FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Stephen Guenther
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen talks to Stephen Guenther, a fine art photographer who considers himself a "creative investigator."
This podcast is brought to you by FRAMES, a high-quality quarterly printed photography magazine. You can find out more about FRAMES at www.readframes.com.
You know, photography is a two-dimensional representation of three dimensions. And mo a lot of people who look at phot photographs think it's three-dimensional for them. They see their their mom, their car, their whatever. But the the way these are presented, they flatten because the texture is uniform across them. So it it for me, it kind of reinforces that two-dimensionality.
SPEAKER_02This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is your today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_05Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olsen, and today we get to do something that I don't get to do very often. I get to talk to someone I have talked to before. Today we are talking with Stephen Gunther. Stephen, as you may remember, if you are a longtime listener to the podcast series, October 25th, 2022, Stephen and I had a wonderful conversation about a tremendous range of his work, from documentary to corporate to travel, everything from film to working with NGOs. Steven's got a career that I said back then, and I still stand by it, I am jealous of. But at the time, Steven had not had one extra line on his resume, one extra thing to put up, and that is that he is in the current issue of Frames magazine. And not only is he in the issue, Steven is in the section that we call beyond. This is the section where photographers do something a little extra special, a little out of out of um what most people expect. And it is without a doubt inspiring and mesmerizing and the kind of work that you look at and you think, man, I wish I'd thought of that or I wish I knew how to do that. So once again, Steven, welcome to the Frames Podcast. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_03I'm doing well. Thank you, sir. It's always fun to talk about for me photography in general, particularly with someone who has a passion for it, understands the history of it. And I think the last time we went over because we were having such fun.
SPEAKER_05So well, we we were having a lot of fun. And you know, we're gonna have fun today, too, as well. Um, I'm gonna promise everybody there's gonna be a link to the old podcast, which is gonna be right there present. Um, I've already told Steven that we were not gonna go over a lot of the old information there because that that was a wonderful conversation. And so the first thing I'm gonna do is ask you about some of the old information, um that we went over before. Um but but this is sort of a lead up to the remnants, sort of a lead up to the beyond section. Um, if you would, I mean, you you began or you did your undergraduate work in visual psychology, and then you did your graduate work in you know design and photography and all that. Um and there's a there's a pivot moment in there where you went into last week of undergrad work, you go into a friend's dark room and the world changes. Um walk me through a little bit of the formative history a little bit. Um, first of all, you know, what is visual psychology? Tell me about that moment in the dark room. Um, and then tell me what about grad school sort of gave you a compass heading.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I um like a lot of people in the same period of undergraduate as me, psychology was a very popular um area to study. And within that, I did take a class on perceptual psychology, which was pretty interesting. Not only physically the way the eye sees, but the perception of color, all those sort of things. So perception's always um been interesting to me. Um, I actually was studying to be a medical illustrator for a while. Anyway, I I'd also always had a camera, but it was kind of either my brother's camera or a hobby or something. And it was actually literally the last week of my undergraduate, and I had a good friend who was an architectural student, and uh I called him and said, Hey, let's get together, you know, the year's ending, let's go have a beer or something. And he said, Yeah, meet me at the dark room. And I'm like, Where's the dark room? So he told me, and I went there and um I went in this little room, and then he came out of a different room and said, Hey, I'm almost done, come on in. We went in and he switched off the white light, turned on the red light, and um which is necessary in black and white photography for those who don't know. Um it doesn't affect the film uh the paper. Right. Um but anyway, he walked over to this machine, turned it on, and this light came out the bottom of it with a negative image onto a piece of paper. He slid it into a developing tray, and I it knocked me over to watch that magic happen. And magic is the right word. And I was I was stunned by it. I was just overwhelmed by it. And I don't think I even slept that night. I think um it it it just really struck me, and I think that happens to a lot of people. And I think within the next few days, I said to uh my parents, I said, I think I need to study photography. And they're like, You're just graduating undergraduate in psychology, and so you you can imagine the conversation.
