THE CONVERSATIONS |
|
ERIC McCOLLUM
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Edition ONE Gallery
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Pilar Law, Edition ONE Gallery Owner and Curator, welcomes LEICAS & SCOTCH to the gallery for Mark Berndt's conversation with fine art photographer Eric McCollum.
All images © Eric McCollum | All Rights Reserved Images may not be reproduced without written permission from the photographer.
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Edition ONE Gallery
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Pilar Law, Edition ONE Gallery Owner and Curator, welcomes LEICAS & SCOTCH to the gallery for Mark Berndt's conversation with fine art photographer Eric McCollum.
All images © Eric McCollum | All Rights Reserved Images may not be reproduced without written permission from the photographer.
Pilar Law: Welcome, everyone. What a wonderful crowd. Thank you for being here on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. My name's Pilar Law, and this is my gallery - Edition ONE - and we are very excited to host this ongoing series of conversations with photographers, with Mark Berndt, called LEICAS & SCOTCH. We're working on getting the Scotch.
Thank you for being here. And I'm going to hand it over to Mark and enjoy this wonderful moment here.
Mark Berndt: Thanks. Thanks to you all for coming, and thanks to Pilar for letting us use the gallery space again. Absolutely. Because we wouldn't be able to do this if we didn't have this cool space.
I know most of you guys. I'm Mark. This is Eric. And this is the second LEICAS & SCOTCH event. Tony Bonanno did our first inaugural LEICAS & SCOTCH about a month ago. We're trying another one now and hopefully you guys will enjoy what we talk about today. So without further ado, I'm going to read you this introduction to Eric because he's got, like, this great background.
Eric McCollum is a writer and a fine art photographer who works in both digital and analog formats, primarily in black and white. A lifelong photographer, his career as a psychotherapist and college professor in the DC area for 26 years preceded he and his wife moving here about seven years ago. Eric took a course with Beaumont, Newhall at UNM in the seventies, but he says he got really serious about photography in 2004. His work has been published in Lenswork, Adore Noir Magazine, Digital Photography UK, Stern in Germany, Madame in Germany, Kinfolk in Denmark, Chip Photo Video in China and in Shadow and Light Magazine, where he has written a column for the past seven years that focuses not on technology but on the experience of making pictures. He has also published non-fiction and is currently working on projects that combine text and photographs.
And there you go.
Eric McCollum: Well, first of all, it's really a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate Mark's willingness to invite me to be part of this. And also, many thanks to Pilar and the gallery for hosting what I hope will be an ongoing series of conversations with photographers. My thanks for all of you. Mark and I have been having conversations like this for some time now, years. And we often have them over lunch, which leaves me feeling like I ought to order something before we get started. But I guess that's not going to going to happen today. So anyway, thank you all, and I hope you enjoy what we have to talk about.
MB: I asked Eric for some images to show as we were trying to promote this event a little bit. He sent me all black & white work, but he and I worked together a while back making a print of this color image of his and I decided to use it too. So everything you're going to see today is black and white, except for this image. I just love the color and the dynamism and the energy in this image. And I thought it was a really nice contrast between this and the other more personal black and white, smaller format Holga stuff that you're doing. We're going to talk about a wide range of things. Eric gave me four different bodies of work. We're going to go through and talk about and get some information about each of those bodies of work.
This is this first body of work - called Cocoon. Right? And I'm just going to kind of kick it off with… you had a straight job for your career. You didn't have a commercial photography career, right?
MB: I asked Eric for some images to show as we were trying to promote this event a little bit. He sent me all black & white work, but he and I worked together a while back making a print of this color image of his and I decided to use it too. So everything you're going to see today is black and white, except for this image. I just love the color and the dynamism and the energy in this image. And I thought it was a really nice contrast between this and the other more personal black and white, smaller format Holga stuff that you're doing. We're going to talk about a wide range of things. Eric gave me four different bodies of work. We're going to go through and talk about and get some information about each of those bodies of work.
This is this first body of work - called Cocoon. Right? And I'm just going to kind of kick it off with… you had a straight job for your career. You didn't have a commercial photography career, right?
EM: I’ve not been a commercial photographer. Right.
MB: But you've been photographing since you're a kid. So everybody was kind of wants to know, how did you get hooked? How did you get addicted?
EM: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my my parents bought me a camera when I was about five or six, I think, and it was a little Kodak twin lens reflex. It had absolutely no manual controls whatsoever, no focus, no aperture, no shutter speed. You just kind of pointed it at stuff and pushed the button. And my dad and I would develop the film and I like to say that my first introduction to serious profanity was with my dad was trying to load the 127 film into one of those old Bakelite developing tanks. Uh, that's when I really got my introduction to adult level profanity. But I think it's sort of a cliche, but when you're in the darkroom and you make a print and you see that image emerge, there's just something magic about it. And everybody says that it. But I think it's it's really true.
I didn't get really serious about fine art photography until approximately 2004. I had been working in a very different field. I had a 40 year career as a psychotherapist. Usually when I say that to an audience, there's this sort of slight gasp and a bit of silence because everybody thinks that I'm analyzing you. Trust me, if you don't whip out that Visa card, I'm not analyzing you, so you don't have anything to worry about. Okay. So I'd been doing that, and I was also working in higher education, training young psychotherapists. And I had a good friend and colleague who was diagnosed with a terminal illness and who died within a couple of years of her diagnosis. And it led me to ask myself - if I were facing what she was facing, had I done enough, had I done what I wanted and needed to do? And what was really missing for me was the creative side of my nature, my interests. And so that led me back to photography. I'd made some efforts to do photography in my undergraduate years very unsuccessfully, and I then came back and started being more serious about it at that point.
MB: So tell us about this. We're starting off with two series that take place in the studio, right? As a commercial photographer, you use lighting a lot. You work in the studio, you work on location, whatever. But as a non-commercial photographer, jumping into the studio seems like a kind of a big deal to me.
EM: Yeah, it was. And I was really intimidated and I didn't have my own studio. I rented a studio. We were in the D.C. area at that time and there were several good rental studios. Although some of this series was shot in my in my basement studio. But I spent a lot of time kind of teaching myself how to make studio lighting work, how to get the kinds of images that I wanted to get.
I was working with a model and we were kind of near the end of our time in the studio, but we had maybe 45 minutes left and we were tired and we’d kind of run out of ideas, but studio time is gold when you're paying for it. So we wanted to keep working. And she said, “Wait a second, I got something that I think you might like.” And she ran to her bag and got out this nylon cocoon thing and she put it on and began to move within it. And this was the first image - the one that you're seeing right there - that came from the use of that material.
All of a sudden you could see - I mean, the thing that I think intrigued me so much was you could see the geometry of the body in a different way, you could see the space around the body in a different way. There was a sense of mystery to it. It was you know, in fact a real person. But you weren't quite sure who it is. You can't identify her very well. And because the the models in this series were nude, there was a sense of seeing and not being able to see it and not being able to look. And this really became, Mark, like the first of what I would think of as a real body of work. Okay. I shot this body of work for probably four or five years on and off.
MB: That’s what I was wondering about. It's not just a one time deal in the studio with a model. You have a concept and then you revisit it and so it progresses or you learn from each one. You come up with other ideas. Did you work with multiple models?
EM: Yes . Multiple models. And, it really was an exercise in playing with a set of elements. You have the body and the cocoon and the studio space. And we just played with that. And after a while you'll see, I decided, okay, let's get some body paint and spread that on the fabric and see what that does. Let's get some mud and put that on on the fabric and see what that does. Let's tear it. right? Let's put two brave people in it together. You know, let's, I don't know that I included it here, but I think there is one. A model. Yes. This one is with the mud that we used. We used that facial mask mud because I wanted something that I was hopeful, you know, wasn't something that would irritate the skin of my models.
MB: It’s interesting. I think the thing about working in a studio compared to location work is you feed off of whatever you find on location, but in the studio you've got to think of what you're going to do beforehand, and if you don't bring the stuff there, you're not going to have a shot, right?
EM: Right. Yeah. Yeah. At the same time, though, it's its own location, okay? Because you, you take the elements with you, but you also let the model play with them. And I make suggestions to see what you can find. Not unlike if you're walking up and down Canyon Road, you can see what's there. This is a little different, but it's the same in many ways because you kind of see what develops, what happens. And it's not a one way process. It isn't where I'm saying, well, now do this and put your arm in your left hip and and this sort of thing. We really worked on conversation and creativity and what makes sense to you?
MB: Do they see things? They see what you're doing as you go.
EM: Absolutely. I started out they would look at the back of the camera and then later I was shooting tethered. It really helps. And these are, these are models who really took this work seriously and were, you know, happy to be doing it, happy to be included. It was an interaction. And sometimes we'd get started on in conversation and wander off into something else and all of a sudden 10 minutes had gone by and we hadn't made any photographs. So I'm like, okay, well, let's kind of get back to, you know, what we're doing here.
MB: The next body of work is in the studio as well. And this is also a dance series. But this is collaboration again.
