- [Stephen] Hey Gregory. - [Gregory] How are you? - Pretty well, thank you. - Where are you calling from today? - I'm in my studio in Tivoli,
which is the northern end of Dutchess County, in the Hudson Valley. - We really appreciate you
doing this with us today. - Well, it's hard to
fit this in my busy day. (Gregory laughing) But I'm glad to give
you the time. (chuckles) - Yes. (laughs)
- Actually, it's the highlight of my week. So I've actually something
to do during the day other than my own classes. - (laughs) Good, well, as we
discuss, I'm gonna ask you a series of very general
questions that were put together with our students, our
Yale photo students. And you can answer them
as you wish, or not. So with your permission, should we begin? - Please. - First question is, what is
your first aesthetic awakening? - Well, I guess I've reached
the age where it's so far back in the mists of history,
that I'm not sure I remember. But what I do know is
that from an early age, I would say by my early teens, I was just obsessed
with art in every form. And so let me kinda
describe what that involved. I had very little interest in school. And my last year in high school, I was I guess, 16 17, I dropped out when I met Andy Warhol and started going to
the factory every day. But for several years before that I was barely going to school. And when I think back
on it, I don't know how I was able to pass classes
and why the school allowed me to continue, because I just
really wasn't showing up much. I had a number of interests. I was interested in classical music. And I should preface this by
saying I grew up in Manhattan, which was, I'm saying
that because it allowed, it was a great resource. And so for example, I
developed an interest in pre-baroque music, Renaissance music, and was able to go to an organization called Pro Musica Antiqua, and meet the director
of it, Noah Greenberg. And, I was just this 14-year-old kid. And I found a lot of
people were very welcoming, that some young guy showed an interest in what they were doing. And so I'm gonna mention
a number of situations. And these people were all very welcoming. And one was this man, Noah Greenberg, who ran Pro Musica Antiqua. And then there was an
orchestra in New York, called the Festival Orchestra,
which got funding one year to have weekly concerts at
Carnegie and Philharmonic Hall, they repeated the concert. And they specialized
in pre-romantic music, a Baroque and classical period. And I just went up to them approached them and got a job for $15 a week
to be their photographer, and went to the two concerts every week and three rehearsals. At the same time, I was interested in film, both Hollywood and independent. And again, just to put in years, this is when I was 14 15 16, that period. Met Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, and the people at Film Culture magazine. And through Jonas met a number
of filmmakers that I became I can't stay friends with, again
because these were grownups and I was just this kid. But they were all very nice to me. Gregory Markopoulos and Jack Smith. And, at the same time, I was interested in Hollywood movies and European films, and this was a great period in New York because there were revival
houses, a Bleecker Street Cinema, The New Yorker, and MoMA, of course. And they each had, Bleecker
Street and the New Yorker had double bills every day. And I went to two movies a day. I mean, I literally went
to two movies a day, for months and months and months. So, I was also interested
in drama, in theater, and I decided to just kind
of learn modern theater and started reading,
started with Georg Buechner who wrote "Woyzeck". Up to people through Beckett and to people like Pintorini Ionesco. And so, I mean, this is
what I was doing all day. I mean, all day long and again, I don't know how I was
able to fix schooling in. And then I was taking my own pictures. So I was just obsessed with this stuff. - Were there certain early-- - Sorry for the very long answer. - Oh no, it's great. Were there certain early
influences in terms of photography? When you were coming of age? - Yeah, the earliest,
I mean, there was a lot of bad influences at
the time, there were-- - I was there also. - The world of photo publishing world is not like it is today. I mean, this is the golden age, with style, and Mac, and aperture really, resurgence of aperture,
and Phaidon, just great photo publishing happening
now, and small presses. But in those days, it was the
commercial photo magazines. And I would go to art
bookstores and I'd get books. I have the French edition
of "The Americans" that I got when I was, I don't know, maybe 13 or something like that. But I was very, very
fortunate, just a pure chance. I lived in an apartment house in New York and our upstairs neighbor
was a music publisher. And I'd gotten to know him. He was the head of a
company called G. Schirmer, which was a major publisher
of classical music. And he was a very cultured man. And he gave me for my 10th birthday, a copy of "American photographs" by Evans. And it was the first
photography book I ever owned. And again, this is just chance. But I won't even say Evans influenced me. I think it goes beyond that. I think there is something
in my temperament that completely connects
