Mark Power - 14 Years Photographing America, The Democracy of Photography & Why Stillness Matters More Than The Decisive Moment, E114

Do you want me to tell you why I started?
It was a universal language that I think I wanted to start tapping into.
I'm very good at making competent photographs.
When is it exceptional?
I have to work doubly hard with the way that I structure my pictures and the subtleties within it to expect anybody to spend any time looking at it.
Where did the Good Morning America concept and idea come from, and why did you start this huge project?
I remember we were having a Magnum AGM in Paris, and a few of us were bemoaning the fact that it was almost impossible to get any funding anymore to do the work that we really wanted to do.
So that night was born the postcards from America idea.
It's probably a hugely pretentious thing to do, to make five books over a period of time.
What is the intent with the subject matter with which you photograph?
I'm more interested in trying to elevate the absolutely deadpan and ordinary into something interesting.
Why do you want to elevate a banal scenario?
Where does this desire to do that come from?
Yeah, it is a very, very hard question, and I think a lot of it is again difficult to put into words.
Let's slightly rephrase that because Mark Power, welcome to the Moo Podcast.
Uh what a pleasure it is to have have you on the show.
Thanks for taking your time.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Let's I know who you are.
We haven't met before, but you know, I know who you are as a photographer.
I've been following your work for so long.
Um, have a couple of your books, and uh, you know, for me to sit here and talk to you without blowing smoke up your backside.
It's a genuine honor and privilege to to chat to you.
But for those that may not know who you are, um, let's just start with kind of the those kind of intros as to who you are, what you do.
But what what I really want to hear is kind of why you started in photography, why you still do it, what it is about photography that still captures your imagination.
When I was at art school, I was we were looking at a lot of painters, and um we were taught how to look at a Mark Rothko painting.
Mark Rothkoe, the very exceptional, great um abstract, abstract, expressionist American Russian painter.
And um the idea being that you're supposed to focus behind the surface of the painting.
Anyway, I went to what I went to London to see a huge Rothko show, and uh and I stood in front of it and I looked at focused behind, and I got the um paintings to kind of vibrate because that's what happens, and um and that was got so everything worked, and then I left and uh I had a Time Out London in my um bag.
This was back in 1980, I would think, 1981.
And um I saw that there was um an exhibition by one of only two photographers that I'd heard of.
Um uh one one of the photographers was Bill Brandt, the other was Don McCullen, and there was a McCullen show on the South Bank in London.
So I thought, well, I've I've got some time to kill, I'll go and see the McCullen show.
Never been to a photography exhibition in my life, and uh it was a sort of retrospective, and um uh I remember being in a room, I I'm pretty certain it was his work from Biafra, and there was me and a woman in this room, nobody else, and the woman was looking very closely at these pictures.
So I I I thought, well, I'll go and see this McCullum show because I've got some time to kill.
And I I was um it was split up into several rooms, and I think I was in the room with his Biafran work, which is very powerful, and uh it was me, and uh, there was a a woman in uh in the room with me, nobody else.
And she was looking very closely at these pictures uh on the wall, and she was gently crying to herself.
And now I'm taking a big leap here, uh, but because she could have been crying for any number of reasons, but I still like to believe that she was so genuinely moved by the pictures that um yes, it it gave her this response.
And also another leap would be that let's assume she'd had no photographic training about how to read a photograph.
She just she was just genuine, genuinely affected by what she was seeing.
And I I think on the way home, I mean I'm filling in gaps here because it was a very long time ago, but I bel I think on the way home I was thinking, well, why is it that to look at a painting and get the right response from a painting, I had to be taught how to look at it.
And photography seemed so much more democratic that it could potentially really reach people deep inside without any training at all because of its ability to communicate.
So it was that kind of democracy of photography that it was a like a universal language that every I know painting is as well, but it was a universal language that I think I wanted to start tapping into.
You know, I'd been I'd been to art school for this was my final year, so uh this is my fourth year I'd been to art school.
So of course I wanted to be an artist of some kind, whatever that meant.
Then I thought, well, maybe photography might be an interesting career to follow.
But to be honest, Matt, I I thought the only way you could be a photographer was to work for a newspaper, be it a national one or a local one, or do weddings.
I didn't know that there were such people that actually did photography, you know, made photographs for a living, their own work.
Of course, back then it was a lot more difficult uh to do that.
But I think I I do genuinely think, and that's a very romantic story, I know, but I do think that was the uh the genesis of me wanting to be a photographer.
I'd I'd sort of messed around with it a little bit when I was a child because my dad used to be um the ship's photographer uh when he was doing his national service in the merchant navy.
So he was the n he was an engineer, so he worked down in the engine room, but he was also, he was he had this Voigtlander camera, and he used to uh take pictures around the the ship, but also uh and then he'd he made uh an enlarger out of a flower pot and um uh upturn flower pot.
He was very good at making things, and then he would take the lens off his Voigtlander and and put it on, screw it into uh a fitting he'd made in the enlarger so that he could actually print these pictures.
What was very interesting was that I discovered um later on that he his his real thing was photographing, because he was mainly stationed in the Gulf.
So his real thing was photographing these oil tankers that were always tiny in the distance, a long, long way off, with the horizon dead center in the image and always straight, never off kilter.
Um and so it's like the Bechers only years and years ahead of them because they'd have but they you can't hardly see these things, it's just like a little dark line where it's uh it's an oil tanker.
But he has he has a lot of these.
So one day I might like to do something with these.
I mean, sadly he's no longer with us, but um, because he wasn't doing it for any other reason than he was interested in oil tankers and he didn't have a long lane.
So I think that was all it was.
But but um interesting.
And I remember him saying to me actually, because I think maybe this explains a lot.
I was like we all are, we want our parents to be proud of us.
And um and I always struggled a bit with my dad because I never had a proper job and he could never really until really late in life when he he finally thought maybe I did know what I was doing after all.
And I remember very close to his death, he said he said to me, um, you know what about your career?
He said, You were right and I was wrong.
And that was the first time he'd ever said anything like that to me.
And of course, it wasn't a game I was trying to win, but it was a, you know, I want I wanted so much to have his um his his backing really.
Well, he he was supportive, but he didn't really understand.
And he kept thinking, why aren't you, you know, you've got a a degree, so why don't you go and get a job as a graphic designer or as a you know, as a painter or whatever.
I played around with the enlarger when I was little, you know, because he showed me how it worked, and we went out and took some terrible pictures of trees and developed them.
But I remember him saying to me when I was relatively young that I must always get my horizon straight.
And um and I so I think that that's you know, the fact that obviously I'm known for my very straight.
Um I I it's almost like he's looking down on me if ever I take it.
The shipping forecast, when I did the shipping forecast, which is all full of pictures that are all wonky angles, I think he really struggled with that.
But but I had, you know, I had I had him on one shoulder and I had Paul Reese and Martin Parr on the other, you know, saying good, you know, tilt is good, and so I didn't know what to do.
So, you know.
So in the shipping forecast, I think some are straight and some are wonky, and it's not very it's not very consistent in that way.
If you're enjoying this conversation and if you're drawn to this kind of slow reflective discussions we have on this podcast, then I want to let you know about my free closed community book club, which might be something that you genuinely find value in.
The Voice Alchemy Book Club is kind of an extension of these types of conversations.
Each month we focus on one of three types of work: a book, a photo book, or a photo critique.
And we meet online to sit with it properly, asking ourselves what it's meant to one another, what we can maybe learn from it, what ideas and actions we can take from it, what it's wrestling with, and what it asks of us as viewers and creators are.
It's a space for deeper introspection, long-form thinking, and really honest discussions around photography, creativity, and authorship.
There's no pressure to perform at all, no chasing trends, no algorithms, no need to have everything figured out, just honest, authentic connection with fellow like-minded creators, uh careful, collaborative looking, uh, thoughtful and meaningful conversation, and a community of people who care about staying with the work long enough for it to mean something.
