FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Robert Kalman
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Robert Kalman, a New York–born documentary portrait photographer whose forty-plus-year practice uses large-format cameras to reveal the dignity and emotional truth of everyday people across America and the world.
You can visit Robert's website here.
Find out more and join FRAMES here.
In 1990, I uh was with a group of Americans who went to Nicaragua to monitor the elect the first free election in Nicaragua in a long time. And I just fell in love with the people. Um, I had never been to Nicaragua. This was a life-changing moment for me. And so I was there really to just document the work that the Americans had come to participate in. And Scott, here were people whose lives had been altered by our government's interference into their affairs with Iran-Contra. The people were still warm and effusive and open-hearted to us. And so I made the images on 35 millimeter and knew that I would be back. And it was that particular time where I was making the serious transition to just using large format exclusively. As a result, I returned four times in the early 1990s, made many portraits of villagers in this one particular village that I was connected with. So when I went back, I sought out a whole bunch of people who we had fought uh we had photographed earlier in the in the early 90s. Um, just made these remarkable photographs again of the same people. And it was interesting to me to see how they had aged and how the culture had or hadn't changed in the 20 years that it hadn't been there.
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_04Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson, and today, for today, we're gonna go off into a kind of work that I absolutely find mesmerizing and engaging. And oh my lord, there's no way in the world I can ever get my camera and my sensibilities to do it right. We're talking about portraits. As you guys know, the portrait is probably the most evocative, the most uh empathetic, the most interrogative way of approaching photography. There's something about taking somebody else's picture in in a, I want to say formal, but that's not really what I mean, but in a composed, intentional, uh creative way that goes well, well, well beyond um just a snapshot of somebody on the street or in a studio. Now, studio port, you know, uh portraiture is one thing. You get to control all the lights, you get to control, you know, the temperature of the room. But environmental portraits, street portraits, documentary portraits, that's a completely different ball of yarn. And the people that do it well seem to get it something magical. Do they seem to get it something that is illuminating the human character, that is saying, here's an individual, but here is also an example of the whole damn universe. And I find myself staring at these portraits, impressed at the technical level, sure, but also looking at these men and these women and thinking they are part of the world that I am moving through and I am moving through theirs. What is our relationship? Who are these people? In other words, portraiture, environmental portraiture, documentary portraiture speaks to me at an intimate level. And there's nobody, nobody out there doing a more interesting job right now than Robert Callman. Robert is a documentary portrait photographer. He's got at least seven books and portfolios all over the place. Um, he's got, you know, exhibitions since I think it was 2011. It is a kind of work that is minute and exact and universal at the same time. And I am absolutely thrilled to have him on the podcast today. Robert, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much, Scott. I'm doing wonderfully. It's just very cold here where I am right now.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we we are recording this in December. You're up in in New York in the New England area. Um, it and snow and cold weather is heading your way. That is very much true. Um Robert, you know, you it if Superman is is, you know, your persona as a photographer, your Kirk Clint, your Clark Kent version is that you were for 40 years, you know, a school principal. You've got a huge other career out there. Um I do know that you know photography came into your life in 1959, you're 10 years old, your parents gave you a box camera. Um so bring bring me up to speed a little bit from age 10 through being in education and how the image and especially how portraiture came to be the center of your creative attention.
SPEAKER_03I like to think of myself as having two careers, parallel careers in education and in photography. And the one thing that really drives me, really motivates me, is still educating people and your introduction regarding uh the evocative portraits and showing people as they are as you walk through the universe. I like to think of myself as the person who gets to put people in touch with themselves through the photography, through the portraits that I make of them. I have this very deep conviction that uh John Dewey once expressed that the deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important. Right. That to me is important to help folks that I photograph feel that way. So it's it's not exactly Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, but it is giving people attention, perspective on themselves, listening to them and making their portrait. You know, the one thing that I do as a street street photographer that I don't think a lot of other photographers do is I always take people's contact information and I always give them a copy of their photograph. In the years when Polaroid existed, I would hand it to them on the spot. But now that Polaroid is gone, I not only send them a digital copy, but I I mail them a print. And because I'm relentlessly old school, I do everything on film. So sometimes people say, Oh, can I see the photo? And I say yes when I've processed the film, and we're done uh with it. So um yeah, the brownie, 10 years old. I I fooled around with it. I uh it wasn't the thing that inspired me, it spurred me on. When I was 20 years old, my wife gave me, gifted me a Canon FT and started using it. And I then my wife and I moved from New York to New Hampshire, a very small New Hampshire town, and it had a town photographer. And I had one of his children in my class, and um, he was kind enough to take me under his wing and teach me how to use the dark room. And as most photographers say, when you when you see the image coming up in the in the developer or and getting fixed in the fixer, you're hooked. And that's exactly what happened to me. Um I thoroughly uh I I would read Time Life photography series as it came each month from cover to cover. And I just fell in love with photography, and most importantly, I fell in love with making photographs of people.