EM: Absolutely right
MB: But you've been photographing since you're a kid. So everybody was kind of wants to know, how did you get hooked? How did you get addicted?
EM: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my my parents bought me a camera when I was about five or six, I think, and it was a little Kodak twin lens reflex. It had absolutely no manual controls whatsoever, no focus, no aperture, no shutter speed. You just kind of pointed it at stuff and pushed the button. And my dad and I would develop the film and I like to say that my first introduction to serious profanity was with my dad was trying to load the 127 film into one of those old Bakelite developing tanks. Uh, that's when I really got my introduction to adult level profanity. But I think it's sort of a cliche, but when you're in the darkroom and you make a print and you see that image emerge, there's just something magic about it. And everybody says that it. But I think it's it's really true.
I didn't get really serious about fine art photography until approximately 2004. I had been working in a very different field. I had a 40 year career as a psychotherapist. Usually when I say that to an audience, there's this sort of slight gasp and a bit of silence because everybody thinks that I'm analyzing you. Trust me, if you don't whip out that Visa card, I'm not analyzing you, so you don't have anything to worry about. Okay. So I'd been doing that, and I was also working in higher education, training young psychotherapists. And I had a good friend and colleague who was diagnosed with a terminal illness and who died within a couple of years of her diagnosis. And it led me to ask myself - if I were facing what she was facing, had I done enough, had I done what I wanted and needed to do? And what was really missing for me was the creative side of my nature, my interests. And so that led me back to photography. I'd made some efforts to do photography in my undergraduate years very unsuccessfully, and I then came back and started being more serious about it at that point.
MB: So tell us about this. We're starting off with two series that take place in the studio, right? As a commercial photographer, you use lighting a lot. You work in the studio, you work on location, whatever. But as a non-commercial photographer, jumping into the studio seems like a kind of a big deal to me.
EM: Yeah, it was. And I was really intimidated and I didn't have my own studio. I rented a studio. We were in the D.C. area at that time and there were several good rental studios. Although some of this series was shot in my in my basement studio. But I spent a lot of time kind of teaching myself how to make studio lighting work, how to get the kinds of images that I wanted to get.
I was working with a model and we were kind of near the end of our time in the studio, but we had maybe 45 minutes left and we were tired and we’d kind of run out of ideas, but studio time is gold when you're paying for it. So we wanted to keep working. And she said, “Wait a second, I got something that I think you might like.” And she ran to her bag and got out this nylon cocoon thing and she put it on and began to move within it. And this was the first image - the one that you're seeing right there - that came from the use of that material.
All of a sudden you could see - I mean, the thing that I think intrigued me so much was you could see the geometry of the body in a different way, you could see the space around the body in a different way. There was a sense of mystery to it. It was you know, in fact a real person. But you weren't quite sure who it is. You can't identify her very well. And because the the models in this series were nude, there was a sense of seeing and not being able to see it and not being able to look. And this really became, Mark, like the first of what I would think of as a real body of work. Okay. I shot this body of work for probably four or five years on and off.
MB: That’s what I was wondering about. It's not just a one time deal in the studio with a model. You have a concept and then you revisit it and so it progresses or you learn from each one. You come up with other ideas. Did you work with multiple models?
EM: Yes . Multiple models. And, it really was an exercise in playing with a set of elements. You have the body and the cocoon and the studio space. And we just played with that. And after a while you'll see, I decided, okay, let's get some body paint and spread that on the fabric and see what that does. Let's get some mud and put that on on the fabric and see what that does. Let's tear it. right? Let's put two brave people in it together. You know, let's, I don't know that I included it here, but I think there is one. A model. Yes. This one is with the mud that we used. We used that facial mask mud because I wanted something that I was hopeful, you know, wasn't something that would irritate the skin of my models.
MB: It’s interesting. I think the thing about working in a studio compared to location work is you feed off of whatever you find on location, but in the studio you've got to think of what you're going to do beforehand, and if you don't bring the stuff there, you're not going to have a shot, right?
EM: Right. Yeah. Yeah. At the same time, though, it's its own location, okay? Because you, you take the elements with you, but you also let the model play with them. And I make suggestions to see what you can find. Not unlike if you're walking up and down Canyon Road, you can see what's there. This is a little different, but it's the same in many ways because you kind of see what develops, what happens. And it's not a one way process. It isn't where I'm saying, well, now do this and put your arm in your left hip and and this sort of thing. We really worked on conversation and creativity and what makes sense to you?
MB: Do they see things? They see what you're doing as you go.
EM: Absolutely. I started out they would look at the back of the camera and then later I was shooting tethered. It really helps. And these are, these are models who really took this work seriously and were, you know, happy to be doing it, happy to be included. It was an interaction. And sometimes we'd get started on in conversation and wander off into something else and all of a sudden 10 minutes had gone by and we hadn't made any photographs. So I'm like, okay, well, let's kind of get back to, you know, what we're doing here.
MB: The next body of work is in the studio as well. And this is also a dance series. But this is collaboration again.
EM: Absolutely right
MB: And how did you even start this? With Anna?
EM: Anna. She also goes by Poppyseed Dancer. But Anna is her name. I was interested in working with dancers. I've worked with models, but I think dancers have such a unique knowledge of their physicality that I thought, well, this would be really fun and this would be an extension of the work that I’d been doing and I worked with some dancers and then somehow I was able to connect with Anna, who is very well trained. She's really a remarkable person. She's a very well trained ballerina, trained mostly in Italy with Russian teachers. And she was my entree into the ballet world in the D.C. area.
And so once you've kind of made connections with a model or an artist they're happy to send their friends to you because they know you're going to do a good job, they know you're going to work with them, you know? And so she really introduced me to the rest of these folks.
MB: Again, what was the first session like? I mean, there you're exploring, right? It's like, do you really know what you're going to get out of everybody or how you're going to approach it? Or are your ideas evolving?
EM: Well, the first session… again, Anna’s a very well trained ballerina. She's also I mean, she's also a concert pianist who’s played Carnegie Hall. And the very first time we had a session, I said to her, “I think it would be great if you would try this and then this and then this.” And she looked at me and she said, “No. I'm going to dance for you. You're going to take photographs and it's going to be beautiful.” And she did. And I did. And it was.
She grew up in Yalta in Ukraine, but immigrated to the U.S. with her mother and stepfather and was actually raised in the D.C. area. She had a little bit of an accent, but she certainly had that kind of Russian feel to her. Her dancing was beautiful. It was beautiful. It really was. But it has to be, for me at least, a collaboration. I don't know enough about dance to think of these things. And so what, what the process would be like - we’d start with a concept. I told them, “Look, I don't want to photograph choreography. I don't I'm not trying to photograph a performance. I don't want to do a piece that's out of The Nutcracker.”, which all ballet dancers hate, by the way. Nutcracker season is not a happy time in the ballet world.
So I said, “Let's do something else. Let's use your skills to try to create something that says something about human emotion, you know, physicality, the beauty of the body…” and so forth and so on. So they would start with something and then we would begin to refine it and we'd look at what they'd done.
MB: And so, they're getting feedback from all the way through, right? Through the computer screen.
EM: Yes. And sometimes there were just things that needed to be corrected, You know, if a hand’s here and the lights up there, there's going to be a shadow on the face. Technical stuff. It wouldn't it wouldn't matter if it was in motion, but this is a still image, right? And so we just worked and worked on it. So I worked with Anna two or three times and then she introduced me to her friend Emmanuel, and these two were magic together. The thing about two dancers that I really liked is - then there becomes a narrative. You know, you can kind of see an interaction. There's a story there. There's a narrative in the interaction between the couple, right?
MB: Not to get into too much technical stuff but you're using strobe, and even strobe to freeze action is a really short duration burst compared to what it can typically be for portraiture. Are you working with an assistant? Are you doing testing before you go in? Or kind of making it up as you go along?
EM: Yeah, I was the assistant. I did the testing before I went in. I cleaned up the studio once it was over, processed the images. No, I didn’t have an assistant.
MB: No assistant? Cool. How long were your sessions?
EM: I would usually reserve the studio for 4 hours. I can shoot for about 3 hours without getting too tired.
MB: And the dancers?
EM: You have to be careful about this. This particular studio was a lovely studio. It had a huge cyclorama wall that all of this was shot against. But the floors are cement and that's really hard on dancers for jumps and leaps. And so we had to restrict the number of those kinds of photographs that we could make.
MB: Have you taken photography classes?
EM: I took some workshops. I didn't ever take a class until I got to Santa Fe and took some.
MB: So your lighting stuff is all just kind of moving stuff around ‘til you like what you see and…
EM: Yeah. And I tried to keep it really simple. Much of it is shot with one light. The high key images add 2 umbrellas in the back. Yeah. A lot of it was just trial and error. And sometimes you know, you’d look at the back of the camera and go “oh, crap… What am I going to do about that?”
MB: But I think that's part of it. I see with people who are getting into to photography these days, they haven't come up and tried things - kind of looking for answers - and they don't have a way to think their way out of an issue. If there's something that they don't like, they don't necessarily know how to how to change it to solve that problem. Right?