So if this episode and this podcast generally resonates with you, which I hope it does, the book club is a natural place to continue that way of thinking and actually participate for free with others that will be open and welcoming to you and your ideas.
Uh you'll find more details via the link in the show notes, and I really hope to see you there.
It's my favorite book of yours, which we're we we're gonna get to later, but um really interesting moment, uh looking at a paint, uh looking at a photo with a lady kind of crying.
And I always like the fact that you don't know for sure why she was crying, and it's kind of like played with your imagination and your your your curiosity with with photography.
Um, so was that so then what how you you you were kind of inspired a little bit to to learn a little bit more about photography, but you completed your schooling in in art, right?
And then you took up photography after that.
Yeah, I did fine art and then I took up photography.
Uh no, no, I then uh so I I graduated in June 1981, then I got a job as a dustman.
Um garbage.
Which I mean, probably.
Oh yeah, I was gonna I was searching for the term.
Um sometimes they just have to work it out for themselves.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Maybe I treat my audience like they're stupid, which is probably not a good not a good thing, but yeah.
Anyway, I I I I I did that for about four months and saved some money and uh flew to Hong Kong, ended up staying there for a couple of months, went to Thailand, stayed there three months, um, ended up in Australia, got a job, um, or got several several jobs actually, um, including one in a camera store, funnily enough.
Uh I was away for two years, and I took with me um a sketchbook, um, no paints, but a sketchbook and some charcoal and pencils and stuff, and uh and a very simple Fuji camera, Fujika camera.
It's like a 50-pound, 60-pound camera with a standard lens.
Um and I think it was it was quite tricky for me actually to sort of sit on a well, you can imagine because you live in you with you live in Southeast Asia, but to just sort of sit down in the middle of a small town and start sketching, you suddenly, you know, everybody's gathered around you watching what you're doing, and I I'm not comfortable with that.
So I started to take pictures um instead, make photographs take photographs instead.
And um I think I was it's it's of course it seemed easier.
It I mean, because on the surface, it is easier to to to take a photograph than to make a drawing.
Of course it is, and it's quicker and it's instant.
Um but uh of course the more you do it, the more difficult you realise it is.
So I I I I continue to take photographs through that two-year um journey that I made.
And I it was um what was it?
213 roles of black and white 35mm film.
What I couldn't do was process any of it.
Um so I was sending the undeveloped roles back to my parents back in Leicester in England.
And um so when I when I got home in '83, um I set up a dark room there, moved back with my parents, set up a dark room with my dad's help, and uh, and I processed the films.
And um, yes, the film 213 is certainly better than film one, but the progress that I made through that 213 was very, very slow because of course I couldn't learn from my mistakes.
And I think that um that that sort of stayed with me because I do spend an awful lot of time not making new photographs.
I'm spending at work every day and I'm looking at what I'm doing, I'm looking at other people's work as well.
But I spend a lot of time really assessing and evaluating what I've just done or what I've, you know, and and um and I think that's really important.
I think it's under undervalued actually uh by a lot of people.
But you've got to learn from your mistakes.
You've got to be very self-critical and not never be satisfied.
And uh I'm sure that comes from two years of not being able to see any the results of anything I was doing.
What do you mean uh what is undervalued exactly?
Um spending proper time uh looking at your work and thinking about what you're doing and um learning from your successes as well as your mistakes.
I think that's you know, yes, we can all learn from our mistakes, but I think, you know, why something I'm very interested in is, you know, I think I'm very I'm I'm I'm very good at making competent photographs, you know.
I can do that, you know, with it standing on one leg.
But when is a competent photograph, when when does it rise to something much better than that?
When is it exceptional?
And I don't know what the answer is, and I and and I wish I did, because I you I could cut out a lot of um wasted time.
But I think it's the act of spending time looking hard at the work and trying to understand why this picture is better than this picture, because it is difficult and it's confusing because I I edit and sequence my own work generally, with a little with some help from Stuart Smith in um uh Ghost, my the publisher that I work with.
But Stu generally leaves it to me to get on with.
And then occasionally we come together and we we discuss and we change things.
But um, you know, to be able to have the confidence to be able to do that myself, because I think a lot of photographers do spend uh do struggle a lot with their editing and sequencing, and they need somebody else to come and do it for them.
Um I've just made myself understand what I think is good and bad, and so therefore, and why why pictures work together, and that's all so I spend much, much, much more time doing that than I do actually going out making work, you know.
Um because I think it's part of the job, and also we're emailing all the time, we do we're doing all this stuff.
Well, now we have a relationship with with photography that is so fast, you know.
You have digital photography that basically does everything for you anyway, and you can learn in an instant how to take better photography.
You've got YouTube tutorials, you've got you know, we live in a world of abundance these days where you can now we've got AI agents and AI, it's like learning is is just at your fingertips at whatever speed you want to learn at.
And I think one thing, one thing I'm not seeing in the photography world, I mean, whether whether it's a little bit too um esoteric or niche, is that people are reverting back to more analog and more analog ways and experimenting in dark room using film because I think it's it's more of a it's more of a hands-on way of learning photography, and you have you develop a better relationship with failure than you do with success.
And I think that's extremely grounding, and I think it's extremely powerful to learn in that sense rather than just knowing how you can get get better through just seeing something on social media or seeing something on the back of an L C D screen.
I I think you're right, yes, you can learn all sorts of things from YouTube videos, but nothing beats actually spending proper time with your own work and trying to understand uh you know why something is this is better than that.
Or indeed looking at other people's work in books or in exhibitions.
And I always used to say to students, it's all very easy to go and say, Oh, I really like this, but but try and ask yourself why you like it, and then pick something off the shelf that you don't like and try and understand why you don't like it and ask yourself these difficult questions, write things down, so you know, write paragraph about a paragraph about what you are trying to do with your camera with your work out there.
Um, so that's it's it's really just about that idea of uh because I do know a couple of photographers that are constantly making more and more and more pictures and spend very little time um just slowing down and really assessing what it is that they're trying to do.
Um and I'm not saying that what they're doing is necessarily wrong, it's just not me.
Interesting that you said you still have this kind of pursuit of trying to find out why a good photo is good and why a bad photo is bad, certainly in your own work, which I find extremely refreshing, but also for someone you're with your pedigree and your your stature and your success in the photography world, kind of blows my mind a little bit.
But I was going to say before you did it's like sometimes sometimes an image can speak louder when it's amongst other images, right?
And you can kind of understand why that one image works works well because it's surrounded by other images that kind of elevate it.
And this, this, this beauty of secret, this whole art in itself of sequencing and editing is and you talk about those people that that need other people to sequence.
I'm one of those guys.
I think I know what I'm doing until I go to somewhere like Chico or I go to portfolio review, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, what are you doing?
This is so I think it's it is subjective, but there is there is there is a skill and this art in the edit and the sequencing, which I find so enjoyable and intriguing, and that's kind of the next step.
You know, you take a good photo, everyone can learn how to take a good photo, but how do you how do you make something of it amongst other images and a story and a and a you know and a rhythm and a journey that people take?
But I I when we come to single images, because I don't really think of single images anymore, but you you mentioned it, and I think that lady that was crying at that image, have you ever thought why first of all, can you describe what that image can you remember what that image was?
But why do you think she was she might have I know you don't know for sure she was crying at that image or how it made her feel, but it's it's incredible how images can be so emotive like that.
But did you ever kind of question what what is it about this image that's well it was it was clearly I don't remember which image it was, but I'm pretty certain it was the work he made in Biafra, which was I don't know if you remember, but But Biafra was hit by a terrible famine.
Many people died, including many thousands of children.
So I think she was, she could just have been a humanitarian who was just moved by, you know, the the what was happening on, you know, in this part of the world that hardly anybody knew where it was, you know, that this kind of thing.
And uh and photography, of course, is very, very good at that.
