FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Robert Golden
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Robert Golden, an award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and educator. He is the creator of Photography: Making Meaning, an online course exploring how photographers can develop deeper, more personal work.
You can visit Robert's website here.
Photography Making Meaning - Robert Golden's course on intentional photography
When I give a critique of pick people's pictures, I say to them, There is nothing in me that wants to hurt you. There is nothing in me that wants to show that I'm superior in any way to you. What you do is up to you. I have no right to tell you what to do. But I can tell you what I do, and I can tell you what I think and what I believe. And if you show me your pictures, I will tell you exactly what I think about them. Trying not to hurt anybody's feelings or put anybody down. But I think it's absolutely vital, particularly as teachers, that we tell people exactly what we understand and tell them why we understand it.
SPEAKER_00Here is today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_01Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson. And you know, folks, one of the real pleasures, one of the real honors of doing this gig with the podcast, um, is when you get to talk to somebody, and frankly, there are people that I talk to that I am, I feel humbled as a photographer. I feel proud to be a photographer when I talk with them, because not only are they doing extraordinarily good work, they are doing extraordinary good with their work. These are people who take the voice they have and they apply it in a way to make just to use a simple explanation, they try to make the world a better place. We are a troubled planet in a lot of ways, and we are also a beautiful planet in a lot of ways. And there are women and men out there who take the talent they have with film or with photography or with anything else, and they say, I'm going to add my voice to making the world a better place. Which means today we're talking with one of the very best. We're talking with Robert Golden. Robert is not only, as some of you may know from the frames community, the author of a book called Transient Light Fleeting Time, which I'm proud to say I've got right here on my desk. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. He is a filmmaker, he's a video maker, he's a writer. Um speaking to just every bit of artistic output I think you can possibly have. Um on the writing side, he's written three plays, a poetry cycle, he's got a novel out there called A Forgettable Man About a Photojournalist. You know, of course, the photojournalist is forgettable. He's got an epic poem, eight feature film scripts, four books about photography. Um, he's got collections of essays out there, a role for artists in troubled times, he's got a role for artists post-COVID. You can start to hear some of the magic that's going on there. He is third year of university. He went to the London School of Film Technique. The advertising world got wind of his talent, and they started using his images and his video work for um commercials. Finally, he became the director of photography for over 900 commercials, winning all sorts of awards and awards. Not only the short form, the commercials and stuff, there's feature films out there. His very first feature film called Beg won the best of the festival at the Edinburgh Film Festival. He went to Sundance. I mean, we've got a talent here that is just remarkable. But we're talking today about photography. And I mean, it would take me an hour and a half simply to go through all of the credits, all of the merits on Robert's uh resume. Just exhibitions alone, the Half Moon Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery, the Photographers Gallery, little places like the VA Museum, Victoria and Albert in London. Uh it's just all over the place. He is a documentarian, he is an activist, he is one of these people that you simply say, I am glad that your intellectual output is public. It's out there, it's part of our conversation, and I cannot wait to talk to Robert today about not only the merit of his work, but the merit that his work is doing. Robert, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Scott. Well, I have to say that from the outset, I feel very humbled by your introduction. So I hope I can live up to some of that whilst we speak.
SPEAKER_01I I I I have no doubt. This is just really remarkable work. And I remember when I got the book, Transiat Light Fleeting Time, um, the subtitles Fifty Thoughts About Photography. The images in there are all remarkable. Um, but this is you have facing every image, a short essay that takes on a different theme, a different idea. And I felt not only moved by the images, but I felt provoked in the very best way by the essays. You are taking on the ideas behind what causes us to either press the shutter release or hit print and say to somebody else, look at at what I saw. How can this make us uh more of a community? But uh I want to talk to you a little bit more. You let's start with sort of a Genesis story. I know when you you were in school, you were studying intellectual history, European intellectual history, this kind of stuff. And what I don't know is how in your life the camera of any sort first came into your hand, and and then how that morphed into saying this is the voice I'm going to use to participate in the world.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's a big question. Um and I'll I'll try to be as careful as I can be about describing it because it starts in childhood. Um I was uh a normal student in uh public school, and for some reason or other, and it's truly unbeknownst to me why, I was nominated with a small group of other children from around Detroit, which is where I grew up, um, to attend art classes at the Museum of Art in Detroit every Saturday for a number of weeks. And um it was extraordinary. It was very beautiful what how those young teachers took control of us and showed us how to see the world and how to use our hands and our eyes to coordinate and make another image of the world. Fascinating. Um and at the end of every period, they would then take us into the museum and show us a work of art. And I don't remember what whether it was the first or second time, but one of those two times, there is a huge um um uh gallery filled with paintings from floor to ceiling uh by the Mexican revolutionary artist uh um not Roscoe, um uh Rivera. And um I was standing there looking at them, and I remember I started crying. I was, I think, about eight or nine years old, and I was overwhelmed by looking at these images that were really from floor to ceiling, and they were of um basically of men and women working very hard under the sun uh to try and make a world that that they could live in, that could they could bear. And it was it told this huge story about you know people planting seeds and the seeds growing into into plants and the plants being uh picked by the women and turned into food in the camals, the pots that they used, and the men sharing the food with them, and the men then going off and working in the mines and uh working on the docks. And they filled the uh ships with uh various insundry iron ore and so on. And those ships then went across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Atlantic coast of the United States, up to New York Harbor, through New York Harbor and uh up the um uh uh East River and t into um the lakes and across the lakes to Lake Erie and therefore then to uh uh Detroit, which was a deep port city. And they offloaded uh the materials uh out of which they made steel. And there you and there you saw all that was happening, and the steel turned into an automobile and a production line. It was the whole story of Detroit. It was extraordinary. And I was terribly moved by it, and uh, one of the teachers came up to me and said, Why are you crying? Are you okay? And I said, I think I know what I want to do in my life. And he said, What do you mean? I said, I think I want to tell stories with pictures. And that that set my brain, not about photography, but about painting. And uh a couple of years later, I was my parents, like most parents, had Life magazine delivered to the house um once a week. And I was absolutely fascinated by looking at the pictures all the time. And uh so I was born in 1945. 1955, 10-year commemoration of the end of the Second World War in the Pacific. Um, there was a there was a series of celebratory images by W. Eugene Smith. Now, I didn't know who W. Eugene Smith was, but I looked at these pictures and I thought, these are the kind of pictures I want to make. Not necessarily war pictures, but the beauty of his images and and the and the the sensitivity he expressed towards people suffering, both both American soldiers and also Japanese um people on the on, I think it was on Okinawa, i I was moved by that. And at that point, when I was ten, I decided I wanted to be a photographer. And when I was twelve, I was given a camera, a little box camera. And by the time when I was thirteen and and got into high school, I I was able to attend a a class on photography. Not many people chose it. It wasn't popular. Most of the young people of my age chose to go into art classes with painting and sculpture. So there was just a small handful of us, and uh and a teacher named Mr. Ormersby, who basically taught me photography, along with the fact that from the age of ten I started reading magazines, photo magazines, American photographer and so on, to uh understand what this thing was about. And I read even the ads about cameras. I read everything I could get my hands on. And at that time, photography wasn't really very popular. It was very odd for somebody to be interested in photography, uh, which I paid no attention to. I just I was I fell in love with the medium. And so that was the beginning, really. And then high school gave me a boost. I was extremely lucky because um in the last the you know the scholastic contests that probably they still go, yeah. They still go on there?