EM: Yeah. Can I tell you one short quick story?
I was shooting with Anna and there was a light leak against the back wall. So instead of this nice grey, there was a light like a streak - a bright spot there. And so the soft box that I was using was kind of old and there were kind of tears in the side, so I must've had four yards of gaffer's tape wrapped around that thing trying to stop this light leak. And it wouldn't stop and it wouldn't stop. And finally I went out and got the studio assistant who was at the front desk and said, “Can you come and give me a consult? Can you tell me what's going on here?” And she came in and she looked at it and she said, ‘Well, I don't think it's a light leak here, but you see that mirror that you've got set up so the dancer can see herself? That's what's throwing it back behind. And so we turned it a little bit and all of a sudden the light leak was gone.
EM: Anna. She also goes by Poppyseed Dancer. But Anna is her name. I was interested in working with dancers. I've worked with models, but I think dancers have such a unique knowledge of their physicality that I thought, well, this would be really fun and this would be an extension of the work that I’d been doing and I worked with some dancers and then somehow I was able to connect with Anna, who is very well trained. She's really a remarkable person. She's a very well trained ballerina, trained mostly in Italy with Russian teachers. And she was my entree into the ballet world in the D.C. area.
And so once you've kind of made connections with a model or an artist they're happy to send their friends to you because they know you're going to do a good job, they know you're going to work with them, you know? And so she really introduced me to the rest of these folks.
MB: Again, what was the first session like? I mean, there you're exploring, right? It's like, do you really know what you're going to get out of everybody or how you're going to approach it? Or are your ideas evolving?
EM: Well, the first session… again, Anna’s a very well trained ballerina. She's also I mean, she's also a concert pianist who’s played Carnegie Hall. And the very first time we had a session, I said to her, “I think it would be great if you would try this and then this and then this.” And she looked at me and she said, “No. I'm going to dance for you. You're going to take photographs and it's going to be beautiful.” And she did. And I did. And it was.
She grew up in Yalta in Ukraine, but immigrated to the U.S. with her mother and stepfather and was actually raised in the D.C. area. She had a little bit of an accent, but she certainly had that kind of Russian feel to her. Her dancing was beautiful. It was beautiful. It really was. But it has to be, for me at least, a collaboration. I don't know enough about dance to think of these things. And so what, what the process would be like - we’d start with a concept. I told them, “Look, I don't want to photograph choreography. I don't I'm not trying to photograph a performance. I don't want to do a piece that's out of The Nutcracker.”, which all ballet dancers hate, by the way. Nutcracker season is not a happy time in the ballet world.
So I said, “Let's do something else. Let's use your skills to try to create something that says something about human emotion, you know, physicality, the beauty of the body…” and so forth and so on. So they would start with something and then we would begin to refine it and we'd look at what they'd done.
MB: And so, they're getting feedback from all the way through, right? Through the computer screen.
EM: Yes. And sometimes there were just things that needed to be corrected, You know, if a hand’s here and the lights up there, there's going to be a shadow on the face. Technical stuff. It wouldn't it wouldn't matter if it was in motion, but this is a still image, right? And so we just worked and worked on it. So I worked with Anna two or three times and then she introduced me to her friend Emmanuel, and these two were magic together. The thing about two dancers that I really liked is - then there becomes a narrative. You know, you can kind of see an interaction. There's a story there. There's a narrative in the interaction between the couple, right?
MB: Not to get into too much technical stuff but you're using strobe, and even strobe to freeze action is a really short duration burst compared to what it can typically be for portraiture. Are you working with an assistant? Are you doing testing before you go in? Or kind of making it up as you go along?
EM: Yeah, I was the assistant. I did the testing before I went in. I cleaned up the studio once it was over, processed the images. No, I didn’t have an assistant.
MB: No assistant? Cool. How long were your sessions?
EM: I would usually reserve the studio for 4 hours. I can shoot for about 3 hours without getting too tired.
MB: And the dancers?
EM: You have to be careful about this. This particular studio was a lovely studio. It had a huge cyclorama wall that all of this was shot against. But the floors are cement and that's really hard on dancers for jumps and leaps. And so we had to restrict the number of those kinds of photographs that we could make.
MB: Have you taken photography classes?
EM: I took some workshops. I didn't ever take a class until I got to Santa Fe and took some.
MB: So your lighting stuff is all just kind of moving stuff around ‘til you like what you see and…
EM: Yeah. And I tried to keep it really simple. Much of it is shot with one light. The high key images add 2 umbrellas in the back. Yeah. A lot of it was just trial and error. And sometimes you know, you’d look at the back of the camera and go “oh, crap… What am I going to do about that?”
MB: But I think that's part of it. I see with people who are getting into to photography these days, they haven't come up and tried things - kind of looking for answers - and they don't have a way to think their way out of an issue. If there's something that they don't like, they don't necessarily know how to how to change it to solve that problem. Right?
EM: Yeah. Can I tell you one short quick story?
I was shooting with Anna and there was a light leak against the back wall. So instead of this nice grey, there was a light like a streak - a bright spot there. And so the soft box that I was using was kind of old and there were kind of tears in the side, so I must've had four yards of gaffer's tape wrapped around that thing trying to stop this light leak. And it wouldn't stop and it wouldn't stop. And finally I went out and got the studio assistant who was at the front desk and said, “Can you come and give me a consult? Can you tell me what's going on here?” And she came in and she looked at it and she said, ‘Well, I don't think it's a light leak here, but you see that mirror that you've got set up so the dancer can see herself? That's what's throwing it back behind. And so we turned it a little bit and all of a sudden the light leak was gone.
MB: So I didn't want to talk about gear a ton, but you have these various bodies of work and you use different equipment on them. I thought that'd be interesting. That you would be a very interesting “what's in my bag” person to talk to.
So the first these first two groups of work that we've seen are digital, converted to black and white. Right?
EM: Yeah. We shot digitally. Those are all shot digital That was a while ago and those were shot with various Nikon D bodies, the last of which was the D810. I haven’t used the mirrorless system which I'm using now, in the studio. If I go back in the studio I would go back to the D810. That’s kind of what I learned how to do studio work with. I think there's a little bit of lag in the mirrorless cameras. I don't know. But I it's partly superstition, you know, I kind of want to go with what I know works. I seem to have the knack of knowing when to hit the shutter, and I don't want to mess with that. If I go back, I want to use equipment that I'm familiar with.
MB: But besides the studio work, you like mirrorless?
EM: I do, yeah. I have a Nikon Z6, which is what I use most of the time. And I have several lenses for it.
MB: Okay. So then going forward from here, we're going to look at two other bodies of work. And this is your film work, right? So - what’s this gear?
EM: This is traveling gear - film. Traveling gear.
MB: And you travel, You guys drive around the state and find stuff to shoot, right?
EM: Yeah, yeah. So Julia drives and I find stuff to shoot.
MB: Yeah. “Good. Pull over here. Yeah, I know you're hungry, but pull over here. It'll just be a couple of minutes." Right?
EM: I used to tell my my dancer models, when I say just one more, that means eight or nine more, just so you know.
MB: For those who don't know, explain a Holga camera.
EM: Yeah, the Holga is a little plastic camera made in China, and it was originally designed to be kind of the people's camera in China, so that Chinese families could make pictures of their kids and so forth and so on. It's entirely plastic, including the lens. And so it's not razor sharp. It gets light leaks. Mine has like a half a roll of gaffer tape on it, on the back. trust me. It's medium format and it creates these kind of images that have generally an area of sharp focus, and then it's kind of fuzzy around the edges, and it vignettes quite a bit. They're kind of dreamy photographs in a way. And we'll see later a series that I've done traveling around in this area with the Holga.
MB: Explain the focusing nomenclature please.
EM: Oh yeah. It has two controls. It has a setting for cloudy and for sunny, and which make no discernable difference that I can tell, because I've often left it on the wrong one and think, Oh my God, what's it going to look like? And it's fine. And the focusing is manual. You got to turn it, but you can't see the image.
MB: You just have a little viewfinder up here like a rangefinder at the top. So you're, you're looking at a window. Not through the lens. Not through the lens. Right?
EM: Right. And so on top of the lens it has a little diagram of one person and then two people and then four or five people and then a mountain range. And that's for, you know, whatever, two feet to infinity, in the space of about an inch and a half. And you do, you do have to tape it together. I was carrying it around here somewhere and I stopped in a gallery and the gallery owner was asking me about this camera and I was trying to impress him, and the back fell off. So, you know, that's when I went home and got out the gaffer tape. And then this is a Zeiss Super Ikonta and I use it when I want a sharper, clearer image. And I like it because it's still medium format -120 film - but you can carry it around ‘cause it collapses. And it’s a rangefinder camera so you get some help focusing. It’s just kind of fun to have that available. It's square as well - 6x6.
MB: And then this thing down here, I have no idea what that is.
EM: Yeah, it's interesting. You hold it up. Like, if you were going to take a picture of us, you hold up and you push a button and it tells you what the correct exposure. And it's not an iPhone.
