Charlottesville Festival of the Photograph

19:13

Introductions from Vince Musi….always perfect :)

19:15

Thanks in particular to this year’s curators: Scott Thode and Kathy Ryan, who have shaped this year’s festival around the theme of HOME.

19:20

Scott Thode: a former staff and freelance photographer whose project Looking for the Light chronicled the first decade of people living with HIV. He is now the editor of VII Magazine.

19:26

We open with a slideshow of Antonin’s images from the foreclosure crisis and beyond. Then voices break in from back stage, “Baby, you ready?” “Yeah, baby, let’s do this.” Then Vince, “Guys, your mics are live.” Laughter and Antonin and Scott take their seats in comfortable chairs on a big Persian rug.

19:27

Scott: Let’s start with your background.

Antonin: Growing up in Czechoslovakia, seeing the hardship of my parents, one day I got out. Dad was a photographer and he told me not to get into it. And he was right, it’s hard. But I’ve made a lot of good friends, one is sitting right next to me.

19:30

Scott: How did you escape?

Antonin: I didn’t have a belly yet, so I squeezed through the barbed wire. Today, I don’t know.

Scott: I’m not going to let you get off that easy. There’s a lot of stuff that happened that I think effects your photography.

Antonin: I couldn’t envision how it would be when I got out, then I did. I went into a new system, refugee camps. It was difficult. You were treated like a pig, you got sick. Refugee life is not easy. You’re a man without a country. Anyone who wants to fuck you, fucks you.

Eventually I got to Holland and they gave me political asylum. And I reinvented myself. And I’ve done that a lot of times. I can relate to a lot of different people.

19:34

Scott: I’ve always loved that you’re always looking, always pushing. Does that come from that reinventing?

Antonin: I’m not saying I’m reinventing the wheel, but I enjoy being sort of rebellious and standing up to the establishment.

Scott: I think it’s more than being rebellious. I think it comes back to a relationship and empathy you have with people. You come across as laid back, easy going, but larger than life in many ways. With a lot of great photography there is an anger there; I think there is an anger in your photography that drives it.

Antonin: Yeah, but the anger can be bad a lot of times. It’s going to drive you to make images that people will see are made in anger. I want people to be able to relate to my photos and understand them. Sometimes you just have to let go of control.

19:35

Scott: There was a time you weren’t doing the work you do now. What was it that made it start to come together for you? How do you come to grips with all that?

Antonin: You fucking tell me. I don’t know. I just do my work and the way people react to it, I think it’s pretty cool. But it doesn’t come from here [the head] it comes from down here [the gut].

19:39

Scott: There was, Abu Ghraib, let’s talk about that. You got a lot of shit for that. Why do something like that?

Antonin: I think it was very upsetting for a lot of people and the worst was that people were not informed about Abu Ghraib. So a lot of people reacted. It was one of those events that was exposed. Actually the reason why was I was going to Czech Republic for this artist residency, and I read this thing in the New York Times, which never lies….I read that 80% of Americans had never heard of Abu Ghraib.

So I shot it and started showing it. In Italy someone came up to me and said, thank you for this, we didn’t know about this. So I felt that I did the right thing. My dad was also persecuted and humiliated in a labor camp, so it resonated with me too.

19:40

Scott: Do you judge your work?

Antonin: I really don’t. I just do it and I let people judge it or not. I’m glad that it resonates with people, I say, shit, that’s good. It surprises me that it resonates with a lot of people. I don’t think much of myself or my photography. I stay humble because I know how important it is to do what we do, inform the public.

19:43

Scott: What resonates with you?

Antonin: I’m just continuing a tradition of people who didn’t think much for money and they just went for it because they had a feeling for it. A lot of stuff now is driven by money. For me it’s not important how much I get paid for my work.

Scott: I’ll remember that…. I always think of you as sort of the poet laureate of photojournalism. There’s a poetry there and a sensibility and emotional intensity. But I think you’re right, there are never clear questions or answers. Where does that come from? What were your influences?

Antonin: A combination of what I’ve seen and lived through. It definitely was not photography. More like art, music, literature, and of course, life.

19:47

Scott: Let’s talk about life. For you it’s been a long circular journey. And now it’s come back. By the way, Domovina means home in Czech. I feel there’s always been the search for finding what home means in your work. What does home mean to you?

Antonin: You can’t really define it, it doesn’t exist. I finally realized my home is where my family is. And I’m glad I still have one. Yeah, leaving home was very traumatic for me, and my parents, because I knew I might not see them again. I knew I could never come back. And if I chose to go back I would be persecuted. For years I couldn’t go back because I had no passport.

There is also a sense that my photos have a sense of freedom in them, because I didn’t want to betray what my parents gave to me. I couldn’t even see them. It was like I could send them something in my photos.

19:50

Scott: I think you have a lot of compassion, even if you try to hide it.

Antonin: I feel privileged. Photography has given me the opportunity to get my shit out of my mind and I take it very seriously. I might not show it, but I do.