SPEAKER_01I have no clue, but yeah, I you know we're roughly the same age. So yeah, I I know those.
SPEAKER_02So, okay, so they they they had photography as well as poetry and painting and so on. And uh for the last three years of my high school education, I entered photographs and I won more than any other student in the country for three years and in the third year, I entered a portfolio and I was awarded two scholarships uh to two different universities. In I think one was in Miami and one was University of Miami, but that was in Ohio, I think. But both of them for um uh photojournalism. But my parents had no understanding of why I wanted to go to university and simply refused to help me. Um so I had to stay in Detroit to go to university, which I did. Um in some ways, sadly, but uh I uh who knows what would have happened had I gone to one of those universities.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or or or I I mean, staying in Detroit certainly led to a hell of a career. Um so you know, may may it might have been detrimental too. But a couple of questions. When you took those photography classes um early on, was it just, you know, here's your trix and here's your developer bath, or was it composition, was it voice and learn to say something?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Well, it was interesting because Mr. Armsby really liked having me in his class because by the time I was in his class, by the first time I was what I was 14, I had read endless amounts on photography, and I had read histories, and I had looked at Edward Weston and uh Paul Strand and Assel Adams. And so I knew a lot. And he he loved me as a student. Um, and he was incredibly generous towards me. I can't remember quite, but it wasn't just about technique. It was also about the look of the picture. And I remember him saying to me once when I was thinking about entering one picture or another into one of the competitions, um, I said to him, I don't know if I should enter this. I don't really think it's big is strong enough. And he said, Robert, there's a rule here, which is if you can't make it good, make it big. And I made I made a very large and it won an award.
SPEAKER_01Oh there's a a story, a similar story from E. B. White when he was doing um Elements of Style with Lee Strong. Um he said, if you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly.
SPEAKER_02Um if you don't understand, shout.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um you tell a story in in another interview about seeing a picture of Woody Guthrie with a sticker on his guitar. Tell me that story, but was that really a sea change for for the activism coming into your work?
SPEAKER_02When I when I teach people, I talk to them about how we make ourselves. And you know, we make ourselves through having experiences and responding to them, as well as uh from my point of view, from my life, reading a hell of a lot and looking at pictures and admiring uh culture in every way I can. So I love theater, I love poetry, I love painting. I I mean, uh, you know, looking at, not not making. Um I think the thing is that I grew up in a very strange household with with with unloving parents and a brother who was a brute. Um and so I grew up uh really, really detesting uh bullies. And it didn't matter to me if the bully was my brother or the bully was a policeman or whatever. I I just had contempt for bullies. And I'd tell you a strange little story, which is that when I was um, I can't remember, probably nine or ten in elementary school. And um I at that time, the uh American Congress changed the um salute to the flag, you know, I pledge allegiance to the flag, um, where which at the end said one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Um and they had changed it to one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And I refused to say it. Um and so I refused to say the whole thing. And and I eventually they realized I wasn't saying it. And the I a teacher came over to me and said, Why aren't you saying, are you are you um not a good American? And I said, No, I am a very good American. The thing is that America was established on the basis of not um mixing religion with uh with the state. And this actually mixes it, and I won't take part in that. They were shocked. And I, you know, when I look back at thinking, what was I doing? Um but they were really shocked, and so what happened was I was taken by the ear and and into the principal's office, and my mother was called to come in, and she said he will never do this again. Of course, of course, I did the next day. But yeah, but um in that way, in those constructions, we were brought up, well, probably you were brought up in the same way I was, which was to believe that Americans were the white hats, that we won the Second World War, which wasn't the truth, and that that um we were the good guys who believed in liberty and freedom for all. And you know, if if you're my generation, you know that we turned around and we said, well, hold on, why are black people being treated the way they're being treated? Right, right. Um and you know, that meant that it was I was a natural for the civil rights movement. And also the question is, why were we killing people of a different race around the world? You know, in other words, in Vietnam. Um and and I think I was naturally antagonistic towards the bullies um who were creating a very, very un-American way of living, as far as I was concerned. And I think, you know, my generation, which may be your generation, said, you know what, this isn't right. And we're going to change things. I think that was the promise we made. We didn't do very well, unfortunately, but certainly it was the promise we made. And that's of course, those those kinds of events set me up for being a natural to be um selected to go to the South by the Students for Democratic Society.
SPEAKER_01But now again, tell but tell the story of seeing that picture with the sticker on Guthrie's guitar.