SPEAKER_04What is it about the portrait that caught it? Because you're living in New England. You're just in New Hampshire. You've got mountains and forests and you know, the you've got scenery falling off every corner you can look at. What about the portrait was appealing to you?
SPEAKER_03So the other day uh there was an interview with Guillermo del Toro uh talking about Frankenstein. Um one of the things he said which really resonated for me was that the fate there's no other landscape than the face. The face is the landscape that is infinite and move uh it just constantly changes. So, yes, New Hampshire is a wonderful place to live. And um, but um landscapes don't do anything for me. I have an emotional response to the people I meet and to making their images, making their faces, making their portraits. Um so I I freelanced for uh uh quite a while doing news stories throughout um New Hampshire. And then when we moved to the Hudson Valley, I continued to do that. I discovered the work of Arnold Newman sometime in the early 1980s and and Judy Dater, both of them exceptional photographers, both of them using large format, and I decided that that's what I wanted to do. Arnold Newman's book Artists is just an exceptional uh panoply of beautiful environmental portraits that he made over the 1940s and 50s of artists. Um Judy Dater was much more creative, and but also both of them worked in large format. And I that's what attracted me to making portraits that way. The work of those two photographers. I realized that and many of my colleagues say, why do you bother? Um and they're right. Large format equipment is heavy, it's cumbersome. Uh yes, in the beginning you have to think through everything. By now, the the rigors of making correct exposures and all of that is uh embedded in my neurology. I don't have to think about it consciously. Um, but the quality of the image and the quality of the interaction between me and the person being photographed is something very, very special and meaningful, both for me and for the person I photograph.
SPEAKER_04Okay, well, let let's let's hang on to that for a second, because I mean on the gear side, yes, you know, you you start a project in Nicaragua in 1990, you got a 35 millimeter, you go back with a 4x5, then you go to 8x10, then you go to a wet plate. I mean, you you're making the the the gear and the process more difficult every step of the way. But to do that, or the reason you're doing that, um, you you talk, you quote Paul Strand, where you say the most difficult thing is to bring the presence of that other person to the image. In another place, you know, you say photography for you for you has never been about spectacle, it's about presence, to honor the individual and illuminate the universal. So, okay, talk to me about portraiture as a way to bring not just the look, but the presence of another person out.
SPEAKER_03So if you can imagine standing in front of somebody with either an iPhone or a 35 millimeter camera uh pushed up against your face, banging out photograph uh uh exposure after exposure. And you know, oh that's great, that's wonderful. Oh, just like that. Turn your face a little more. I can't really do that. Um, my event with the person has to be very personal and deeply felt by me and by them. And yes, uh I do it using large format. I do I've done it with uh wet plate. In fact, um wet plate, because it's so slow, it's even slower than it's more complicated and more difficult than any other photographic technique or uh process. And the person has to literally stay still for four to six seconds as their image gets registered on the plate. I really believe that that kind of concentration and focus really brings out that evocative quality that you talked about in the introduction. Person has to really collaborate with me and with the camera in order to present themselves in a way that they usually don't have to. Um I have this belief that people engage in what is called camera behavior. Uh if I pull up a camera to my face and hold and start making pictures of you, your neurology tells you to bring up, oh, well, I have to smile, I have to look good, I have to tilt my head. All of that is automatic and you don't think about it. But when you're confronted with standing in front of a large format camera, it's a very, very different experience for you. And that's what I am here to do. I'm here to give people an experience in their life that they never would have had if I hadn't come on the scene and met them.