Bringing that world into our, into our living rooms or into the gallery walls.
It's always strange to see work like that in a gallery, and you've got to get that in an in an art gallery setting, and you've got to get that balance right.
But uh, I I suspect it wasn't because it was a the photograph itself was uh you know, it it didn't necessarily need to be constructed beautifully or anything.
It was that I'm sure it was the subject matter.
Although McCullen, of course, famously said when he was um uh accused of um beautifying war, he would say, Well, what do you want me to do?
Take a bad photograph.
And because he knows that he knows that um the way to engage people is is to make images which which work, you know.
And then if you've got some very strong subject matter on top of that, then people are going to engage with it, they're gonna look at it.
Of course, that's the way you draw people in, isn't it?
And especially in this day and age, when we have no, we, you know, we have such a short attention span.
That that is very, very important.
And I'm very well well aware of that.
And I'm not photographing famines or or death and destruction.
So I have to work doubly hard um with the way that I structure my pictures and and and the subtleties within it to expect anybody to spend any time looking at it.
So that, you know, but I also know, Matt, that I'm not trying to change the world and I'm not I I know that my audience is relatively small.
I'm not I'm not like I was when I first started out where I thought that, you know, grandiosely that I was doing something important, because I don't think I am anymore.
I think it's just, you know, there are some people out there that like what I do, and I'm I'm eternally grateful for that.
And never a day goes by when I don't think how lucky and fortunate I am to be doing what I've done and and you know, and to be asked by people like you to go on a big, you know, to chat about myself like this, um, you know, for an hour or so.
So here I am.
I'm very lucky.
I'm a very, very lucky boy, but it's been it's been a struggle.
It's it has been difficult.
And uh so I was just thinking, just going back a little bit, because something popped into my mind about um spending time with your work and not just making more and more and more of it, is you know, we hear about novelists, for instance, who are, you know, they they travel around on buses and they listen to conversations, they look out of the window and they're getting real life uh experience, which then they go home and they they close the door of their their office and they write a novel, which is based on this thing.
You know, it's not you know, Marcel Proust may have been able to write a novel in bed, but most people are actually most people are actually going out and and and experiencing the world and bringing those experiences into the work that they're writing about.
And I think, you know, photography isn't much different from that in a way.
Um we have to go out and we have to collect information, and then we have to come home and we have to kind of write that novel in a way.
Although I absolutely don't see myself as a storyteller, by the way.
I'm I'm uh I do bang on about this, but but I I think that I think the word storytelling within photography is so bandied about these days, I don't know if it means anything.
Everybody says, Oh, I'm a storyteller.
And I think, well, I'm not I'm not really sure you are, actually.
Um and and I don't really know what that means anymore.
Um so I I'm I'm interested, I don't I don't know what I am, and obviously uh, you know, my last my latest book, Fashion, intentionally doesn't go anywhere, it just um goes in a circle and ends up where it begins.
And in fact, the final picture in Good Morning America Volume 5 will absolutely refer back to the first picture in volume one, so it hasn't gone anywhere.
So I'm not I'm not it's not like a linear story as such.
So forgive me if I'm you know being I just just something that I I find is a little bit I I'm a it's a bit tiresome for me.
Like everybody's a storyteller these days, and I'm not sure that's true.
Now we've just lost half our audience.
No, I agree with you.
I think I I think one thing I've learned um even in the recent Chico week, which I can't stop talking to people about, um, probably to the point of boredom, but is not putting these, not having this, like feeling this gravitas and this self-importance of putting labels on things and telling people you're like this poet and you're trying to tell this story.
And because you know, I I went in there having this specific narrative and specific specific more like an expression that I wanted to get across in the images, you know, and was just saying, like, just chill, chill the fuck out a little bit.
Like you, it's it's okay, just have nice photos and figure out where they go together and just appreciate the photos for the photos and find your own voice within that.
I think we hide behind these words and these phrases too often.
And I I think we can just if you really analyze what a lot of people say in these situations, it's totally meaningless.
It's almost like what you think you're supposed to say.
Uh but but you're right.
And I I of course, I know that if I present because I do, I I work in sequences, but I also uh, you know, I I enjoy I think I'm still making singular images that one could take out and put on a wall or just look at on its own.
And yes, within all of those images are stories.
I mean, I accept that because but because I'm not revealing everything or too much, then what I'm interested in is how that sparks the imagination of the viewer and how each person can take it in their own way, which is you know, really going back to the history of painting, or particularly abstract painting, because that's exactly what that does as well.
You shouldn't ever tell somebody this is what this work is about.
Yeah.
Yes.
And so I'm always I'm always really vague, but that's not because I necessarily can't do it, it's just because I don't want to do it.
This whole idea of captioning is something that I'm I'm sort of having a little bit of a tricky relationship with at the moment, particularly with Magnum, because of course if I put pictures in Magnum's uh live uh picture library, then I'm supposed to, of course, I'm supposed to give as much information in the keywording as and you know, tell you otherwise I'm never gonna sell that picture to a magazine, am I, if they don't know what it is.
So it's it's uh it's a bit tricky.
But um, you know, we're we are I I think we're just different people to different audiences.
Our work just changes and you know, according to who we're targeting it it at, and it's not it's not rocket science after all.
And you know, I I've been asked a couple of times to do other podcasts for specifically uh for street photography podcasts.
And my immediately I say, Well, I don't think I'm a street photographer.
What do you think about that?
And then they come back and say, Well, you know, that's fine, and we're we're inter, you know, but we're interested in that other approach.
And and I'm and then I go go off on one about these labels and not wanting to be categorized as something or other, you know, it's it's just I'm a photographer, and that's what I am.
And um so these words I think can often tie us down.
So I'm happy to go on a street photography podcast, by the way, but that's not what I would class myself as, although I work outside on a street.
So what does that mean?
I live on a street.
Yeah, I I have a really tough relationship with any label.
Um, even like things like I have this argument with my mum about swear words, and granted, like there's a time and a place for for swearing, especially around children, and I agree with kind of like this societal construct that we we want to kind of outlaw swearing in certain situations, but they're just words, and we we place so much like weight on labels and words and identities, and as soon as you start doing that, you end up pigeonholing yourself and you end up kind of performing to those labels, and then it becomes a status game, and it's just like it's all just nothing, it's all just arbitrary letters put together.
And I don't know, maybe I'm going into something that's a little bit too meta for this conversation, but I I totally agree with you.
I think there's people when they're learning though and they're kind of trying to find their way.
You know, people talk about when people ask me about style and voice, oh it just like it's so trite.
I I don't, it's just too limited.
It's like just go and take photos and take photos.
More's more important is trying to understand what you care about, and that takes a lot of like that takes a lot of inner work and takes a lot of experience, a lot of practice, a lot of failure.
And then the rest just cut comes after it.
So I, you know, I I totally agree with you.
And for you and your images, and the way you you photograph, and you know, there's this storytelling aspect that you do and don't want to kind of have in your images.
I mean, it's inevitable that there's, like you said, there's going to be a story part in your images, and that I love the subtlety that you have, and you you mentioned subtlety earlier.
What are you looking for?
What are you looking for when you press the shutter button and you know you you have something composed, and I know you do things very intentionally and and in a in a much more of a mindful and slow manner?
What is it then you're looking for?
Because I I look at your images and I think it takes me a while to figure out those subtleties and these nuances, these beautiful little um messages that you put in put in the image.
Are you is this like a very intentional for you, or are you kind of like looking for the moment that everything kind of comes together?
I know it's a really difficult question to answer, but can you just kind of give us an idea of that process of you in your photography flow and and behind the camera, what you're looking for through that viewfinder?
It is a very, very hard question, and I think a lot of it is again is difficult to put into words.
Let's slightly rephrase that because we all know that feeling we get on the back of our neck when we think we've got a really good picture.
Um and sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.
Um I um and often I am surprised by the way that an image will uh work and how it will last.