SPEAKER_02I'm trying to think of where I saw it, actually. I think I saw when I when I was about 16, 17, I started going down to the folk clubs in downtown Detroit. Um and I think I saw it there. I saw uh I I met um Mike Seeger, Pete Seeger's brother.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And um I think he he may have showed it to me, I'm not sure. But they they sort of the new the what were they called? The New Lost City Ramblers, they instinctively understood that I was a kind of radical kid. And there are various other stories. I mean, there are numerous stories about having worked with uh a group of people who had been engaged with the in in the uh Spanish Civil War. And they told me the stories of the Civil War, and of course it made me very sympathetic to anti-fascism. Um and whilst being involved with them, they asked me if I would work as a as a postboy, as it were, to take the books that that the books that they were selling, which were basically books about uh the left and communism, socialism. Now, I didn't know what any of those things meant at the time, but I knew that those people that I was I was with were really lovely people and believed in in freedom and democracy. And so I became, you know, a kind of l uh employee of the bookshop, and I r re remember being followed down the street by men with fedoras and sunglasses and collars up into the post office. And and, you know, I that happened a couple times, and I mentioned it to the guys in the uh shop, and they said, Oh, yeah, yeah, it's probably FBI, they want to know who you are. Incredible. I mean, really incredible. I was only like 16 or something. Um, but also there was a final moment which radicalized me. I was in Wayne University in Detroit, studying intellectual history, set up by a group of uh, I think socialists from the University of Chicago who were fleeing the University of Chicago because that had become the center of neoliberalism in the uh Department of Economics. I I never knew their story, but I uh afterwards I began to realize they must have left because it must have been intolerable for them. Any rate, they were wonderful professors, and they turned the whole system of teaching on the head, on the on its head, where you were lectured to by teaching fellows, and you were uh and you were in class twice or three times a week with the professor. So ten of us would be sitting there discussing ideas with the professor. It was wonderful, really wonderful. And they taught this thing called intellectual history. I read history all my childhood, history and and the Greek myths. And it opened me to a reading of history, which allowed me to understand that it wasn't just about kings and queens and generals and battles, but about what people ate at a different time at different times, how they kept warm, what kind of labor they did, and so on. And and it it that opening was wonderful. It it made my world much bigger, much broader. Any rate, at the end of the first year at Wayne, I was in a lecture listening to a professor, another professor talking about something. And um I was it was in an auditorium which um was it you weren't supposed to smoke in. I didn't smoke. I was sitting behind somebody who did, I was sitting in front of somebody who did, and a man came up next to me and he said, Who's smoking here? And I paid no attention because it was obvious that I wasn't smoking. It was light enough to see, you know, who was or wasn't smoking. And he said it more aggressively. Now, this is the only time I ever wore a tie to school, because I was going for a job interview, and uh, he said it more aggressively. I looked up at him and he's looking at me, and I thought, I thought, why is he looking at me? I mean, how clearly I'm not smoking. I got my both hands are filled with notes and pencils, and and uh I said, Well, it looks like everybody's smoking. And he said to me, Oh, wise ass, huh? Lent down, grabbed me by my tie, punched me in the throat, and threw me across several chairs. Oh, Lord. At which time I lost my temper, and I did have a short temper, I have to say. And to his surprise, I went straight into him and we had a little bit of a tussle, and we were separated, and uh taken I was taken to the dean's office, and the dean said to me moved up from the principal's office to the dean's office.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02And the and the dean said to me, You're out of here. And I said, But he attacked me. And the dean said, It doesn't matter. You hit somebody who's an employee of the university. And I said, Yes, but I was defending. Myself. He attacked me. Any rate, as it turns out, I had been nominated for the Woodrow Wilson Scholarship. And the school was known to be anti-Semitic. Okay? They, for instance, had limitations on the number of Jewish people who could be in the in the law depart the Department of Law and the Department of Medicine. So, you know, it was known to be anti-Semitic, and of course, Henry Ford wasn't exactly un-anti-Semitic who supported the university. So I was I was thrown out. And I didn't get the scholarship, of course. They were able to give it to somebody who wasn't Jewish. And that was shocking to me. That was totally, completely rocked my life. Because I came from a background that was lower middle class, not much money, always quibbles about money between my parents. And there I was being offered a free pass to Harvard. So Yeah, exactly. I think it's it's those kinds of things that of course radicalize you because you suffer those things emotionally deeply in your own life. And you think there's injustice here. This is not right. If it happens to me, it can happen. It happens to other people all the time. And in fact, I felt it was up to me as a as a decent human being to stand up for other people as well.
SPEAKER_01Just to do to go back a half step and go forward, the image I was referring to on the sticker on Guthrie's guitar, you know, it says this machine kills fascism. Um I may have misquoted that a lot.
SPEAKER_02No, that kills fascists. Yeah. That's what it says.
SPEAKER_01Okay, but it it it dawned on me the machine, of course, is the guitar, and the machine in your hands is the camera. Yeah, and and you've got that same um yeah, you you cited that as a kind of scene change. Well, what's interesting, listening to you talk, uh you you've got three what you describe as core life missions. And and you've all you've given examples of the first two already. Um the paintings that you saw in the museum, your first core mission is giving a voice to those left unheard in history. The story you just told is is an example of the second core, uh, which is making invisible forces like power and wealth visible through metaphor. Um I mean, I I can see how these formative experiences are really become the headwaters of of what you're doing with your photography. But uh explain a couple of, I mean, so you're in university and you go off to the London School of Film Technique. It's not the London School of Film, it's the London School of Film Technique. Tell me about that change in your life, because that leads to the commercial work and the food photography and and you know, a lot of stuff that if I were to put some of the early food stuff next to some of your other stuff, um, it'd be difficult to see the bridge between the two.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so um the reason I went to the London School of Film Technique was because um uh I had grown up with a friend named Bruce Rubin who did who wrote Ghosts. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, and and um Bruce was studying film at Columbia and invited me to come to New York and to photograph the his um working on his uh film for graduation. So I went along and um there I was crawling around on rooftops in New York with Bruce. And uh because of course there are a couple of very beautiful young women uh involved in this film, I thought I thought film, maybe film's a really good idea rather than photography.