SPEAKER_04So you know, the the this kind of work in the studio is very different than on the street. I mean, if you're doing wet plate stuff in the studio, you might have a little head brace behind somebody. You know, there's all sorts of ways to hold them still. When you're doing this on the street, and even, you know, beyond wet plate, you know, just the large format stuff, it it's a whole, like I said, it's a collaboration. It's a whole process. You stop somebody because they look cool. Tell me about the conversation then between then and the time you take the lens cap off.
SPEAKER_03So I do all of the things that are now currently in vogue on Instagram as street photographers, as portraitists, stop people and start with, oh, excuse me, I'm a photographer. I take pictures of people in the street, and I like your vibe. You look really good. Yeah, I start that way too. Um, the big camera is a draw. It's just it's there. And I say things like, you know, I really am struck by your presence and I'd like to make your portrait. And here's the kind of work I do. I always show people examples of the work, and they look at it and they say, You can make me look like this. I say, Yes. Or if they say, if they say, uh, I can't, I don't take a good picture. I I look at them quietly, say, have I ever taken your photograph? And that that tends to convince them.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Lately, people have been asking, I I've been I uh switched to a roly for uh Roleflex Square. Oh, you did, okay. Well, just to see what that's like. And I was interested in exploring the square. When I stop people, of course, I don't have the big camera, it's just an odd-looking camera. And I explain that I'd like to make their photo, and they look at me, their eyes narrow, and they say, Well, what are you gonna use it for?
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03I I say, I'm an artist. And that that seems to be all I need to say. That convinces me. Oh, okay. So at some level, I don't really think of myself as an artist. I think of myself as a documentarian. It I don't believe it's my responsibility to make someone look their best, look good. That's why I don't make headshots. That's why I don't make photographs of people I know because there's an expectation that I make them look appealing in some way. My interest is in putting your image on film and bringing your presence to other people who are not present at the moment. And I have a way of communicating with the person once I have them in place, whether they have to hold still for four seconds or whether they're in being photographed on film conventionally. Um I just have a moment with them where we connect, and that connection then translates to you, the viewer. I think I think it was Willie Roney, Ronis, the French photographer, who talked about an exceptional photograph is something that uh is a photograph that captures the feeling that the photograph wanted to make and conveys that to you, the viewer. And I I think that's what what happens. That's what we do.
SPEAKER_04Talk to me about an uh an early um an early project that then became a later project as well. 1990, you headed off to Nicaragua with a 35 millimeter that wound up being a lot bigger and you know, coming back even 20 years later. So tell me about the Nicaragua project and projects.
SPEAKER_03So in 1990, I uh was with a group of Americans who went to Nicaragua to monitor the elect the first free election in Nicaragua in in a long time. And I just fell in love with the people. Um, I had never been to Nicaragua. This was a life-changing moment for me, and so I was there really to just document the work that the Americans had come to participate in. And uh, Scott, the the the atmosphere were people whose lives had been altered by our government's interference into their affairs with Iran Contra. And the people were still warm and effusive and open-hearted to us. And so I made the images on 35 millimeter and knew that I would be back. And it was that particular time where I was making the serious transition to just using large format exclusively. And so as a result, I returned four times in the early 1990s, made many portraits of villagers in this one particular village that I was connected with. And then in 2010, I said to my wife, we really need to go back. I was inspired by the work of Milton Ragovin, the photographer from Buffalo, New York, who made photographs of people over time, over actually 30 years. So when I went back, I sought out a whole bunch of people who we had photographed earlier in the in the early 90s, and um just made these remarkable photographs again of the same people. And it was interesting to me to see how they had aged and how the culture had or hadn't changed in the 20 years that it hadn't been there.
SPEAKER_04No, say, say, because the th these dip titches, you know, are are really poignant. Um but but tell me how you perceive the the two images being in conversation with each other. Um are we, you know, do you intend for us to imply a narrative? Do you impl intend for us just to question? You know, when when I see you know one young woman, you know, in in her youth, and then slightly later, you know, she's lost part of her leg to diabetes and stuff. Um is the actual emotional effect sitting between the two images?
