FREESTREAM EPISODE #1 JOEL MEYEROWITZ

hi everyone i'm chris ryan founder of masters of photography I hope you're all staying as safe and as well as you can out there during these times welcome to our free stream show we're going to bring on some masters of photography to tell us about what they're up to during these times and maybe set some projects tell us about what they're doing have some Q&A with them we'll be showing some clips and some of their imagery just to help inspire you guys and to keep you creative during these times so without further ado let's bring on our first master [Music] Photography is really a tool for us to go out into the world and find bits and pieces and moments and objects and people and places and time and light everything is photographable [Music] so come with me and let's see what we can discover so it gives me great pleasure to bring in our master photographer and a very good friend of mine mr. Joel Meyerowitz Joel how you doing buddy hi Chris I'm doing like everybody else is doing I'm sheltering at home and trying to do things that keep me interested and engaged do a lot of cooking and photographing not as much reading as normally but you know these times require us to adapt and become better at being ourselves we're without so much interaction with other people yeah you realize how much we need people it's true and you know obviously being creative in these times is so important to all of us you know too how do we do that and how do we keep how do we keep that creative vibe going you know and I'd love to talk to you a little bit later about what you're actually doing at the moment you know but do you miss that mass in the streets I know you love to photograph in the streets and are you missing that vibe at the moment being alive in the world and out on the street and watching the craziness of humanity on a daily basis as has been the way I've lived most of my life and so I really missed that I missed the the energy human energy that every hive that we live in because we are creatures in hives are we isn't that what cities really are and when we see it now when when you go out on the street and there's no air yeah it's tricks and but I think I remember on Trek our tears for example you know he holed up in his apartment I think he had a he had a bereavement and and also then I think I believe he was sort of attacked in the streets and he holed up in his apartment almost isolated himself and he created some incredible pictures and I believe actually you you met him during that period didn't you yeah well you know toward the end of his life was working on my stand in the history of street photography with cody western-backed we went down to see Andre Oh two or three times because he was he was sort of amusing charming grumpy tonight it's you know he was up he was up and down I think he probably felt that he didn't have the kind of renown and recognition that he felt his work deserved that meanwhile he was getting all the recognition that anybody could ever hope I have a funny story we went to see him Andre he lived in Greenwich Village and his apartment looked out yeah he had a terrace and it looked out and down into a car with a big fountain in the middle and the kind of an NYU University around it and it gave him a wonderful advantage he could work with a telephoto lens and look out of his windows and down onto the street and and he made really extraordinary photographs both from his department out and then within the confines of his apartment but on one of the days we were there we were talking and Andre said oh you must come outside to see the view from the balcony and on the way out I noticed on a little side table where he had some objects stored there was a fried egg you know one of those rubberized yeah yeah a perfectly made one the kind you'd love for an English breakfast and and as I walked by I picked it up and I became outside and I said Andre you left your breakfast on on the table he said oh oh and he picked it Edgar and he slapped it on his forehead and he stood there with his second of course I had my Leica with me and I went he made like three instant pictures of Andre with egg on his face I'm gonna bring that image up right now it's hilarious so it's true but but so he didn't feel the confinement right I mean he didn't feel he didn't feel that inhibited him to a certain extent he create those beautiful pictures of the tune of glass sculptures which I think probably was reminiscent of sort of him and his wife so he used that confinement he used the light he used the the dynamics of the room to create imagery even though he was in some sort of kind of self isolation himself you know during that the 16 at the 1606 bubonic plague all the theaters closed all the shops closed everyone was in isolation and a certain William Shakespeare decided that that was a really great time to look at his entry of stuff he should finish and he actually wrote King Lear Macbeth and some people say Antony and Cleopatra during the lockdown you know in 1606 so it does open opportunities and and so I'd love to talk to you now about kind of your project which I know you're doing if we could talk a little bit about the project you're currently doing at home and have done from January 1 well you know on January 1st when I was here in London I thought what could I do for 2020 such a nice number and maybe I could find a project for myself I mean things come along all the time that are distractions from whatever project one has but it's good to have something going into a year that gives you a kind of concentration and I thought I've never done self-portraits I mean in my lifetime a few here and there usually with an 8 by 10 inch camera all my Leica once in a while but I've never done it in any consistent steady day-by-day way and I thought well I've challenged myself because we live in the time of the selfie and it's not something that I do you know yeah almost ever I don't take a picture of myself but I thought photographically how can I make this interesting and challenge so you know the first few pictures I made on January 1st and 2nd were pictures of me you know holding the camera out at arm's length trying to get myself in the frame