320 / tank talk Empty new york tank / 321

I should create my own drama. And In Buddhism there is a saying that when the alpha and omega of photography. solve those problems, too, but I never duane michals then the question arose, what will those the student is ready, the teacher will And then you get spinoffs, like Garry wanted to be Avedon. I didn’t want 20 dramas be? It was an exciting discovery. appear. When I needed help, Josiah came. Winogrand, who I think is loathsome. employees. I was always a cottage industry. And when he said we can make a movie I’m very opinionated, as one should be. I take small pictures. I make small movies. CS Atget’s perspective was already with the little camera, I said, “Wow, let’s Like Truman Capote – when Johnny I learned everything on the job, and I had nostalgic, because the old Paris had do it!” And when I think of something Carson asked him about Jack Kerouac’s a lot of luck. I have been in rhythm with disappeared rapidly under Haussmann’s on Monday, I will have it done by Friday. writing, he answered: “That’s not writing, things somehow. radical master plan, a little bit like what that’s typing.” I think of Cindy Sherman is happening to New York now. When you CS You’ve said that of all of the iterations as inauthentic, for example, because CS Foucault said that your photographs arrived in Manhattan more than half a or incarnations of Fred the last one was she is a product of the art world, of the gave him the feeling that your images are century ago, it was still mostly an old city. the most interesting. People usually don’t museum world. There is even a new his, even though he knew that wasn’t true. DM Compared to today, the skyline speak about Alzheimer’s in these terms. category now: artists who use the camera. DM I think there are public experiences, looked amateurish. The old Penn Station DM He was saying amazing things It makes me so angry. Cindy Sherman and then there are private ones. Poetry was still here, and there is a very charming like: “Everyone who wants to go to went to photography school, showed deals with private experiences. And when melancholia in these images. The energy Massachusetts, raise your hand!” Where photographs in galleries and museums, you get to a point of intimacy, if someone of New York has changed because of all does that come from? He was always published photography books, and now can identify with even one sentence you these new buildings, which are not elegant, very conservative, but in the end all these suddenly she is not a photographer! She have written, if there is a communication, and their scale is outrageous. I’m glad to surprising things came out like “Why is an artist who uses the camera. They that’s very powerful. And talking about live in an original building from 1865. don’t you take your shoes off and make say that about Eggleston, too. That’s a being gay – Foucault invented it. yourself useful?” or “You’re eating a whole new artificial category – what does CS You are surrounded by books here. banana – what is the meaning of that?” If that make Robert Frank? Immediately, CS I thought you did. DM I’m a big reader and I love books. I could write like that I would be Rimbaud. photography goes back to the end of the DM I gave him the French franchise, I love Borges. I love the games he plays. line, because we now have “artists with along with Cocteau. Cecil Beaton got the I love his imagination. Rimbaud is my CS You believe that people don’t reveal a camera”. Before I forget, there is a British one. I saw the recent documentary favourite poet, and I love James Joyce – themselves in photographs, and you have phrase I love: don’t pee on my shoe and about him and felt very sad for him. I I also like the games he plays. I like people made very critical comments on [Dutch tell me it’s raining. So I’m sorry, if it thought of Andy Warhol because he was who use ideas instead of description. So photographer] Rineke Dijkstra, calling squawks like a photograph and walks like also an arriviste – he was very anxious. of the three upcoming exhibitions, the one her style of portraiture “stand and stare a photograph, it is a fucking photograph. I did a lot of work with Capote and he at the Morgan Library is most important pictures”. But that could perhaps also be Don’t tell me I’m looking at this mythical hated Andy, because he thought of him to me. I am also planning a book of just said about somebody like August Sander. category called art. as a social climber who was cultivating my texts, no images at all. I did that in DM It is a matter of assumption. Dijkstra him, but it was the same thing with Capote French already. Photography duplicates did a series about Israeli soldiers, but CS Death has always been a theme in himself and Beaton most of all. The inter- the moment. That is its power – say “now”, what am I looking at? A bunch of teenage your work. You have tackled it with esting thing in the film is when Bailey and it’s not now – but it doesn’t bring boys. If you hadn’t told me they’re Israeli poetry and with sensitivity and humour. shows up and Beaton becomes past tense. insight. I can show you a picture of my soldiers, they could almost be anybody The medium also has an innate affinity Bailey was a terrible photographer, a real mother and my father with their arms else. I’m interested in their thoughts about to death. From its very beginning, people fashion hack, a third-rate Avedon and The light-filled rooms in Duane Michal’s stately New York town- around each other, smiling, but they the Palestinians, and what they think created images