Excuse Me, I'm Lost. I'm Sitting in a Small Café in Bath, Next to an Old
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Excuse me, I’m lost. Which brings me to why I’m here. I’m sitting in a small café in Bath, Being an artist is truly a labor of next to an old man who appears to love. Most of us create without the be consuming the events of a world promise of making large sums of he no longer understands. money. As painters, photographers, musicians, sculptors and writers, And I can sympathize. we offer ourselves to the world wholeheartedly, hoping to create I, on the other hand, am staring something greater than ourselves. at him, trying to photograph his Without art we wouldn’t be able to reading habits to avoid writing this justify our lives, and without the act letter of resignation. The problem of creation there would be nothing is I’m uncertain as to what I’m for the world to profit from—no resigning from and whom I’m numbers to measure or things to addressing. I just know things can’t aspire towards. continue as they are. In a world overgrown with Some months ago, Ann commercial interests, I’ve become Demeulemeester, my friend and exhausted by compromise. I’m tired longtime inspiration, resigned of pretending that I care about from the world of fashion. For me, celebrity. I’m tired of only being able this news came not as a shock but to photograph advertisers’ clothing. as another sad sign of the times. I’m tired of talking about how Soon after, my favorite dive bar everything resembles everything in New York closed its doors, due else. And, most importantly, I’m to Manhattan’s incessant rent tired of feeling bitter about it all. increases. As I write this, more and more of the quiet corners Pausing to create this magazine has in which we dreamers dwell allowed me to make photographs are slowly disappearing into a with wide eyes and uncertainty, as corporate abyss. if I were a teenager again. It has let me forget the world we live in and celebrate the quiet corners we still have—if even for an instant. Erik Madigan Heck 23 January 2014 Somerset, United Kingdom Conversations on Photography Works 8 Susan Bright 1 Comme des Garçons on Classification 70 Illustrated 20 Elinor Carucci 2 Guinevere Van Seenus on Discovery 90 in The High Priestess 28 George Pitts 3 On the Subject of Flowers: on Perception 136 Remarks, Addressed to the Poet 38 Taryn Simon 4 Lykke Li on Identity 144 on Adaptation 44 Vince Aletti 5 Jerry Schatzberg on Context 152 on Family 54 Kathy Ryan 6 Waris Ahluwalia on Immediacy 164 in Haider Ackermann 62 Miranda Lichtenstein 7 Jamie Bochert on Evolution 176 in Ann Demeulemeester 8 Fashion 190 “Advertisements” 9 Yves Klein 216 Dialogue with Myself Conversations “I should like to paint the portrait of an artist on Photography friend, a [woman] who dreams great dreams, who works as the nightingale sings, because it is [her] nature... I want to put my appreciation, the love I have for [her], into a picture. So I paint [her] as [she] is, as faithfully as I can, to begin with. But the picture is not yet finished. To finish it, I am now going to be the arbitrary colorist... Behind the head, instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint infinity.” Vincent van Gogh, 18 August 1888 Susan Bright on Classification EMH: Let’s start at the beginning. photography, in whatever form it When did you first become takes, it was a revelation. I felt I interested in photography? could finally be honest, instead of pretending I was really into difficult SB: The very first photograph that video art. It was enormously ever meant anything to me was on liberating. the cover of a catalog for when the Russian gymnastics team visited EMH: It seems that everyone Australia in 1978. I was about I know has had a similar seven and it was of Olga Korbut entrance into photography, with on the beam. I was obsessed with a subconscious trigger and then 8 9 that photograph. I carried the later the “aha” moment. catalog around with me for about three years. I can’t remember SB: The epiphany moment! seeing the actual performance, but And yours was Harry Callahan? that photograph is etched onto my brain. It also reveals, very early on, EMH: My mom was looking that I had an interest in how the for a medium to transition me body is represented. back into the world from music, as she saw me locking myself EMH: Do you still have in my bedroom for hours with the picture? my records and turntables. So she presented me with this SB: I can’t find it. I’ve found a camera and mandated that very similar one, but it’s not the every Sunday I shoot a roll. actual photograph. The pictures She would drive me around and that have resonated with me over say, “Here’s a tree. Here’s a my life appeared on album covers, sidewalk, or person. It doesn’t postcards and posters, and I just matter; just shoot.” That kind didn’t consider them somehow of repetition is what started it. worthy, because they weren’t The first two or three weeks I presented as “art.” I didn’t know didn’t want to do it, but once that it was legitimate to be into that. I got in the darkroom the Later, when I gave myself immediacy of photography permission to dedicate my life to hooked me, the instant gratification coupled with the SB: Well that’s sort of like jazz, it’s extremely wide and enormously institution, but, crucially, also fact that I thought I was good isn’t it? You start off gently and complex. So that was it. My encompasses a field of knowledge at it almost immediately. So then you can get more specific. commitment to photography as a relating to the culture at large. that got me into the bookstore Actually, that is a bad analogy, as career—as an obsession, really— As a curator, I am putting searching for any and all I hate jazz. My epiphany moment can literally be pinpointed to the day. information forward and receiving photographers, and the first was seeing an Ansel Adams Other mediums fell by the wayside, it back. I am doing so in my own book I came across that really photograph—of all people! apart from literature, which I think language, with my own rhetoric. spoke to me was by Harry of like a long-term lover. Part of the process of “Home Callahan. EMH: There’s no shame in Truths” was to deconstruct, reveal Ansel Adams. It seems like EMH: Can you speak about your and assess that agency and bias. SB: So you knew that you wanted Ansel Adams, in the photo most recent exhibition and book, It’s important to say that my to be a photographer, as opposed world, has become this dirty “Home Truths: Photography and subjectivity does not demand a to me. I never had any interest in word that you have to whisper Motherhood,” which deals with certain way of looking or thinking in actually taking photographs. under your breath. perceptions of motherhood? terms of the viewer. It is my aim to yield new insights, frameworks and EMH: It was strange because SB: Of course he is a crucial part SB: The inception of this project interpretations through my curating the camera was kind of forced of the history of photography. I just leads from our conversation practice, with a rigor that does into my lap and after pushing have little to no interest in that about legitimacy and permission not foreclose on subjectivity and it away I fell in love. You wake fetishization of the print, nor the to pursue something that feels enthusiasm, and is free of anxiety. up and you’re like, “I can’t live romanticization of the American intuitively right. It was the But to get to those personal without this.” Harry Callahan’s landscape, so it’s surprising that first project I had done that issues… One: Until the age of 37, I photos were the first things that it should be Adams who made came from a very personal and never wanted children. I was really made me think of photography the penny drop. I was interning at autobiographical space, rather happy; I had a great life in London, not just as pictures, because the Victoria and Albert Museum than intellectual interest. This with my wonderful partner. There 10 11 his work was so graphic—and and opened a box in the stacks to is somewhat frowned upon in was no gaping hole, which I know seamless. It was my first get a photograph for exhibition curatorial circles, as it can be seen a lot of women experience and I do introduction to art photography, preparation. I’d never seen a as too subjective or not rigorous understand. as opposed to practical photographic art print close up, enough. Personally, I think this Secondly: I come from the photography. let alone an Ansel Adams print. It is rubbish; this accusation would generation where a lot of my was exquisite; it felt like I could never be leveled at an artist. friends don’t have kids and they’ve SB: Were your aspirations towards put my hands into it, like it was As a curator, I totally come to the point where they art? Did you want to have your three-dimensional somehow.