with what he was doing. And to find that connection at that age was just an amazing chance, occurrence. - Do you feel that your photographs have shaped our understanding
of the American landscape? If you think about the
tradition of other photographers who have pictured that same iconography? - Mm-hmm. I'm gonna give you an answer that I wouldn't have
given you 30 years ago. - Okay. - Only because (chuckles)
I've reached a point when I turned 70, that
I have a new policy, which is no bullshit. - I like it. - It doesn't matter, people
think I'm self-aggrandizing, I'm gonna tell what I really think, even if it sounds like,
why would someone say that? And what I would say is
that the answer is yes, it could have an effect,
and that for some reason, with certain people's work at certain times, something takes over. And something happens. And the era is recorded in a way that that's how the era's
been remembered by people who were never even exposed
to those photographs. What I'm saying is, there are
people who were influenced by Evans view of the 30s, who have never opened a photography book, and have never heard of Walker Evans, but somehow it seeps into the culture. And Evans spoke about this
kind of thing happening. He did an interview later in his life with George Leslie Katz and published it. Eakins just republished it in the past year, called "The interview". And he talks about how there are times in the life of young artists, often happening when they're young, that something just takes over and he uses the transcendent. - Yes. - Happens. - I believe that. - And... - The coming together things almost outside of your control, right? - Exactly, it feels almost
outside one's control, it's not that I'm planning it or anything, it's just it's a coming together
of lots of different forces of the culture, the upbringing, just, phases of the moon, who knows? Sometimes something happens. - Do you feel or do you think that your work is in any
way autobiographical? - Generally, yes, and specifically, no. I don't try to make it autobiographical. But it always is an
expression of my concerns. When I sequence books,
with a few exceptions, like this new book that I did this fall with Eakins called "Elements". Which is sequenced in a
very different kind of way. I often do it chronologically
because I think there is a story there in the chronology But yeah, to the extent
that any artists work is an expression of their
concerns, it's autobiographical. And when it looks
superficially autobiographical, let's say "American surfaces", When I'm photographing the meals I ate, and the beds I slept in, I wasn't doing it for the kind of Facebook reasons that
people photograph their meals. I was doing this as, I saw this as using the form of a diary, creating a series of cereal imagery, just packages of cereal imagery, that through variation give
a portrait of the culture. More than here's literally
what I had, what I ate today. - Right. - I don't think anyone would really care. - Do they care now, that's
the question on Instagram? We'll get to that. Do you believe in photographic
truth or neutrality? - Well, this is a question we could spend the entire
session discussing. And this past year, I had a
series of lectures at Bard called The Photography in the Document, that was about this very
thing, and different people who have approached
this in different ways. We had Alex Coghe, Martha
Rosler, Walid Raad. In the spring we were gonna have Karine Simon and Joe Perez, but then Coronavirus happened and then the whole thing was called off. I think there was a post modernist idea that photography is fictive. - Right. - Well, the news is that this is not news. I remember using that
very word 50 years ago with your predecessor at Yale, Todd. I mean, photographer sat
around and talked about this. We understand that what
you see in the picture is so much in the control
of the photographer, even in a straight photograph. For example, I can pull my car
over to the side of a highway and take a picture of a landscape that looks like a natural
landscapes untouched by man. And there's a marginal place to stand where I can move back six inches and you have a tiny bit of
a guardrail in the picture. And it changes the meaning
of the picture totally. It becomes a completely different picture. And I'm not altering
what's in front of me. I'm altering what the camera's showing. But on the other hand, there's
something about photography. And I can't say it in a more intellectually
profound way than that and not use this kind of vague language. But there's just something
about photography where that question keeps coming up because it is about what's
in front of the camera. - Yes. - And so I think those two pictures both have different truths. And I remember one other
thing that was discussed by probably with Todd all those years ago, is that novels can be true. I don't have to believe that
there ever was a Captain Ahab to pick up one of the
more fanciful novels, that makes no pretense really to realism, to understand that the
novel is full truth. - Fantastic. What is your least favorite
part of the artistic process? The least favorite? - I guess selling, having to sell myself. But there have been, the
middle people happen. So that relieves that. - You just mean the whole
aspect of commerce, okay. - I'm just not comfortable with it. - Yeah. What is the best part for you? - So I feel very