MB: Well, it's a museum piece.
EM: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And then this… this was a lovely gift to me, I must say, from my buddy who's sitting right over here. This is Mamiya 7 ii . And it is a lovely camera. It's a six by seven.
And I threw in two light meters. This is also a studio meter, useful for strobe. And a Honeywell spot meter. This is a beautiful camera, and the lenses are stunning. They just are stunning.
MB: Interchangeable lenses?
EM: Yes. I have two other lenses.
MB: Obviously for your digital stuff you've got zooms. But a lot of these are prime lenses - especially on the film cameras.
EM: The film cameras are all prime lenses. And prior to to getting this camera, I used an RZ67 for the studio. Those of you who've ever used one of those - it’s not very portable. You need to hire a 16 year old to carry it around for you because it weighs a ton, but it works fine on a tripod.
MB: Cameras used to come with a 50 millimeter lens, called a “normal lens” ,that everybody would like immediately throw that in a drawer somewhere because nobody wanted to take “normal” pictures and they would get some other long lens or a wide-angle lens. Now everything comes with a zoom lenses, but I don't think anybody uses a zoom lenses to pick a focal length and shoot. I think they use it to crop instead, of - like - moving closer or further back. Leaving the house with a camera with just a single prime lens on it is a kind of a gutsy thing to do, I think.
EM: Yes, indeed.
MB: Okay. So let's look at some of this other work. The next group of images you call “Expiration Date”. I love that title.
EM: Okay. Do you have a question? Because I'll just keep talking…
So the first these first two groups of work that we've seen are digital, converted to black and white. Right?
EM: Yeah. We shot digitally. Those are all shot digital That was a while ago and those were shot with various Nikon D bodies, the last of which was the D810. I haven’t used the mirrorless system which I'm using now, in the studio. If I go back in the studio I would go back to the D810. That’s kind of what I learned how to do studio work with. I think there's a little bit of lag in the mirrorless cameras. I don't know. But I it's partly superstition, you know, I kind of want to go with what I know works. I seem to have the knack of knowing when to hit the shutter, and I don't want to mess with that. If I go back, I want to use equipment that I'm familiar with.
MB: But besides the studio work, you like mirrorless?
EM: I do, yeah. I have a Nikon Z6, which is what I use most of the time. And I have several lenses for it.
MB: Okay. So then going forward from here, we're going to look at two other bodies of work. And this is your film work, right? So - what’s this gear?
EM: This is traveling gear - film. Traveling gear.
MB: And you travel, You guys drive around the state and find stuff to shoot, right?
EM: Yeah, yeah. So Julia drives and I find stuff to shoot.
MB: Yeah. “Good. Pull over here. Yeah, I know you're hungry, but pull over here. It'll just be a couple of minutes." Right?
EM: I used to tell my my dancer models, when I say just one more, that means eight or nine more, just so you know.
MB: For those who don't know, explain a Holga camera.
EM: Yeah, the Holga is a little plastic camera made in China, and it was originally designed to be kind of the people's camera in China, so that Chinese families could make pictures of their kids and so forth and so on. It's entirely plastic, including the lens. And so it's not razor sharp. It gets light leaks. Mine has like a half a roll of gaffer tape on it, on the back. trust me. It's medium format and it creates these kind of images that have generally an area of sharp focus, and then it's kind of fuzzy around the edges, and it vignettes quite a bit. They're kind of dreamy photographs in a way. And we'll see later a series that I've done traveling around in this area with the Holga.
MB: Explain the focusing nomenclature please.
EM: Oh yeah. It has two controls. It has a setting for cloudy and for sunny, and which make no discernable difference that I can tell, because I've often left it on the wrong one and think, Oh my God, what's it going to look like? And it's fine. And the focusing is manual. You got to turn it, but you can't see the image.
MB: You just have a little viewfinder up here like a rangefinder at the top. So you're, you're looking at a window. Not through the lens. Not through the lens. Right?
EM: Right. And so on top of the lens it has a little diagram of one person and then two people and then four or five people and then a mountain range. And that's for, you know, whatever, two feet to infinity, in the space of about an inch and a half. And you do, you do have to tape it together. I was carrying it around here somewhere and I stopped in a gallery and the gallery owner was asking me about this camera and I was trying to impress him, and the back fell off. So, you know, that's when I went home and got out the gaffer tape. And then this is a Zeiss Super Ikonta and I use it when I want a sharper, clearer image. And I like it because it's still medium format -120 film - but you can carry it around ‘cause it collapses. And it’s a rangefinder camera so you get some help focusing. It’s just kind of fun to have that available. It's square as well - 6x6.
MB: And then this thing down here, I have no idea what that is.
EM: Yeah, it's interesting. You hold it up. Like, if you were going to take a picture of us, you hold up and you push a button and it tells you what the correct exposure. And it's not an iPhone.
MB: Well, it's a museum piece.
EM: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And then this… this was a lovely gift to me, I must say, from my buddy who's sitting right over here. This is Mamiya 7 ii . And it is a lovely camera. It's a six by seven.
And I threw in two light meters. This is also a studio meter, useful for strobe. And a Honeywell spot meter. This is a beautiful camera, and the lenses are stunning. They just are stunning.
MB: Interchangeable lenses?
EM: Yes. I have two other lenses.
MB: Obviously for your digital stuff you've got zooms. But a lot of these are prime lenses - especially on the film cameras.
EM: The film cameras are all prime lenses. And prior to to getting this camera, I used an RZ67 for the studio. Those of you who've ever used one of those - it’s not very portable. You need to hire a 16 year old to carry it around for you because it weighs a ton, but it works fine on a tripod.
MB: Cameras used to come with a 50 millimeter lens, called a “normal lens” ,that everybody would like immediately throw that in a drawer somewhere because nobody wanted to take “normal” pictures and they would get some other long lens or a wide-angle lens. Now everything comes with a zoom lenses, but I don't think anybody uses a zoom lenses to pick a focal length and shoot. I think they use it to crop instead, of - like - moving closer or further back. Leaving the house with a camera with just a single prime lens on it is a kind of a gutsy thing to do, I think.
EM: Yes, indeed.
MB: Okay. So let's look at some of this other work. The next group of images you call “Expiration Date”. I love that title.
EM: Okay. Do you have a question? Because I'll just keep talking…
MB: So I love this title, this “Expiration Date”. The title makes me look at these in a deeper way as self-portraits than I've always thought of self-portraits. Here's a picture of you now, but this is also about what happens after this right? They're they're very evocative. When you to do a series like this, do you get up in the morning and say, I'm going to go make a self-portrait today? Or are you somewhere where you see a situation that sparks an idea that triggers something or means something and you can turn it into one of these and take on a like a sort of a deeper meaning spontaneously on location?
EM: Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both, actually, Mark. Sometimes I have an idea that I want to realize. For example, with one of these, I had seen this bench, a park bench in the absolute middle of nowhere, near us and I thought, what a great place to make a photograph for this series. Okay. And so I went and actually I think Julia went with me and, and you know, made a photograph there. Other times I just see something, right? The image with the dressmaker’s mannequin. Julia is a fiber artist, and I just saw that sitting in our bedroom. And I said, you know, that merits of photograph. Because it was white in the bedroom, stark and all that. And so I made it then. Another one is an homage to Emmet and Edith Gowin and we kind of recreated that. So the inspiration sort of came from a variety of places.
I call this my COVID project. It's not about COVID because it started when we were quarantined. Isolated. And I thought, you know, now would be a time to think about doing some self-portraits.
Now, all of these are shot on expired film. I bought a little film camera online and it came with five rolls of of expired color film. I mean in the eighties! Seriously expired - not like, you know, 2019 or 2022. And so I was talking to a friend of mine and said I don't know what to do with it. I'll just throw it away (which means I flunked the first test of being a photographer) because he looked at me and said, “No, you need to shoot it and see what happens.” And so I thought, as I said to a friend of mine, I'm coming up on my sell-by date. Maybe expired film would have a conceptual meaning, like in a self portrait project for somebody in my age group.
And so it started with that and a sideline about expired film is… color negative film - C41 process film - if you develop it in black and white chemistry, it yields a black and white negative, right? It is the densest black and white negative you've ever seen in your life. I told Mark one day at lunch that you could watch the solar eclipse through it, but with being able to scan it and manipulate it in Photoshop before making the print, you're able to you can find a usable image. The other thing that amazed me, I thought I would get these very funky images with, you know, big parts of them that were blotchy and artifacts and all that, but the black and white film holds up really well. The photo of Julia was Agfapan 50, I think, and it expired in 1986! And you wouldn't know it now. Now the Kodacolor does not. The C41 doesn't hold up.
So it started out as self-portraits. One was a lot of fun because with a piece of mylar and I thought I would go out into the landscape and reflect the land with the Mylar. Well, as you can tell, that didn't work with the mylar. But a lot of people thought it sort of looks like I’m looking at a map or something and well, I mean, that's kind of what, you know, you get to the age that I'm in and it looks like many of my friends out here. You know, you're kind of looking for where have you been? Where are you going? And so I think it, you know, even though it was not what I intended, it ended up it works in this context.