SPEAKER_05But oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, and then I, you know, I looked around for workshops because at that point in academia, unless you had an undergraduate art degree, you couldn't get into graduate school. Um, that has changed. They like interdisciplinary people now in their programs. So I started looking at workshops. The two primary ones were Visual Studies Workshop in New York, run by Nathan Lyons, and then there was one closer to home in Louisville, Kentucky, called the Center for Photographic Studies, run by a lovely man, CJ Pressma, who had studied both with Henry Elm Smith at Indiana University and with Minor White at MIT. And I took a chance and went there and enrolled in the program, and the rest is history, so to speak. There we are.
SPEAKER_05Now, so you're you're coming out of visual psychology and you know how how we respond to perception. You you go into um design work and photography, but you're also stepping into this tradition, you know, by with Minor White and the others, of mindfulness, of a kind of zen approach. Perfect. Um Yeah, but I mean, I can I can see these things swirling around. Suddenly you've got mindfulness and you've got visual psychology working together. Um, I mean, you're looking, and this is a quote from the earlier podcast, you have always looked at texture and and color as design elements. Um tell me more about that.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, it um I've always been aware of surface and texture, um, both in the physical world and in the photographic world. How do you photograph it? Um it's one of those things that's right in front of you, and unless you become aware of it, you know, it kind of disappears. But there were people, you know, looking at textures everywhere everybody from Walker Evans and his torn posters to Aaron Siskin and his, you know, walls with graffiti. And, you know, those things are they're out there and they're they're right there and a lot of we don't need to travel necessarily, we just need to look around us a little bit. And texture's always been there. And back in those days, um, I I'd always had an attraction to color photography, but um so we're talking mid-70s. I was told that serious art photographers don't pursue color. It's black and white. Um I know. And uh there were a few doing it at the time. Um Ernst Haas, who um had been a life photographer, tried you know, color, and there were some others, and people were just coming in the back door, Stephen Shore and people like that. So I actually ended up working at a color lab for a couple years to actually learn the process. It wasn't available um in academia or even in the general public. Nobody was teaching it. So it was interesting. I mean, it was kind of it was people were confused. Um it uh if you go back and look at Ernst Haas's book Creation, um, there are touchstones in there from my work to his work.
SPEAKER_05So oh, very cool. You know, you you have one one of the best and one of the coolest websites out there, and I'm looking at your list of portfolios here. And you have the good fortune to have traveled quite a bit. Um, and so I'm looking at India, Sri Lanka, Bahamas, Portugal, uh, Thailand, Germany. It just goes on and on. Um, when you are traveling, and you know, I'm looking at these pictures now. When you are traveling, is it color and texture that is is the you know, the the call, the siren call saying turn this way?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there is a lot of that. Um, you know, one of the uh joys of traveling, um, particularly in third world countries, is that it's all new and your filters and your defense mechanisms are gone. So your perception changes. I think you see things a little clearer if you're willing to look. And in a lot of countries like India, color and texture are just part of the fabric of that culture. Um it's everywhere and it's it it is every day. It's not it's not something you bump into a mile down the road. So it's always been there for me.
SPEAKER_05So it but w when you are in in search of subjects, are you know is is it the the the drama, you know, the the human drama of the scene, the color clashes or compliments? What what most often says point the lens this way?
SPEAKER_03I I think because I have a designer's eye, a graphic designer's eye, many times it's patterns and textures. Um I did do portraits whenever I travel, sort of nodding for um permission, because the people are just just extraordinary. Um but it is the the color, the paint, the reflection, and within that also I began to develop an eye for the landscape, um, particularly the you know, India in particular.
