16:35

A little late, but the lights go down and guest editors Scott Thode and Kathy Ryan appear on stage.

16:38

Kathy: Whenever I’m in a gathering of the photo tribe, I find myself wondering, are other professions like this? We really are just one big family.

16:48

In an annual tradition, Vince Musi (the voice of the festival) asks, one by one, for the photographers, workshop students, staff, volunteers, everyone who makes the festival happen to stand and be recognized with applause and laughter.

16:53

Nan: Hi I just got in from London and this piece you’re going to see…oh my god I can hear myself…it’s something I did in Paris. I was invited to do something at The Louvre. I started photographing the statues and painting every Tuesday. I was completely alone in the museum. It was one of the great experiences of my life. I didn’t even know I loved that kind of art. I knew I loved it, but not much about it. It’s called Scopophilia. Peter Hujar told me what it is: It’s an incredible pleasure you can get just from looking. It’s not necessarily sexual, voyeuristic, it’s just enormous pleasure from looking. That’s what this piece is about.

17:18

The slideshow is long, an incredible number of photographs of statues and figures in classical paintings, interspersed with Nan’s own images, taken over many years, of men and women, together and alone, in moments of intimacy and confusion. Most of the classical art she focuses on mirrors the same themes in her work: love, sexuality, loneliness, dependency.

17:21

Nan and Sally take seats side by side on the couch.

Sally: I’ve got ten pages of questions, but that doesn’t seem like us…It occurs to me that Kathy Ryan put us here on stage together for a reason. We are perceived to be so strong and unflinching. Yet, I know that I’m fragile as ash. And I have the perception you feel the same. There is so much sweetness in that slideshow.

Nan: If men were like we are, they’d be called perfectionists. You probably have the same issue of people wanting to talk about your first work and not being able to get past the changes.

Sally: But we all love to talk about our new work. We’re artists, we’re always moving forward. So, what’s in your new work?

Nan: That’s the thing about really new work, you can’t talk about it because you don’t even know what’s going on yet.

17:25

Sally: The best moment is when you realize you’ve taken a photo that doesn’t fit at all with what you’re doing. Do you do that?

Nan: This project is all about that. I have this assistant I’m really close to. He’s really young but he has this incredible visual memory. And he went through all my old boxes. There are still mounds of boxes (slides) from the old day, but nobody has looked through them in years. He dug through those … a lot of these images haven’t been seen.

I was in heaven going to the Louvre every day. I was falling in love left and right there. He was digging through photographs. So it was like two parallel archaeological digs.

But I have nothing to do with Nan Goldin. She died about ten years ago. Do you know a Sally Mann that you’re not anymore?

Sally: I don’t necessarily like the person I used to be, but I recognizer her. But you feel like it was a complete change for you?

Nan: I’ve had so many sea changes. Before I was battered and after. Before I was on drugs and after. That’s not what I am talking about. I’m talking about this public Nan Goldin; she’s got nothing to do with me. This famous person, this cult figure, has nothing to do with me.

Sally: I have this sense that instead of being an artist, you became a cult figure. And America does that to people. Maybe that’s why you left America for a while?

Nan: When Bush was elected, I left. I was saying I would leave, and I thought I should do what I said for once.

17:30

Nan: But to my friends, I’m just Nan. If people believe in that other Nan, I don’t work with them.

I think of you as having the perfect life. Maybe you don’t see that.

Sally: Oh no, I’ve been extremely lucky. That’s the thing: Our lives really couldn’t have been more different. I was thinking about you and your club life. At that exact point I was getting pregnant with Emma. I wanted to have your life but it just didn’t work out. I can’t even smoke.

Nan: Oh anyone can smoke.

Sally: No I’ve tried for years.

Nan: I encourage you to smoke, it’s good for you. I’ve got to wonder who’s making money off of us not smoking. They never do anything for our good. That’s why you should smoke.

No, but I wish I had had the life that you had.

Sally: It’s boring.