Mark, I'm a retired college professor, and we're like a gas. We can kind of expand to fill space, but, you know, time is made available to us, so
MB: The last group of images is called ReJoice.
EM: Rejoice. Always rejoice.
EM: Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both, actually, Mark. Sometimes I have an idea that I want to realize. For example, with one of these, I had seen this bench, a park bench in the absolute middle of nowhere, near us and I thought, what a great place to make a photograph for this series. Okay. And so I went and actually I think Julia went with me and, and you know, made a photograph there. Other times I just see something, right? The image with the dressmaker’s mannequin. Julia is a fiber artist, and I just saw that sitting in our bedroom. And I said, you know, that merits of photograph. Because it was white in the bedroom, stark and all that. And so I made it then. Another one is an homage to Emmet and Edith Gowin and we kind of recreated that. So the inspiration sort of came from a variety of places.
I call this my COVID project. It's not about COVID because it started when we were quarantined. Isolated. And I thought, you know, now would be a time to think about doing some self-portraits.
Now, all of these are shot on expired film. I bought a little film camera online and it came with five rolls of of expired color film. I mean in the eighties! Seriously expired - not like, you know, 2019 or 2022. And so I was talking to a friend of mine and said I don't know what to do with it. I'll just throw it away (which means I flunked the first test of being a photographer) because he looked at me and said, “No, you need to shoot it and see what happens.” And so I thought, as I said to a friend of mine, I'm coming up on my sell-by date. Maybe expired film would have a conceptual meaning, like in a self portrait project for somebody in my age group.
And so it started with that and a sideline about expired film is… color negative film - C41 process film - if you develop it in black and white chemistry, it yields a black and white negative, right? It is the densest black and white negative you've ever seen in your life. I told Mark one day at lunch that you could watch the solar eclipse through it, but with being able to scan it and manipulate it in Photoshop before making the print, you're able to you can find a usable image. The other thing that amazed me, I thought I would get these very funky images with, you know, big parts of them that were blotchy and artifacts and all that, but the black and white film holds up really well. The photo of Julia was Agfapan 50, I think, and it expired in 1986! And you wouldn't know it now. Now the Kodacolor does not. The C41 doesn't hold up.
So it started out as self-portraits. One was a lot of fun because with a piece of mylar and I thought I would go out into the landscape and reflect the land with the Mylar. Well, as you can tell, that didn't work with the mylar. But a lot of people thought it sort of looks like I’m looking at a map or something and well, I mean, that's kind of what, you know, you get to the age that I'm in and it looks like many of my friends out here. You know, you're kind of looking for where have you been? Where are you going? And so I think it, you know, even though it was not what I intended, it ended up it works in this context.
Mark, I'm a retired college professor, and we're like a gas. We can kind of expand to fill space, but, you know, time is made available to us, so
MB: The last group of images is called ReJoice.
EM: Rejoice. Always rejoice.
MB: You and I talked about transplanted photographers - photographers who move to New Mexico. And what else is there to do in New Mexico but shoot landscape and, well, it’s not like it's never been done before. So how do you do landscape and make it something that's yours?
EM: It was depressing to come to New Mexico. As you know, you kind of imagine a beautiful light, beautiful landscape. You're just going to go out and make landscapes and I mean, you can do that. But I found myself more often than not kind of raising the camera and then thinking, ‘It's been done before and it's been done better than I could do it, you know, and there's nothing that I have to add to this. Right? I think. And so that's when the Holga came along and I thought instead of the grand landscapes, which I love in many ways, what are the smaller landscapes? What are the micro landscapes? What are the the idiosyncratic parts of this land? And so these were all shot on film with the Holga. And they're just kind of my take on what this place is all about from a different perspective, I think than an Ansel Adams, you know?
MB: Ansel didn't have Julia driving for him either.
EM: No. (laughs)
MB: So you guys just explore. You just, like, head out in the morning and see where you go?
EM: Yeah. That's my little Holga bag. I take it with me and some of it… this was shot at a friend's house. And then the cross. I love the cross. It's in Española at a church along the main road there. It’s on wheels, with a trailer hitch, which puzzles me. Where this cross would be going and what purpose it would serve once it got there. And then there’s Lamy…
MB: So you're shooting film. Processing. What chemistry do you process in?
EM: Oh, the chemistry I use, I use Eco-Pro which is a variant of Kodak’s Extol for this work. For the expired film I use Diafine because it's a 2 solution developer and regardless of what the film is, it's 4 minutes in one and 4 minutes in the other. And so some of these films, I had no idea and there wasn't any literature about it. And so that was just kind of the best way to go.
MB: But you're not making darkroom prints?
EM: I scan it and I manipulate the images in Photoshop to some extent, and then print digital, inkjet.
MB: Okay. And so is the print your end result? Is that what you're heading for in the whole process? Or, I know you've done books. Or is there any consideration for where it ends up?
EM: Yeah, there is. And I'm hesitating because I'm not sure there's one end result. I mean, I think the prints are important. I think it's important to see this work on paper or on the wall. I also think photobooks are are really an elegant way to show work because you kind of control the sequence, right? Especially a body of work. So I think books are also important in that way. Absolutely.
MB: Do you think about - do you sell prints? Uh - I can’t seem to, but do you?
EM: Yeah. If someone will buy them. I'd sell my desk chair.
MB: I guess what I'm getting at is, if you sell prints, or if you sell books, is that a factor when you're making pictures? Are you thinking about audience? Are you thinking about salability, or are you thinking about a body of work that has a genre or a classification that's going to interest an audience? Or is it just about that image or that concept that you're working on?
EM: I think for me, the first step is the image and am I satisfied with it? Is this work that I like and that I enjoy and it means something to me. I've often tried to describe what in my mind makes a good photograph that I've taken, and it's a sense of finishedness and coherence, you know, that it's a whole thing that satisfies me first. And then I like to think about, okay, who might be interested in this, right? But if nobody's interested in it, there's still something satisfying about it and something important about it.
MB: Did these start out as bodies of work? It's kind of like you start making pictures and then you see you've got kind of a group that makes sense and then you can put a name to it and then you pursue that? I think early on in a project sometimes it's very intuitive. And you shoot intuitively. Then after that you you need to find a way to intentionally pursue your intuition, right? So that you keep your vision, so that you keep the subject matter, you only shoot on cloudy days or whatever it is.
EM: Yeah, yeah. That's a great question because the last two projects in particular, I just started making those photographs, right? In expiration date I was just kind of playing around. Some of it was fun just to see what would happen with the film, you know, and because you never know. And sometimes I make what I thought were wonderful photos and I'd come home and man, there was nothing on the celluloid. And other times it came out really well. So I just had all these photographs and I started thinking, you know, I think there's something here, but I don't know what it is. And so I started putting them up on the wall just to see what was there.
I went to a couple of critique groups and one was Jason Langer, who some of you may know. And I also consulted with Jennifer McClure, and they kind of helped me sort it out. And with Expiration Date, when I started writing about the images - you’ll see there are some small pieces of text in there - that's when it all came together; when it kind of coalesced into, okay, that's what it's about and this is how it might look.
MB: I think that's a big thing. Writing about your work really makes you face up to it. I kind of figure out a lot of stuff at that point about why I did what I did, which I wasn't aware of at the time. When you say, like with the expired film particularly, that you don't really know what you're going to get, were you, over time, able to figure out which films to use and not use, or did it end up being a surprise a lot of the time?
EM: Much of the time it was a surprise. If I bought four rolls of a certain kind of film and two were bad, right, I discarded it. I didn't mess with the other two. But generally, I mean, it's all over the map. And then once people find out that you want expired film, everybody's got expired film, like in the back of their freezer or in their attic
MB: Or in the trunk of their car!
EM: Yeah, right!
MB: Okay. We're getting close to wrapping up, but I did want to touch on your wall because I think this is a great way to be able to look work. Tony, you probably did this with your book, too. Eventually the computer doesn't work anymore and you have to lay stuff out and see what you've got. Right?
EM: It was depressing to come to New Mexico. As you know, you kind of imagine a beautiful light, beautiful landscape. You're just going to go out and make landscapes and I mean, you can do that. But I found myself more often than not kind of raising the camera and then thinking, ‘It's been done before and it's been done better than I could do it, you know, and there's nothing that I have to add to this. Right? I think. And so that's when the Holga came along and I thought instead of the grand landscapes, which I love in many ways, what are the smaller landscapes? What are the micro landscapes? What are the the idiosyncratic parts of this land? And so these were all shot on film with the Holga. And they're just kind of my take on what this place is all about from a different perspective, I think than an Ansel Adams, you know?
MB: Ansel didn't have Julia driving for him either.
EM: No. (laughs)
MB: So you guys just explore. You just, like, head out in the morning and see where you go?
EM: Yeah. That's my little Holga bag. I take it with me and some of it… this was shot at a friend's house. And then the cross. I love the cross. It's in Española at a church along the main road there. It’s on wheels, with a trailer hitch, which puzzles me. Where this cross would be going and what purpose it would serve once it got there. And then there’s Lamy…
MB: So you're shooting film. Processing. What chemistry do you process in?