SPEAKER_01Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you are enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code POMEDCAST to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new frames magazine subscription. And now, back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_05I should tell everyone on your website there there's a particular portfolio simply called texture. Um and and if you ever want a masterclass in in how colors and textures and shapes and stuff uh create a wonderful photograph, just take a stroll through this portfolio. It is thinking well, I mean, for someone you know like me, I work mostly with street, mostly with black and white. I I look at this and feel like, oh God, okay. Yeah, I'm I'm glad you're doing it because I don't have a clue. I don't have a prayer. Um Steven, you're you're going along, you're the the career's rock and rolling, and we get COVID. Right. Um and this this actually um, you know, like for many of us, caused you to rethink, recast, look for other things to photograph. So as a way to get into the remnants idea here, tell tell me about the the change in in your artistic life pre through post-COVID.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, uh there had always my training as a photographer was not um a wanderer street photographer looking for something. It was more creating a series of images. And some of that involved travel for me, and of course, um that got the kibosh because of COVID. So I started looking around and I was actually in the process of selling some antique photographs, and these were tin types, and I had put them under a light and was photographing them to share with people who might be interested. And as I was looking at them with a macro lens, I started looking at sections of them and you know, how close can you get to the face? What part of this image is more interesting than the whole? Because tin types in general were kind of at a a little wider you know uh visual stance. And then I started looking at other things under the macro lens, um in this case a collection of vintage postcards. And I've always seen postcards and even the the sort of banal general uh postcards that travel um as kind of viewfinders. And as I looked at them, I noticed that just like when you're in a landscape and you're looking for something to photograph, you hone in on something, or there was something more interesting in the image than the full image. So I started looking at re-photographing that, even tried some scanning uh to see if I could find an image that had a graphic feel to it, had a a visual interest. And the more I played with it, the more I looked at these some of these sections are blown up by 2400%. Wow. Um but these postcards are all done using uh high-speed lithography. So there's multiple dot patterns in there that create the color. If you look at them with a magnifying glass, you see the dots that create the image. When you back away, your the your your eye fills in the blanks and creates an image. And a lot of times on these large web prints that the postcards are on, there's imperfections, there's misalignment. Some of those are pretty interesting.
SPEAKER_05Um, okay. I mean you're leading right up to the first image in the magazine here. But but but no, but I want to ask you a question before we even get there. Do you have just like several hundred old postcards sitting in the basement? I mean, how how did you find the source material?
SPEAKER_03You know, um both my parents are deceased, and there was boxes and boxes of stuff from their house. Um, that's mine, some of that's theirs. And there were postcards from vacation postcards, and you know, they're they're memories.
SPEAKER_05You know, you just you pull them out, you look at them and go, oh, that was Cape Cod, oh, that was Florida, oh, that was so these are postcards that they bought as in in lieu of taking their own photographs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, my dad had a a Leica and he took code he shot codochrome all the time, but I it was just kind of the standard thing to buy postcards when you know when you travel. And I bought them too, and I bought them whenever I traveled, you know, and so there was just a big box of them, and I started looking at them and going through them and finding sections that I thought would be more interesting.
SPEAKER_05And and so the the designer in you, you know, you're looking at this postcard, you're thinking, you know, okay, this is pretty cliche, but boy, that upper left-hand corner has got something something special to it.
SPEAKER_03Well, I started, yes, exactly. And I started making just kind of small prints, you know, 8 by 10, 11 by 14, 16 by 20. And each time I did that, the image got more interesting. When the dot patterns got blown up, these prints that I had on a show last year, they're 36 by 36 inches. So you're taking roughly an inch out of a printed piece and blowing it up 36 inches.
SPEAKER_05I mean, three feet by three feet is not a small print. It's not. Do you remember the first one you did at that size? Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_03It was uh it was actually that first image in the magazine.
SPEAKER_05The towels okay, cool. Well, what okay, t tell me the story of postcard to three by three foot by three-foot print.
SPEAKER_03Well, it it you know, I started out using a macro photograph, just photographing the whole postcard, and then bringing that in and taking sections of it.
SPEAKER_05Did you put it like in a little white box or something, or just on the you know, living room table or you know, dining room table? How did you actually take the picture?