Nan: Are you kidding? Riding horses, having three beautiful children. Having a husband. Having a relationship with your father. I never had children and I regret it terribly. It’s not about being boring or hip, or doing drugs. I don’t regret any of that. It’s just, I’m living in a self-imposed exile. I don’t see people.

Sally: You’re right, your life is not at all what I thought it was like. Your life is like my life. Larry caught me, I didn’t leave my farm for six weeks.

Nan: But you can ride your horses.

Sally: But you’re living in Paris.

Nan: I hate Paris. I hate the people. Me and the French don’t mix. You don’t understand. I love to ride. I love to be in the country.

Sally: I read that you fell off a horse and broke ten ribs.

17:35

Nan: He took me to Christian Louboutin’s house.

Sally: The horse?

Nan: Yeah. I was on this maiden voyage of this ship that went up the Nile. It was made for Christian, but he wasn’t there. So I had this boyfriend and he worked for Christian, and Christian fired him because of us. The boy bought the horse for me; Christian Louboutin had fired him so he was the enemy, so the horse took me there.

The first doctor they took me to was in a truck. I thought my back was broken. We get there and the doctor can’t touch me, because men can’t touch women there. We were in the desert in a totally Muslim world. The temperature was about 104 degrees. The x-ray, you couldn’t read it, it was like vintage photography. So he said, nothing’s broken.

Finally I went to an American hospital and they said you have three ribs broken. Then when I get back to Paris, it was ten broken ribs. But that all sounds so fabulous. That’s what I mean.

Sally: The living in Egypt sounds pretty good, and the young boyfriend too. I mean, my husband is OLD.

Nan: I like older men.

Sally: You can come to the farm but you can’t steal my husband.

Nan: I’ll steal your son.

Sally: Oh by all means. He needs someone to support him.

17:45

Nan: But my boyfriend, he still wants to marry me. But he’s so boring. I mean, he’s hot and the sex is great, except during Ramadan.

Sally: How old is he?

Nan: Ten? No, he’s 36. He was 28 when I was with him. I haven’t seen him in years. He keeps calling me to talk about my pussy but I’m not into it.

Sally: Let’s talk about your pussy for a minute….One thing about your slideshow I realized, all the women had their real pubic hair. All the fashion and stuff now, women are infantilized with these little wisps of hair.

Nan: Yeah, do you guys out there shave. Stand up. I’m waiting. [Awkward laughter]

There’s not a lot of nudity in the paintings. But if I had shown the pictures of my children. I have these god children. My new slideshow is opening in two weeks, all about children. These two god children in Berlin when I would go there they would do little performances for me. One went to a Turkish school, so she was showing me her belly dancing and the other is leaning over watching, and you can see their vaginas. It’s such a beautiful image about sisters. It’s been such a problem all around the world. In one place they shredded 10,000 copies of a magazine I was in because of that picture.

I did this show called Thanksgiving and that photo was part of it. Elton John bought one of my prints. That was back when my art still sold.

Sally: You have that problem too??

Nan: Oh honey.

Sally: Anyway…

Nan: Elton John lent his show of my work to this gallery in London; they told me they had wanted a show with Mapplethorpe instead. Anyway, they called the police and said, you might want to censor this photo, to get publicity. Elton John took it all down; he said if you’re not showing one picture you’re showing any of it. I was going to be prosecuted under British Law for child pornography. Elton John spoke on my behalf and that was it.

But it keeps going on. It happened in Poland too.

Sally: I had a show in London last summer too. They had a selection of the family pictures. And the week before a man had been convicted of child pornography and among his stuff was one of my books, so it was deemed pornographic. So the judge called the police and said this image from the book was on the wall in this gallery and it was a real legal problem. They called and said they were going to take the photo down. So I got Mark Stephens, who’s defending the Wikileaks guy, he’s really tough, and he and this Robertson guy tore the whole place apart and got a promise that I would not be arrested if I went to London.