in an interesting way and then I realized I had a little one of those tiny tripods that's about you know five or six inches tall I think I defended lanes once the pentacon yam bendy legs right but but not a gorilla paw just a small butt like a little gorilla pod and and um so I set that camera up and then I realized oh wait a second the Leica has a 12 second timer so I set the camera on 12 seconds and then I was able to actually go about in my space in the moment rather than posing them all and then the camera makes a picture when it's ready to and catches me off balance in some way unawares out of the Posey position almost like having a second person in the room doing a documentary about me and they choose to take a picture when they see something interesting that's sort of the mindset of so I've made mine I've made a hundred and twenty days of portraits every single day inside/outside shave the bathtub you know cooking making soup flipping an omelet it seems to me that you started on January the first and this set of images will have this extraordinary arc from from what was going on in the world generally the first through to what you're going through now and a lot of the world is going through now and hopefully coming out the other side of it later in the year so so not only you know not only is it a brilliant idea but it will have this arc and that must be fascinating for you to explore because I've seen some of them earlier on which are sort of more social ones where you're a dinner table with friends and now a lot of your images in this project are singular or just with Maggie in you yeah well you know you can plan but you can't plan the outcome and so by planning this for a year I opened myself up to all kinds of challenges and play but then suddenly we're into lockdown and and the the portraiture continued but it's now continuing inside of the predetermined space that gets very familiar very fast so I have to try to be more inventive within the confines of my home to look at different things you know I take for instance yesterday afternoon Maggie was running around the house vacuuming the house it was just one of those moments she thought Oh got a vacuum now she does this every two or three days so this place is it's sparkling it doesn't really need to be but she was vacuuming I just come in from the studio part of the house and I picked up my camera and then I noticed I could see her in the mirror and so I moved myself into the mirror and I started to make a picture of myself but of course she was so far away that she was out of focus so I thought well how am I gonna make this picture interesting so I made a few frames of myself in the mirror where I'm in focus and then I moved the focus so that she was in focus and I was out of focus and I thought oh given today's capacities of Photoshop I can take these two pictures and blend them together and I can counteract the limitations of photography and take an out of focus zone and bring it into focus by layering the two pictures so I don't think there's anything wrong with that what I see is it's using photographic intelligence and our capacities today most people will look at it and go you'll see me in the corner of the frame and they'll see Maggie in the distance vacuum and they won't think why is that why they both in focus yes so so in a way these kinds of photographic technical challenges come into play it's interesting to recognize certain limitations and problems and then try to solve them photographically just like you would when you're out in nature working with us your position in space or the timing of people in the picture or difference and I use this same time exposure trick not a trick it's math it's it's my asset yeah and use it in nature too so it allows me to set the camera up somewhere on the street on Hampstead Heath I put it down on the sidewalk or even in in this in the street where the traffic is and I go stand on the other side and I can literally fire the camera with my feet waa and release that the Leica has now I could use my phone to set the camera off so in a way I have a new kind of control and it allows me to do things at a distance and risk making pictures of me way yeah it's interesting because it's completely different perhaps to the way that you've worked in the past you know where you where you will specifically select you know that two hundred and fiftieth of a second that's two hundred and fiftieth slice of what's in your viewfinder and now you're you're using the timer to create things you know in a sort of almost a random way and you're enjoying that that that massive change well you know I think anything photographic that that challenge is the way we think about making pictures is it it's a game-changer and we're in a moment now where the whole game has changed our life game has changed and so working with inside that box it's like those Russian egg boxes for know one thing inside of another working with inside of that it's it poses interesting and playful challenge and I have to say I I come away from a lot of these shoots that I do about myself really laughing ridiculous an idea it is and yet how interesting yes and you know if you focus on it with your mind so that you see the the photographic potentials and after all for the whole career that I'm 50-plus years I've been photographing I've always been asking questions about what can I do photographically that's interesting whether it's still life with speed photography or a landscape or you know shooting from a moving car I like the challenges and so this self-portrait challenge has is so much bigger than you would think of to begin you know it's not just the selfie and by the way I think the most important thing for me is that my ego is out of the picture okay yeah I'm not trying to look my best yes I'm trying to make an interesting photograph of the most ordinary commonplace daily life rituals and then set the camera so that it sees me doing it in real time without me trying to look my best and that is that the most interesting challenge of self portraiture right to not idealize yourself so that you look good to your your history audience yes look at the schmuck that you're absolutely right and your