SPEAKER_03It was just under a ring light on a on a table. Okay. Just put it straightforward. And as I played with it in Photoshop, I started cropping areas out. And then I went back and re-photographed some of those. And the funny thing is, about because you have this almost hard-edged lithographic dot pattern, blowing it up doesn't degrade the image. It actually adds to it. It it's fascinating. And in the gallery, when you're 10 feet away and you're looking at it, you can see the church or you can see the beach ball. But when you get up close and you start looking at it, you start seeing all the dot patterns and the flows and the blending of colors.
SPEAKER_05And it's the dot pattern almost has an MC Escherish feel to it, because when you're looking at it in the brown wall of the church, um, it seems to be one pattern. When you're looking at it in the blue sky, I mean it is still the same pattern, but you're seeing almost the opposite, almost the inverse of the pattern. Does color really affect our perception of the pattern in the texture?
SPEAKER_03I think it does. Um that's a great question. Um one of the things that, particularly on the Taos image, that was fascinating to me is that the registration on that image is horrible. So if you look at the print, there's a little vent stack on the top of the church. And the blue section of that is totally out of alignment. And it creates this ghost image that to me just adds to the image a lot. And it kind of floats around the structure. But you don't see it in the clouds, which are primarily blue, because there's no other color in there. So there's it gives it this interesting sort of three-dimension, if you will.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And and the right-hand wall of the church is also out of alignment. Um but it but it strikes me, you you know, you mentioned just a second ago, depending on how far away you are, you you have a completely different understanding of what the center of attention is. Correct.
SPEAKER_03Correct. Yeah, and it's it's um for me when I was able to make a large print, uh, I knew instantly that they needed to be that size. Uh it just felt right, it felt good, um, I liked the variation in the distance, and it presented in a different way when somebody stood in front of it. Um it was fascinating, even in the show, the one of the the Tao's church, which was on the mailers and on posters I made, and I put it kind of on the back wall, but it faced the door. Okay. I sold more of that print than any other, and I'm trying to figure out why. Um location matters, or um, I've had people say that. Um they were mesmer, they were they liked it in the postcard mailer. Um, but I've also had people say that it the the gold and the blue are very attractive to a lot of people. So the goldish brown. Um the other thing that's interesting about these is these are old postcards. So they're very dirty and very scratched. So I did spend a considerable amount of time in Photoshop cleaning up the images, taking the dirt off, taking the scratches. But because there is this dot pattern in it, it's actually not that difficult to do in terms of cleaning.
SPEAKER_05Oh, I thought it would be immensely because you I mean you can't reduce noise without blurring all the dot pattern. Um and so if you're cloning anything, you you've got a double you've got your own alignment problem, don't you?
SPEAKER_03Well you do, but because there's like a center dot on a lot of the um photography, you can if you're really careful about where you make your first contact and where you clone to, it it really becomes pretty invisible.
SPEAKER_05Um you you just hit the you just hit the two words that are my problem. Really careful.
SPEAKER_03Um it didn't happen quickly. It took a lot of trial and error.
SPEAKER_05So oh man, okay. I'm I'm looking at one of my personal favorites here, and that's the one called Rocket. Tell me that story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's actually a pretty um uh recent one. And I'm as well as being a photo buff, I grew up being a NASA buff too.
SPEAKER_05I was we all wanted to be astronauts, I know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, there's a longer story about uh for me, I had a long childhood illness, was very depressed, was really into the space program. My mother got hold of John Glenn four days after his orbital flight. He wrote me a two-page letter. Oh my god. Sent me a lapel pin, and you know, I'm I'm deeply connected to the space program and grateful to people like Oh, very cool.
SPEAKER_05Well, okay, keep going.
SPEAKER_03Tell me the story here. So, anyway, you know, I've also collected, you know, I've got NASA stuff, I've got NASA brochures, I've got I was actually at the 69 moon launch um in the congressional stand.
SPEAKER_05So I'm not jealous at all.