17:48

Nan: So with Scopophilia, I did show children. But if you look at the paintings in the Louvre, we’ve got nothing on them. The children are naked and having sex, I mean, they are angels so they can do what they want….

So what happened to you with the family work?

Sally: Nothing really. But it’s really tricky. There’s one photo that is so illegal, “The Three Graces,” it depicts a child urinating, my lawyers say don’t even risk it.

Nan: Wait, I have a lot of pictures of children pissing.

Sally: It’s illegal to photograph a child urinating.

Nan: But it’s legal to kill a child outside of America.

Sally: The thing about pictures of children is they are up to interpretation, but urination is actually in the statute.

Nan: But that doesn’t happen in a private gallery?

Sally: Yes.

Nan: But it’s in London.

Sally: London is worse! When you go over there, I’ll give you the name of my lawyer.

17:54

Nan: The last work of yours I really looked at was the decomposing bodies in the forest…

Sally: Wait, I’m interviewing you.

Nan: No, I want to know about that work and how that led you to the work with your father?

Sally: Yeah, my interest in death. You’re sort of dealing with mortality all the way through.

Nan: This thing in London is the first thing I’ve done that isn’t about AIDS, death, loss. There’s a kids slideshow. There’s landscapes. And there’s this new work called Shapeshifting.

The three things that interest me the most are deserts, oceans, and the sky. Those are the spiritual things for me, things that are so vast that you begin to understand your size in the world. When I was a kid I met this TV newsman who was quitting his job to go around the world with a bunch of sky watchers…people who look at the sky all the time. Ever since then I look at the sky every day. It does amazing things. You think my life is so exciting; all I want to do is look at the sky. But yeah, these pictures are clouds and the horizon. I’m very interested in the horizon.

Sally: Do you put the horizon high or low?

Nan: In the middle.

Sally: Me too.

Nan: I can’t talk about this new Shapeshifting work, which is in grids. It’s the thing I care most about in the world. The grids are about shapeshifting. It’s the beginning of wanting to do kind of magic. Things about what the eye can’t see and states of being rather than people being in states. You know, I don’t have the need to photograph people any more. It’s really different to be an artists for a few years than for 30 years. You know that.

Sally: I do. I think we all begin to deal with the transitory nature of memory. But I think even the way you photograph sometimes speaks about memory. They are almost visual memories. Are you aware of that?

Nan: No, they’re just out of focus. But it’s nice to hear.

18:01

Sally: Eudora Welty was reading a short story, talking about a marbled cake one character gives to another. All these PhD students said, how did you come up with the wonderful metaphor of the marbled cake with yin and yang? And she said, well, it’s a recipe that’s been in my family for a long time.

Nan: I call it the post-rationalist world. You do what you do and let people say what it’s about, then you repeat what they say.

The first reason for my work was to remember. That’s why I’m so disturbed by the computer age. There is no way for my photographs to be real anymore. I made pictures so the world I came from, no one could revise my memory. Now, nobody believes anyone’s photographs anymore. There is a beautiful show on BBC called Machines that Rule Our Lives with Beauty and Grace, something like that [All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace]. It’s unbelievably frighting. If anyone intelligent watches this and is still on Facebook…seriously. What happened to real life, real relationships?

Sally: What happened to privacy? Do you have a web page?

Nan: Yeah. Do you?

Sally: A friend just put one together for me.

Nan: It’s nice to see what you’re doing.

Sally: It’s nice that people don’t call me up and ask stupid questions, like when I started taking pictures.

Nan: What happened to books? Books are dying. And movies and DVDs. In France at least they still believe in cinema. All those things we did as teenagers, we were so hungry for information. We would go anywhere and do anything to find out about things no one knew about. And now, it’s all just there.

Sally: Are they smarter than we were?

Nan: No, they’re stupid. I’m talking about the integrity of my images. If my goal was to make a body of work no one could revise, now in the world of digital photography I’ve failed.