Scott: I think all you have to do is look at [your images]…Do you not want to plesse people or do you not care?

Antonin: I care, but I want to please people in the right way.

Scott: What’s the wrong way.

Antonin: Something you don’t care about. Like I photographed this thing in the behind the scenes of the Oscars. I handed them in and I asked my editor, did you show them the pictures. He said, “I’m waiting for the right moment.” He didn’t know what to do with them.

19:54

Scott: How has your family changed you?

Antonin: I remember when my son was bored I went to Rwanda to photograph these kids surviving on top of their dead parents. I saw my son there. It became more real to me. I think I made better pictures there. I could relate to it more.

Scott: It definitely comes out in your work. There is a thing with children, with people who are struggling. There is a real sense of the connection you have.

Antonin: Yeah, I grew up in trying circumstances. I didn’t understand it and it didn’t bother me that much because I was a kid, but my parents were suffering. When I looked at them and saw how my mother cried every night. I think it helped me later with my photographer, it taught me how to relate. As a photojournalist you need to feel something, but not something sentimental. I hate sentimental photography. It makes me feel like I’m cheated. I want it to be unflinching.

19:55

Audience Questions

19:57

Nick Nichols: Abu Ghraib. The images weren’t made there? What was the controversy?

Antonin: It was an hommage to Abu Ghraib. It was set up. Because no one was there.

Scott: Backlash came from right wing bloggers. Or from people saying, you represent reality, how can you make this up. But the truth is, the reality escaped us….wait, I shouldn’t be talking.

Antonin: No no, you’re doing good man. Sometimes I get really upset and this was really upsetting. I just needed to work this and I did.

20:00

Q. How did you pick up a camera the first time?

Antonin: There came a time in my life where I was pent up with my emotions and I had a chance to enroll in an art academy and someone said what do you want to do? And I said I wanted to study art. I made some pictures and took it to the professor and the old man took me. I thought, I’m getting a chance.

I do the same as many people here; they are angry or upset and instead of killing somebody, they make a photograph to get it out. And sometimes those create change and you don’t even know. I believe in that. It’s not always the truth, but sometimes it is. And that reinforces that why I’m doing what I’m doing. Sometimes you make a wrong turn, but I always manage to come back. I’m happy about that.

20:02

Q. I’d like to ask about editing your work.

Antonin: I pre-edit my own work. If I do a book, I edit my own books. Some people love it. I don’t trust that many people to edit my work. Scott and Kathy Ryan I trust. Editing your own work is protecting your own voice.

20:04

Q. A lot of your work tends to have things going on in the edges.

Antonin: I don’t want to say the truth about this. I worked for the LA Times magazine. I really wanted to have double pages. So I knew if I played things in the middle, they would never blow it up because of the gutter. So I knew I needed to have things playing on the edges.

20:06

Q. Why did you decide to work mostly in black and white?

Antonin: Color film was too expensive for me. And it was not very high speed. You can’t go inside with that shit. Forget color. I wanted to work nonstop, in and out, as high speed of film as possible. TMZ really liberated me, 6000 speed. Because I don’t like to use flash.

20:11

Q. It seems like Antonin’s career is really about documenting the aftermath of atrocities. What was so profound about Abu Ghraib you wanted to recreate it.

Antonin: You tell me man. We come from different worlds, I think. To me, it touched me deeply. But I have a different experience. There’s nothing I can tell you. You have to search yourself.

Scott: I think to get too caught up in Abu Ghraib is a mistake because I think all your work is about that need to communicate.

Antonin: I really don’t like dictating anything. I leave it up to you. Everyone reacts differently. You just have to throw it down and not everyone will like it.

20:14

Q. Roland Barthes writes about photographs that show something and photographs that pierce the soul. Yours is obviously in the latter group. What’s the difference between the two?

Antonin: I always hope for some kind of transcendence in the pictures I make that they will not be just forgotten. That they will become a frame of reference for things. I think the photography I make is more subliminal and it works on many levels so it stays out there. You ask more and more questions and history moves on.

20:17

Q. In one of your pictures it appeared you were in a room of neo-Nazis how did you find yourself there?

Antonin: Most of them were from the [military] and I didn’t want to fuck them. I told them they could hide their faces but they said, no. There was a big Congressional hearing and it was a big deal and you can’t make these kind of neo-Nazi signs in the military anymore. That was a time when things changed. [Clapping]

20:23

Scott: Do you see yourself as a spiritual person?

Antonin: Yeah, sure, I guess. Do you mean if I believe in God? Once again, I hate photographers and photographs that dictate how you should fee. I like complex photography. I don’t like to be given an answer.

20:24

Q. Why did you move back to Prague.

Antonin: It was difficult. I moved back and I realized why I left. But I did it for my kids and my wife. My kid was on drugs, it was painful, I didn’t know what to do. I felt maybe if I take him out of this world, back to Europe, he’ll do better.

[Lots of applause]

Ok, you got it?