I think the lasting is really difficult, you know how we tend to have this uh understandable uh opinion that the the last thing we did is the best thing we did, and and and it it I I made a mistake in one of the Good Morning America books putting in a couple of pictures that from a trip I'd finished two weeks before, you know.
And probably looking back, I wouldn't have put either of them in because it didn't this those pictures just didn't last.
Um so I'm looking for um you know, I'm I'm interested um first of all about in the structure of the picture.
So this the structure of the picture that's got to have some kind of balance, and I don't mean in a kind of geometric uninteresting way.
I'm challenging myself to keep reinventing that framing.
But I do have this tendency to work 80% of the time at a certain distance from something, particularly in the States when I was trying to um emphasize my foreignness there by by by standing at a certain distance.
I'm not it's not very intimate work, if you like.
Um so so I've got I've got I'm dealing with the structure of things, and um, you know, and I and and I use that word, you know, this is something that I've learned a lot of things from Stephen Shaw over the years, but Stephen Shaw talks about how uh painters compose pictures and uh photographers structure them because painters can add things, remove things, they can do whatever they like with reality, but we are stuck with it, and so we have to arrange whatever is there in the frame to make that frame balance and work in some way.
And by the way, balance can also be the opposite of that.
So you can also use that framing to make a slightly uncomfortable frame that doesn't look right, but actually is so it and so it's be it it's a little bit difficult to look at.
Um and I like that very much, but I'm it's much harder to do that actually, intentionally so.
And then of course the the content is important.
Um I want to have layers of information.
I try to make these pictures that are sharp right across the frame so that not one there's no one thing in the image that's more important than anything else.
Um so it's again that that were democratic, they're democratic photographs in as much as I'm not telling you what to look at beyond the fact that I've framed it, so you can't see what's outside the frame.
But within that this rectangle, you can look at lampposts, you can look at dogs, you can look at whatever you want to look at, whatever you're interested in, which plays with our preconceptions, our prejudices, all sorts of things, which is kind of interesting.
Um and sometimes there's a degree of decisive moment, um, although generally speaking, there isn't.
Um for all sorts of technical reasons, there's often not pictures of there's not often not people in my pictures unless they're really still, because I'm often on slow shutter speeds.
Um I'm also I'm not very keen on that kind of classic photojournalistic picture of you know person walking through a frame.
I don't, I don't, I try to avoid that kind of thing.
So I think there's um there's a a silence and a stillness in photography, which I really love.
And um so there tends to be nothing moving in my picture.
So I'm not, I'm there's no moving cars.
Um I try not to go out when it's windy because I don't or if I do, then I I tend to stay away from anywhere where there's trees because I don't want trees to be moving.
So it's I mean it all sounds ridiculous, but but I I think for me, if there's all this movement in the sky and so forth, it it takes away from the absolute stillness.
And then it becomes a kind of um a mo it's it's a bit of a cliche, but a moment between moments.
So uh when almost nothing is happening.
Um, so I'm not really chasing the decisive moment where something really important is happening, and look, I must make this picture at this moment or it's gone.
It's actually I'm more interested in trying to elevate the absolutely deadpan and ordinary into something interesting.
Because I know that I know that the very act of making a picture and putting it, even putting it on Instagram, let alone putting it in a book or putting it on a gallery wall, is elevating it.
So, and we can photograph an infinite number of things.
It's overwhelming the number of things out there that one can photograph.
So you're making those decisions.
But I've learned from experience, Matt, that the more uh exciting and interesting the subject matter is in the first place, the more difficult it is to make a picture of that that is actually reflects what the experience of being there.
I remember a long time ago being in a in a car factory, and it was uh an extraordinary place with robots and noise, and it was dangerous and it was smelly, and you know, had all these other, you know all these things that photography can't capture.
And um and actually it was the first time that I'd um first time I'd used a digital camera uh in a in a in that kind of situation.
I I was actually lucky enough to have Murray, my who was then my assistant, with me.
I don't always have an assistant, by the way.
And um uh and and I was looking at the image on the screen in this sort of cacophony of noise and smell and danger, and you know, and uh and I just looked at it and thought, that's terrible.
And I tried to take another and I said, Murray, I think I've just lost all my talent overnight, you know.
And it and he was brilliant.
He just said, no, it's because you're looking at it in the situation that you are in.
You, you know, you can't hope you can't, we and we talked about it later, that we can't make a photograph of something which is so multidimensional because the phot photograph is extremely limited.
And and in the past, of course, when we w worked on film, when I'd worked on film, I would, you know, take the pictures, I would take the film along to the lab, and then maybe a week later I would get some contact sheets back.
So in that week that had passed between the real experience, the photograph that I received a week later, all that a lot of that memory had disappeared because they're no longer in the place.
And so the the um contact sheets themselves become the memory, because photographs are very good at that, the being sparking memories.
So that was that was the reason that that was the moment I think when I realized that, you know, we might chase these really exciting places to photograph, but actually it's impossible to and it's much it's much more interesting or much more uh successful generally to go to somewhere where or be in a place that doesn't really have anything going for it at all because your photograph can elevate it into something, well, at least get to the level of what it was like to be there.
Blah, blah, blah.
So that's it.
I have so many questions.
Yeah, that was a bit all over the place.
I'm sorry.
No, no, no.
It's like um there was a lot of stuff going on in there that I could have gone off in different directions too.
But what is the int what is the intent with the subject matter with which you photograph um in terms of what you know we you talked about stillness and there's almost like this contemplative nature to to your images?
So that I have another question about that later, but what why do you want to elevate a uh banal you know scenario?
Is it just because you kind of uh you think it's more interesting than what people may first look at it?
Or what why where does this desire to do that come from?
Uh well of course I'm not I'm by far and away the the not the first person to do to try to elevate the everyday into something uh you know consequential, in consequential into something consequential, but um I'm just attracted to those places and I think that uh if I don't know, I I wouldn't so I could say that uh I really get excited by the fact that someone is willing to spend time looking at a picture of almost nothing and and enjoying it for its beauty or its or you know, its silence or whatever, or something that they might get from the picture that's difficult to put into words.
Um and it's it's why I think I've drifted further and further away from being a photojournalist, which is where I started, which was all about chasing the moment and chasing something exciting, you know.
And when I years and years ago, when I first started, I was lucky enough to work for a national newspaper, and um and it was always being sent to something where an event was happening, where somebody famous was, where there was it was always the subject was right there in front of you, and there was not much room around it to do anything else.
And certainly that's not what the picture editor wanted you to do.
You had to take the picture of the of what of of why you were there, and I think it's a sort of a uh uh like a little personal rebellion against that, that I don't think you have to be somewhere overtly interesting in order to make interesting pictures.
And um so the first picture in uh volume one of Good Morning America, so uh, which is obviously an important picture because I knew I was going to be making five books, so that first picture is kind of sets out your store.
So it's working, uh it's it's referring to all sorts of things because it's a uh a diverging railway track, which talks about division in America, it talks about um um, it talks about my love of American Westerns uh uh specifically.
But it's also about that idea about going left or right when you are a photographer who walks like I do, that um, you know, you we are constantly faced with the choices of which way do I go now because I've never been here before.
And and I think in the past I would probably get really angry with myself because I clearly chose the wrong way because I didn't find anything interesting and the day was ended and I had to leave.
But nowadays I just don't care about that because actually the the less that's there, the more I like it.
Um so it that's not to say that I'm avoiding spectacular.
Things.
Of course, I'm not.
But it creates a totally different challenge for me.
And I have to remind myself not to be disappointed by it.
You know, I go to Grand Canyon, and I can't make a photograph of Grand Canyon that gets anywhere near the magnificence of being there, the you know, the experience of being there.
So I try to do something else.
I don't don't ask me to put that in words, but I think it's self-explanatory.
Um there's there's a beauty in, you know, we talked about the fast-paced existence we live these days.