18:04

Sally: When I’m working on things, I think, how much easier would this be if I just did it on the computer, when I’m burning and dodging and printing.

Nan: They stopped making my film, Sepiachrome [?]. They haven’t let me make a book in 8 years. I have this terrible contract with Phaidon. But I’m about to get out of it. There was a clause that said I wouldn’t make another book with another publisher without going to them first. And it was a horrible relationship. They took the book away before it was done; I wasn’t allowed on press.

Steidle is ready to print four or five of my books if I can ever get out of that contract. I’m going to do one more book with them and then I can do more.

Sally: Let this be a lesson to other photographers, not that anyone will ever publish a photo book again.

Nan: It ruined my life.

Sally: Well, it ruined 8 years of your life.

Nan: But look at me, how many do I have left?

Sally: Hey, we have plenty left.

Thank you all.

16:25

Massimo: I just make some pieces of plastic with aluminum on the back really happy for a while. I see the images for a while, then they make their way into the gallery, a collector’s home maybe.

The image is a very small part of my work. The work is about organizing, setting up a scafolding where I take the picture, it’s about having all these people, two or three assistants/photographers with me.

16:27

In the age of internet, you cannot keep track of images. The only thing I can really keep my hands on is the object. It’s heavy. It’s something that cannot be stolen. It cannot go anywhere unless FedEx takes it.

When I started 15 years ago, I was already thinking about this. It’s like music; you cannot hold onto it anymore. The concert is the only thing you can get people to pay to go see.

So with pictures, the only thing you can hold onto is the object.

 

16:30

A long time ago, I was in NY with my photographs rolled up, and I went to a few meeting with galleries. At that time you could actually talk with people in galleries.

I put my pictures out on the floor and the woman said I’ll buy two pictures and I’ll do a show. But she said, how do you want to mount them, frame them. And I was in agony because like every photographer, all I was thinking about was the image. Only later on I learned that she was terribly right. She told me, it was an object.

And now I go even further. I say it’s not only the object, sometimes it’s the frame, sometimes it’s the size.

16:33

M: That was a strange moment. That was a moment when someone in the contemporary art world decided they needed photographs. That doesn’t happen anymore. They left the doors open for a little while, and then they said, ok, that’s enough.

Alex: But you found yourself inside the doors.

M: Yes, but it was pure luck. I never meant to be a contemporary artist, they just told me I was a contemporary artist.

So the money started coming in, slowly. I always tell my friends, the first few you sell, the money just goes away. Once you start making a lot of money, you start to have a little something left.

Yeah, but I learned lots of things. This happened when I was fairly old. Because when I started this thing I was already 53. I was almost retired.

16:38

Alex: You had been a newspaper photographer, right?

M: I was, and a steady cam operator…all the stupid things you could do. And then I took a few years and I said I wanted to do something that no one had ever told me I had to do.

I gave myself two years and began experimenting with a 4×5 camera. And one day, somebody lent me a big old Mercedes. I was in Milan, I went for lunch, I had all the cameras in the trunk, and I get out of the restaurant and all the cameras were gone, two 4x5s. But I still had an 8×10 and one lens. And I thought this is a sign.

The 8×10 is a horrible beast. It’s really terrible. The depth of field is VERY shallow. It’s very good for a portrait. But the moment even and interior, it’s sort of strange. And outside you have lots of things in the way.

So I thought I would go high and tilt down so everything was sharp. So with a friend I built some scaffolding, really dangerous and shaky. Once I remember some idiots took the ladders away from the scaffolding and I was stuck up there for an hour. You cannot imagine what happens on these beaches.

16:42

So I’m there, it’s summer 1994, I’ve built this thing, and I need to see that my idea works. I was living not far from the beach and a month before our dear head of state (in Italy) won the elections and I couldn’t believe it.

So I went to the beach and I wanted to see their faces. And it worked. The first day I did a pictures every half hour all day, kind of a conceptual thing. I was working in black and white. You have no idea how horrible black and white is on the beach. Between the cassettes I had one sheet of Portra 160 and I developed it two weeks later and I thought, this is not so bad.