image is beautifully portray that and you are you know you're capturing dynamics you're finding the dynamics even in confinement you'll finding the dynamics in a room you're finding the dynamics and the light you'll finally definitely find the dynamics and your angle and then you're bringing into them intimacy and loneliness in some of the pictures and as you say you know they represent all of those things and in the social ones you know joy as well and so it's it's a beautiful arc already of how you see the world and your world in confinement and outside of confinement earlier on so and I just wondered if this there you know anything that you can give to advised of two photographers who are sheltering now in terms of you know what advice to give them about what they might be looking to try and create well you know it does seem on the one hand that it's limited everybody is gonna say I'm sitting in my apartment and this I'm its social media there's nothing fresh to see and that is the lie that should inspire some kind of creativity because really if you look around your apartment there are so many ways to actually see the place you've been living in in a fresh way for instance you could say to yourself I'm only gonna follow the light I live here but and I'm so used to the space and the proportions and the you know the mess that one lives in or the pristine quality one losing but I'm gonna make like my subject which means the chance to sit in any part of your house and watch the way either a beam of sunlight comes in and hits the floor where there's a red rug and the light bounces up on the tan couch and turns the bottom half of the couch red or it turns a wall green or that you know it's like a billiard table like caroms off all kinds of surfaces and leaves a drawing of itself yes in color drawing of itself or a volume drawing of itself a band of light so I would say the people to just inspire yourself go and watch the way light changes the course of the sculptural qualities of your rooms or the objects in your lives or you can take objects books off the bookshelf choose out of the closet boxes of things that you never you can take all the oddball stuff that does not constitute beauty people think when they make a still life they have to get apples and pears and oranges and make a beautiful conventional classical Renaissance still life you don't need to you can take anything that interests you you could say oh look on this is my wife's desk her drawing I'm working on her desk today here is this this jar with some things in it and she's got lots of lots of things around that are just the objects that she uses to draw you could pick up those things and see ask yourself how do I make a still life out of objects that don't have essential beauty but they may have interesting shape or color they may be dinged and dented and kind of throw away stuff that you've never been able to part with because it's had some kind of meaning for you an old baseball glove and old soccer ball and all this you know who knows what a bunch of hats that you have that you're lying in the bottom of the closet in the sack that you're meant to give away or throw away you can take these things out and just move them around on the table but I agree you know that let's inspire people to look around them at home and and see what they can use and how they can use it and create imagery you know and if you create something interesting upload it to our photo stream on our site and put a hashtag on it you know Joel one and we'll take a look and see what people create give some feedback yeah exactly that would be great um okay thanks Joe like I just want to bring in one of your students from your master class who's got a couple of questions so over to you Richard Richard Joe Joe Richard good to see you Richard I hope you're doing well during this time where I'm great thanks Jordan and thanks so much for doing this this conversation it's great to see you what is just to start off by talking about um still life because in these circumstances many of us are forced back to it maybe exploring still life more than we might have done otherwise and one of the questions I had looking at the segments on still life in your course really was how you elevate something from simply being a picture of text and shape you talk about doing things intuitively a lot but you know there are seems to me the best still lives have a resonance that goes beyond simply what the the subject is and I wondered if that's something that you think about when you're putting still life together or if it just happens or is it maybe just in the eye of the beholder that's an incredibly astute question and and I think the the answer is subtle in the sense that each of us as an individual has responses to things but when you're in a fruit and vegetable market for example and you're going to pick apples you don't just reach in probably and take five apples and just throw them in the back you pick up the Apple and say oh this one's dented I don't want that one this one's got a blemish on it this one's you know its shape isn't appealing to me I mean at least I do that maybe everybody does I don't know but when you pick up each of those objects whatever they are and you turn them around in your hand you're examining them for the their shape their appeal to you they're I appeal their color you know I think we make a lot of very subtle intuitive aesthetic decisions for everything so if we take that further and we talk about objects in the still life and you look around your house and say well what I want to make a still life but I don't want to make a conventional still life such as Renaissance still lies so a dutch still lies the beautiful fruit and you know occasionally a fly on the painted on the fruit I want to work with whatever I have and so you you pick up your objects and you know one of them will will just look like nothing to use you'll put it aside another and another and then finally you'll hold something in your hand and you turn it around and you realize it has an anomaly in it it's got a a dented surface or it's been aged in a certain way or heat has burnished it so that it's it's coppery color has gone black and some something