SPEAKER_01But but yeah, I mean the most noble of motivations. Okay.
SPEAKER_02So I became interested in the idea of film. And because when I was thrown out of Wayne, because of my grades, um they I applied to University of Michigan to carry on studying history. And they couldn't say no to me because A, I was in state, and B, I wasn't actually a criminal. I hadn't actually done something that was criminal. Right. Um and because I had top grades, you know, they they had they really had to accept me. But on the very first day I was in school, I was called to the dean's office and told that I didn't belong in the university. Um and they had it, they had it in for me. I mean, it was it was extraordinary. Um and that you know, it's when you're an average student, they figure they can get rid of you, they can treat you badly, they can do whatever. But when you're a kind of you know high high grade student and they see you as a troublemaker, they don't know what to do with you. They really don't know how to handle you. Um at the beginning of this, you said I should tell stories. I'm gonna tell you a quick story, which is that they in order to get into the U of M, I had to take a psychology test. And I deeply resented this. Um and so there was a three-page test, and it was yes, no, yes, no, you know, uh, on each of the three pages. And so the first page, I I answered all yes, second page I answered all no, and the third page, I answered yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And I said to the dean, he said to me, you, you know, you you really looking at your psychology test, you really shouldn't be in university. And I said, Well, let me tell you, sir, let me tell you what I did so that you understand. And I told him that. He paused for a long moment, he looked at the page, he looked back at me, and he said, Well, the very pattern you made is obviously psychotic. Oh, Lord. And so anyway, they couldn't kick me out, but I wasn't really much in favor. And what happened was that Mr. Ormsby, my high school teacher, I went back to, because he was the only person I could speak with. And I said, You know, they don't like me at U of M. Uh, it's really problematic, I don't know what to do. And he said, Robert, you should be in the art department, not studying uh history. And um, I mean, I loved history and I still love history. Uh but I thought, well, maybe, maybe this is the way out. And so I was introduced to the head of the photography uh unit at the University of Michigan, who was a lovely man, and looked at my portfolio, and he said, Look, Robert, I don't know what you want to do, but I want you in my course. And that was the first real grace moment I had for a long time. Very cool. And yeah, it was. And um, whilst I was in his course uh and learning some stuff, he told me about London School of Film Technique. And I looked it up and I thought, okay, uh, now here's me, bad-tempered late teens who worked on the good humor trucks every summer to make money. I was really the last person to be working on a truck called Good Humor, but any rate. Okay. I um I looked up the university, I had I made enough money during the summer, uh sorry, not the university, the the London School of Technique, and went. And again, because I knew photography, I was very much ahead of a lot a lot of the young people there. Because you know, I didn't have to have an explanation of how cameras work and exposures work and so on.
SPEAKER_01So, what was what was the curriculum there? What was it technique or or was that also having something to say?
SPEAKER_02No, it was it was storytelling as well as technique. Okay, good. It was very good. I mean, I I have to say I learned a huge amount in a very short time. And uh, you know, I took it very seriously, and I was very serious, and there were very interesting, serious people. Like, for instance, you know Mike Mann, the filmmaker? No, but okay. Uh Last of the Mohicans.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay, okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Fine filmmaker. Mike, Mike was a grade above me, uh, sorry, a year above me. And I got to know him, and he was a very, very nice human being, um, and turned out to be a wonderful filmmaker. Um so there were interesting people there. Any rate, I went back to university, I got my degree. Well, I got two degrees, actually, one in design and one in history. And um, two days later, with $60 in my pocket, I moved to New York. And I stayed with a friend from the London School of Film Technique who who was uh from New Hampshire and he was down in New York trying to make a living. Had an extra space in his loft and he gave it to me basically. We were we were very close friends. I mean, it was it was it was very kind of him to do that. And the second day I was there showing my portfolio, I was given a commission to do a whole set of um photographs for uh published uh music publishing.
SPEAKER_01And Robert, it's not supposed to be that easy.
SPEAKER_02I know. I believe me, I know. Um but it was, I mean, I was doing experimental color work, I was doing documentarist work, and I had this portfolio, which was mix and match sort of thing. But um but I think people looked at me and they saw this, you know, 22-year-old or whatever I was, you know, very young photographer with an accomplished portfolio, and I think people wanted to help me. Okay. Um and people were very kind. And also the New York Times uh uh review of books picked me up as well, and I did a number of things for them. Again, very illustrative. And uh by the time I I was in New York for two years, two and a half years, uh, and I decided actually I really didn't like New York, and um I wanted to go back to London. But I thought I'm gonna go to Spain to this little island I heard about called Ibiza. And at that point, Ibiza was still a prison island, the unknownst, unbeknownst to me of of the Franco regime. I know. Um so uh I decided to go there and um and just spend a couple of months in silence. But the very last project I did in New York was uh a Diamond Is Forever campaign. And I was one of twelve photographers, including Art Kane, um uh uh Sterling Pen. Yeah, I my brain. Yeah. All of them and me. And and you know, I mean that was extraordinary, and I got paid an awful lot of money. So I had money to cruise on, you know, a little bit, and the and the island was very inexpensive. I mean, it wasn't a tourist island because of uh the fact that it was a prison island. So they let people on. But you you know now it has an airport, but then you got off the boat that was rocking, and you walked across planks that were rocking um and carrying a bag was very uncomfortable. And there were uh three, four guardia civils standing uh just on the land side of the of the uh quay. And as people got off, they looked them up and down and they would hit them on the chest with their two fingers and say, Back on the boat. You back on the boat. And they looked at me and they said, No, fine, go. So I I was very lucky. Um I I didn't have long hair. I mean, I had long I had slightly longish hair, but anybody with really long hair was not allowed on. They wouldn't want hippies.