SPEAKER_03Um with my brother's camera not knowing what the hell I was doing. Um so uh this is an image I discovered um at a postcard show. I went to a postcard show and was looking through vintage cards and found this image. And I've actually done this image into a trip tit as well, but it's one of those images that you show with the people, and I would say half the people are clueless about what it is. Which really? Yeah. Um, I mean, if you're a space buffer, I would think it would pop right out at you, but um, I had a framed print 36 inches by 36 inches sitting in my living room, and a dozen people saw it, and I would say half of them, they're like, What's that? And I'm like, Oh yeah, I know. Um so that one I I just really like. Uh it's got it so many connections to me. And and a lot of images in this do. I mean, um, if you read my little blurb, which I'm sure you did, there's also some connections sort of to the history of photography. Um the Tao's church, as you know, and maybe people don't, is sort of a a very uh landmark image. And with Paul Strand and Ansel Adams, and yeah, that's it. And then in the show also I have a cloud. And for me, that connects to one of my heroes is Alfred Stieglitz, and the whole story of him making a series of photographs of clouds that were the equivalents of music. And he was kind of one of the first people to not do photography that was representational of something else. And it was kind of fortunate because about he tried doing it, and uh at that time film was orthochromatic, so it it was pretty much black and white, and I think Kodak maybe just came out with um monochromatic film that you could do the ranges, and that's kind of what helped him do the cloud anyway. So there are some nice historical connections for me in the images as well.
SPEAKER_05Very cool. You know, and I'm looking again in the current issue of frames, and right next to Rocket, there there's one called a flame. And turn the page, uh, you've got the cloud, and then you've got the beach bone stuff. And I'm looking at the dot pattern. I'm I'm looking at the you know, the texture of the postcard, and I'm wondering if in another world what you aren't dealing with here is you know grain or noise or whatever. Um, but the the aesthetic appeal of oh, what would you call it? You know, almost a layer or or a something you have to see through to get to something else. Um tell me about in your world at least, um, the relationship between this, the the textures of the postcards and what in other formats would be grain or noise and why we like that.
SPEAKER_03I think for these in the studio, most, you know, well, so many people today don't know what you know offset printing is. So much is done inkjet, so much doesn't have dot patterns. And it's sort of new, and I I would venture that a lot of people who looked at these thought that I put the pattern in 'em. Um but it for me, it it I think you used the word layer before. It it adds a layer to it that almost forces you to look at it in a slightly different way. You know, I want to say to connect the dots, but it's such a cliche. Um yeah, but you know what I mean. It it it and as you look at it and as you step back from it, it it changes. It changes. I mean, there's even some, there's one it's not in a magazine, there's one in the portfolio online of a kind of a curve of a bridge. It was in, I think it's in the keys. And it it's almost abstract. I'm not sure anybody even knows that it's a bridge. So I think it the reality is played with a little bit, um, which is nice for me.
SPEAKER_05So there there is for my way of looking at these, you know, with the dot pattern there, um I mean I'm just paying attention to the cloud one right now, which is the you know, the simplest image in the world, blue sky, a little white cloud. Um but the the dot pattern, again, it has that Escher-esque kind of morphing, you know, depending on what color you're seeing behind it, which I find uh tremendously fascinating. But I'm not looking at a cloud. I'm looking at an I mean, I'm consciously aware of the fact that I'm looking at a made image of a cloud, and that madeness, that sort of thingness of it is the subject. Um it is for me the the source of the real appeal, more so than the cloud. And the the uh the element of what's the word I'm looking for? Interpretation is not secondary, it is primary.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's well put. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean, does that make sense to you? It does.
SPEAKER_03I mean, you know uh I think I haven't really thought about this, but you know, photography is a two-dimensional representation of three dimensions. And mo a lot of people who look at p photographs, it's three-dimensional for them. They see their their mom, their car, their whatever. But the way these are presented, they flatten because the texture is uniform across them. So it it for me, it kind of reinforces that two-dimensionality. It's a little harder to see the three-dimension, I think.