I showed some friends and they said, what are you doing? It’s a really stupid idea to take pictures on the beach. And I thought, I think I like it.

So I made more photos, bigger and bigger, in the winter. One summer my assistant couldn’t come because he was a lifeguard and he was working. So I took and architect with me instead.

And after 4-5 years it was pretty successful.

16:47

Alex: Let’s go through how you would actually shoot.

M: So the camera is what makes the picture. I heard other friends here saying I don’t want to talk about cameras, because it’s the photographer who takes the picture. In my case, it’s not me, it’s the camera. So if I change the camera, I take a different picture. I have an 8×10 and I know what I can get with that.

The relationship between the space on the film and the space you are photographing is absolutely unique. Each camera has a different way to portray reality. And since I like to somehow be part of a objective way of looking at reality and working with photography, I choose this large format because it puts me closer to the classic photography. The early photography, which was really so objective. People hadn’t started dealing in “beautiful” pictures. Pictures were whatever. Already the fact there was an image was a big deal. And that’s very important. Because they didn’t have time to think about the light, the composition, and I think photography should still be like this. It should be about the discovery of the image. Photography was born to reproduce things, not to interpret things.

16:51

Alex: I read that you think of your images as giant post cards.

M: Yes, because they are the epitome of objectivity. These guys made these photos…they had to make an image that was easily understandable and that people would want to take home. They usually had to find the most obvious but also the most objective view.

I have a friend, who collects old postcards of the places we go and shoot. Every place we go to shoot, I know exactly where I’m going and how many photographs I’m making. This summer I’ll take six or seven. And it’s solid work from now until the end of August. Greece, south of Italy, we move.

16:56

Alex: And when you get to a beach where you know you want to shoot, what happens?

M: You get there and there’s only one place you can put the scaffolding. It’s heavy and difficult to move, so I put it in one place and then I let things develop around me.

Alex: How high are you.

M: About 18-19 feet. It’s a good height, because it’s not geographic, and you’re a bit distanced but still in touch with people. In fact the people in the foreground of the pictures, I get kind of intimate with them.

Now, the reason that I’m up and shooting down, because starting in the Renaissance, paintings were full of people. You had the angels in the sky, a little landscape, then you have people doing things, warriors, saints, whoever, and then in the bottom you have the guy who paid for the portrait.

So the fascination of this kind of image is that every space is filled with things. And when I started I confronted the photography that was being done and I thought the missing part was there was always too much sky, too much foreground, and very rarely pictures were filled with things.

My idea is also about doing complicated images. Things you cannot understand in a short amount of time. People who have my pictures, they tell me, I’ve had that photo for five years and every day I look at it I find something different. You have to give people something you can look at for a long time.

17:00

Alex: So you’re up there on the scaffold. You’re also shooting digital now.

M: I’m trying. This digital thing is an ordeal. It’s beautiful, but I don’t know if I can do the same size prints…. But I thought about doing digital, because maybe there won’t be film left, so I have to be prepared. But one thing I thought is that digital should stay digital. I shoot on negative I print on paper. You shoot digital, you see it on a screen. When you start messing with prints, you’re confusing the issues. If one day I do digital, I will probably sell the picture with a screen.

17:05

Alex: All the photographers I know say don’t shoot in the middle of the day. Do you sleep in?

M: I don’t care, I’ll shoot any time. I don’t even look at the light. The 8×10 is very forgiving. I shoot until the light is gone.

When I go out, the assistant brings out the camera, puts everything straight, I go up and look into the camera and the picture is there. Then I eat a sandwich, I have some water, and then I spend the day. I have a little swim.

Alex: How many images would you take?

M: I take very few images. In 15 years I shot 4,600 negatives, altogether. But that works, because every picture has something, since I’m not looking for particular things. Obviously the more complex the image is, the more human texture you have, the better it is. But now I’m also doing some things with less people, because I can better master the trade. I can get maybe only 50 people is enough to make a complex situation.