SPEAKER_03So what I started to do maybe in the early 90s as I was photographing people was to either take notes on things that I asked them about and what they said, or I would have them write specific uh answers to specific questions that I had. So in the Nicaraguan project, I asked people, well, how has your life changed since you and I had seen each other? And um I had a uh a helper with me who either wrote down what they said in Spanish or uh just helped translate for me so that I understood fully. My Spanish is emerging. I I I can order beer in a restaurant and I can ask someone in the street to pose for me. Okay, but I I can't, uh as they tell me their life history, it's very difficult for me to follow. So that particular project uh generated a book which contained both the first picture and the second picture, plus the essay uh or a page of conversation that I had with the person. And I've used that technique since um in the project um with the uh members of the lesbian community, a project I took up to memorialize my late sister, who came out of the closet and was not. Well received in 1976 when she did that. Right. And so I I simply asked folks that we met, what's life like for you right now? And this was at a moment in time when um gay marriage was just about to be enacted. And so people were upbeat and really exhilarated by that prospect. Although some stories were not so exhilarating, some were depressing, and um talked about life being very difficult in the closet.
SPEAKER_04Well, now actually for the lesbian project, you know, talk to me about just the street process. You don't put a sign on the street corner saying, Are you a lesbian? Please stop over here. Um I mean, how did you identify people to photograph out on you know out on the street?
SPEAKER_03So uh and I should uh mention at this point that uh when I'm out in the street, I'm working with my wife who acts as my assistant. Linda, her name is Linda. We would uh we would um position ourselves, situate ourselves in spots where we knew there would be uh I don't know, lesbian traffic. Uh there is a uh an LGBT center in New York, and um we would hang out there waiting for folks to show up for appointments. There are a number of bars and restaurants that cater to the lesbian community. So we'd we'd position ourselves there. Um two women in the street holding hands as they walk is a sure sign that uh two folks um probably uh part of the community we want to photograph.
SPEAKER_04Well, very cool. Um you you tell a wonderful story about in in 2007, you saw that this absolutely you said you know stunningly good-looking couple that you didn't have the courage to ask them uh for their photograph because it was an interracial couple, and then that that you know hesitance on your part got transformed into a whole project.
SPEAKER_03So um I do a lot of self-assignments, and I don't remember what we were in the midst of at that particular time, but yeah, we saw this just this exquisite older couple, a black man and a white woman. And I I just couldn't summon up the courage to approach them and ask them if they would pose, if they would, if they would stand for a portrait. Um so from there I thought this is a project I have to pursue. And once you start, you you asked about finding lesbians for us as uh subjects, uh portrait subjects. Well when you're looking for people who are interracial couples, suddenly you see them everywhere. There's an actual either sociological or psychological concept. If I'm standing on a corner and I'm determined, I'm I'm determined to find blue Hondas, that's all you will see. And so once we started that project of interracial couples, and by then I had the courage to um approach people easily, because I was so angry with myself for not having the gumption to walk up to those folks and ask. Um usually I have my wife Linda break the ice. Um I I have a theory that typically it's much less threatening to have a woman, a strange woman, approach you in the street rather than a strange man, even when I have the the big camera with me. Um plus by breaking the ice, um she sort of takes away the first wall of resistance. Um you know, in New York, you get approached in the street by lots of folks who are either busking or panhandling or just have uh I don't want to say evil intention, but um, you know, they want something. Yes, exactly. Well, I want something too, but it's benign. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So to speak. Um so that's what we do. We approach people on the street. Uh this latest assignment that that's now uh a fairly significant piece of um history is this book that we've just put out on Americans.
SPEAKER_04Uh yeah, I can't wait. We're gonna talk about that in just a second. I can't wait to get to that one. We with the interracial couple book, though, you you got a funny story of your cover guy showing up a little later.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um so t tell tell the story of taking the picture that became the cover, but then tell the story of what happened later.