fortunate that in my life, I earn a living, doing
something I love, teaching, that my profession is
the same as my avocation. And that reasonably early in my life, I found the love of my life, and that takes care of a lot of needs. (Gregory laughing) That's a great thing. - Yeah, perfectly said. Is there a movie or artwork
that changed your life? You've made reference
to some pivotal things. - I mean, not a single one. At the same time, I didn't
go into art and photography, but at that same time that
I was describing these, it was a very formative period for me, which is why I went into detail. But there was a photography
gallery in New York called the Heliography Gallery. It was a cooperative. It was at 65th on Lexington,
on the second floor. And a building that was torn
down about two years ago. And the rent was $150 a month. And there were 15 members
who put in $10 a month. And that didn't leave
leftover for keeping it open so they would hire me in
Prince to come after school to keep the gallery open in the afternoon. And the photographers were
a very interesting range. Jerry Uelsmann, Carl
Chiarenza, Larry Clark. I remember when Larry arrived in New York, he was a friend of a
member of the Heliographers named Thomas Stone Zimmerman, who was a wonderful photographer who just kind of disappeared, but a really wonderful photographer. And Tom said, here's this
guy who just came from, I guess Oklahoma, or
Arkansas I forgot where, this is amazing stuff
and he was Larry Clark. And so they paid me in these prints and that's how they stayed open. I became friends with all these people. And I was going to museums, The Frick, but really The Met. I mean I would walk over, it was, I don't know
maybe a 20 minute walk from my apartment and
my parents apartment, and I would just spend hours
wandering through The Met. So, I mean, like my days were filled with all these different
art consuming activities. But there wasn't a single
work that there have been. The other thing that just came to mind is when you ask that question
or what's your favorite? I think about a British radio show called "Desert Island Discs". - Yes. - Where the people who
are called castaways are asked what are the eight records they would bring with them, or CDs? And whenever I've heard it, I have the sense that, what the people are telling, and these tend to be, sometimes they're kind of regular people, but usually they're people
in sort of some note actors, or musicians, or politicians, that their choices are bullshit. That what they're saying is bullshit. They're trying to create a public personna through the the cultural
signifiers of these choices. And that the more interesting
thing would be to do when they're in the
recording studio doing this is to reach into their pocket and get their phone or their iPod and say, "Okay, here's what
is on so on's a playlist." - Good idea. - And I mean, so I could
say there are certain movies that I watch over and over again, there are certain TV shows, long form television that I
watched over and over again. I can't say I'm not
saying these are the best. I'm not saying they changed my life. But I'm saying why have
I watched it 10 times? I've watched "The Wire", which
is 60 hours, three times. And there's a BBC show in the 80s of journal raid books
with "Smiley's People" and before that "Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy", each one is six hours. So it's 12 hours total with
Alec Guinness as George Smiley, and they're spectacular. And for years I've watched
at least once a year. Again, I've watched it 10 15 times and never get tired of it. - You mentioned "Desert Island Discs" and it did make me think in a certain way, we're all castaways at the moment. - Yes. (laughs)
- You know. Maybe a difficult question,
but taken as a whole, when you look at all the
work that you've produced, do you feel that there are certain central
themes or preoccupations? - Yeah, well, couple of years ago, I had this retrospective at MoMA. And it covered the first
picture as a self portrait I did when I was nine. So it literally covered 60 years. And it allowed me to
look at what I've done through the eyes of
just someone walking in and saw connections that being in the midst of something I might not see. And as teachers, I think
we both probably have had the experience of seeing
a student's work on. for me a weekly basis, for
you it might be monthly, and then seeing that same
work over a two year period, summation of two years and
it looks very different. - Yes. - And so yeah, I saw themes, and one of the themes that came across was that I was always interested
in very ordinary moments. I never sought out something highly charged or extraordinary. Occasionally I'd come
across something like that, and might photograph it, but basically. And the other thing... One of the other themes was
that it's connected to that, is an interest in
communicating what it's like to live with attention. To pay attention to ordinary moments. And that it's best to communicate that through the ordinary moments, because that's what it's about, it's about living your day with attention. Because I think, and when I
say attention, I don't mean. I actually see attention as, I'd be more specific, I would call it metacognitive potential. It is mind being aware