Alex: One thing you told me was you could make them more beautiful, you’re not trying to make them beautiful.

M: If I wanted I could make them much nicer. But contemporary art doesn’t work like that. If you take a nice picture, they say, this is too nice. Your reputation is ruined.

17:11

Alex: You told me one thing you do is you organize the image in some way.

M: Normally I make the most obvious things. Everything is level. Horizon is high. And then if there is a point of interest, I put it right in the middle, and that’s it.

Alex: What would you say is the subject of your pictures?

M: Human beings. And this is something that I have to tell you. One thing I don’t understand about photographers, friends of mine, is that they keep changing subjects. They need a subject for their pictures. You don’t need a subject, it’s humanity. It’s what you have around.

For me it’s a bit restrictive to try to find a a story. But also the contemporary art photographers need an excuse to go out and take pictures. I don’t think you should have an excuse. No subject.

I decided to look at human beings through gatherings that are very interesting in certain places. But that’s it. And this is my life’s mission. I’m not going to change. Why should I? I’m changing every year, I do a different photo. But I’m not going to change subjects.

Also, going back to contemporary art, the moment people recognize your work, you’re really in. I remember the first couple years I had a gallerist who said, for two years you have six pictures. Only these six pictures. Everywhere I went, every show, was only done with those six pictures. And people started to remember. Maybe they wouldn’t remember the name, but they would remember.

When you change your subject, when your image is nice but similar to other images….people go through these huge art fairs, they don’t remember who you are. They don’t know who you are. You have to immediately catch their attention. And when you catch the attention, then someone maybe takes the wallet out.

17:14

Alex: Are the people you’re photographing aware you’re taking pictures?

M: I’m up high so I’m really out of the visual space. They don’t care. Sometimes I get out of the scaffolding or my assistants go to take pictures and they’re immediately confronted by people. But no one ever asks, what are you doing up there? I’m like a pier. Do you ask a pier what they’re doing out there?

Alex: Have people come up and said they are in a photo?

M: Yes. I pretend privacy laws don’t exist. But sometimes I have people who write to me and say I’m in your picture…and I just send them a little print, and they’re really happy. Also because I have no attitude towards the people in the pictures. I’m objective. They can only be happy to be part of a contemporary art piece.

17:16

Alex: Now you’re starting to get asked to go back to doing editorial assignments.

M: For them I shoot more film.

Alex: In that case you do take a subject on, but you try to do it your way.

M: Obviously I have to do it my way. Sometimes it works really well. The Venice picture in the gallery, I was doing an editorial for New York Times and I shot the picture and everybody knew and the edition immediately sold out. And one of the collectors got it in the Guggenheim in New York, less than a month after it came out in the New York Times. So it was good for me and for the Times.

17:19

Alex: I want to talk more about your camera. But Kathy Ryan isn’t asking other people to go take their 8×10 to make pictures. So there is some contribution from you….

M: I just refine the technique of the 8×10 camera. Not everyone has such a refined technique. All winter we spend getting things ready for the summer shoot. It’s not easy, it’s very technical.

17:26

Alex: Can you tell us how an image becomes an object for you.

M: I have the negatives developed and a first run of contacts, with very rough color, etc. Then I look and say what I like and don’t. Then we do scans of the negatives. I send them out to galleries and say when they will be available. They say, ok, how many they want, a preorder.

Then I do the prints. I go to my lab in Milan. We have lunch with the printer then right after we do lots of tests. Then we do a print. And 80% of the time it’s fine. Sometimes I have to redo a big print, sometimes even twice. And this is all included in the final cost of the print.

Then they get rolled up and sent to Dusseldorf, and they put them under plexiglass and ship them to wherever. So sometimes I don’t even see the finished product until I go to a show or something.