EM: Oh, the chemistry I use, I use Eco-Pro which is a variant of Kodak’s Extol for this work. For the expired film I use Diafine because it's a 2 solution developer and regardless of what the film is, it's 4 minutes in one and 4 minutes in the other. And so some of these films, I had no idea and there wasn't any literature about it. And so that was just kind of the best way to go.
MB: But you're not making darkroom prints?
EM: I scan it and I manipulate the images in Photoshop to some extent, and then print digital, inkjet.
MB: Okay. And so is the print your end result? Is that what you're heading for in the whole process? Or, I know you've done books. Or is there any consideration for where it ends up?
EM: Yeah, there is. And I'm hesitating because I'm not sure there's one end result. I mean, I think the prints are important. I think it's important to see this work on paper or on the wall. I also think photobooks are are really an elegant way to show work because you kind of control the sequence, right? Especially a body of work. So I think books are also important in that way. Absolutely.
MB: Do you think about - do you sell prints? Uh - I can’t seem to, but do you?
EM: Yeah. If someone will buy them. I'd sell my desk chair.
MB: I guess what I'm getting at is, if you sell prints, or if you sell books, is that a factor when you're making pictures? Are you thinking about audience? Are you thinking about salability, or are you thinking about a body of work that has a genre or a classification that's going to interest an audience? Or is it just about that image or that concept that you're working on?
EM: I think for me, the first step is the image and am I satisfied with it? Is this work that I like and that I enjoy and it means something to me. I've often tried to describe what in my mind makes a good photograph that I've taken, and it's a sense of finishedness and coherence, you know, that it's a whole thing that satisfies me first. And then I like to think about, okay, who might be interested in this, right? But if nobody's interested in it, there's still something satisfying about it and something important about it.
MB: Did these start out as bodies of work? It's kind of like you start making pictures and then you see you've got kind of a group that makes sense and then you can put a name to it and then you pursue that? I think early on in a project sometimes it's very intuitive. And you shoot intuitively. Then after that you you need to find a way to intentionally pursue your intuition, right? So that you keep your vision, so that you keep the subject matter, you only shoot on cloudy days or whatever it is.
EM: Yeah, yeah. That's a great question because the last two projects in particular, I just started making those photographs, right? In expiration date I was just kind of playing around. Some of it was fun just to see what would happen with the film, you know, and because you never know. And sometimes I make what I thought were wonderful photos and I'd come home and man, there was nothing on the celluloid. And other times it came out really well. So I just had all these photographs and I started thinking, you know, I think there's something here, but I don't know what it is. And so I started putting them up on the wall just to see what was there.
I went to a couple of critique groups and one was Jason Langer, who some of you may know. And I also consulted with Jennifer McClure, and they kind of helped me sort it out. And with Expiration Date, when I started writing about the images - you’ll see there are some small pieces of text in there - that's when it all came together; when it kind of coalesced into, okay, that's what it's about and this is how it might look.
MB: I think that's a big thing. Writing about your work really makes you face up to it. I kind of figure out a lot of stuff at that point about why I did what I did, which I wasn't aware of at the time. When you say, like with the expired film particularly, that you don't really know what you're going to get, were you, over time, able to figure out which films to use and not use, or did it end up being a surprise a lot of the time?
EM: Much of the time it was a surprise. If I bought four rolls of a certain kind of film and two were bad, right, I discarded it. I didn't mess with the other two. But generally, I mean, it's all over the map. And then once people find out that you want expired film, everybody's got expired film, like in the back of their freezer or in their attic
MB: Or in the trunk of their car!
EM: Yeah, right!
MB: Okay. We're getting close to wrapping up, but I did want to touch on your wall because I think this is a great way to be able to look work. Tony, you probably did this with your book, too. Eventually the computer doesn't work anymore and you have to lay stuff out and see what you've got. Right?
EM: Yeah, it's a magnetic white board. It's just helpful to live with it, you know? Just walk past it two or three times a day and stop and look at it and think about, okay, does that one - A - does it fit, right? And - B - if it fits, is it where it needs to be? Right? And then you move it around and then you think, well, now this one ought to go over there. You can also drive yourself crazy doing this. One of the things that Jennifer McClure said to me that was really helpful is ‘it will never be exactly perfect’. You know, just keep keep working and when it gets good enough… that’s when it’s done. Right?
MB: And they’re Holga images - not perfect anyway.
EM: Yeah. I had a friend, a good photographer and a wonderful guy, and he said, I want to try this Holga thing. And he came back to this little group that I'm in and said, Yeah, I shot that, Holga, and, you know, if you run it through Topaz, it really sharpens it up! You could fix all those problems. But that's not the point, right?
MB: Let’s do some Q&A. Who's got a question?
Q&A1: When you were shooting the dancers in the studio, were you playing music for them?
EM: Oh, my gosh. That's a great question. No, we weren't actually. They were really creating their own choreography as they went along. And so I think music would have interfered with that in some ways. It would have constrained what they wanted to do, what they were doing. That's my assumption. I didn't use it. So I don't know.
Q&A2: I wondered if you had one or two people that you admired and who influenced your work? And then one more technical question: You said you scan your negatives. What do you scan with?
EM: Well, that's the easier one. I use a flatbed. I have an Epson V850 and I scan on a flatbed scanner.
You know, influence is an interesting thing. I have people whose work I like, that I think influenced me in a subtle way. I love Raymond Meek's work, for example. And I think the subtle feeling in his work is akin to what I'm going for in Expiration Date. But the images don't look anything alike. With the dance photography, I think Lois Greenfield is kind of the benchmark for that. Howard Schatz has also done dance work and I love their work and they look similar. I think the more subtle parts are different, though. I mean, I don't think there's quite the same emotion in the work that Howard does as there is in the work that I was able to do with these dancers. And those of you who know his work might, might disagree.
Early on I saw an image that Jerry Uelsmann did, I mean early, early on. It's a picture of - above ground there's a tree and below ground there's a leaf. The veins of the leaf are visible. And that image really struck me that, you can use a photograph to really say something. To make a connection that you might not make otherwise. And so, I’ve never done anything that looks like that, but it kind of got me going. And of course, the class with Beaumont Newhall was just amazing. You know, somebody said he didn't write the history of photography, he was the history of photography. And I mean, I think it was really true. And he really showed us the ways in which people were making serious art with photography, which was new to me at that point - I was an undergraduate - and the variety and the evolution of all of that so that, you know, that was an influence as well.
Q&A2: I see a little Ralph Gibson and a little Duane Michals in the work, just because it's sort of mysterious.
EM: I can see that. In a way I think it's easier for other people to see influences in our work than it is for us, because I think I've just invented all of this absolutely from the wonderfulness of my mind and soul!
MB: Absolutely!
EM: And then somebody says, “Well… no. Have you seen …?”
Q&A3: Can you talk a little bit about the thought behind the Expiration Date project? The square format, the tape, what you were thinking? There were words with some of those.
EM: There’s text in some, yeah. Well I got started doing it as self-portraits and then I kind of expanded that to be a meditation on where I am in my life at this point. You know, it started out when I was 70 and now I'm a little older than that. And, you know, kind of what this stage of life is like. And so there are about 30 some images in there. There’s some about the landscape. There's some about, you know, our home, there's some about Julia, there's some about me. And I really wanted to portray a vision of this stage of life that isn't entirely deficit focused, because I think a lot of what we see is deficit focused and and some of it is deficit. I mean, you know, your knees just don't work like they used to. So that's kind of the philosophy.
And then, since this is kind of a narrative or a description or roadmap, if you will, about that stage of life, somebody suggested, I think it was Jason Langer said, you know, I think this is kind of a journal. This is like a journal. And so I thought, well, let me treat it like a journal and put these images up with tape and and that also makes them tentative because our ideas about our life at any stage are tentative. They get revised, things happen. You know, you think, oh my God, this happened, or this, you know, happened in a good way and I find out I can do this. I can do that. So, you know, and that's kind of the key.
Q&A4: Are you self-publishing or do you use an outside publisher, and how are you selling your books?
EM: I have two books that have come out and they're both self-published. One is a book of selected essays that I wrote for Shadow and Light Magazine and those are sold through the magazine and publicized that way. I have a book of dance images that Anna and I did, the female ballerina you saw the most of. And that book is self-published, and she and I promote it in that way. She has, the last time I checked, like 150,000 Instagram followers. I have 1500. So I'm counting on her to reach out to her audience.
Q&A5: On that last slide where you had your magnetic board, what was that in preparation for a book or is that sort of part of your process of developing a body of work? Would you look at that and say “I need to put a photograph over there” and I need to go take it? I’m sort of wondering where in the process, your creative work, that whole thing fits in.