that I'm paying attention, as I stand stirring
risotto for 40 minutes. - Who's your imagined audience? Do you think about that? - I don't. When I'm working I'm... And let me say there was
another thing that I would say with regard to work, which is that, and this is something
I've always been aware of, that whenever I found
myself repeating myself, I would just switch, and sometimes it would be
switching subject matter, sometimes it'll be switching
from color to black and white, or switching cameras. But an interest in always
keeping something active and always on an edge. And I guess that also goes to
your question of what I like about being an artist, that life is interesting. - Do think about your
audience, of who it might be? - I don't, when I'm working, I'm in the midst of these questions. - Yeah. - And I'm just not thinking
about the audience. Afterward I do, but I don't, I think students should
listen to me (chuckles) when I critique their work. But when I was their age
I didn't listen to anyone. And so when I did "American surfaces", other than a couple of people, like, one or two people at Light Gallery, Harold Jones the director,
and Marvin Heiferman, and Western Neff at the Met, I don't think anyone else liked it. It got just a scathing
review by A. D. Coleman, which I've now have it on my
website if anyone wants to-- - Oh yeah. - And I'm just undeterred. I do bodies of work that my wife, who's been a photo editor
at Fortune Magazine, in fact, had corporate
haven sold office there. So is very knowledgeable in photography. And there's work she doesn't
like, and I just plow ahead. So, I mean, I'm aware
of there's an audience, but when I'm in the midst of working, I'm not thinking about it. - How has success affected your work? - I like... I mean I've been doing it a while and started with a gallery in 72. And throughout most of the 70s, people's pictures sold for 100 $200. And no one made a living at it. And I think it's great that people can make a living at it now. It just gives another level of freedom. I think there at the same time, there could be a downside to success. And I see this, I've seen a couple of
students who have made, got a lot of recognition
right after they left school, and then were afraid to move on. That they felt tied to that
work that got the recognition. And so you can't, just as
I don't wanna listen to... It's not I don't wanna, I just didn't listen to the
people who criticize my work, Because I had a strong
sense of what I wanted. The other side of that coin is, I wouldn't listen to the people who give accolades to the work. Because there are times
when you have to move on. - What have you learned through failure? - There is no real failure
that comes to mind. I've had a number of
difficult periods in my life. But I feel like I don't regret anything. That people learn
sometimes through friction. So I guess that's what I learned from it. - Do you have any thoughts about how the majority of us now
experience photographs through screens on phones and computers rather than physical prints? - Well, they sure look
great on retina displays. - Yes. (chuckles) - I've been, as you as
I've been doing Instagram for about five years. Posting almost every day. And I think I was attracted
to it for a couple of reasons. One is, it reminded me of how people used. I'm gonna generalize about Instagram. And that's always dangerous because I'm gonna talk about how a small segment of the billion monthly users approach it. And I don't really mean
this to be a generalization. But some people use it the
way the SX-70 was used. And that seemed very reminiscent in that SX-70 produced a small square print, that's about the size of an
image on a larger iPhone. And it felt disposable,
ironically, because it was unique, so it wasn't reproducible,
but you'd take a photo with an SX-70 and give it away. And there was something
about the lightness of it, or that it would allow
for a simple notation. And I found the same thing
happening in Instagram, that it didn't require a complex image. And that to put in, to
create a different analogy, it is Haiku to an eight by 10's sonnet. (Gregory chuckles) Haiku is no less resonant
than meaningful than a sonnet. But it does it in a simpler,
more notational way. And so that was one of
my attractions to it. I saw that this medium
somehow did the same thing. And then I found that The
community is just fascinated, that I've made real friends,
and I didn't understand the whole idea of social media before, I'd never really got into Facebook. As we have alluded to before with food, it's not that I wouldn't
tell someone what I ate, I don't want to know what someone ate, I feel there ought to
be some kind of privacy. And I don't understand
why someone is thinking that I would wanna know that. To tag me when they bought
a movie ticket on Fandango, that I'd wanna know what
movie they've gone to. But Instagram is different. I sometimes have this image in my mind of two enlightenment scholars, one in Paris and one in Amsterdam who correspond every week
but they've never met. And they'd become the closest friends. And I've met people through
it, who when I meet them, I feel like I know them. And at my opening in MoMA,
I invited a number of people who I knew knew each other from Instagram. A couple from England, one