about the object gives it character or persona and and in that moment I recognize individuality in the object and I I take it in and I think oh yeah this means something to me I don't know what yet but it obviously has a calling it's calling out to be seen so if I could gather a number of these objects and slowly turn them until I find the facet of the object that gives me an expression even if it's an object as as simple as as a ceramic vazh this one does not actually have perfection this shoulder is higher than this shoulder and so as I turn the vasa that side is speaking to me and and that to me is the Zen Bell of inspiration when an object reveals a special quality characteristic it is then talking to you because only you recognize that special characteristic that it's not you're not holding it up to an audience and saying which side of this should I shoot you are feeling something inside and I believe it's true with everything you might look at you know look in your larder for things and and see what the boxes look like in the cabinet after they've been open that the ziplock has gone and they've been crumpled or crunched suddenly they become characters in a little still life play because you know a still life is like a stage all right you're setting the stage you're putting the characters on the stake and what happens between the characters but I think you have to let go of the idea of beauty initially because I think that comes with the idea of still life equals beauty I don't think so I think in this case finding the energies that a number of objects project onto each other when you assemble them together because you know you can cluster three or four together like this and then you put two over here and and they're talking to this this group here so suddenly there's a living dynamic that is your creation looking at the Polaroids on Drakkar test took towards the end of his life and I remember you saying you visited him in his apartment in New York it must have been 40 years ago or maybe more I don't know he was in the 90s okay those little Polaroids that he took very simple photographs but they are kind of exquisite and they they speak in a way that actually most of us going around taking a few shots around our homes and never gonna manage gonna approach and therefore you know the question raises how does an artist like a Tesh manage to get that extra dimension and is that just a natural intuitive thing if you are gifted or is it something that you use stage-managed in the way that you know a theatre producer would I think it's an incredibly important question to ask because many of us deny our creative range you know we say yeah you know I I don't know what to do with that but but Cortes was poetic he recognized the poetry in things the oddball character of them the the sweet memory that one of them projected when he picked it up picked it up he was the kind of man who held on to things and and I think if you allow the trance state to enter your consciousness when you're looking at objects instead of demanding that something come to you and be great if you're willing to look at the at the slight impoverished little thing off to the side you and here's a tiny box on Maggie's desk and on the box there's a little drawing or writing that she had made and the box is you know a hexagon and and then inside this is something in inside so but you could get lost in this box Cortez would get lost in this box he would take that Polaroid camera and he'd moved the box around on the windowsill until it maybe it made a very long shadow so he would see the relationship between box funny shade shadow windowsill window with a kind of dustiness on it blurry outside world he was able to fantasize and go into this trance of the object having a kind of radiant energy and I think that all of us are capable of these poetic transformations but we don't always tap into it we want the object to be complete in and of itself but the object needs us to recognize in it some mystery some potentiality for revelation and and you know mystery revelation potentiality listening to my language I mean I'm not planning this this is me talking because I'm a dreamer too just like Andre but in my own way and so I can get lost when I pick these things up it's as if a kind of a kind of connection occurs that is so much deeper than I would have anticipated that I'm surprised by it and the surprise draws me to go further in to examining this thing and time disappears unlost in the moment and you know photography is about the moment and yet the moment can be an extension of time while we're wandering around in it until we find be the place that speaks to us and we can press the button and have a kind of equation between us and hit that does that make sense I take that idea out into the street as it were in street photography because obviously there's been an explosion street photography at the moment is incredibly fashionable if I'm gonna be brutally frank I see an awful lot of rather routine and derivative street photography online and around the place and and I wonder that's a challenge I guess of people trying trying to find their own voice trying to find you know an original take trying to find a fresh response which i think is more difficult arguably at a time when we are saturated in imagery all around us all the time if you got anything to say about how do you how do you find something fresh to say when we're inundated with other things and that a lot of people are trying to develop their own style and their own voice and start off perhaps by imitating you know the masters but struggle to get beyond imitation into something fresh to say yes I mean I think it's the it's the eternal problem there are always the the great mass of people who can easily imitate or or try on the approaches of other people painting sculpture dance you know there are always our imitators how does one find one's own voice it requires a kind of listening to your impulses and your instincts and your intuition all that internal stuff that is your engine of creativity and and I think learning to trust that is the the task of every per every single person who wants to be an individual artist rather than a follower