So having someone who can show us these imitable but like beautifully, beautifully mundane, if that's not an oxymoron, like the this way of looking at life that is uh that's often gets overlooked, right?
And I think we're all culpable of of overlooking so many kind of the the small everything's beautiful, right?
We just we need more of that, we need, we need more of the like the sensationalism, we need more kind of this external beauty, and we're always chasing more and more and more.
But it's always, you know, what what I think sets you apart from so many other people is that you you bring us back down to the the often overlooked, smaller, uh just as beautiful, if not more, things that we would normally just drive past rather than walk and and notice.
So um, yeah, we're very grateful for that.
That's very kind and thank you for that.
Um it's it's not, you know, I'm sitting here talking to you, and it sounds like I know what I'm doing.
I mean, I'm really wait making it up as I go along most of the time.
But but uh I'd I am, you know, I've made 30 visits to the US, right?
And I've spent two years of my life in total, if you add up all those days.
And and working every day, and the number of places that I've actually been to that I'm supposed to go to, if you read a guidebook, and say you go, you know, this is great, this is great.
I don't go to any of those places.
Um I did go to Grand Canyon, I went to Mount Rushmore, but beyond that, uh very little have I actually been to that I'm supposed to go to because I feel that what's the point in me going there?
Because everybody else is there photographing it, and I'm well, you know, uh, I'm not going to elevate myself to think that I can do anything better than other people, and uh so I'm I'm going to places that aren't necessarily photographed.
And that I'm not, I'm really not putting myself on a pedestal here.
But there's something very pleasant about being stopped in the street and somebody's absolutely gobsmack that you're there in their little town in Nebraska, you know, why on earth?
And you come all the way from the UK to do this, and you've got a funny-looking camera, and uh, and uh it's it's it's a it's a it's a wonderful thing, really, that and very privileged.
I I know that feeling a lot having shot around where I live in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, and so in almost every time, why are you why are you so interested in just like this village in rural Indonesia?
Um, but I feel like the colour of our skin and our accent and uh heritage is almost like a passport for extra access, you know, more you know, there's much easier for us because they welcome you in, or it's someone new and they've come all this way to um, which isn't there's there's such a wonderful uh result in that, I think.
But um tell while we're talking about Good Morning America, let's talk about Good Morning America because it's it's you know taken up so much of your time and a big part of your personal work over the last uh well, you have to correct me, how many years?
Decade probably?
Um 14 years.
Tell I I'm interested in as a as a as a Briton from Brighton and you know uh just like me, you know, outward looking in terms of other cultures and wanting to photograph it.
Where did the Good Morning America concept and idea come from and why did you start this huge project?
Uh well, um I've always wanted to do a long-term uh piece of work in the in the US uh from as far back as I can remember.
Well, certainly um soon after I be became a photographer.
Um, but with you know, financial issues, uh time commitments, because I I taught in a university for 25 years, uh albeit only one one or two days a week, but um it still tied me down, so I couldn't I couldn't do that kind of thing.
And then I left teaching and I um but uh I think the well I know that where it started, and again, it very, very fortunate really, is I remember we were having a Magnum AGM in Paris, and a few of us went to this bar and we were sitting around this table, and we were bemoaning the fact that it was almost impossible to get any funding anymore to do the work that we really wanted to do, you know, in the past, and I'm old enough to remember this, that you you if you were quite good at writing imaginative uh proposals, you could you could write to the Sunday Times and you could say, Oh, I would really like to do this story, and um and it will cost this much money, and they would quite often just give you the money to go, just cover your expenses, and then if they used it, they would give you more.
And uh and and we could uh you know, because there was relatively few photographers about then, and and because there we only had printed media, there was no internet or anything.
It was it would I wouldn't say it was easy, but it was definitely possible.
But these days, you know, there's there's precious few editorial commissions, and if there are, they're not very interesting, and they said, you know, they actually pay less than they did 20 years ago.
So it's really it's really impossible.
And um, so we're all sitting around this table, these uh you know, my magnum pals, and um we're all sort of making work and just losing money hand over fist and trying trying to work out how how this is possible.
Um and um so uh that night was born the postcards from America idea, which began in 2012.
Uh, and the idea was that uh there would be different groups of photographers would go to a place, and we all decided that the US was a good place to do this work.
So, yeah, we were sitting around this table and and and and and decided amongst ourselves that we would like to work in the US, and um and the idea was that small groups of us would go to a part of the US and we would live in the same place in a rented house or something, and um we'd go out uh every day with um local students.
We wouldn't get paid, the students wouldn't get paid, but somehow or other we'd be able to raise, we thought collectively we could raise the money to cover our expenses, which is all we wanted to do.
We didn't want to, you know, but it but it was a huge so the original idea, interestingly, was to pit together, put together um a group of maybe five photographers who didn't get on with each other.
Who would who would are the idea being that at the end of the evening we'd come back and we'd show each other the work that we'd done that day, which is you know quite um uh quite a terrifying experience.
But even more so if you're it's all very well being with with your best mates, you know, in the agency, and you know, I feel comfortable with them.
But showing your work to people who you know really don't get what you do or don't like what you do, and vice versa.
That was the original idea, and then just became too problematic, so we ended up being a bunch of friends doing it.
And I did three, I did three visits uh to the US under the postcards umbrella between 2012 and 2014.
And um and it was great.
I mean it was really, you know, uh the one thing about Magnum is that it really does raise your game.
You know, you are surrounded by some really extraordinary people, and um, and in that kind of very intimate situation, you you can't do anything else other than work very hard because there's some competition sets in, it's inevitable.
And um and I learned a lot from that.
But it it it basically I did I I made some work, some of which went into the um Good Morning America books.
And then um, and I was used to working with local assistants with so I had I had local student, we all had a local stud uh art student with us or photography student with us who would sometimes drive us around or just look after us or tell us where where, you know, if we said we'd like to go to a place like this, they would know where it was.
And then when that all finished, I'd kind of got used to being with somebody in the US.
And so because I didn't have anybody anymore, um, it all cut it petered out for about six months.
And then I did a workshop in uh London where uh and and in that on that workshop was a fellow called Dean Burner, who uh was an American uh uh from Arkansas, but living in Nashville.
He was a very good slide guitar player, he was a session player in Nashville in the country music scene.
And we got on really, really well.
And at the end of the workshop, I just really liked him and I and I thought I could spend time with you.
And I asked him if he would like to accompany me on some trips, and we worked out financially how that would work, and um uh and then he came, Dean came with me probably about four or five of the trips that I did.
Uh and then I think then he got uh in to do an MA at uh uh at Yale, which is great.
Uh uh and I think partially with some of the work that he was doing with me and the chats we were having, I think it was all helping both of us.
And then so we kind of drifted apart and I started to work on my own.
I was much more comf comfortable and confident that I could do it on my own.
Um I don't know looking back why I was so obsessive that I must have somebody with me.
Um because I didn't take I take as many, I take as many risks now, risks now as I used to.
But um but yeah, that's it, that's basically how it grew and grew.
And I think um it didn't take me long before I thought I want to do this for a decade.
I'm gonna I'm gonna really do this properly.
And I didn't really think about how many trips per year I wanted to take or how long they would be in those early days.
Um and I certainly didn't think about going to every state, which I've now done, because at some point I can't just because I had some spare time, I'd counted up the number of states that I actually visited on this project, and it was about 38 or something.
And I thought, well, I'm, you know, I'm a photographer, I'm a collector, aren't I?
So I've I've got to collect them all.
So hence my latest and last one was to Hawaii, um, because it was the most tricky and expensive, and it's all self-funded, so it's quite difficult to uh do this.
And um uh yeah, so that that's the genesis of it, and it kind of grew like these things do.
Uh, you know, with my uh university background teaching background, um I th I I learned that rightly so, students should have some idea of what they're trying to do.
Because I think when you're 19 or 20 years old, just wandering around aimlessly photographing anything, it's quite difficult to you know, not to be overwhelmed by that.