SPEAKER_03So there was this really attractive couple, a white, a blue-eyed white young man and this absolutely stunning uh black young woman. And we made their portrait. And um months and months later, I'm I'm shooting in the street again, and someone taps me on the shoulder and says, Excuse me, are you are you Robert Kalman? I said, Yeah. And I I couldn't place him. He said, I'm Isaac. I thought, all right, who I'm not getting it. He said, Isaac, I'm on the cover of your book. I went, oh Isaac, yeah. Hey, how are you? How are you and Jamila doing? He said, uh, just a few days after you took the photo, we broke up. Oh my.
SPEAKER_04So the question is, is it your fault? Are are you are you the one that broke them up?
SPEAKER_03I I I take no responsibility for it.
SPEAKER_04I love I I mean, you know, doing a little bit of research, you you got so so many wonderful stories of of people uh that you met on the street. Um talk to me about meeting celebrities, you know, over I forget whether it was uh in Istanbul or where it was, um, but you wind up floating a bunch of celebrities that you don't know are celebrities.
SPEAKER_03So yeah local pe local celebrities exist everywhere. And uh the one story uh in Budapest, I came across any number of people. I mean we we met uh Gabby Toth, who is was the winner of the Hungarian equivalent of America's Got Talent. And of course, I didn't know who she was. She's just this very attractive young woman that I thought would make a good portrait. But in Istanbul, uh, we were sitting, dining at a at a restaurant for lunch, and um I saw this just striking woman at a table with a couple of other people, and I said, I'd really like to photograph her. And so I approached the table and I introduced myself, and we made a date that after lunch we would photograph her. And the person I was with, well, Linda was with me, but the person I was with was my Turkish translator, um, that who I actually met on the street and attached himself to us. Um we got back to the table and he suddenly he looks ashen. He says, Oh my god, that's Mir Khan. I thought, all right, who is Mirkhan? He walked back over to the table and you know, was humbled. He said, I'm so sorry, I didn't recognize you. Okay, who is she? She's this international pop star from Istanbul, and she was in the restaurant, she looked great, and uh after lunch we photographed her. But uh his his reaction, his name was Husnu, his reaction was priceless. Um, it's like if Beyoncé had walked, you know, if I had walked over to Beyonce not knowing who she was, right? Asking her to pose, that was, I guess, the equivalent for him.
SPEAKER_00Let'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 podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new frames magazine subscription. And now, back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_04I'm really impressed and struck by the relationship that you have with people that you are photographing. Um, when you're doing the wet plate stuff, you know, this this is a quote from I forget where. Um, you know, there's four to six exposures, and you say that the momentary intimacy and trust and vulnerability are all significantly heightened. Uh, is that a good thing?
SPEAKER_03It is a good thing. Um there's a researcher, her name is Keo Stark at NYU, and she wrote a book about talking to strangers. And she talks about the social norms, the cultural norms in engaging people in the street and how it's it's just a momentary thing. And I realize that what happens when I ask someone, man or woman, to photograph them, is using the large camera, is that for the 15, 20 minutes that we're together, there is a sort of fleeting intimacy between the two of us. It's not romantic, it's not sexual, it's just it's a feeling that overcomes me. And I can tell that the person is reciprocating and kind. The most interesting part of all of this, Scott, is when we're all done, I say to them, so I'm gonna need your contact information, and they freely give me everything. They give me their phone number, their address, um, their email. It's and I realize that it's because we've had this moment of intimacy and trust. Um, without creating rapport and trust, there is no photograph for me. Okay. Um there are times when I've had these abject failures. Um, there was a time in Portugal, this woman she was in a hurry, and the translator told her what we wanted, and she said she agreed to it, but she was, you know, she kept looking at her watch and tapping her foot, and she just there was no rapport between this woman and me.
SPEAKER_04I took the photo and gave her a copy anyway, but uh how long how long would you say you spend with a a portrait subject, just in general?
SPEAKER_03Um for the major portrait about the Americans, I was with that person at least 20 to 30 minutes. Wow. Typically in the street for a a quick portrait, um, either with the RoloFlex or uh or the large format, it's typically about 15 minutes.