it's so easy to follow you know after Picasso and Braque sort of created the Cubist ideology it was easy for people to come in and start fracturing ever you know with lines and showing different facets of it and and you know they were just imitators the two or three inventors of cubism are the ones who rose above it all because by the time everybody else was copied they already had moved on to the next phase of their lives so I think for if someone is passionate about street photography because they like being out on the street in the world at large they have to find what it is that excites them precisely not look for a Gehry win a grant or look for a Lee Friedlander or look for a job morrow and so not look to find what they think those people might have made but to look for what is the moment what is the interaction between people what is the the scope of the space that life is taking place in that's yours and those little those little riffs give you a sense of traction you say ah I keep coming back to this thing of tiny people in very big urban spaces showing how humanity is drawn in that space I keep wanting to step further and further back if you recognize your tendencies if you recognize your appetite in a sense you'll begin to make pictures that have only your fingerprint on them not on the negative not on the print but on your your vision and I can tell you that it happened that way for me at different steps along my path an idea refreshed itself in my mind in such a way that it was I could not negate it the idea had a kind of simple simple power and it seemed to call me more loudly than everything else and and when that arrived and I started to do it I poured myself into it and I didn't you know friends of mine would look I didn't say well I everything's too far away I don't get it you know I mean I thought well screw you you don't get it I get it and I'm just going to keep working on it until I make it strong enough that you will get so you know in a way you need your individuality that's very good I wonder if talking through that and Richard please please stay with us on the line I'd love you to just talk to a little bit about your still life projects that we covered in the master class which the work you did in Tuscany for example you know you did talk a little bit about the interaction and the conversation is between objects but perhaps we could talk a little bit about your Suzanne and morandi work agile and how that came about yeah well you know I I really never made the lives probably in my life less than 10 and most of those were found still lives like we get up from the dinner table after 10 people had dinner and before you clear it up you look around the table and every glass has a little Ruby of wine left in the bottom and there are plates with forks and knives and napkins and the whole table suddenly was the manifestation of 10 people's hands moving things around and it looked beautiful so that's the kind of still lifes I made where I never touched them and then one day I was working on a book project on Provence I went to Exxon Provence where saison Studio was and has an old art historian and a painter myself I wanted to go to Cezanne studio and I went in and I was shocked that the entire studio which was really you it had one wall of windows that must have been I don't know 20-plus feet wide by 16 feet tall it's a gigantic window and the room was filled with light but the walls were painted a dark grey and I thought what why did Suzanne paint these walls gray I mean today's studios and museums are all white boxes right white cube yeah and so I thought well Cezanne was sort of the first modern artist no at the very end of the 19th century into the 20th century he was doing things that were unlike the conventional reproductive representation of deep space he was nullifying deep space by making things in the distance and things on the up close just little patches of paint that he that he put near each other it wasn't about trying to make an illusion and as I looked around the room I noticed that he had on a shelf above his walls dozens of objects that he I recognized them from his still lives and I thought what why and and I I asked the woman who was the running the place if I could take down some of those eyes except them because they were junk did she say you're completely crazy or did she go okay well I had to say I'm Joel Meyerowitz look me up on the internet do a book you know I had a battle I had a line okay anyway she led me and I spent an afternoon photographing these objects against the grey wall because I was trying to see simply how did they influence the space that Cezanne was working in did it allow him to move from the surface of the object when he was painting it to the background without having to create a deep space did that grave function as a flattening element in his visual recognition of space anyway that was the the argument I pursued in doing this but when I got home to my studio and I looked at all the pictures and I blew some of them up and I printed them right away I had a big printing with in Provence I suddenly saw this simplicity and and I had turned each object around as I was telling Richard before looking for the the anima the spirit in the object and I thought Susanne must have done that too why would he just put it down randomly he was the kind of guy that would turn it until he found a part that spoke to him anyway that drew me in to still lies in a very simple way and then step by step I moved from the rendition of a single object on a flat plane again near a background into more complex relationships and changing the background I built a box for myself that sort of it yeah with an angular box I I took a piece of 19th century fabric and I I printed an image on it dark dark image that you really can hardly see except now and then it looks like a variation and so I made I made different kinds of backdrops for myself that allowed the objects to live in the space to vibrate in the space to interact with each other in the space something that gives them a dialogue or or some kind of conversational thing so that I can engage and I have to I have to tell you this is funny because we were speaking of the