of ghosts and ectoplasm. Penn. But Beaton could see the writing on house are casual, open, lived-in. A number of orchids thrive at his hadn’t fucked in 40 years. They never of religious Jews not joining the army. DM The second book I did – I have done the wall. What did Twiggy and Carnaby kitchen window, the fronds of potted palm trees rustle softly in talked. So I don’t care what they looked I don’t care what anybody looks like. more than 30 now – was The Journey of the Street have to do with Princess Margaret? like – it’s what you are left with in your What Dijkstra does is description. As Spirit After Death, based on the Tibetan the breeze. For more than half a century, the photographer shared heart, what they mean to you. a photographer, you become an artist Book of the Dead. I did sequence books CS Besides being overwhelmed by the this house with his companion, the architect, Frederick Gorrée, when you bring insight into what you’re where the spirit leaves the body, like universe, you also found freedom recently. until the latter’s death last year aged 86. Michals – now the same CS What are you showing at the Morgan? describing. People settle for description The Human Condition of the Man in the DM By the time I was 20 I believed every age – keeps talking about him in the present tense, discussing DM We are going through their collection, as being what the photograph does, Subway and Death Comes to the Old Lady. lie the Catholic Church ever told, and picking works that I’m sympathetic with. but you have to demand more. Sander’s I have always been curious about death, I believed every lie the culture told. But how Gorreem’s mental decline offered glimpses into a previously I don’t need another photo show, but I love are classic pictures – nobody asks them and I keep coming back to it. But finally, I kept abandoning my comfort zone locked chamber of his soul. While steeped in the past, Michals – this one. I get as much pleasure out of the questions that I ask from photography. I realise my own insignificance and and security. I abandoned religion. I an uncensored rebel against most rules and all pretensions – my texts as I get out of my photographs. They have history on their side. My bottom become overwhelmed by the universe. abandoned God. Now I have abandoned I will choose some Saul Steinberg – he’s line is not what does something look like, I’m overwhelmed by billions and billions longevity. You have to learn how to let is preparing for three major museum exhibitions next year, as well an artist I truly love, very literary. And but what does it feel like. I see a woman of stars and galaxies. I feel as small as go, and there is a certain freedom in that as the re-publication in autumn of his 1963 book Empty New York. they are going to show my experimental crying, and I want to know what is making an insect on the back of a flea. I become process. But what remains? What ideas mini-movies. One of them, Interruptus, her cry. So I write about it. It’s not a ques- smaller and smaller and implode. I’m support me? I’ve had an amazing life and Interview by Claudia Steinberg is about two men about to have sex when tion of photography or writing – it’s a overwhelmed by my huge unknowing. it is more interesting now than it has ever the wife of one of them walks in. question of expression. My texts don’t been. Eventually I will have to let go of Portrait by Stefan Falke tell you what you are looking at. They CS You’ve also enjoyed commercial my own life. All of it has been a prologue CS When did you discover making films tell you what you can’t see. They pick up assignments, something that many artists to this moment sitting here, talking to you. for yourself? where the photograph fails. Photographs only take on reluctantly. Claudia Steinberg Your early morning which left an echo throughout my work. DM Fred had Alzheimer’s for seven years fail constantly. People believe photo- DM I love commercial photography and CS What are you looking forward to? images of abandoned New York sites were At the same time, I was also looking at and I was completely involved in his care, graphs, even though they lie all the time. hate the snobbery of art students, the DM Dare I say it? I have an amazing inspired by Eugène Atget’s haunting the paintings of Balthus – there is a street so I decided to make the films to go some- preciousness of their creativity. I always imagination. I thrive off it, I’m thrilled photographs of early 20th-century Paris. scene at MoMA of people walking down place else, to revive my imagination. The CS But in the case of Robert Frank, made my living commercially. I worked with it, and I need to live at least four Duane Michals When I looked at Atget’s the street in very artificial poses. Looking films were just an exercise for pleasure – your hero, you speak of authenticity. both sides of the street. I did a campaign more years, till I’m 90, because I have pictures of deserted places in Paris, they at that painting and at Atget’s empty I don’t want to go to Hollywood. I have a DM Because he is absolutely unique and for Massachusetts Mutual that went on for a lot of junk in my head. I want to see looked like stage sets to me. I was capti- rooms, it suddenly seemed very logical great assistant now, Josiah, but before true, and he never tried to be an artist. nine years. I have been on Vogue covers, what it looks like. ◉ vated by their sense of mise en scène, that I should make my own theatre, that I have always done everything by myself. He and Cartier-Bresson – those two are Life, Mirabella. I’m thrilled that I could