EM: I think it serves to two purposes. One is to look at the the work as it currently exists and see are there things that are missing, and that may be content wise, but it also may be that you realize everything in your project has been shot from about 15 feet away and there's nothing close up, there’s nothing at a distance, everything is kind of at eye level - this sort of thing. It helps with that. It's also, I think I'm contemplating this being a kind of a ‘zine’ sort of book, and so it helps to think about how are these images going to fit together in a controlled sequence where, you know, people turn pages one after the other?
MB: Are you at this point thinking about spreads versus an image on the right or on the left or anything like that? Or just kind of what follows what?
EM: You know, Mark, I just like one image to a spread. Yeah. I could be talked out of that by a book designer, but that just seems to fit for me. Yeah, it seems to work for me.
MB: I love the tape. I think the tape adds a lot. It really gets you to that journal, the handmade, very personal, one of a kind of feeling.
EM: And the other thing, thinking about image size. I've proposed that project to a couple of art centers as an exhibition, and I want the prints to be smallish. It's an intimate body of work. I want people to come close to them. I really love it as a book too, because I think when I've tried to show it in class, for example, in classes with a big screen you just lose something. You need to be alone with those images.
MB: Well, in a time when we make prints huge because we can, really small things that people have to come up to and look into create a different kind of connection.
Q&A6: I’m curious if you ever go back to images that you think are finished and redo them and in a different style, different size, different quality of the print, etc.?
EM: Absolutely. I think there are two functions of that. One, sometimes I go back to images and redo them. Sometimes it's because we have technology now that we didn't have back then that can change how or what's possible with that image. Sometimes I just get a little different vision of it, you know? And that's certainly not unique to me. I mean, Ansel Adams reprinted some of his most famous images and you can really see the evolution over time. The other thing that's fascinating to me as a photographer is you go back through your archive and you find an image that all of a sudden makes sense to you. And it didn't before. And I'm always fascinated by that. I think one of the things that happens is you're far enough away from what you originally thought that session or that image was supposed to be like that you can see it with different eyes. And the thing that I'm fascinated with is how did I know to make it to begin with? You know? There’s a photo that I took - I played photojournalist for a while when I lived in D.C. and I went down to the mall on the 17th of January of 2017 and went to the Women's March. I made photographs there, and it was an exuberant day. It really was. And I’ve, if you'll forgive me, I've never heard the word “pussy” used so often and so exuberantly as it was that day. And it was kind of healing and all this other stuff. And I took one photograph that was very somber and I didn't like it. It didn't fit at the time. And yet a while later I came back to it and it made perfect sense. And that's sometimes I've changed, my experience has changed, the environment we're in has changed. And an image that didn't make sense all of a sudden makes sense again.
MB: Probably also happens when you’re shooting film. You get back, maybe you don't finish a roll, then later you finish your roll, then you process it. But until you see it as a positive it’s at least a few days later than when you shot. I think that distance from the actual act of shooting the image to where you get to put on a different hat and take a different look at it, changes the way that you view things and the message you get back from it.
EM: Yeah. Yeah absolutely. I think - I wrote a brilliant little essay about that for Shadow and Light!
MB: So… subscription time I guess!
Q&A7: Would you mind explaining a little bit to me about what you intend, what you look for when you process your film, when you scan your film into digital, and then what's the biggest advantage you find when you have the digital versions of the film photographs?
EM: Well, as I said, for the C41 process film, I couldn't print it in the dark room. I mean it just needed to be manipulated in a way that the darkroom at my skill level at least I just can't do it. Oftentimes I don't do much to it, though. I correct the the contrast a little bit. And I sometimes correct the brightness. But I don't do much with it. Sometimes I crop a little bit, but it often works just like that. And it's a way of getting it into the the digital realm where I make the prints. Oh, and the other thing that's great. Dust. Yeah. You can take dust off that stuff and only have to do it once!
MB: Yeah, we used to have to spot every print.
EM: Yeah. I tried that with some portraits that I made way back when, and the people looked like they had tropical diseases. But I mean, there are some advantages, for me that is.
Q&A8: Thanks a lot for the really interesting presentation and description of your work. I'm not sure I understand the question I'm going to ask. But I'm thinking about your background, and your very interesting study of the human psyche and the human condition, and then your exploration of photography and then you referenced your stage in life once or twice during the presentation tonight. I'm curious to know, looking at the evolution of your work, what's on your mind right now at this stage of your life, and where do you think that idea or feeling that you're having might take you?
EM: (There’s a long, silent pause…) Well… Uh… Thank you, everyone, for coming… (Laughter…)
You know, it's a great question. You know, I often don't know that until I'm doing it. And every time I set out with a concept as the beginning place, it's not led me to much. You know, I wanted to do a series of photographs on the theme of evening - visually evening, emotionally evening. And that's where I started. It was nothing. The stuff that I did with Expiration Date - it just came, you know, I was just kind of playing around and it just came. And then there were a few more images and a few more. And all of sudden it's like ‘Well, maybe there's something here.’
So I think the evolution of my work is moving from the studio work, which I liked a lot, and I'm proud of, and I think those are beautiful images in a lot of ways. But they didn't say as much as I wanted to say and Expiration Date allowed me to combine different kinds of images, images with a different look. You know, there's a picture of the book on the coffee table with the chestnuts and then this kind of ghastly side view of my face - and those together say more, I think, than the beautiful dancers - who say a lot! I mean, those are also great. I guess I'll just ramble for a little bit. Um, people have asked me about it, say that it takes a lot of courage to show some of the photos particularly in the Expiration Date stuff. And I think my work as a psychotherapist, you know, helped me be comfortable with the parts of life that we don't necessarily like to look at, and that it's okay to show that side of yourself.
And, you know, if you really want to lose friends, volunteer to make photographs, portraits of them. Michael Bergt and I had this wonderful conversation because he makes beautiful paintings and drawings, those of you who know his work. He said “Yeah, when I draw somebody I do idealize them a little bit and they look at what I draw and say, ‘My God, I didn’t know I look like that!’”. And I said, well for me, when I take photographs of them, they look at it and say, “Oh my God, I had no idea I look like that!” - but it’s a whole different meaning.
So, I think being a therapist really helped me feel comfortable being in that part of life, you know. And like I said, I didn't want it all to be deficit. I think there are beautiful parts about this stage of life.
Where I am now, I’ve just been thinking about winter and I'm kind of in a creative winter at this point and I'm doing some other things. You know, I'm writing and I'm working some projects that may come to fruition in the next few months and so on. But I'm not making a lot of photographs right now. And Jason Langer, in his group, he said, I want you all to be pressure cookers. I want you to work at this and be pressure cookers. And I said, “Jason, I'm a crockpot.” It just takes me a awhile to do this. You know, it takes me a while and it's got to, really ferment, it's gotta take its time.
MB: Thank you, Eric.
EM: Yeah, Thank you, Mark.
PL: Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. It's great to see you all.
To see more of Eric's work, visit his website here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MB: And they’re Holga images - not perfect anyway.
EM: Yeah. I had a friend, a good photographer and a wonderful guy, and he said, I want to try this Holga thing. And he came back to this little group that I'm in and said, Yeah, I shot that, Holga, and, you know, if you run it through Topaz, it really sharpens it up! You could fix all those problems. But that's not the point, right?
MB: Let’s do some Q&A. Who's got a question?
Q&A1: When you were shooting the dancers in the studio, were you playing music for them?
EM: Oh, my gosh. That's a great question. No, we weren't actually. They were really creating their own choreography as they went along. And so I think music would have interfered with that in some ways. It would have constrained what they wanted to do, what they were doing. That's my assumption. I didn't use it. So I don't know.
Q&A2: I wondered if you had one or two people that you admired and who influenced your work? And then one more technical question: You said you scan your negatives. What do you scan with?
EM: Well, that's the easier one. I use a flatbed. I have an Epson V850 and I scan on a flatbed scanner.
You know, influence is an interesting thing. I have people whose work I like, that I think influenced me in a subtle way. I love Raymond Meek's work, for example. And I think the subtle feeling in his work is akin to what I'm going for in Expiration Date. But the images don't look anything alike. With the dance photography, I think Lois Greenfield is kind of the benchmark for that. Howard Schatz has also done dance work and I love their work and they look similar. I think the more subtle parts are different, though. I mean, I don't think there's quite the same emotion in the work that Howard does as there is in the work that I was able to do with these dancers. And those of you who know his work might, might disagree.
Early on I saw an image that Jerry Uelsmann did, I mean early, early on. It's a picture of - above ground there's a tree and below ground there's a leaf. The veins of the leaf are visible. And that image really struck me that, you can use a photograph to really say something. To make a connection that you might not make otherwise. And so, I’ve never done anything that looks like that, but it kind of got me going. And of course, the class with Beaumont Newhall was just amazing. You know, somebody said he didn't write the history of photography, he was the history of photography. And I mean, I think it was really true. And he really showed us the ways in which people were making serious art with photography, which was new to me at that point - I was an undergraduate - and the variety and the evolution of all of that so that, you know, that was an influence as well.
Q&A2: I see a little Ralph Gibson and a little Duane Michals in the work, just because it's sort of mysterious.