But what I don't think is right is that students should know exactly what they're doing before they even step outside.
So I always think there are two types of photographers, and I'm really simplifying here, but there are the kind of people who work out exactly what they want and then they go and almost like butterfly collecting those photographs.
So I I would put Taryn Simon, for instance, in that bracket.
Um because she she builds a project in her head and then she she does it.
And I'm I'm I'm mean, I'm I'm and that and I am so impressed with that.
But my my brain doesn't work like that because it's just not it's it's not that logical or smart.
And so I tend to work out my ideas by the act of just the simple act of doing it.
And students, I worked, I soon realized, loved to hear this because of course most of us do that.
You know, we we step out and we don't really know what we're doing, or we think we do, but then by the act of doing it, our ideas and the I the word idea is also problematic, but what we are looking for or what we're trying to do it it evolves over time, doesn't it?
And uh and that's okay, and that's absolutely okay, which is why I always say that I collect pictures in the first place, and then I bring them home and I try and make sense of them.
Uh and so if we talk about America a little bit further, um it wasn't long before I realized that um, well, there are huge advantages of being in a place which is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, which it the US definitely is.
There's no language barrier.
And I know this because I I did a five-year project in Poland where there was a language barrier, and that was quite tricky to do in in comparison to America.
And then there's this idea that we think we know America because we've seen it on television or in movies or heard about it in songs.
It's yeah, almost everywhere you go, there seems to be a song that you pops into your head about that place, which is fantastic.
Um but um where was I going with that?
Um that's that's disappeared.
What was I talking about?
Um the familiar and unfamiliar of America.
Yeah, I think I was a bit before that.
I should write things down.
Um don't worry about it.
It'll come back to me.
Um don't worry.
So what is it that uh pieces these five volumes together?
Well, what kind of what is the thread that you know goes through them all if there is one?
And I hesitate to use story and narrative and stuff like that, but what what is what is it that you know, if you to provide a synopsis of this you know, incredible body of work, what would you what would that kind of elevator pitch be?
Well, the first uh the first thing I would say is that it's not an original thing to do, you know, um being uh being a a foreigner in America.
Oh, yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
Sorry, it's back.
I knew you were still thinking about it.
Well, I'm gonna re rewind a little bit, but um I soon realized that uh I now go for three all my trips ended up being three and a half weeks long because I I worked at I thought that that was a good time because I have to get over the jet lag first of all, and then I've got three, I usually three solid weeks of making pictures, and then I start get getting bored, blind, just want to go home.
And uh so and I realized that by bringing that work, so it was about collecting pictures now and making sense later.
That's what I was talking about.
So you got I go there, I went there, I have to think in the past tense now.
I went there, collected pictures, came back and thought about the experience and tried to make sense of all of that.
Um and I I realized that that was a very different uh way of working, uh, or a very it's it's it it's uh it's a it's very precious to be able to do that because if I'm if if you're an American, you are every time you open your front door, you're back in that landscape again.
Every time you turn the television on, you're back in that landscape again.
And there's no respite.
So there was something really important to me that felt really important to be able to go there, make work, come back and look at it quite dispassionately from a sort of distance.
Um, which gets us back to the idea of you know, what we did yesterday is our best thing we've ever done, because I'm less inclined to do that because I'm looking at it, you know, out uh out of context.
Um so yeah, so that was, and so where were where were we going with it?
Now I forgot where we were before.
Well um, yeah, the You were oh yes, you were asking me about where the the the five books and how they relate to each other.
So it's not a particularly um uh original idea for any any uh person to photograph America.
It's the most over-photographed country in the world by a long way.
The history of photography is very American in many in so many ways.
Uh and yet people keep making work there because it's a fascinating place.
Um and it's certainly not unusual for someone from somewhere else, like Robert Frank, for instance.
I'm not putting myself on that pedestal, but you know, he was a foreigner working in the States in the 50s, so and uh and and I'm a foreigner.
Um but what probably is um original is the fact that I'm making publishing the books as a work in progress.
So I'm sort of working it out as I go along.
And so when I started the work in 2012, firstly with um uh postcards from America, and then it evolved into Good Morning America, which was my work solely.
Um uh so it started in 2012.
The first book, volume one, I think came out in 2017 or 2018.
So five, six years have passed since I started.
So I had plenty of work to choose from, but I and but I knew at that moment that I was going to do five books.
Um and so therefore um I can't make volume one about the northwest and volume two about the southeast, because I haven't finished yet and I'm continuing to go to the northwest and the southeast.
I can't likewise I can't make the first book about industry, the second one about landscape, the third one about people, you know, those kind of things.
I can't do that either.
So, because I haven't finished it yet.
So, what happens is the work weaves in and out of different ideas and repeats itself, uh, which is fine.
So the books should read as if here's somebody who is going through this experience and their idea about the US is sometimes shifting, sometimes not.
But um I might even go through periods where my the kind of pictures I'm making is slightly different.
That may be very subtle, but I might that might happen.
So it's I mean, it's probably a hugely pretentious thing to do to make five books over a period of time.
And why would anybody buy all five of those, especially if they miss number one?
That's uh another thing to talk about.
But um I'm really it's it it's such um a privilege to be able to do these, but it's a real challenge.
And you see, now that I'm slowly putting together volume five, which is the last book, I can no longer say to myself, oh, that picture can go in the next book.
You know, you know, this one doesn't quite fit, so I'll put it in the next one because there isn't gonna be a next one.
So now I'm realizing that I've got to kill some of my babies, uh, you know, but my best friends, and uh because they're just simply not gonna go in.
I've got far too much work to go left over to go into volume five.
By the way, each each book that comes out uh can go right to the can select, I can select pictures from right from the beginning of the work in 2012.
So I try to put a picture from 2012 in every book.
So it's not it's not like when volume one came out, all of the work I'd made before that is now dead, and I've got to start again.
So I'm I'm constantly I even came I even thought that at one point that wouldn't it be fun if I put the same picture in twice, you know, one maybe one in volume one, one in volume four, or something, in a different kind of context to sort of show that how a picture might be read according to where it is in a sequence.
I didn't Do that because in the end I I just thought what's the that's just be a bit being a smart ass and what's the point in that?
So so I didn't do that, and I won't do that.
But um and I I so I'm coming to the end of volume five, and I of course I'm thinking to myself, do I have to come to some kind of conclusion?
And uh and then I realized that no, I don't really.
And that's not just an easy way out.
It's the fact that you know the US, as we know, is going to continue a pace doing whatever it does without me photographing it.
So what's you know, so what any conclusion that I might come to has to be a deeply personal thing, more about me than about the country, I think, actually.
I can't do anything else.
Um, I know what the last picture is, and I know that it will circle back to the beginning of volume one, and I'm excited about that.
I think conceptually it works, and it and it is absolutely uh emphasizes this idea that it's um it's a very deeply personal um connection.
Uh and it's not and and that that is its prime, it's it's it's really about my experience and my connection with the place rather than anything else, of course, because they're photographs, they give you all this information.
So a an historian can look at those pictures, or uh somebody in politics can look at those pictures and see very distinct, different things that they can attach themselves to.
But I think for me it's got it can only ever be I'm gonna use the word poetic experience because that's uh essentially that's it's it's you know, what is it about?
It's a it it it if it's about anything, it's about the US um since Obama was elected for the second I started just before Obama was elected for the second term, and and I'm finishing where we are now with Trump in his second term.
And a lot of water has pup passed under the bridge.
And it's so it's a slice in time.
I hope it will become an important historical document with time, but all photographers think that that's that's something else.
And beyond and everything else, I've had a fantastic time doing it.
I've really enjoyed doing it, and I'm I'm I'm I'm kind of proud of the work.
And um let me tell you something else as well, which I'm I I think you're you know, is is so I did I went you've just come back from Chico, I was there last year, and um and uh I I was one of the reviewers and one of the speakers, and I I remember we had to meet in the hotel.