from Geneva, one from Atlanta, who had never met, and got to introduce them and
saw this look on their faces. They put a face to this person whose posts they've been
looking at every day, for a couple of years. And I find that very interesting. And there're people who in
this group that I follow, there's one person in South Korea, and there's another person, just a marvelous photographer in Iran, in a small city in Iran. And there's this kind of global community that I think it's really
interesting to be part of. - What role does teaching
play in your practice? - I would say I'm as
serious about teaching as I am about photography. And have tried, over the
years I've tried to figure out how this process works. And as someone who's
basically self-taught, I still feel that I can
offer shortcuts to people. To say that I'm self-taught
isn't really true, because at a certain point in my life. I developed a relationship
with Schakowsky. And every time I had a
new group of pictures, I would take it to him. And sometimes he would say
things that were very explicit, and some times he would just nod. And it was like I was learning by osmosis by almost his body language. And so I felt that in a certain way, he thought of himself as guiding me. And that's the role I wanna play. And I understand that I don't
have a dogma about teaching, I don't have a program
that I've done long enough to see that as our culture changes, as the temperament of the students change, even what happens in the
classroom has to change. And so it's always in flux. - Speaking of classrooms,
the last question is, what advice would you give the students in this moment of peril,
from the last question? - I guess, I don't wanna sound like
a commencement speaker. And they always are supposed to be upbeat. And I think there are
certain trends in our culture that are very worrying. But I don't think the Coronavirus is one
of them, it will pass. We've gone, people talk about
it compared to the Spanish Flu which killed maybe 50 million people. In the 20th century
smallpox killed 350 million. We lived through the Great
Depression which happened in our country at the same
time as the Dust Bowl, and a couple of world
wars, and this will pass. In may be a couple of
years, but it will pass. I think the advice I would give, there's Jewish concept, Tikkun olam, which means repair the world. And I take it to mean
that different people find themselves in
different circumstances, different geographical circumstances, different societal circumstances, different educational circumstances, and maybe different inborn talents. And you don't have to go
and try to change the world, but you do what is available to you. And if everyone were to do
that, things would change. - Well, thank you so much, Stephen. We very much appreciate it. Do we have the time for a few questions from the student body? Do you have the time, Stephen? - I have time, anyone? - Yes, we're gonna open it up
to School of Arts students. So anyone who would like
to ask Stephen a question, raise your hand digitally. - Hi, thank you Steven for
being here, I'm very excited. So, you reference Beckett and Jack Smith as early influences. - This was just a mix of all
the things I was consuming. - Yeah. - And honestly I don't see any connection between my work and Jack Smith's. - (chuckles) Okay, I
was gonna ask if you saw "Uncommon Surfaces" as
a performance in a way, or the action of travel, or just more generally
the role of photographer as also kind of performer in any way? - No but I really relished the
experience of the road trip and I saw it almost in a couple of ways. One, I saw myself as an explorer. And I approached that literally, like I wanted each year,
I would plan a route that was different from
the previous years. I would literally be exploring and one year bought a safari outfit. There was the great safari
outfitter in New York at the time was a store
called Abercrombie and Fitch. The name has been sold many times and the original Abercrombie
and Fitch bears no resemblance to the current store. But if you were going on
a big game hunt in Africa and needed a safari outfit
and buy your rifles, and tents and anything you would need, you'd go to Abercrombie and
Fitch on Madison Avenue. So I went bought a safari outfit to feel, to dress the role as an explorer. The other thing I found,
my first road trip, is that just spending a
couple of days on the road paying attention for hours
was kind of meditative. And that I would, after a couple of days be in this very, very clear state of mind, which would last for weeks. And then at some point, I'd begin to get tired and burnt out. Because I would work all day
I didn't do anything social when I was on the road trips. I didn't do any sightseeing, I just, I was either driving
or photographing or eating, although I'd sometimes photograph when I was eating, so there was. And so that that's sort of how it went. I wasn't thinking of it as a performance. As I'm saying that, I thought
there was one trip in 73, where I kept a literal journal of how many miles I drove, what I ate and each meal, what I watched on television at night, because I would after a day's work, I would just watch just the most ordinary, mindless television shows to unwind. So I did keep this
journal so I guess I did, and I kept every piece of
paper that came my way. Postcards I collected but