SPEAKER_01Okay, but I I'm still struggling. I how do we get from I mean, here you've got this wonderful progressive upbringing, you know, all sorts of interesting drama. But you're the guy who also did Savoring the World and Savoring Europe, which have been described as good time stories looking at food and culture. Was this just a commission that came along? Was it how do we get to there and then how do we get from there to the good earth?
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, uh I'll uh I have to go back because uh from Ibiza, uh whilst in Abiza, I wrote a hundred-page history of photography and and and included that. I mean, as I did it because I wanted to understand where I was and where I was going. And and so uh that's when I decided. I mean, there was a moment in Spain, which I've uh uh I I have uh at the end of my first film or my first three films in uh my website uh about photography, that there's a story told there, which is that there was a street called the Rumblas and a big cafe, and I would go and sit there in the middle of the day having endless espresso and reading the uh New York Times. And slowly but surely uh older men came and started sitting around me. And we all had our papers up so that somebody on the street, like the Guardia, could not see that we were talking with each other, because you were not allowed to sit or be with more than two people at a time on the street or in public. Um because that meant they were plotting. Yes. So at any rate, uh, we were plotting. They they they you know, we uh I had learned a little bit of Spanish in order to go to Spain. I had spoke I had learned German in high school, and I was I was pretty it was pretty fluent, not great, but it was pretty fluent. I was easy with it. And uh a lot of the Spanish had worked in Germany before the war. Any rate. Um so uh between hand gestures, my little bit of Spanish, a little bit of French, and German, we spoke and English. Uh we spoke with each other, and I learned from them the story about the island and about the the uh way in which the island was run by the fascists, and I thought this is extraordinary. These people were they were lovely human beings, and they had all had tragic stories. Anyway, one day I was up at the top of the town uh near the uh uh cathedral, and um I came out of a bar and one of the old men who was uh there by chance took me by my arm, and I always had a house of blood hanging off my shoulder. Okay. He took me uh down to um a wall that had bullet holes in it. I mean, I recognized what it was, and he told me this story about how uh on the la in the last days of the Civil War, his family, including all his young siblings, were taken there, amongst many other people and shot by by uh Francoist firing squads. Horrible story. And then he told me that at the end of the day w all the bodies were piled up, and the priests, young priests, would come out of the uh church and take the bodies down to a place where the wall was lower and throw them over the wall, and the bodies of the people who sometimes were still alive bounced down all the way down to the sea. And the priests said that the bodies had to stay there and be eaten by the insects and the fish and the birds because they were communists, which wasn't true. Uh they were what they were was anti-Francoists, but they were uh um uh left left there to rot. And then I mean I was terribly moved by that. And the next day I walked down uh to the that beach, I found a way down to it, and I sat there for a while. And I felt like the ghosts were around me. And I thought that's when I made the decision that I knew exactly what I wanted to do as a photographer. I wanted to give people without um a voice in history, a voice in history. I wanted to give them I wanted to picture them in history and for them to to see those pictures. So that that really changed my life. I I definitely made that decision. And and all the time I was in New York working, I was working as an as it were a photographic illustrator. But um I was trying to convince people to let me do photojournalistic work, um, which probably I would have been trained in had I been able to take up the opportunity of these scholarships. Any rate, so there I am uh in Spain, and I think, okay, I'm gonna go back to London and see what happens. And I thought, uh you know, I'm happier in Europe than I am in the States. And um I decided to stay and see what happened. And uh really uh again, very, very I mean, I had a uh, you know, the Diamond is forever ed. Yeah. Uh amongst uh and amongst the things. When I was still in Detroit, um I was asked by Barry Gordy from uh Motown if I would uh photograph the four tops for their first album, which I did. And so I had that and a couple of other uh Motown covers, and uh also the pictures from you know, uh different pictures, still lives and so on. So I started getting work right away, but particularly for book covers. And I became like the book cover king. I was working for every major publisher in the in the country, doing book cover after book cover after book cover, but was unhappy because what I really wanted to do was photojournalism. Um and so I decided, okay, um, I was I was known by Penguin Books, um, because I did a lot of their covers for them, and I could speak to people there, and I had come up with the idea of a collection of books called the People Working Series, where in the end I made ten books with a writer. We co-wrote it, and I did the photographs, I did the layouts, and they published ten of them, and they were very successful, and they won the first English non-sexist, non-racist uh award for for children's publishing. In that time, I also uh decided that I wanted to do a photo essay, a major photo essay on the lives of black people in Britain. Right. And I got into the community, and I think my experience, really all around the world, is that people look at you and they say this guy's all right. This guy's not a racist, this guy's not going to look down on us. They there's this now, you know, people just sense it. Um I think because in my history, I you know, I might be brighter than or more educated than, but I'm also less educated and less bright than others. And and for me, everybody absolutely has the right to to equality. I don't care who or what they are, they have that right. And I think um that people understood that uh in me.
SPEAKER_01At this point, when you started that that project, had you already done the autism clinic?
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, that was I did that in New York. Oh, okay. That's it. That was done in New York BBC.
SPEAKER_01That that is a couple of places I've said that was like your first um you know self self-proposed project. No, no, no, it wasn't. I did it in the BBC. Oh, okay. Well, what for people that that don't know what that is, w how did you get access? Just describe what you were what you were trying to do there. Because it's it's a it's a gut-punching series.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, um at the London School of Film Technique, I got to know uh got to be quite friendly with a couple of people. One of them named Gavin McFadion, who eventually became an extraordinarily um brave uh photo um documentarist working for a British BBC program called World in Action. At any rate, Gavin was in uh New York. My friend Charter, who would uh who had let me stay in his loft for a while, was in New York and several others. We formed something called Chicago Films. Chicago Films because Gavin was from Chicago. Okay and uh Chicago Films was connected one way or another to the BBC. Various people knew various people, and uh and so that's how it's done, you know. And um, we were we all had gone to film school, and they trusted us with commissions in in the States, and one of those commissions was to film uh that's that uh school teaching autistic children. And because they knew I was a photographer, uh they had, you know, several of them could run the camera. So I said, well, I'll do the stills, it's fine. Because BBC wanted stills as well. So I did the stills while the film was being made. And uh I mean it was shocking. Uh it was absolutely shocking. I think anybody who sees those pictures are shocked by the horror of it. This is caring for children. Um, well, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um Tell me about the reception to those images when it came out.