Oh no, we were supposed to meet all the um all the reviewers were supposed to meet at lunchtime to have lunch together and get to know each other.
Those most of the Chico crowd know each other anyway, but for us outsiders.
Uh anyway, I was I didn't make it to lunch because I wanted to, I was in Wyoming, I wanted to make pictures and so forth, so I decided I'd meet them in the evening in the bar before dinner.
So I was walking through the hotel to the bar at the back, and I was so terrified, Matt.
I was just thinking, I you know, because some some of the people I really, really respect in American photography were in that room, and I knew they were.
And I was thinking, nobody's gonna know who I am, and I'm gonna be standing in the corner, Billy nommates, you know, and I'm just gonna feel so awkward and just want to go home.
And and and I walked in, and um not only did people know who I was and recognize me, but what was much more important to me was that all of those people had all my Good Morning America books.
They had them at home, which is just and and saying to me that they thought they really thought that what I was doing was important, and because and they were able and that as a as a foreigner, I was perhaps able to no, I was able to see some see their country in a way that perhaps you they they couldn't.
And and you can imagine how much that did for my confidence.
I mean, it was just I I suddenly really deeply believed in what I was doing, whereas before I wasn't really sure of it.
13 years later, yeah.
And this and this this comes from somebody who for so many years had had a very deep suspicion of photographers who thought they could get under the skin of another country just simply by spending a lot of time there, you know, assimilating themselves, you know, learning the language and so forth, and therefore you can get you can become part of that culture, you can become part of that place, and you can say something really profound about it.
And I I've never believed that, but I did my work in Poland over five years, The Sound of Two Songs, and the response I got from that, from Polish people, was very much the same response that I was getting from these Chico boys and girls in in Chico, um, was that maybe a foreigner can bring something something new to the table in in a way that a local person can't, and also I realized, and this is really important, that that struck me when I was doing the work in Poland, that um it's it's much easier for someone like me from the outside to do a kind of a survey of a place than for a local person to do it.
Because if, and I know this because it's I have the same problem when I work here in the UK, we we understand so much about what we're looking at, we get we get interested in details.
And I don't mean, you know, a fly on the end of a stick or something, but I mean we are we generally speaking, work that comes out of anywhere by a photographer from that place tends to be very specific about a certain subject.
And I'm not really doing that.
Mine's about everything and anything.
Uh and and I think that that I I've tried to do that in the UK and I just can't.
And I always I so so what I might say to very simply illustrate that is that if I see a big pile of rubbish on the street outside, I know that it's there because the the bin men are on strike.
If I see that somewhere else and I don't know that information, I might be looking at that pile of rubbish as a thing of beauty, for instance, a very different way of looking at it.
And um, so that explains why I think that uh that's that's how I managed to keep going through all these years and keep going back and spending all this money was that I felt I in deep inside I felt to myself that there is a point to doing this, there really is.
And then when I went to Chico and heard that, well, it was everything I could possibly have needed to inspire me to finish.
Wow, that's that's wonderful.
And it's also also quite inspirational to know that even someone like yourself is fueled by fueled with or you know, embodies a lot of self-doubt, even when they're doing the work and after the work, and um, you know, it's it's almost a British thing as well that we we're kind of uh almost too humble in that respect or self-deprecating.
But um, yeah, it's kind of refreshing to hear that even when you're invited as a reviewer and a keynote speaker, that you still, you know, we just want I've talked about this all the time, even at Chico, we just want to be loved, you know, essentially at the end of the day.
We use we use our photography as a as a conduit for that, like like my photography and you like me, and I just want to be validated and and belong in this world where where I see other you know heroes of mine in.
So yeah, it's just kind of kind of nice to go on.
I I was gonna say that I've I've always been someone who quietly gets on with it.
I've never been a networker, I don't go to parties, I don't go to openings, I don't like any of that stuff.
And and then so I I make a book and it amazes me that by somehow or other it crosses the Atlantic or goes somewhere else and it it reaches the homes of people I know and respect in in our wonderful industry, for want of a better word.
So, you know, it's the way that these things filter through without you even doing anything.
Uh I mean Instagram, which I'm quite active on, is is um is is I suppose pushing myself out there.
But it took my daughter several years to insist that I did it because she said it'd be really good for your career.
You know, you've got to do this.
I'm not interested in that, I kept saying.
And of course, now yeah, when we start when I started Instagram, by the way, uh Chili, my daughter, she was she was going into my archive and she was posting pictures on my behalf, and and I thought that's great, she's connecting with what I'm doing, she's my daughter, that's lovely, and everything.
And I agreed to give her a penny for every follower that I got.
And by the time, and very quickly I got 50,000.
I had a 500 pounds.
I just thought, I'm I'm not doing this anymore.
I'm gonna take over and do it myself.
Can't afford this.
Um, yeah, you're you need to change your profile photo as well.
This is the mark power of 10, 20 years ago, I think.
Um, you know, it's handy if I ever went on uh a dating site, you know, that's what people do.
Um obviously I'm taking the piss.
But uh we don't have enough time, but um, I wanted to touch upon um briefly what the Chico fellows said about why they felt that work was important uh for for them or for America or for the photography world.
What was it about what you were doing that they felt was important?
Um I think it's the dogged determination to just keep going with this um through thick and thin.
Um just just I mean it might be as much as anything, Matt.
The fact that I'm just not asking myself why I'm doing it.
I'm just doing it because I can't think of anything else to do.
But I I think that's that would be a little harsh on myself.
Um I think it is we all know as we all know as photographers how difficult it is to go out the front door and start making pictures.
I know, you know, it it gives you the highest of all highs, but it's a it's hard work.
And, you know, believe me, I would much rather do the washing up or hoover the stairs than go out and take pictures.
I'm you know, I really don't I find it real a real struggle, and I'm not alone in that.
Um, because it it is, you know, it's it's physically demanding, but it's also mentally very hard.
And uh which is why the the three and a half week period is is like my maximum.
I remember Matt Black.
Um, you know, he was going out off for nine, ten months at a time.
And I just said, how do you do this?
I mean, how how can you possibly keep yourself active and interested for such a period of time?
And um he said, Well, I don't work every day, and sometimes I take time off and I go to the cinema and stuff, or I go swimming or whatever.
Uh, I'm paraphrasing, but I'm sure he does something.
And uh, but he also says that what it is is it's a routine.
And he said, You do a routine as well.
You get, you check into a hotel, you download your pictures or whatever, you go to bed, you get up in the morning, you're out at first light, you go out and you have your adventures, you come back to a maybe the same hotel, maybe a different one, and you do the thing, same thing over and over again.
So I don't do much emailing uh while I'm away, I just concentrate on working.
And it's that very simple, uh repetitive nature that that gets you through it.
Because I know that when I'm at home, my life is so much more complicated.
There's so many other things to do.
Which is, I think again, is about why for me it suits me going somewhere else, you know, to do the work rather than outside my front door, which I really struggle with because I'm always thinking, oh, the weather's wrong for me, you know.
I can go home and I can read a well, I can do something, I can, oh, the stairs need hoovering, I'll go and do that.
Yeah, too easy.
What um so now you're putting the the final touches on uh volume five.
Um when is that but when are we gonna see that in the world, do you know?
Uh well we're supposed to be on press in June, but um it's it's it's meant to have three or four texts in it, so I'm still negotiating that um you know by other people, so there are other people involved all of a sudden.
The texts are important.
There's a QA with me, but there's also a political text.
Yes, yes, because I think there hasn't been any text other than little bits of introduction that I've written.
Um so I I wanted it to be, you've got to put that work in context because I realize that if somebody picks up these books, they'd have to pick up volume five or the whole set, but if they pick them up in 20 years' time, not understanding what's going on in the world at this moment, it's going, it's gonna what how's it gonna be looked at?