SPEAKER_04That I mean, you know, considering how street photography is often uh serendipitous and hidden in, you know, maybe one 250th of a second, um, that's an impressive amount of time. The um we're gonna get to the Americans in just a second, but one of the I mean, you've got so many projects here, um, you know, everything, you know, from dogs to statues. But tell me about the tell me about the cops project. Because again, you know, doing a little bit of research, and there's a funny story about some people that weren't cops. Um, but but tell me where the idea came from and how you went about photographing people that generally don't want to be photographed.
SPEAKER_03One thing that you need to keep in mind is that even police officers are people and they have egos, um, they can be flattered. You know, when you stop and you ask somebody, you don't just take a quick photo uh for the and that's uh at least I don't take that spontaneous moment. And um I approach people, I want to know something about them. So when I photograph police officers, most of them are willing to do it. Usually they won't sign the model release, but um they will pose and they will give contact information. Uh, usually it's the their uh um information where they can be contacted at their station house. Right. Um, but I have photographed police and military people all over the world, and they love it. Uh over my sofa, I have a 40 by 50 inch photo uh photograph uh uh reproduction of six Roman policemen who posed for me. It's just it's one of the the greatest group photographs I have ever made because each you don't you don't pose them.
SPEAKER_04These are poses they adopted themselves.
SPEAKER_03Usually in a group like that, yes. Although I will slightly position people to improve the composition. Uh usually I ask people to um uh lower their chin when they're standing for the final photograph so that because everybody looks a little better that way. But um no, I don't pose people. I I feel like I'm asking them to write something, they're gonna write it from their gut, from their heart, and um they're just gonna present themselves to me without my intervention or interference. By the way, I only make one exposure. Um really? Yes, only one. Um I used to make two, thinking that, well, I I need uh safe and I just in case I ruin the negative. And plus I used to take a Polaroid, so technically I would take three three exposures. But these days I only use one sheet of film and drives some of my colleagues insane. Um and large format film is very expensive, right? And if you're self-financing projects like this, you need ways to economize and save money. Currently, a sheet of um Ilfert film is eight dollars a sheet. And um so uh Joel Meyerwitz once said if I don't get it in one, I'm not gonna get it in two, and I'm certainly not gonna get it in ten. I I I make one exposure.
SPEAKER_04Just like I'm I'm impressed. Um tell me the story of the two police officers or one army and one police that weren't that at all.
SPEAKER_03So we were in Budapest, and I see these striking this this group of uh police officers in camouflage uniforms, and I thought, oh, I gotta get these guys. So I walk over to the closest man and I ask him if he spoke English, and he was per spoke perfect English. So I said to him, you know, I I really would like to take a photograph of the group and make your photos. Because I I take photographs of police all over the world. And so he looked amused, he turned to the group, and in Hungarian he said something, and they all burst out laughing. And um I said, What? He said, uh, we're not police, we're not military, we're actors. We're in a we're in a uh Bruce, uh now I can't think of his last name.
SPEAKER_04Bruce Willis.
SPEAKER_03Ah yes, thank you. Bruce Willis movie. He was he was just here, he just left. So it shouldn't be a total loss. I I took the photograph of that particular guy and his son, who was an extra in the film.
SPEAKER_04I love it. And I feel for you a little bit, because I mean I remember I was down um where the Staten Island Ferry joins Manhattan there, and there there were some police in in full riot gear. This was a couple years ago. Uh, and I said, you know, they were striking. I said, Can I take your picture? And they said, no. They said, here's the difference. They said, you cannot take our picture, but you can take a picture that we are in. And I said, okay, that's an interesting way to think about it. Um so, you know, none of the model releases, none of that. Well, actually, let's go back to model releases. You do that for everybody, do you?
SPEAKER_03I do. Um the story behind that is um uh as I was sitting at my desk one day in school, my secretary comes in and says, so-and-so, National Geographic's on the phone for you. I thought, yeah, right. I lift the receiver, I say, you know, this is Robert Kelman. She's she introduced herself. I don't remember her name, but she said, I'm the chief photographic editor of National Geographic. Suddenly I sat up a lot straighter. Yep. She said, We've seen your mixed race couples photos. We love them. We want to run them. I'm just like, oh, okay. She said, You have model releases, right? I said, no. She went, click. So from that moment in I think 2007, uh, I always ask for a model release. And we always get one.
