra money at all I would bid on this so fast— I am in love with this image by Noah Kalina.

+ I’m SO EXCITED to be going to the Bazaar Bizarre tonight!  It’s open until 7, so get on over there!

+ According to the GenderAnalyzer, Existing Light is 52% written by a woman.  I find that amusing since I’ve written most of the posts here (I admit that my speech patterns are rather feminine), but I appreciate the assessment by a random website that we’re pretty gender neutral.  That sounds about right.

In response to the Magnum Advice to Young Photographers, some other people’s thoughts:
+ We Can’t Paint’s “On Advice and Context”
+ Mrs. Deane’s “Some more advice to young photographers”
+ Discussion with Joerg Colberg and others on advice
I have a feeling that a discussion on some of these topics might make for a good video blog or discussion/interview between Steph and I… maybe we’ll have to set aside some time to have a few drinks and really dig into these topics…

More interviews:
+ Debut Solo Shows: An Interview with Jesse Chehak @ Ground Glass
+ Marilyn Manson @ The Art Newspaper: “If I didn’t care about the world, I wouldn’t put something into it.”
+ A Conversation with Emily Shur @ Nymphoto

Tell me helpful things. Or don’t.

I know it’s not exactly one interview, but this week I wanted to highlight Alec Soth’s collection of advice to young photographers on the Magnum Blog: Wear Good Shoes.

Being a young photographer, I get offered a lot of advice, both solicited and not. Some of it really resonates with me and some of it doesn’t at all. I’ve recently learned to not freak out if something someone says doesn’t seem to fit into my plan, my life, my work, etc. We are all trying to make different kinds of work. We all want to tell different stories, have different audiences, make viewers feel different things. I always listen to all of the advice, but I only remember what really stands out and makes sense to me, personally. That’s how I know which advice to take to heart. I guess that’s my own “advice” on taking advice.

Here are some of my favorite parts of the post:

“Work everyday even without assignments or money, work, work, work with discipline for yourself and not for editors or awards. And also collaborate with people not necessary photographers but people you admire. The key word to learn is participation!” -Alex Majoli

“Forget about the profession of being a photographer. First be a photographer and maybe the profession will come after. Don’t be in a rush to make pay your rent with your camera. Jimi Hendrix didn’t decide on the career of professional musician before he learned to play guitar. No, he loved music and and created something beautiful and that THEN became a profession. Larry Towell, for instance, was not a “professional” photographer until he was already a “famous” photographer. Make the pictures you feel compelled to make and perhaps that will lead to a career. But if you try to make the career first, you will just make shitty pictures that you don’t care about.” -Christopher Anderson

“Lose the ego and let the photograph find you. Observe the life moving like a river around you and realize that the images you make may become part of the collective history of the time that you are living in.” -Eli Reed

“Be yourself and look outside of yourself.” -Larry Towell

“Find a subject you care about. Something that moves you. Something which stirs your rawest emotions. And then have patience.” -Mark Power

“…I would recommend working to become a more developed and informed individual, a more knowledgeable and engaged citizen. This will translate into a deeper more complex understanding of the world around you, and ultimately into a richer and more meaningful photography.” -Paolo Pellegrin

The above quotes really mean something to me. They remind me of how I want to work. Also there are, of course, some very conflicting comments in this collection. I don’t have a problem with that. Like I mentioned earlier, I take what makes sense to me and leave what doesn’t. I know the world of photography is big enough that many will disagree on things. But what seems to be a common thread is that many of those asked have offered advice on becoming great photographers, but not how to make a living at it. In fact, some specifically said not to try making a living at it.

I can appreciate this. Right now I don’t close to make a living with my work, and I don’t expect to anytime soon. Maybe I never will. Right now I try to focus on the work itself and what it says and means to me, rather than bending my work to fit into some paying gigs that just aren’t desirable at all. But this means I currently work 4-5 days a week doing non-photographic jobs. I do like that my time spent shooting, editing and printing is focused on what I want to do and what makes me happy. And I don’t expect to become the photographer I want to be in the next year, or even 5 years. I can be patient and go at my own pace. Maybe those who said don’t try to make a living as a photographer were right. Maybe. But I still need to make a living at something, and make my work simultaneously. This seems to be the biggest tripping point for me right now.