Speaking of the Germans…going back to this contemporary art business, I think that really the Germans did it right. They’ve been working on this 50 years before we started. Because they started back with the Beckers, they were all going in one direction. And finally they came out with the Dusseldorf school.

Whereas in the rest of the world, including, unfortunately, the US, the contemporary art galleries had to take what was there. There are beautiful photographers here that I love, but they were photographers. And they’re called contemporary artists, but the real ones are back in Germany.

17:28

Alex: Yesterday you were talking about how you organize your material. You said when you started this project you began to archive things in a different way. And you put everything you did earlier than 15 years ago, you put in a drawer and you don’t have any interest in it anymore.

M: I don’t think that earlier work represents me. I’m really against digging into the drawers and finding what Cartier-Bresson did when he was 11. I don’t care. My 11 lasted until I was 50, but, still. I don’t want to do it. I don’t like what I did then.

17:30

Audience Questions

17:33

Q. A lot of your pictures show middle class European life. Have you ever thought about showing another slice of life?

A. Yeah, but it’s not that easy. I’m middle class European and I know middle class European. If I go to Africa, I have to either be geographical or start thinking in another way. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. But it’s just not easy to confront oneself with a reality that is not similar to the one you live in. It’s like, I purposefully avoid any confrontational beaches. Nude, lesbian, gay, gangsters. Lots of places I could go to, but my idea is to go to normal beaches with normal people.

17:35

Q. It’s it kind of unusual to have no bare breasts at European beaches isn’t it?

A. I have some with bare breasts. I was at one beach near where I live and the beach was really crowded and there was this beautiful girl with bare breasts, she’s walking, and I’m a total voyeur, and she goes around and she turns, and she positions herself in the middle of the picture in front, and obviously I took the picture. She did her part, and I did my part.

17:38

Q. You said you’re a very technical photographer. Two of your prints had a very cyan tint….

A. They are fading. You’re good for noticing. Photography is a vanishing art. In the sense that pictures only last a certain time. I think that the diptych should be reprinted because it’s losing the proper color. Sometimes it happens. It’s part of photography. I prefer to have a good picture that lasts 10 years rather than a bad picture that lasts forever.

17:38

Q. Have any of your patrons ever asked to be in a picture and what would you say?

A. Well, it depends on how much…. [Laughter and applause]

17:39

Q. Has anyone ever asked to not be in a picture?

A. There is a story that happened the first day I went to the beach and did the black and white. While I was printing we were doing test strips. And the guy said this is my brother. Then he does another test strip next to the brother and he says, oh, but this is not his wife. But apart from this, no.

17:50

Q. One of the things I find fascinating in your photographs is the relationship between people and the natural surrounding. Can you talk more about that?

A. Yeah, what you should know is that I started with a more urban industrial background. I wanted to show that beaches were not far from every day life. And then part of my slow evolution was to get into something more romantic. Get inspiration from the landscape painting of the 17th Century.

Just to tell you one stupid instance. This place that looks like a nuclear plant because luckily in Italy we don’t have those. But that is a factory that produces some basic, innocuous chemical. And it belongs to a Belgium concern called Sovay. And I met this guy, Mr. Solvay. And this guy, the last in his family, has a private terminal in the Brussels airport. He’s a very nice guy. But obviously his factory that the people are concerned about. But this guy has bought 6 or 7 of my pictures. All the ones with the factory in the back. And one day he says, every time I see my factory in your picture, I love my factory so much, I cannot help, I have to buy the photo. So there’s something you can see from two different sides.

17:52

Q. You shoot so few frames, and you capture so many great gestures with thousands of people. How do you do that?

A. It’s sort of easy. The 8×10 sees much more than you can see. But I try to follow…there’s always something that catches your attention. And you follow little stories. When you have enough connections and the tension starts….in a way, the picture is building up.

For instance, around 4-5 in the afternoon, nothing happens anymore. There is no more tension. No more life on the beach. But there are moments in which things happen. And you have to catch those little things. And when you have 4 or 5 things happening at the same time, you shoot.

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?