street with you yep one day I was pushing these objects around I must have had probably 12 to 15 objects on the table very crowded and I thought oh I'm gonna move them around as if I was on the street and they were street life coming down the street and someone's coming up the street and they're going through they're going to separate they're going to separate that fat lengths of people because you have to move to the side so I started to make a street energy appear on the work surface now that was just like a flicker of an idea that popped into my mind so what do you do when that happens as a photographer weather wherever you're working do you cancel the idea and say no I'm not doing it what do you say hmm that's interesting why don't I just play with that because it's a little play I think of it as play yeah and we need that I mean we always hear artists talking about playing like children well they're not kidding yeah absolutely yeah if you lose your negativity which is always trying to be fine I can't do this and I shouldn't do that I won't do this this is this doesn't work you're left with sudden nothing what it's true and the intensity I find instilled I've been a still-life photographer for 30 years you know the intensity of those small objects moving them around the the concentration and the way you can lose yourself in the messages and the owner and the aspects of that work is really amazing and incredibly interesting if you've never tried still life or you know think I know it's too dull try it right so you know if you can get caught up in it and spend a half an hour 45 minutes in play particularly now during lockdown you will be engaging the inner recesses of your mind with the factual reality of the present moment with objects that you've chosen to work with and ideas will definitely spring up on their own you'll have frustrations and you'll have resistance but you'll also have potential optimism things will suggest themselves and it's the opening of the suggestibility space in each of our characters that allows for creativity I don't think creativity is a rubber stamp that you get when you're when you're born they project this one's creator you have to recognize it yeah that's right you have to recognize the the inner workings of your your potential your playful but I call a playful potential because often when I'm when I'm stumped by something and and I'm looking at it I just wait with it and I think what else what else I get up and I move around or I move it around I try to engage because if they don't engage you don't engage right that's the end no art and I think what is an engagement that is full of risk and unpredictability you find that you have to work it so the first few shots you take of any setup are really the best it's the ones you take twenty minutes into working it somehow you get you know beyond the obvious shots and you get into something else and it's always the ones that are you've worked a way out for a little while ten 15 20 minutes or whatever that turned out to be the better ones in my experience yeah I think so too I think this these two things coexist with you there's the first impulse you know first thought best thought yeah but then there is the pragmatic side of pushing and pushing until the unknown because that that was easy to in a sense to recognize the harder stuff might give you more pleasure because you've earned it you've worked it through you decided you just you had this thing and you had this thing and at some point you thought am I gonna be able to balance this thing on this and you work and you try and try it it doesn't do it it keeps falling over and then for one moment you think oh I'm gonna go get a piece of that gut that chewing gum and if you stick it on there and I'm gonna put this on here and I'm gonna balance this thing and it works and suddenly you can't breathe because you got to make the picture before it falls off and the wonder of the picture is that you got it to balance in the first leg and frankly I do that a lot with these objects that I found in in France and in Italy I sometimes make a kind like a few years ago I had to I was commissioned to shoot a whole pavilion to create a pavilion for the Milan Expo World's Fair and I had the grain provision pavilion and so I got bread from all over Italy hundreds of loaves of bread were sent to me from all over Italy they arrived by chauffeur-driven limousine a mail they arrived by you know people ask people to do it to deliver it for me I had bread everywhere tiny breads gigantic breads round breads flat breads thing and I had to photograph them all and after a while I started to see that I could balance one of these very thin pieces of bread that was you know like like this but rigid and I could stand it up and I could lean something across the top and it would touch the wall no like I put I had so much fun playing with the breads and their shapes that I got completely lost and and I I made hundreds of photographs as if I was doing portraits of these personage II know that's been saying to tell you know it's a personage yeah so if you get engaged time disappears and the good sense of play and the vitality of the objects come into a new way of relating to you and and I think it's an expression it's a it's a it's a moment of self expression and that's it really that's what art or instinct brings us to and it's it works for photography perfectly because you just press the button on instinct and it makes a photograph so what we do now is show a clip from the lesson that we filmed with you in your studio in Tuscany in the barn which was amazing so just four minutes of part of the lesson in Tuscany coming up now [Music] composition that's a word that sends chills down my spine people talk about composition as if there are rules for how you make a good composition and I say throw those rules out to me there are no rules for anything the only rule probably is when you go out and carry your camera and make sure you have film or a chip in it that's the only rule but that's its basic Boy Scout preparation but for a composition for a still-life or a portrait or anything I say and it served me well for 50 years or more make it interesting push things around