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_03Always.
SPEAKER_04Tell me a story and then we're gonna get to the Americans because that's just give me such a kick-ass project. Um, but but tell me a situation where things didn't go the way you wanted them to.
SPEAKER_03There are lots of projects I start and uh never finish because they don't go anywhere. Um are you thinking of something specific that I once said?
SPEAKER_04No, no, no, I'm just thinking, I mean, I either you have the most remarkable good luck out on the street, um, or you know, there's got to be at least one person out there um who's you know said no and and was really upset, or you know.
SPEAKER_03Well, first, Scott, luck is the residue of design. So I love that. Yep. I don't think of myself as lucky in the street. I think of myself as prepared. Um, there are times when people get away. As people pass by, I'm like a casting director, and it depends on the project we're working on or the mood I'm in that day, of what kind of face I'm looking for, what kind of presence I want to be in. And there are times when people will pass and it just takes too long for me to pull the trigger, and by then they're they're gone. So I lose a lot of photographs that way, a lot of portraits that way. Um yeah, I uh off the top of my head, I mean that there have been people who say no. In New York, people beg off because of time. Uh. Or people say we'll be back, and I know they never will. Although um, in the Americans book, somebody did come back and actually appears in the book. Um, it was fortuitous. He he was someone I really wanted to photograph, and he came back. So Okay.
SPEAKER_04Let's well then let let's talk about this book. And and the book's title is What's It Like For You to Be an American? And it it's a gut punch of identity and personality and exquisite, wonderful, wonderful uh portrait photography. Um, you know, in the description, you know, there's both the uh you know 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but there's also the January 6th insurrection and stuff. Um, this this is not a small project, and it's complicated in a lot of very nuanced, magnificent ways. So tell me where the idea came from. Tell me where you decided to include the writing as well as the pictures, um, and just you know, the the miles under your tires to get this one done.
SPEAKER_03Right. So my wife and I were this was at the end of 2020. We were, it was the height of COVID, and I didn't want to make photographs of people with masks on their faces. So I created this project of uh flags, uh American flags that were damaged and soiled and uh poorly displayed, and sadly there are there are a lot of them. And so we were uh one afternoon, late afternoon in late December, we were traveling through a small town in in the Hudson Valley, and there were every house had an American flag, literally every house. There were 20-something uh houses on the street, almost all of them had a had a flag. And there was no way to photograph it well, but I said to Linda, as an aside, I said, Wow, must be a lot of Americans who live here. And then I I said, I wonder what it's like for them to be an American. And that was just like a throwaway line. And a week or so later, January 6th happened, and I was devastated. And I looked at Linda and I said, This is the project. We need to find out what Americans, what it's like for them right now to be an American. And so um we started the project a little later in the spring, after I did a lot of research. Um, we started in New York City and I had almost a hundred port 108 by 10 portraits. And I showed them to a group of photographers. One very well-known photographer looked at them, complimented them, and said, You're not done. New York is not the United States of America. You need to go everywhere. And I knew he was right. And so after he gave me that advice, I uh traveled, Linda and I traveled to the Deep South. I had been there for a different project, but this time I had to fully engage with people who live in a culture that's very different from the culture I'm familiar with. So I decided that this was going to be a book about our democracy, about Americans' sense of national self-identity. And so I asked everybody the exact same question: what's it like for you to be an American? And I had them write it on a single notebook page, their answer. And we made their portrait. And the goal was to make sure that we had everybody represented in this particular book and gave everybody a chance to have a voice in this book.
SPEAKER_04So By everybody do you mean region or what?
SPEAKER_03Region and ethnicity and um citizenship. All of the issues that are confronting us today are contained in the book. So there were instances of me finding patterns in folks' responses to the question that I hadn't anticipated. For example, uh the black experience in America is very different than my white experience in America. And I I I so appreciated that black people would give me uh straightforward answers and pose for me. And I learned I learned a lot. I learned about people who are what we might call hyphenated Americans, uh Korean Americans, uh Hispanic Americans, Mexican Americans. And uh one experience with Puerto Rican Americans is, and this was so fascinating to me. I photographed seven people who identified as Puerto Rican Americans, and every single one of them said, I feel more like a Puerto Rican than an American. And that just kind of blew me away. So the book is compressed in terms of how many folks we included in the book. We made almost 500 portraits, so therefore I asked the question more than five at least 500 times. I have 500 answers to the question. Of course, there are patterns. The word freedom comes up more than any other word, and um it was just an extraordinary experience for me to get in touch.