SPEAKER_02Well, I don't know. I have no idea because I was in New York and they were shown in in London. So I have no idea what the reception was.
SPEAKER_01Um Okay. Well, like I said, for me, it it was gut-punchingly sad and and um you know anger-making in in sort of the best way. Like we need to change this, even though it was quite some time ago. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um you say in in um a different interview, you s you make the claim that everything an artist makes, consciously or or unconsciously, is a reflection of their historical moment in community. Tell me how that informs not only the work you've done, but the work you're gonna do tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um well, like I was saying earlier, that you know, we are what what the experiences that we encounter make of us and what we make of them. And and I think that um if we say to ourselves, who or what do our pictures represent? It's a good question. Does it represent a class, a class point of view? Does it represent uh a religious point of view or a moral point of view or a club's point of view or a team's point of view? What what do we represent? What's our what is our voice? To whom does that voice belong? Does it belong only to me or does it belong to a community as well? And I I think that that's what we have to consider. And uh I got a lot of um hot water in um in London. Because uh when I was first here, um I was taken under the wing of people who ran something called um the Half Moon Gallery.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02And that was a lefty group in London who were bringing feminists into photography and socialist ideas and so on. And because in my background and my reading and my history, they were very interested in in me. And I became sort of like a counselor because uh to them, because I had done all the reading. I mean, I had read Marx and Trotsky and and and Lenin and um Daskapital and so on. And so, you know, and I had studied uh modern European history, so I had a fairly good idea about you know what all that led to. I mean, so I mean, just to be clear to you and to your what your uh listeners, that did not make me pro-uh Soviet Union. If anything, I was contra the Soviet Union because, in fact, they had destroyed all the freedoms of the working people. They were they were a horror show, including the gulags and so on, and the oppression of Jewish people, for instance. Um and so in no way was I in favor of the Soviet Union. In no way did I see their form of communism working, and I wasn't a communist. If anything, I was some kind of, you know, like Mandami, a kind of socialist who believes that, you know, everybody needs a fair shake. Anyway, uh with with with the half moon, um I I was asked to r uh be interviewed in in great depth. And one of the things I said, which really upset people, was that middle class photographers have to stop and take stock of what their views are of working class people, because uh Britain is very class-oriented.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02And mostly the c photographers were middle class, and their subject matter was um perhaps quite often working class, because the 70s was a period, late 60s and early 70s. Well, 70s was a period of great politicization in Britain, uh, with trade unions and a failing economy and lack of modernity and so on. And uh that seemed to really upset people. The uh the idea that I suggested that people should stop and take a look at their own attitudes, because I think they were prejudicial and I think they looked down on people. And I felt that wasn't exactly what they should be doing as photojournalists. So you could see that it would perhaps not go down well. Um but you know, I I I really think that uh when when I give a critique of pi people's pictures, I say to them, There is nothing in me that wants to hurt you. There is nothing in me that wants to show that I'm superior in any way to you. What you do is up to you. I have no right to tell you what to do. But I can tell you what I do, and I can tell you what I think and what I believe. And if you show me your pictures, I will tell you exactly what I think about them. Uh trying not to hurt anybody's feelings or put anybody down. But I think it's absolutely vital, particularly as teachers, that we we tell people exactly what we understand and tell them why we understand it.
SPEAKER_00Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you're 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_01Everybody needs to go look at your website um and and the rest of your work because the breadth of your work is tremendous. We were talking before we hit the record button, you know, just like on portraits, you've got headshots, you've got environmental, you've got you've you've got you know everything out there. But I was taken by um a difference that you called out. Um you once said that documentary work is very different from painting or or anything, any other art, because the painter can go witness something, but then retreats to a studio and recreates on canvas whatever she or he saw. The photographer, you've got that moment and only that moment. Um talk to me a bit about that, you know, that moment, that that being able to see and then capture as a documentary photographer that fleeting moment.
SPEAKER_02Well, there are two things there. One is being present and the other is not generalizing one at a time. In other words, when when we are there, we are documenting what is in front of our cameras. And we cannot document anything other than where we are. So we have to be there to do the documentation. Whereas, for instance, uh a painter could could do some sketches or actually just watch and go back to his or her studio and paint. They don't need to have acquired the information in its semifinal form whilst being in front of the event. We have to be there. Documenters, anybody using the cameras has to be there. Right. Um, so there's that. It's the and and it's it's the thing about understanding your presence and appreciating the meaning of pr of your presence in any place at one at any one time, and how we, with cameras in our hands, actually affect the moment as well. And the other thing is this that we all, well, all of us who know about photography know about Katier Bresson in the decisive moment.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02And I think that that is incredibly important. That we understand that we must release the shutter at the point where the key emotion is expressed by the key of uh composition. Obviously, what that means is you can't have the key emotion being shown at the far end of the picture. It needs to be near the center of the picture so you can see what's going on. So it means it means that the combination of content and form have to be joined together at that moment of releasing the shutter. It's something else as well, which is I see people's pictures snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, and I think the motorized camera was the death to a lot of good stills photographers. Um and uh in fact, uh a uh a once uh w um one-time friend of mine who was a photojournalist showed me a picture of some Africans dancing. And they're they were leaping in the air and then landing on the ground and then leaping again. And I said to him, I don't I you know, I don't get this because you don't have them at the key moment. At that you don't have them at that peak moment where they stop. You know, you go up, you stop, and you go down. Right. Um and I said, That's because you're using a motorized camera. So that you didn't actually release the button at that precise moment, but you just took a bunch of snaps, basically. Um I think that you have to be aware that all emotions reach their peak, all conversations reach their peak, all greetings reach their peak, all actions, all violence reaches their peaks. So that idea is I think people need to keep with them, which is do not generalize, do not say that one expression is as good as another. Uh I mean, for instance, if you're if you're covering an event, like say a meeting, uh it couldn't be one of the most boring things you could do in life, but but it gets quite quite close to it. I mean, meetings, you know, people stand up at a podium, they talk to other people, and other people listen. There's not much happening unless you say to yourself, Is this person expressive when they speak? And what kind of expression do I see them? Do they do they use their hands? Do they use their mouth to pucker? Do they look up at the at the the the sky above? And what about the listeners? Are they bored? Are they interested? Are they laughing? Are they clinching themselves? Are they s shrieking back in horror? All of those things, if you show those things, you say, okay, I mean, you learn in filmmaking, wide shot, midshot, close-up. Yeah, of course, wide shot established, midshot, this is the subject matter, and close-up as you're emphasizing it. Um but um I think that that for each of those moments, you have to wait until you can release the shutter when something is about to happen. Well, that's the other thing. Something about to happen that is very telling about about emotion. And I, you know, and I say to people, you're not shooting the event, you're shooting the emotions. That's what you should be concentrating on. And that will make a very rich set of pictures, something that is far, far more interesting than the looking at watch, just watching the lecture.