so the frame is alive don't be don't be too precious it's so easy to say fine if I move this you know I'll lose the composition if you really feel concerned about where you put your objects take a pencil and make a little drawing around the bottom of the object so you knew that the square thing was here and the round thing was here and the bowl was here you know the great Italian painter more Randy did that on his table if you look at my Morandi book of still lifes you'll see that he drew thousands of little circles on his table to show where his positions were but it also showed how flexible he was and how he could move his objects around in any relationship he wanted so I I think that it's all play you put an object down the first object then maybe you just make a portrait of it and you find where it reveals itself most fully and where do you see it most strongly where do you connect to it and then maybe you add another object and it's possible that they start to have a conversation maybe it's about one is big and one is small or perhaps it's about one is black and one is red so and you'll choose other objects to come into the game it's like you're the coach and you're bringing in the players so that they'll play the game well for you I'm not kidding when I say this this is a kind of childlike activity making a still life and how sweet it is when you bring these objects together and after a while you discover their their energies their conversational approach to seeing each other or being with each other and you'll be surprised that you can say things with these objects that you didn't know what's on your mind but the objects themselves kind of tickle you or they kind of suggest something and so you think to yourself I'll just put them closer together here and then you look in the camera you think AHA that's interesting and if I add a little something over here Bing [Music] so it's it's a game and as I say there are no rule so what can I teach you I can't give you any rules but I'd like to be able to give you the confidence to play with a kind of open-heartedness and a willingness to surprise yourself at the things you choose and how they bring meaning really some kind of significance or poetry or even drama to them to the little world you are making on a tabletop or the floor or the hood of your car or I mean anything can be a still life and any place can be the background for so just move them around in the light add light or boost light or darken the area it's in total control and it only comes to you when you have a sense of play okay so this is the in isolation question number one if you could only have one camera and one lens with you in isolation what would that camera be and what would that lens be this is not a desert island that's isolation right it's in isolation yeah we don't get sued by the BBC by calling it Desert Island Discs or something I would have a 35-millimeter Leica camera with a thirty five millimeter lens an analog 35 film camera no III isolation means you probably won't be able to go out and get the film which less and less of it is exist anyway I would need a camera that I could recharge and keep working with my chips and likes oh yeah and you know the 35 millimeter Leica is my tool of choice it's an old friend it has wonderful rendition it 35 millimeter lens is my one-to-one lens it shows me the world as what I see is what I get it's my go to fantastic okay right you can take one other photographic object with you in your isolation you can help with you in your isolation one other piece of equipment or photographic object erm what would that be it would be an HP 44 inch printer nice that's a good one that's what I would do because that's what I print on and it is most reliable color quality it has ways of balancing internally that whatever you see on the screen you get four so it's it's my its it gives me the proof of whatever it is my make and that way I could complete the circle I would have the picture and I would have a proof of it so that I I would learn to work with it further or it would be no got it great stuff okay so you can have with you if you could only have two books and one of the books was a photography book and one of them was a non photography book what would what would your two books be what would your photographic book be first of all my photographic book would be looking at photographs by John Shar Kowski it's 100 photographs and 100 brief essays from the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection it is one of those books that I've read I've read those hundred essays I can't even count times 20 would be too little you know I go to that book whenever I need a little pick-me-up sometimes a little work I'm trying to refresh some way of thinking about something I go and I look at John's writings and his selections and it rekindles my passion for the medium and my understanding it's a great a great book and a great choice so then I have to ask you afraid you know this difficult question as well in isolation if you could only have one non photography book what would you choose there's a I mean you know that's a really hard question but sorry I've over over the course of my life I found that mythology Greek mythology has been very supportive in helping me to understand human behavior the certain some truths that they understood back then in the simplest of time human truths have played out in the through the expression of mythology and hold true even to today so it would be one of them I'm just reading a book now actually well I think it's called mythos and it's a kind of fresh interpretation of those myths and I'm finding it so enchanting and it's it's tone ism a contemporary voice but it leans heavily on the original myths and it takes them apart in ways that are so playful and interesting and it's so something that you can many many levels it would keep you entertained for a long time because it's opening more questions and ideas about the myths that's very interesting well it's human nature you know and and the way they shaped it using gods and goddesses and you know one of the things I I have no idea what's sure now but I've always thought that the gods were not old men and women they're