SPEAKER_05Walk me through the beach ball picture. From you know what was the what was the original postcard? Why'd you why'd you select that part of it? Um, and you know, people's reaction to it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that was actually one of the ones in the family ones, and it's um it's one of those typical 1950s, 60s Florida vertical postcard of the young woman in a bathing suit holding a beach ball above her head. Okay. And I still have the postcard? I do. Um and it it was the object entering the frame, the beach ball itself, against the sky that drew me to it. If I had a camera, that's the photograph I would have taken. So it and I really like something entering the frame, not totally in the frame. To me, that it it helps add a dimension to it.
SPEAKER_05And so, okay, so you cropped it and you you said, okay, this is now the story I want to tell. Was it difficult to bring out in this this new way of looking?
SPEAKER_03No, it I mean, it's there's multiple steps here. You know, there's scanning the card, there's scanning the sections of the card, there's blowing up sections of the card, there's replaying with I mean, when you're taking that small a portion out of the card, moving it a fraction of an inch changes it. And you know, it's no different than standing in front of a tree and moving your camera two inches to the left, two inches down, two inches up, two inches to the right. It does change the composition. And that's you have to sort of go through that process with ease too. And it's it's it's an intuitive process. I mean, there's certainly some compositional history, some compositional um education in my career as a designer, but and I hope this doesn't sound uh strange, but it just feels right. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05I think for many of us, intuition and the the old you know it when you see it feeling is is how we work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. And it was kind of interesting because you're doing those, you're in your your studio or at your desk, you're not out wandering around, there's no distractions, there's nobody saying, What are you taking pictures of? There's you know, um you're just you and the little gadgets you got, and it it it's a different kind of concentration, some of the same frustrations by oh, I gotta do that again, oh that doesn't work. Um but it it it was a lot of fun. I mean, I almost fell into it. Yeah, you know, maybe a benefit of being a little isolated though during the period.
SPEAKER_05You know, COVID for a lot of us um taught us new ways of seeing it. I mean, you know, some new skills, obviously, um, but also you know, shook the edges of what we're comfortable with, I think profoundly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there were some other things that um I have a box of toys from when I was a child. And within those that box of toys is, you know, yo-yos and those kind of things. But there's also a very beautiful gold-tinted cowboy pistol. It looks semi-real, but it's not and I did start photographing some of those toys, and the toy gun was interesting because it's it's a toy, but it's not a toy.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03You know, we look at those things so different today. Um when I was a kid, we all had toy guns and we were all running around you know, pretending to shoot each other. I don't see that today. Um in itself, it was beautifully manufactured, it's handsome, but it's also a representation of something that kills. So, you know, that that might be a series to come as well, so I don't know. It's kind of I have mixed feelings about it.
SPEAKER_05So well, I mean, Steven, it it it's it's gonna be an interesting project, no matter what. The everybody, you I mean, you've got the issue of Frames Magazine, or at least you should. Go to the be go to the beyond section. You are gonna be blown away by Stephen's work here back here. And I keep looking at this. I'm looking now at the portfolio, um, an image that's not in the magazine, uh, just an orange golden sunset. And I could spend hours looking at this, looking at the sunset, looking at at uh what might be a little cloud or something over on this on the side. But the dots and the way they morph and the way they change, this is asking me to view an image, a photographic image in a completely new way, one that I find personally rewarding. And and Stephen, as before, it has been wonderful to chat with you. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_03You're more than welcome. I want to thank you and Tomas and Frames. It is a privilege to be published. Um, they they held up amazingly so because the printing quality is uh Well, thank thank you very much.
SPEAKER_05Tomas that does an absolutely magnificent job. I I feel honored every time I get an issue, can hold it in my hand.
SPEAKER_03Well, those those who don't haven't gotten one yet, when you open it and smell it, you know that it's pretty good.
SPEAKER_05Spoken like a true book lover. Oh man. Um, Stephen, thank you very much. I'll talk to you later.
SPEAKER_03Thank you, sir. I appreciate your time. Be well.
SPEAKER_00Frames. Because excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit us at www.readframes.com.