SPEAKER_01Right. Um this is I'm we're gonna run out of time here in a few minutes. There's just two other things I want I want to talk about. You have a wonderful and and and complicated answer to a question that you know you you actually pose on your own website. Um the question is what is the most important motivator to pick up a camera?
SPEAKER_02Sorry, you're asking about the question.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, you asked the question on your website, and the answer, of course, is curiosity. Yes. Um so t tell me what curiosity because I love this phrase on your course trailer, the little video you've got there, and we're going to talk about the course in a second. You say curiosity embraces the polite fog of convention. Um, and then you go on to talk about two different kinds of curiosity. But okay, tell in in your world, how do you understand curiosity as a photographer? How do you understand curiosity?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell The thing is that we we grow up surrounded by opinions that are not ours, that are imposed upon us, and that our family will have certain opinions, our friends, our schools, et cetera, will all have certain opinions about things. We will learn certain things and not learn other things. And now, unfortunately, I was brought up with um the aim, and probably you were as well, with the aim of teaching us critical thinking. But at a certain point, it was decided that that was dangerous, and uh both in the United States and in Great Britain, papers were released, and Nixon actually made a speech, about how critical thinking is dangerous and that we should be taken back to reading, writing, and arithmetic. Um and, you know, we're we're surrounded by all that, and uh the only way to break out of it is by actually saying, well, wait a minute, what is this? In other words, being curious. And and what allows some people to continue to be curious and others not, I don't know. But I think it's the difference between the children who have within them, for whatever reason of parentage or experiences, they have we all have creativity as children, but those are the ones who maintain the creativity throughout the educational period and actually come out of it, still being curious and still saying, what is this and what is that, and why is this and why is that. And I think I think that's what's important, is maintaining that lightfulness. And actually it's the playfulness as well, mental playfulness.
SPEAKER_01Um you mentioned two curiosities, both of which can generate fear. You say we should be curious again, mostly as as documentary photographers, but as any kind of photographer, really, um, in the outer world, but we should also be intensely curious about the inner world. Um when you've got the hassleblad in your hand and you're raising it to your eye, or you know, putting it to your belt, tell me about that. How does curiosity manifest itself in something like composition?
SPEAKER_02I think, for instance, when when I'm looking, I mean, uh my my wife says my eye is a camera. Uh when I'm looking at things, I sometimes will stare at it for for a while to say, there's something grabbing me here. I don't know what it is, but something is interesting me here. Maybe it's this open space, maybe it's that fountain with the backlight through the sun setting. I'm not sure what it is, and the silhouettes, and so on and so on. And eventually the camera comes up because I've been curious enough to stand and look at this thing and to say, that is interesting. Now, I won't know necessarily why exactly it's interesting, right? Because I'm not at that point pursuing a project. When I'm pursuing a project, it's totally different. I will have done storyboards of imagined pictures. Oh you do. Absolutely. I mean, um, do you remember that picture of mine of the of the mining town with the two children in the road? Did you see that? Yes. Yeah. Okay, I drew that picture. I mean, it was amazing when I was sitting standing um on a hilltop during sunset and I saw the I saw the picture that I had drawn. I mean, uh, but it's it, you know, because of tri film training, you know, you learn you learn to do storyboards. And so whenever I did a uh an article or a a story like this ten of stories for my my books, I would storyboard it. I would imagine how I could tell that story with a wide-shot, mid-shot close-up. I would draw those pictures out and I'd put them together and I'd see what it would look like as a layout. And then, of course, I'd go do it looking for those pictures, but also saying to myself, be open to anything. Whatever happens, be open to it. So, you know, I'm not actually strictly ruling myself by my own imagination, but actually trying to be persuaded to shoot something that's in front of me because it really is inherently visually interesting. Do you still storyboard when you go out these days? Well, no, because uh I'm I'm these days, uh, unless I'm actually doing a uh a job which I'm not anymore in terms of stills, I'm doing it, I'm shooting three sets of images at the moment, which I will turn into something. Okay. And it's all about alienation. Uh I'm fascinated by the fact that people sit next to each other in close quarters uh with phones in their hands and never say hello to the person next to them. Yeah. Um and it and just looking at people's faces and how disconcerted people are and unhappy people are. And part of that is because we have been taught to be we have been atomized by our neoliberal society. And I and I think that the phones are a perfect um machine to do that. Yes, they're convenient, yes, they help in safety and so on, but I think they also atomize us. They keep us one from the other. So I'm I'm doing that. I'm I'm doing pictures on trains and metros and so on. And my wife keeps saying, don't do it now. You're gonna be caught. And I yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, I I I have said this before. There are two things in a photographer's life that we need to pay uh or give give awards to other people for. Um the first is that it's it's a blessing that we've all not been arrested for trespassing. Um being in places we shouldn't be. But if you are with a photographer and you are not a photographer yourself, God bless you, uh, the patience required of our friends and and our spouses is gargantuan.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. My wife deserves very large awards, and I can't tell you she's so tolerant.