So if any experienced photographers out there are offering advice this week… I could certainly use some on how to balance all of this. How to pay the bills in a desperate economy and still find time and energy to make good photos. How to prioritize, budget, manage my flow, etc. How to adapt when the “market” adapts (or disappears). I want to hear about mistakes made and recoveries that just barely came through, and really creative ways to find paying work that didn’t compromise vision. I also can’t hear any more advice from folks who’s parents or partners supported them financially while they “found” themselves or jump-started their careers*. I want to hear from others who didn’t have that option, and what actually helped. Basically, how did you make it through the days working in an office or restaurant and still be able to continue a time-consuming documentary project? That’s my open interview to whoever wants to answer.

[By "career" I mean showing work and getting recognition - I don't mean it has to be financially lucrative]

OK… anyone?

Mother + Son + Photography

I know it’s not technically an interview (did we mention it’s Interview Week?), but I can’t help not mentioning this event, that I really wish I could have attended. Thank goodness for streaming video.

In Conversation: Hank Willis Thomas and Deborah Willis, hosted by Aperture in November (watch video through link).

I’m floored by the connection and the significance of the work and just the heavy amount of cultural power that seems to exist between this pair. More events like this, please!

BIG RED & SHINY

Looks like my show is included in Our Daily RED’s Big RED’s Recs of the Week! Thank you!

There’s still a few weeks left to check it out, and if you come on Dec. 13th I’ll be gallery sitting and we can chat about whatever tickles your fancy.

Best. Clothing. Score. Ever.

After a long day of assisting, I was exiting a Fort Point Studio when I noticed something new left out for someone to take home, so of course I snatched it up.

Here’s what the note said:

HOME-MADE KISS GENE SIMMONS DESTROYER TOUR COSTUME.

IT’S A LITTLE BANGED UP
AS WAS I ON HALLOWEEN.

ENJOY

Amazing, right?
I felt special lugging it home on the T.
I can’t wait to try it on and shoot in it…

Steph interviews Caleb, Part 2

This is a continuation of my never-ending interview with Caleb Cole that began last July.

In your series Other People’s Clothes, I know that you are very particular in choosing the details of the characters you portray (location, clothing, etc). I’m wondering to what extent you feel a responsibility to these made-up characters, and when you know that you’ve portrayed them accurately?

I do feel a responsibility, but mostly it’s a responsibility to myself, a desire to as clearly as possible show the people I see in my head. I only wear an item of clothing once, because it belongs to someone, and even though no one else would know if I wore new things or the same stuff twice, I would know, and I’m sure that would translate in the images somehow.

And it’s hard to know if you’ve portrayed these people accurately when you only have yourself to trust, when you yourself might have other motives that get in the way — but on the other hand, can I ever be wrong if the people originate within me?

In the end it’s a gut feeling about whether or not it’s right. I try not to over-think it when I shoot, to just chase the fuzzy dream of this person I have in my head and live in their space for a while, and then afterwards in editing I can decide if I really found them or if it’s just me in the picture waiting for that person to arrive.

If you had all the time and resources in the world to work on it, where would you take this project? What would come next?

I think right now it’s about access to locations. I would love to explore more (inside) public and commercial locations because at this point the people in my series are relegated, for the most part, to domestic locations and very public outside spaces… I think there is a lot more I can do in similar spaces to what I have been working in, but I would love to shoot in a grocery store, a mall, a bank, a rollerskating rink, etc. I often feel limited by access issues. I would also love to travel around the country in a bus of clothing and equipment so that I could stop anywhere I found a fantastic new location and shoot there — and I’d stop at thrift stores along the way for new clothes.

After having near-daily critiques in school, what tools are you using now to edit and critique your own work? What’s easier or harder about being on your own and setting your own assignments?

I feel really bad about saying this, but not much has changed for me since school in terms of critique. In school I was doing a lot of self-critique and now I’m doing the same. I would say that I don’t spend nearly as much time focusing my energy on what my project means, or what direction it should head in, and right now I’m really focusing on producing more work so that in the future I can reevaluate what it all means. It took me a long time to hit my stride in terms of the visual look of the whole project, the tone, the gestures — now that I don’t have to think about those things I can focus on other elements. I’m a lot less stressed about it and feel a lot more free, but I do miss the way that school forced me to concentrate on the project and work on it at a more regular pace. The project sometimes takes a backseat to making money and surviving these days. I also really miss the cheerleading, the pep-talks. I have to give myself pep-talks these days and it isn’t really the same.

Photo © Caleb Cole.