SPEAKER_04How did you edit 500 down to what is it, 76 that are in the final book?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I used to be an English teacher, Scott, just like you are.
SPEAKER_04I knew there was something cool about you.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And uh I I the ability to edit never left me. So I am ruthless when it comes to looking at my own photographs and figuring out what's in and what's out. Um it's the same, I'll get it in one shot or I'm not gonna get it at all. Right. And although I left out any number of great portraits that I wish I had included in the book. Having seen lots and lots of books, I did an enormous amount of research looking for books just like this one. The mistake a lot of folks make is that they put way too many photographs in the book. And I decided on the number 76 for what may be an obvious reason. Yeah. Um but um yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Um it like I said, th this is an an impressive, impressive, impressive project. I I am really, really a fan of this one. Um one of the things that that I'm wondering about, and we're gonna run out of time here in just a second, but it is go back to sort of the technical side for a minute, is um framing and composition and depth of field and those kind of things. Um as you say, as you mentioned earlier, you know, you're not doing headshots. Um a lot of a lot of your images are framed pretty much the same way. Um and sometimes you talk about you know the large format making the background irrelevant. Sometimes your portraits really do include the setting that they're around. Um so you know, tell me how you approach basic composition and content in an image when you are doing documentary street portraits.
SPEAKER_03So logistics plays a key role in all of that. Uh when we we finally figured out that the best place to meet people across the country was in front of restaurants, not corporate restaurants, but diners, mom and pop's, and greasy spoons. Okay. So once we arrive and we make ourselves known and we say what we're doing, and of course we have a breakfast, so you know, okay, they're good. Um I need uh either overcast conditions or uh the north side of the building. Uh sometimes it's not so easy to for uh so we would research and look on Google to see what direction the the restaurant's front faced. Uh we'd select it, then we'd go to work. Um and the you know the composition uh is created by the environment. If there's no good space to photograph them with an interesting composition, I simply face them in a way so that I blow out the background using a very shallow depth of field. Of course, with an 8x10, almost always the depth of field is shallow. Even if you're shooting at F22. Um, yeah. It it just depends composition was dependent upon where we were.
SPEAKER_04But what about how much of the person you're including?
SPEAKER_03So I determined that I wanted to scale the photographs in this particular book identically, regardless of the person's height. So if you look carefully at the photographs, everyone is sized in the same way dimensionally. Everybody's head is at the top of the frame, and the middle, uh the so the portrait is probably from their hips or waist up to their head. Right. And we would adjust the camera accordingly. Um we would uh have a spot for them to stand on. Uh people tend to freeze up and tighten up, and I ask them to just make believe they're waiting for a bus, and then they throw their hip out and they they look a lot different. The other thing I do is I make sure that I explain exactly what's going to happen. And because most people don't, you know, when I go to the back of the camera and I'm only focusing, once I throw the dark cloth off my head, if I don't explain what I'm doing, people then tend to think it's done and move. Um so I get them to stay calm and relaxed, and then I have specific techniques to engage them once I'm in uh next to the camera. And everybody gets a shot looking dead right into the lens.
SPEAKER_04One of my favorite online galleries is a curator.com, uh, Julie Graham's place, which is just a magnificent online gallery. Um you can go check out this project there. There's the book. Um, there's Robert's webpage. Um, Robert, I I gotta tell you, man, you know, portraiture has escaped me. It's it's one of those things that, you know, for you know, whatever talents we're given or not given, it's escaped uh what my lens can do. So I look at your work and I'm just you know flabbergasted. And and I have found it to be personally important and really, really resonant. Thank you for being on the podcast today. I've enjoyed this immensely.
SPEAKER_03Yes, you're very welcome, and thank you so much, Scott, for taking the time.
SPEAKER_01Frames. Because excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit us at www.readframes.com.