like teenagers oh yeah they're so capricious yes and then give a for anything they'll turn you into a stag or a tree or soap in a second I don't give a and this and they have you know momentary passions and I think of course the gods weren't will use itself unfolding and and trying everything and challenging everything and so as you know submitting to their passions and the telling of those stories gives us insight into the way human nature works at least that's what so I think those two things are to storytelling books directly and that enliven the mind that's great well that's great answer there so if in isolation if you could only have one luxury item what would it be please Joe are you gonna say you're gonna say Harris that's right Harrods you're gonna say parents I know you are Bloomingdale's gosh it's really it's I tell you the first thing that springs to mind I know that's it that's what we do train hit us and it's not even such a luxury but in a sense it is it's I just bought a a wonderful mandolin a Japanese mandolin slicer oh yeah because I like to cook now in absolution and the mandolin does things to vegetables and stuff that are so playful yes and so much fun to use and I just found that it's expanding my repertoire you know fivefold right now yeah and I look forward to every day to Amanda learning something new I've been a recipient of your mandolin and I can I can tell you it's well worth is wonderful I love it that's great thank you if you are not in your own profession this is another question I've only got two more by the way if you're not a photographer what other profession would you have liked to been involved in or to have been and what profession well there are two okay I have the limited to one well I'm being very generous today I'll let you have two oh well I a dancer Wow okay I would have my father urged me to learn to dance and I you know I thought poorly of it because we were living in a tough neighborhood and if if my buddies saw me going off to ballet school something it would have been hell okay but I did then learn to dance and I love to dance and I danced but I think I think I for a long time I had wanted to be a filmmaker you know I made one film but yes pulp or storytelling and and the move of the camera and lighting and chants and combining of the music and sound and voice the layered richness of cinema would be something that I would have done I wanted to be a filmmaker before I was a photographer me too when an art director and as a young man I I was looking all over New York to find a film company that I could work for do anything to be in film but nothing nothing showed up tonight and I stumbled on photography yeah me too saying exactly the same I you know from nine years old I wanted to be a filmmaker and then when I was 12 years old I want to be a photographer that's pretty much of all I've ever done since but no great great answer so finally last question in isolation what turns you on spiritually creatively and emotionally actually the pause that we're all living in is a expansive spiritual moment in that there's a lot to reconsider about the way we all have lived but personally how have I lived what have I tried to maintain that was part of our social construct and what can I let go up and so particularly at my age you know and having this crisis come toward the end of one's life is a real real game changer and so I I think it has raised really spiritual questions for me and out of that focus comes the questions about creativity and what was the third commotions me what emotionally and emotionally yeah well they are all unified conditions I think interlocking conditions and I find that by opening myself to this pause spiritually and what this means for my life right now brings me to fresh kind of understanding of the creativity of the moment the playfulness the necessity of playfulness right now and and managing the emotional ups and downs of being in isolation finding the joy in it and the the continued pleasure the underlying you know construct of what it's like to be alive now and to have to put up with this you know we're fortunate we can all go out and go shopping and take along but what must it be like for people you know the the Nelson Mandela's of this world who were big mind and they were in confinement you know prison cell in isolation yes in solitary for a long long time and around them was the kind of violence of the prison we're fortunate this is nothing compared to people who live in those things so I'm trying to use this time to stay optimistic and open-hearted and creative and helpful and you know I really think what we're doing here today is part of the very helpful outreach on all of our parts thank you Richard for being part of this thank you in this course for stimulating this as a as an offering to our public yeah other photographers what that's right thank you Joe so much for that and thank you Richard and thank you for coming on Joel and we'll get this out to as many people as we can and just help to talk about photography and talk about what we're all doing in this may in these moments thank you both very very much I've thoroughly enjoyed it as always all talking to you and thank you very much Richard and I would encourage everyone to try some still life and to upload it to our site and put the hash tag on it for the photo stream or master photography site and put the hash tag on it you know Joel one and we'll see you know let's encourage everyone to go out and try some still like Richard you're gonna do is still lie for us yeah I'll do one yeah for sure I can see from what's behind you Richard you got plenty of stuff to work with about the mess of my study yeah thanks okay well that's about it for this show thanks for tuning in and watching and stay safe out there stay well out there we'll see you on the next one in about a week's time watch out for announcements on our website and on our social media masses of dart photography thanks a lot guys see you later [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Masters of Photography

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Id: rw4UIVMa-xE

Length: 66min 34sec (3994 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020