also receipts for everything. A parking ticket,
clippings from newspapers, So I'm not sure I saw it as a performance, but that comes pretty
close to it, I guess. - Anyone else? I think we have a question from Brandon, (beep) Brandon Taylor. - There. - I think Lindsey unmuted me,
- Okay good, great. - Oh, you were talking about
how usually you sequence books chronologically but
recently you did another one where that wasn't like
the editorial principle. - I'm sorry, you cut
out there for a second. - Tell us about that. - Oh, yeah, so this is a book that... Has anyone actually
had a chance to see it? (beep) Gregory have you seen it? - Ah yes, but you should talk about it. - Just (chuckles) to maintain some kind of symmetry in my life, a book that always was
very meaningful to me was Walker Evan's book
"Message from the interior". - Yeah. - And it was done sort
of later in his life, and he looked back on his work and took but looked at it with
a particular eye to... The title was to be taken
on a couple of levels. And one level could be
psychological interiority. And so, he was the first
photographic influence in my life and kind of tracked him into
number kind of odd ways, like my wife having his
old office at Fortune, and then I've an apartment in New York that turned out to be a block away from his apartment on the same street. And I wanted to do a book
that was not an answered to "Message from the interior",
but with that in mind. And so was actually
published similar in size, and similar in that it doesn't have a whole lot of pictures in it. And published by Eakins Press, whose first book that they ever published was "Messaged from the interior". So there are a lot of connections. And it's work from the 80s and 90s. And I don't wanna be too explicit about what is behind the work, but it gave me a chance to use sequencing to explore themes that were on my mind when I was taking the pictures. Connections I saw between
different bodies of work over those two decades and their landscapes, their... Some are completely unpeopled landscapes, some Hudson Valley landscapes that have the sign of
some modernity in it. Pictures in Mexico of
laurel mayan villages. A body of work I did in Italy
in a town called Luzzara, and a series of archeological pictures made in Israel and in Italy. - Any other final questions from anyone? - Yes, sir. - Brandon, hey man, how are you? - Hey Greg, how you doing, brother? Good to see you, man. - Yeah. - Hello Mr. Shore. I am unbelievably tickled to be actually talking to you right now. It's an amazing honor for me. My question is sort of in
reference to what you said earlier about is backing up six inches, and it is specifically related to a photo that was on when you
took over the New Yorker, a photo spread on Instagram. It was a photo of a green Volkswagen bug, and I stared at that photo forever. Because the way that the
cropping on the photo is I would have 100% ruined that. I would have brought it
in and made it cleaner. And a lot of your edges of
your photos are populated. There's another world about
to start on the edges of it. And I'm just wondering if that's like a conscious choice that you make, or just, because of your vocation and how much you've traveled, and like you're just always kind of aware of more world out there. I was just wondering how you do that? 'cause I would ruin it. - I think that's a great question. And, do we have time for a long answer? - Yes.
- Okay. So let me give you one
- Please. - I'm gonna start with going
to a lecture in the 70s given by Tod Papageorge, right after he had written
a small book called "Walker Evans and Robert
Frank: An essay on influence." And he gave a talk based
on this booklet he wrote, and one of the things that struck me as I was looking at Evans and
Frank's work side by side, as he presented it in the talk, had to do with the viewing
systems of the camera and the way edges function in the picture. And Frank's the edges words
sort of where the picture ended. And Evans were more where they began. It's like with an Evans I understand that the sky continues beyond the frame, or the road continues beyond the frame, but there's something about it where it's a self contained little world. And the Frank's felt more like a frame just placed on the world with a world beyond it. And I realized this is how
they were viewing the pictures. A Leica, Frankie used a Leica. and you have a clear viewfinder that has a white frame in the viewfinder that is the frame of the picture. And so literally, you're
seeing beyond the frame. Where Evans used an eight by 10, and you have a, you're
looking at a ground glass which doesn't have a 32nd
of an inch beyond the frame, and he'd put a dark cloth over you, when you're making the
final frame decisions, the final little framing
nuances on the brown glass. And so literally you can't
see anything outside the frame when you're making that decision. So I think that influenced it. So I said, having seen
that, I was interested in how can you use the
camera in a different way? Once that you're aware of that
this is a camera's tendency, can you use it against its tendency? Which of course the answer is yes. And so I would often very
consciously frame in a way that didn't look neat. Now I think there's a
second answer to that. Which is, that also comes