SPEAKER_01Oh, man.
SPEAKER_02But no, she also sees it's made of life for us.
SPEAKER_01Briefly, before we get to the to the courses that you're offering, to go back to curiosity, tell me about the curiosity of the inner world, of the of curiosity about yourself as artist while you are doing documentary work. I mean, this goes back to your suggestion to the middle class to look at the working class. But are you actively doing a kind of self-analysis when you're out in the field?
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um yes or no? Well, I I would say so and so. It's all kind of because you know you're preoccupied with what you're doing, but you're also, you know, you're you're paying attention to your storytelling. Um I think you have to be incredibly open and aware and and tender with people and things, and understanding that the surface of reality is not the same as the inner reality of things. And that and getting back to your question of portraiture, uh, I would I would argue that uh what I try to do is photograph the inside of people, not the outside.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02And I think that comes from the mood that you set with people. And they realize you're you're really serious, you're really interested in me. And I could tell you with all the documentaries I've done and all the interviews I've done with people, what's interesting is that that you could throw the first ten minutes away. Because basically, if people don't know you and you're interviewing them, what happens is for the first ten minutes, they're guarded. But but instead of me just using my shopping um list uh of questions, what happens is I listen to what they're saying and I asked into their questions. And what I mean is that I don't just go on to the next question. I listen to what they say and I respond to it. And it creates a dialogue rather than simply an interview. And I think that at some point, people say, actually, on some subconscious level, they say, this guy's not interested in me as a character or a caricature. He's actually interested in me as a human being. And when that happens, their facial expressions change. And you see the differences in their eyes. And and if it's not a relaxation that occurs, it's a trust.
SPEAKER_01I like putting it that way. Yeah, because you can see the muscles in their face change. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And and it's very real. And if you're interviewing rather than just only just photographing, you can actually see the thoughts going on within their eyes. It's an amazing process. And people love it. People, people really like being interviewed by me.
SPEAKER_01Okay. You have a course on intentional photography, photography making meaning. And it's it this is unlike other photography courses out there. So, you know, for the hundreds of millions of people that are now sitting there uh as potential audience, tell me first, I mean, tell me about the the course that it is, because it's really fantastic. But what you what are you trying to do that's different from every other course that's out there?
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, uh the first thing is that the course would be composed of 12 films that've come out at uh over four batches across how many? I don't know, maybe 18 months or so. The first three have just come out, first three films. And along with that, we've made a manual because the films are really an evocation of beauty and of loving and of caring about visual stuff and so on. But I thought it was necessary for people to be able to stop and understand certain technical questions and how was something done and why was it done. And so we made a manual out of out of the uh using the uh script as the basic text. But it's it's enlarged, engrossed with more pictures and and other thoughts. Because some things you just can't talk about in a film that's supposed supposed to be an evocation. You know, you can't talk about lens coatings, it's just not that interesting. Um so um yeah, the films are an evocation, and it's to m hope to bring people to the point where at what happens is that they begin to understand that there is a mission for them, that there is something that they can do which is meaningful to them and meaningful to those whom they love and care for, um, and meaningful to the general society. And in order to get to that point, they have to go through many different things about learning about curiosity, beginning to understand uh the decisive moment um and uh understanding pre-visualization. And I take people through all these things so that and and show them um what I've learned from other photographers and from painting. I mean, there's a very key moment in history when the glassy-eyed images of uh the Byzantine painting gave way to Leonardo and the most beautiful images of drawings of faces. I mean, they're really stunningly beautiful. And the difference is that in the Byzantine images, what you're seeing is simply a vacant face, supposedly with God reflecting in it.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02What you're seeing with Leonardo is a human being with internal uh understanding of life, with emotions, etc. And that is so significant, not only in terms of the development of the notion of individualism in Western history, but also in terms of the way in which pictures are made. And that's so I I like to take people through those things. It's not a kind of strict art um history lesson. It's actually taking people through to beautiful images and for me to explain to people how those images touched me and what they did for me and how they helped me to develop as a photographer.
SPEAKER_01You know, I I think this course you've got here is is ought to be required for every photographer at every level, because you you're getting at the the heart and soul um of what in the world we're doing. And you know, it's very much like the book, Transiate Light Fleeting Time, where you've got the image, but then you've got the essay sitting right next to it, which puts it in a kind of philosophic or or practical context. It it it is at every level really meaningful work. But but now I I have the impossible question for you. You ready? Yes. In one of the videos that I watched, Transient Light Fleeting Time, you the subtitle was 40 Thoughts about photography, and the book says 50.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's where where did the last 10 come from?
SPEAKER_02That's well no, the last 10 were always there. I'm sure there's a something, there's a there's a typo or something.
SPEAKER_01It's it's it's handwritten on a piece of paper. And I thought, wait a minute, that's different. Um Robert, this is fantastic work. I like, you know, I'm a fan. I am as I said at the beginning, I am humbled when I look at your resume, but also really, really proud to say, you know, we share a passion. I hope everybody goes and looks at your work and then they look at this course because it is important for all of us.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much. Thank you. Uh, can I say I'd just like to say one other thing, which is I think also Tomas deserves real credit for what he's doing with his website, with uh frames, because uh he shows such tenderness and such love towards just about everybody he touches. And I think it's a really wonderful project that he's he's he's done.
SPEAKER_01I I couldn't agree more. Thank you again. Lovely, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Frames. Because excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit us at www.readframes.com. That's readframes.com.