images//alec soth words//benjamin lee

For some of your work you use an 8X10 camera and for other work, such as Dog Days, you used a smaller format—do different formats put you into different shooting mentalities?

Yes.  I like to use the analogy of a filmmaker.  Different films require different technologies.  Someone like Steven Soderbergh will shoot color 35mm for Oceans 11, HD video for The Girlfriend Experience, black and white 35mm for The Good German, and so on.  I want to approach my photographic projects in the same way. I don’t want to be limited to a single way of working.

Do you bring many different types of cameras with you on your project excursions?

No, I generally use a single camera for each specific project.  But I can imagine a project that would call for different cameras (think of Soderbergh’s Traffic).

When did you first start using an 8X10 view camera?

I got my first 8×10 around 1997.

At the MassArt lecture you mentioned your new work.  Can you tell us anything about this project?

Sorry, I’m usually a bit secretive when I’m in the midst of a project.  It is a real struggle to keep your process pure if you are constantly talking about it (something I think students really struggle with).

You’ve said that Dog Days, as a project, developed after you had been shooting in Bogotá for some time.  Thinking of your inspiration for projects as a whole, rather than your inspiration for individual shots, how often do your projects develop from photographs you have been making and how often are your projects born from a thought or a dream?

Most projects are a mixture of daydreaming and actual time out wandering around.  Dog Days was unusually driven by the latter whereas I had the idea for NIAGARA before I’d ever been there.

Looking back on Sleeping by the Mississippi and NIAGARA, what aspects of those projects developed before, during, and after (during the editing process) the actual shooting?

I have an idea.  Shoot.  Change the idea.  Shoot.  Edit.  Shoot.  Edit.  Change the idea.  Shoot.  Edit, and on and on until it’s done.

How much did Sleeping by the Mississippi and NIAGRA change between return trips?

A lot.  I’m just trying to keep up.

Sleeping by the Mississippi has images from many different states.  How did you decide on specific locations?  More broadly, when shooting any project, how do you decide on locations?

Just as I’m attracted to certain people (and less so others), I’m attracted to certain places.  I’m generally not interested in photographing big cities and I’m usually not on the ocean.  And, oh, I really like to photograph in America.

Your occasional technique of associative searching and the subject matter of Sleeping by the Mississippi and NIAGARA have the potential for endless work.  How do you limit your projects? Is there some sort of time frame, feeling of completion, temporarily exhausted interest?

I wish I had a good answer.  The process is much more like writing a book of poems than writing a novel.  How many poems should you have in a book of poems?  All of this is based on a combination of intuition and a knowledge of what has worked in the past.

How much work do you edit out when composing a final project?  Do you feel like the projects could be continued later on (with new work or re-editing)?

Photography is the art of editing.  It is as much about what you leave out as what you include.  So editing is essential.  But the good news is that you don’t burn the negatives.  There is always the chance to use the images in a different way at a different time.  I just bought Robert Adams reprint of Summer Nights.  It is now called Summer Nights, Walking. It is an absolute killer book.

Did you approach Magnum or did Magnum approach you?

I approached them.

Which Magnum photographers attracted you to the organization?

Really, all of them.  The beauty of the thing is the diversity.

What does Magnum expect from you?

Magnum is a cooperative owned by the photographers.  So Magnum works for us rather than the other way around.  That said, there are unspoken obligations to contribute to the cooperative in one way or another (money, ideas, energy, prestige).  But none of this is fixed.

Are there assignments or requests?

Photographers never have to do jobs they don’t want to do.  Again, the agency works for us.

Have you ever worked with another Magnum photographer?

Of course.  It wouldn’t be a very good cooperative if we didn’t cooperate.

I remember reading that while in Bogotá, circumstance required you to scan your negatives and work with them digitally.  Is this now your process when you have access to other equipment?

It really varies on a project-by-project basis.  I shoot film and digital, I scan, I make optical prints… it all depends.

What is your opinion on the quality of scanning hardware and inkjet printers/paper?

Both are excellent.  Both are flawed.

Who are some writers, or which of their works, have inspired you as an artist?

Oy, where to start?  What I’ll say is that the poem I keep rereading these days is “The Politics of Narrative: Why I Am A Poet” by Lynn Emanuel.

What are you reading now?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I find your technique of associative wandering very interesting.  At MassArt, you elaborated on how your sense of wonder, as well as dreams, occasionally guide your projects.  I couldn’t help but think of Keat’s theory of negative capability.  Do you find the idea of living in uncertainties, and chasing those uncertainties, crucial to your work?  Feel free to tell me I’ve been stuck in my room reading old poets for too long.

Now we’re talking.  I’m bored to death with cameras, but am happy to talk about bathing in uncertainty all day long.  At lunch today I was reading an interview with Werner Herzog.  Herzog is one of the masters of uncertainty.  His documentaries are semi-fiction.  His fictions are semi-documentary.  The whole thing is so alive.  Anyway, Herzog said this in the interview:  “I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you’re working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity.”  Photographers might not use storyboards, but they sure do use formulas.  I’m less and less interested in formulas. I want to crack open a book of pictures and feel alive.