EM: I can see that. In a way I think it's easier for other people to see influences in our work than it is for us, because I think I've just invented all of this absolutely from the wonderfulness of my mind and soul!
MB: Absolutely!
EM: And then somebody says, “Well… no. Have you seen …?”
Q&A3: Can you talk a little bit about the thought behind the Expiration Date project? The square format, the tape, what you were thinking? There were words with some of those.
EM: There’s text in some, yeah. Well I got started doing it as self-portraits and then I kind of expanded that to be a meditation on where I am in my life at this point. You know, it started out when I was 70 and now I'm a little older than that. And, you know, kind of what this stage of life is like. And so there are about 30 some images in there. There’s some about the landscape. There's some about, you know, our home, there's some about Julia, there's some about me. And I really wanted to portray a vision of this stage of life that isn't entirely deficit focused, because I think a lot of what we see is deficit focused and and some of it is deficit. I mean, you know, your knees just don't work like they used to. So that's kind of the philosophy.
And then, since this is kind of a narrative or a description or roadmap, if you will, about that stage of life, somebody suggested, I think it was Jason Langer said, you know, I think this is kind of a journal. This is like a journal. And so I thought, well, let me treat it like a journal and put these images up with tape and and that also makes them tentative because our ideas about our life at any stage are tentative. They get revised, things happen. You know, you think, oh my God, this happened, or this, you know, happened in a good way and I find out I can do this. I can do that. So, you know, and that's kind of the key.
Q&A4: Are you self-publishing or do you use an outside publisher, and how are you selling your books?
EM: I have two books that have come out and they're both self-published. One is a book of selected essays that I wrote for Shadow and Light Magazine and those are sold through the magazine and publicized that way. I have a book of dance images that Anna and I did, the female ballerina you saw the most of. And that book is self-published, and she and I promote it in that way. She has, the last time I checked, like 150,000 Instagram followers. I have 1500. So I'm counting on her to reach out to her audience.
Q&A5: On that last slide where you had your magnetic board, what was that in preparation for a book or is that sort of part of your process of developing a body of work? Would you look at that and say “I need to put a photograph over there” and I need to go take it? I’m sort of wondering where in the process, your creative work, that whole thing fits in.
EM: I think it serves to two purposes. One is to look at the the work as it currently exists and see are there things that are missing, and that may be content wise, but it also may be that you realize everything in your project has been shot from about 15 feet away and there's nothing close up, there’s nothing at a distance, everything is kind of at eye level - this sort of thing. It helps with that. It's also, I think I'm contemplating this being a kind of a ‘zine’ sort of book, and so it helps to think about how are these images going to fit together in a controlled sequence where, you know, people turn pages one after the other?
MB: Are you at this point thinking about spreads versus an image on the right or on the left or anything like that? Or just kind of what follows what?
EM: You know, Mark, I just like one image to a spread. Yeah. I could be talked out of that by a book designer, but that just seems to fit for me. Yeah, it seems to work for me.
MB: I love the tape. I think the tape adds a lot. It really gets you to that journal, the handmade, very personal, one of a kind of feeling.
EM: And the other thing, thinking about image size. I've proposed that project to a couple of art centers as an exhibition, and I want the prints to be smallish. It's an intimate body of work. I want people to come close to them. I really love it as a book too, because I think when I've tried to show it in class, for example, in classes with a big screen you just lose something. You need to be alone with those images.
MB: Well, in a time when we make prints huge because we can, really small things that people have to come up to and look into create a different kind of connection.
Q&A6: I’m curious if you ever go back to images that you think are finished and redo them and in a different style, different size, different quality of the print, etc.?
EM: Absolutely. I think there are two functions of that. One, sometimes I go back to images and redo them. Sometimes it's because we have technology now that we didn't have back then that can change how or what's possible with that image. Sometimes I just get a little different vision of it, you know? And that's certainly not unique to me. I mean, Ansel Adams reprinted some of his most famous images and you can really see the evolution over time. The other thing that's fascinating to me as a photographer is you go back through your archive and you find an image that all of a sudden makes sense to you. And it didn't before. And I'm always fascinated by that. I think one of the things that happens is you're far enough away from what you originally thought that session or that image was supposed to be like that you can see it with different eyes. And the thing that I'm fascinated with is how did I know to make it to begin with? You know? There’s a photo that I took - I played photojournalist for a while when I lived in D.C. and I went down to the mall on the 17th of January of 2017 and went to the Women's March. I made photographs there, and it was an exuberant day. It really was. And I’ve, if you'll forgive me, I've never heard the word “pussy” used so often and so exuberantly as it was that day. And it was kind of healing and all this other stuff. And I took one photograph that was very somber and I didn't like it. It didn't fit at the time. And yet a while later I came back to it and it made perfect sense. And that's sometimes I've changed, my experience has changed, the environment we're in has changed. And an image that didn't make sense all of a sudden makes sense again.
MB: Probably also happens when you’re shooting film. You get back, maybe you don't finish a roll, then later you finish your roll, then you process it. But until you see it as a positive it’s at least a few days later than when you shot. I think that distance from the actual act of shooting the image to where you get to put on a different hat and take a different look at it, changes the way that you view things and the message you get back from it.
EM: Yeah. Yeah absolutely. I think - I wrote a brilliant little essay about that for Shadow and Light!
MB: So… subscription time I guess!
Q&A7: Would you mind explaining a little bit to me about what you intend, what you look for when you process your film, when you scan your film into digital, and then what's the biggest advantage you find when you have the digital versions of the film photographs?
EM: Well, as I said, for the C41 process film, I couldn't print it in the dark room. I mean it just needed to be manipulated in a way that the darkroom at my skill level at least I just can't do it. Oftentimes I don't do much to it, though. I correct the the contrast a little bit. And I sometimes correct the brightness. But I don't do much with it. Sometimes I crop a little bit, but it often works just like that. And it's a way of getting it into the the digital realm where I make the prints. Oh, and the other thing that's great. Dust. Yeah. You can take dust off that stuff and only have to do it once!
MB: Yeah, we used to have to spot every print.
EM: Yeah. I tried that with some portraits that I made way back when, and the people looked like they had tropical diseases. But I mean, there are some advantages, for me that is.
Q&A8: Thanks a lot for the really interesting presentation and description of your work. I'm not sure I understand the question I'm going to ask. But I'm thinking about your background, and your very interesting study of the human psyche and the human condition, and then your exploration of photography and then you referenced your stage in life once or twice during the presentation tonight. I'm curious to know, looking at the evolution of your work, what's on your mind right now at this stage of your life, and where do you think that idea or feeling that you're having might take you?
EM: (There’s a long, silent pause…) Well… Uh… Thank you, everyone, for coming… (Laughter…)
You know, it's a great question. You know, I often don't know that until I'm doing it. And every time I set out with a concept as the beginning place, it's not led me to much. You know, I wanted to do a series of photographs on the theme of evening - visually evening, emotionally evening. And that's where I started. It was nothing. The stuff that I did with Expiration Date - it just came, you know, I was just kind of playing around and it just came. And then there were a few more images and a few more. And all of sudden it's like ‘Well, maybe there's something here.’
So I think the evolution of my work is moving from the studio work, which I liked a lot, and I'm proud of, and I think those are beautiful images in a lot of ways. But they didn't say as much as I wanted to say and Expiration Date allowed me to combine different kinds of images, images with a different look. You know, there's a picture of the book on the coffee table with the chestnuts and then this kind of ghastly side view of my face - and those together say more, I think, than the beautiful dancers - who say a lot! I mean, those are also great. I guess I'll just ramble for a little bit. Um, people have asked me about it, say that it takes a lot of courage to show some of the photos particularly in the Expiration Date stuff. And I think my work as a psychotherapist, you know, helped me be comfortable with the parts of life that we don't necessarily like to look at, and that it's okay to show that side of yourself.
And, you know, if you really want to lose friends, volunteer to make photographs, portraits of them. Michael Bergt and I had this wonderful conversation because he makes beautiful paintings and drawings, those of you who know his work. He said “Yeah, when I draw somebody I do idealize them a little bit and they look at what I draw and say, ‘My God, I didn’t know I look like that!’”. And I said, well for me, when I take photographs of them, they look at it and say, “Oh my God, I had no idea I look like that!” - but it’s a whole different meaning.
So, I think being a therapist really helped me feel comfortable being in that part of life, you know. And like I said, I didn't want it all to be deficit. I think there are beautiful parts about this stage of life.
Where I am now, I’ve just been thinking about winter and I'm kind of in a creative winter at this point and I'm doing some other things. You know, I'm writing and I'm working some projects that may come to fruition in the next few months and so on. But I'm not making a lot of photographs right now. And Jason Langer, in his group, he said, I want you all to be pressure cookers. I want you to work at this and be pressure cookers. And I said, “Jason, I'm a crockpot.” It just takes me a awhile to do this. You know, it takes me a while and it's got to, really ferment, it's gotta take its time.
MB: Thank you, Eric.
EM: Yeah, Thank you, Mark.
PL: Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. It's great to see you all.
To see more of Eric's work, visit his website here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.