Can you tell us how you became an artist and photographer?
When people ask me, are you an artist, are you a photographer, do you like black and white, do you like colour? I tell them I like all three. I like black and white and I like colour. The difference between a straight ahead, point blank photographer and somebody who relates to the medium as an artist - is very clearly stated in the nature of the content. For me, the most important thing is that I make a picture that I put on the wall for a long time, it will look at me and I can engage with this image over a period of years. As well as creating, I also have a collection of paintings and drawings from my artist friends that I have exchanged.
« If I don’t understand my work it means that I am in a new territory I can explore. »
Since 1893 photography has always resisted one single permanent definition. It is the most amorphous of all the media, and it is used for every possible application, from the sacred to the profane. I decided early on in my career that I wanted to be a documentary photographer. I was assistant to Dorothea Lange (editor’s note: an American photographer, best known her photographic series taken during the Great Depression) at first, and after I went on to Magnum as a photojournalist. I very quickly tired of this however, I was just generating ephemera. I would take a picture that would be printed on the paper, you would turn the page, another picture, and this would give me no satisfaction. And so I started working for myself, and I started making pictures that I didn’t understand. This now is very, very important for me. If I don’t understand my work it means that I am in a new territory I can explore.
Can you illustrate this thought with an example of one of your photographs ?
I have a picture in The Somnambulist taken around 1968 of a burning beauty parlour, it was on 6th Avenue. I had grown up in Los Angeles, my father worked at the movies, Warner Brothers, my family was very glamorous until I was about ten or twelve, very Hollywood 40’s, 50’s. Then due to alcoholism, my parents divorced, they sold the house and my mother opened up a beauty parlour. A few years later, due to her alcoholism, she died in a hotel fire. I had cut myself off from my parents and by that time, I went into the Navy and went into photography. Around 1968 I was walking down the street in New York and I saw this burning beauty parlour. I was magnetically attracted to this event and I took a picture of it. While I was taking the image I became overwhelmed with tears of grief over the death of my mother and the fire. At that point I dropped out of Magnum and said I’m just going to photograph, I could find myself in photography. In those days, I worked in a purely introspective fashion for myself. I could find out who and what I was, through my photography. And so that was a picture that took me into an area of personal relationship that was completely different for me.
What images have you enjoyed capturing the most?
When people ask me what is my favourite subject, I am compelled to tell a story. One day, I went to see my friend André Kertész (editor’s note: Hungarian-born photographer famous for his work in Paris and New York during the interwar period). At that time, he was 70 and I was about 40. He was taking pictures, becoming very excited over objects in his house, little glass figurines, little bijoux, knick-knacks and he says, “I’m so excited, I see new things everyday”. And he put the camera down and he said, “a photographer must learn to photograph everything”. I said to myself at that moment, I am going to learn how to photograph everything. I have many contemporaries and peers who are highly specialized in certain areas of photography, yet I take great pride in the breadth of my palette. I can make a picture of anything if I can get my intelligence and my awareness to a high enough point. Which means that the content of the picture is really the level of my perception. It also means that I am essentially only as good as my next photograph. So it’s the next one that is important to me, and I photograph every day.
« I am only as good as my next photograph (...) so I photograph every day. »
Are there any other artists that have influenced you?
I love anything done well by other photographers or artists. I would say that over the years I have been in love with the work of every great photographer. At one period or another, I have studied their work, I have understood it, I have discussed it. I draw most of my information traditionally from painting, and from sculpture to a slightly lesser extent. If you want to study photography, it takes you about three months to learn the entire history. Whereas if you want to study the history of two-dimensional art, it just goes on and on. I am also a musician and I study sound, philosophy of noise, science of the theory of music and I am attempting to construct a relationship between my work as a photographer and my work as a musician.
Can you tell us about your work as a musician?
I started playing the guitar when I was about 13. I didn’t start photography until I was 17 so I have always been more of a musician in a way, but I was never so passionate about it. However, about ten years ago I realized that I was never going to advance as a musician unless I studied theory and harmony. And I have a guitarist friend who agreed to tutor me on a daily basis over a period of two or three years. All these musical ideas came through that I had stored up subconsciously. I recorded logic and made little videos and now its all digital software that I had to learn as well. It occurred to me that reality is a strong aspect of photography, and that reality is to photography what melody is to music. You could make a photograph that did not refer to reality but you would be challenging something inherent in the medium. Just as you can make sound and noise that has no melodic structure and you are challenging the very nature of music itself. I don’t want to go onto the far side of either medium. I want to be positioned right on the balance between the two: where noise turns into melody, and where reality turns to abstraction.
Ralph Gibson, 1960-61 San Fran (© Ralph Gibson)
« I like it when noise turns into melody, and reality into abstraction. »
What is the thing that you are most proud of?
I’ll give you a very serious answer, when I was in my twenties and I began my career, I didn’t want to be recognized or famous. I said to myself when I brought out my first book, I want just enough recognition to be able to do my work. No more, no less. And that’s really what I got!
What is HAPPENING next?
I am working on a series of photographs entitled Political Abstraction and its most exigent, my most abstract, difficult, most dangerous project. I am on very thin ice this winter.