from using an eight by 10. The eight by 10 is the only camera where you can't see the whole frame when you're making the final
adjustments for the picture. And final adjustments are
using a rising front, see. So my arms are out, you
use the rising front with a four by five, the ground
glass would be about here. And I can stand back enough so I can see the entire
four by five frame. With an eight by 10, if I'm
adjusting the rising front the ground glasses about here. I can't, I literally
can't see the whole frame. Problem with that is I've
seen work by photographers who haven't figured this
out, how to handle it. Where they make a
decision that looks right on this particular part of the frame, like the space between my hand and the top of the frame you're seeing now that looks right, okay, I like that space. But you're forgetting
what that decision does to the rest of the picture. Because you literally can't see what that decision does to
the rest of the picture. The ground glass is so
large that you can look at this one little thing right up here, or where my head comes
in relation to the frame and forget the rest. So the way to solve it is, the camera forced you
to have a mental image of what you're photographing. Even if you're not conscious of it. You have to have a mental
image that integrates all this. I think you have to have a mental image before you even begin taking a picture, because you don't walk around
with this eight by 10 camera looking for a picture. You walk around and say, "Here's a spot!" By saying here's a spot
it means, I have to intuitively understand the
field of view of my lens. So I can say, here's where
the frame is gonna be. I mean, I would put, like
a golfer putting a marker on the putting green. I would put a quarter down
and walk out of the car and find a couple of pictures. I put quarters down on the ground, exactly where the tripod would go. Because I'm holding an image in my head. Here's where the frame
is, here's the shot. So there's already a conceptualization, a visual conceptualization of the image that's carried through
in these final decisions. And what one of the results of
that is, you understand that, what looks like a good, neat
formal decision along one edge disrupts the whole rest of the picture. And so you sometimes
have to make decisions which look wrong in isolation, which I think gets to what you're saying. But is right in terms of the whole image. Does that make sense to you? - That was epic, that was
amazing, great answer. - Well, you're an eight by 10 photographer so you obviously-- - I was. - You were. - I'm retired, retired. Everybody said live and
die by the eight by 10. Runway, I think you have a question. - It was me, oh. - Yes. - Thank you, and I have
a question because why, with your Instagram, there are a few self portraits. I'm just have some question about what's your ideas about self portraits as a photographer? - So I never did them before, I did one Self Portrait
in the previous 30 years. This is sort of playing
off Instagram tropes. So I will post pictures that
deal with Instagram tropes. I will post stupid animal pictures. And I when I do a stupid animal picture, I know that I'm not the only person who's put the stupid animal picture up on Instagram that day. And if I do a selfie, I understand that I'm not
the only person doing it and it's just sort of playing off of that. - Do we have one last question? A former student of yours, Lori. - Hey Lori. - Hey, Steven, I'm wearing your shirt. - (laughs) Good, I appreciate that. - Thank you, I appreciate you. And I just wanna ask, someone
asked the same question. But so much of your work is
about your own temporality, whatever device you're using. So I'm just curious. I've always wondered if you could bring your camera
anywhere, time or place, what would you want to, what would you want to
seeing yourself and captured? - Well, I think this goes back to Gregory's second or third question. I mean, I've photographed, I'm interested in the everyday experience. And so I've traveled some
places to take certain pictures. There was a period when I became very interested in archeology, and almost a metaphor of an
archeological photograph. And so I had to do that,
I had to go get on digs. I did a project in Ukraine which is work that means
an awful lot to me. But basically my pictures are where I am. And I have my phone, and at the moment I don't feel any desire to be anywhere other than where I am, except maybe Montana,
that will be where I am, in we hope a couple of months. - Okay. (chuckles) - But not for photography
purposes just for living purposes. - Well Stephen, thank you so
much for an extraordinary, meaningful and enlightening time with us. We really appreciate it and
as you can see there are 500 students out there.
(Stephen laughs) - Hi everyone.
- Who want to ask them all to say thank you. And we also appreciate all the interest coming from different
areas of the world now, so it's really a fantastic thing. Thank you Stephen so much. - Yeah. - Thank you, Stephen.
(Stephen giggling) - Thank you. Thank you, Steven. - Thank you. - Thank you so much. - Thank you. - Thank you Stephen. (laughter) (cheering) - That's over Stephen, thank you. - Thanks so much Stephen. - Thank you. - Thank you Stephen. - [Woman] Thank you. - [Stephen] Bye bye everyone. - [Woman] Wonderful.