How's it gonna be read?
So you just really do need, I feel you I need somebody to write a text, for instance, about what's happened in the US and in the world, but primarily in the US since 2012 when I started.
Um and then eventually, I I think probably a little down the line, there will be an uh Stu and I, Stuart Gost is and I are talking already talking about making one book later on, maybe four or five years down the line, which really takes the best of all five books and mashes it all together into something else, and maybe some unused pictures as well, because I know from experience the pictures that you overlook at the time come back with a vengeance later on.
Um and so I I I can see that happening, and in that case, we can just use the same text in that book as well.
So tell me what the next few years looks like for you.
I mean, as a Magdam photographer, and you know, arguably, I'm sure that kind of world is you know struggling be just because of the world we're moving into.
Um what is there more books?
Are you gonna turn attention to home or are you gonna have just a few years off?
Or what what is the what is what's the next few years look like for you?
Yeah, I'm I'm tired at the moment.
I'm feeling tired, um, but I don't I don't know what that is.
I think you know it's maybe just getting a little older.
And uh I definitely want to make some work uh here in Brighton, where I live.
Um I got my I shouldn't really say it, but I got my bus pass.
I've got free travel.
I've got free travel on buses, and I thought, well, you know, I've got a bus stop outside my house.
I can just get on a bus, go somewhere, go for a two or three hour walk, and wherever I end up, get a bus home again.
So and so I don't have to park anywhere, I just go on walks and I can, you know, explore my city where I've lived for most of my life, 40 or 45 years.
Um uh and I of course I've photographed it here a little bit, but not not intensively.
Uh so I very much want to do that.
And the other thing I'm doing or trying to get off the ground is a lot is a big project in China, which is um very ambitious because it's tricky working in China and logistically, it's not like going to the States and just renting a car and going.
It's you know, you have there's so many things that you have to consider.
Um that said, it's a lot easier to work there than I thought it would be.
I don't I'm not being arrested every five minutes, but I haven't done a great deal.
But I I the idea is that I do a series of workshops in China, and then that pays me the money to get out, it pays me for me to get out there, and then the money that I earn in the workshop, I just plow into making the work.
So I stay on an extra two or three weeks afterwards.
And I'm not trying to do a good morning China kind of ambitious thing like that, but it might be something that might cross a three-year period, perhaps.
Have you seen it?
It feels to me like uh, you know, we all think we know what America is, but China is this real closed book.
We don't really we see these mad things on Instagram, that half of which we don't even know if they're real or not.
And um, and then and and I think I think we I for one want to know, I want to explore it a bit, but I'm very interested in the modern China.
I'm not interested in going to uh a little place in the mountains where nothing's changed for 300 years.
I want I want to go to the cities where things are being built fast and because it is phenomenal.
So we'll see if that comes to to anything.
So one is one is really easy because it's outside my front door, one is the other's logistically tricky.
Well, you might find you might find photography in China easier than fight photographing in Brighton, given how close you are to to the city, and you know, as what you explained earlier.
But yeah, I mean China, I've spent a lot of time in China and it's it's difficult.
Yeah, it comes with its own problems, I think, because it's so exotic and I'm so aware that you know how do I avoid this these cliches of the you know the the the the Western looking at this country, you know, through western eyes, uh with the precious little knowledge I have of it.
It's it's tricky.
Is that the way you want to move though, in terms of um, you know, getting money for your photography?
There's no money in photo books, that's just I mean, uh obviously you you probably get some, hopefully you get decent money from, but it's not like life-changing stuff, right?
Um, we just do it for the love of doing it.
And uh you know what how do you see the the photography industry changing, or how how has it changed in terms of photographers earning money for photographing things?
Because it's obviously changed a lot since you first started, and it's only changing faster day by day, right?
So, you know, you're obviously concerned about that.
Maybe you are, maybe you aren't.
But what what is are you exploring different avenues now on in the business side of photography?
Um it's a struggle day to day, to be honest.
I don't get much work anymore.
I don't really understand why that is, but I think a lot of people are saying the same thing.
Uh I I to be honest, wanted to avoid doing workshops at all all costs because I taught in the university for 25 years and I just had had enough.
But now I'm realizing that it pays me decent money for it's very generally pretty unstressful.
I don't really have to do too much advance preparation for it.
Um and and it always makes me feel good at the end when people are, you know, happy, well, hopefully happy with the what they've how far they've got.
It strikes me that everybody's on their own little ladder and everybody wants to just climb up one or two rungs during the week of a workshop, and so everybody's at different levels, and you have to accommodate that.
But um I've got plenty of experience as a teacher, so it's it's not really a too tax.
I can talk about pretty much anybody's work.
I can there are I have tricks to give myself a few more seconds to think about what to say, but um but but um but yeah, I it it it it's I think I'm sort of reconciled to the fact that it's it's probably what I'm gonna be doing.
I also like the way I like during COVID, I did a couple of quite intense online workshops where nobody uh that I was teaching was able to go anywhere else apart from mouse out their own front door.
So we had these people in the workshop from all over the world who were making work in their local vicinity and talking about it.
And it was probably the best workshop I've ever done.
I think actually workshops work very well online.
I mean, there's nothing beating, you know, actually being in the same room as someone, but they can work, which of course means you can do teaching from anywhere, you know.
So I've got a camper van, I could be in the mountains in Switzerland.
If if I've got a a signal, I can I can earn a bit of money for an hour and a half.
And I do online mentoring and so forth.
The the the what it it it seems clear to me that because everybody sees themselves as a photographer these days, um, which is fine, and I think that's great, but everybody is also very keen to learn.
Well, most people are very keen to learn and and go up that, you know, their their respective ladders a little bit.
And so you said earlier I could run a workshop and I could send it out like that.
It's not quite as easy as that, but but there is such a demand for for teaching.
And uh you think you think that these days everyone just learns on YouTube, but there's still such a It you know, a growing demand for learning with with humans in person or or or online, but you know, in that live scenario, so which is which is really, really nice to know.
And and and the way that the student, the participants all tend to stick together afterwards, they make a little group and they support themselves, each other for years to come.
That seems to happen every time.
The only thing I regret, and I don't know the way around this, I mean Alec, Alec, so uh uh Alec has done a you know, he does his in-person workshops in his house now sometimes, and he managed to get some sponsorship so one or two or three people can come for nothing.
And it's sort of a little bit heartbreaking that the workshops workshops generally are a bit expensive.
Like you just come back from Chico, it's expensive to do it.
And um and so it does cut out so many people from the equation who quite often would be the most interesting people, you know.
But um you know that's why it's awesome to have you on the podcast for people can watch and listen to your advice for free.
But um, that's the that's the best we can do for them at this stage.
Yeah, I've got nothing else to say.
That's it.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, I've touched barely any of my notes.
There's so much I we could talk more about, and maybe I say this to everyone, but I'd love to to do another conversation or meet you in person or have you in our book club because there's so much like I want to talk about, especially with your books.
11 books, you know.
We haven't even touched upon those.
We touched upon Good Morning America a little bit, but 16 books.
16 books, Matt.
16.
I do apologize.
That's I will fire my my research assistant if I had one.
Um but yeah, it just goes just goes to show how how fruitful these types of conversations are, but how um, you know, how how hugely important your journey in photography is to uh other people as as hopefully as much as yourself.
So thank you for taking the time today.
Uh, I'll let you go and enjoy your Tuesday morning in the UK.
But um, yeah, I just want to say thank you and um wish you the best of luck with volume five.
I will be one of the ones pre-ordering it, I'm sure.
And um keep up the incredible work, it's uh it's a true inspiration.
Oh bless you, Matt.
I mean, uh thank you.
It's been a pleasure speaking to you.
And if you want to do this again, because we you said you like the shipping forecast, we haven't even talked about that.
So don't even touch upon it.
I I think um well, I run a book club, and you know, without putting you on the spot to invite you now, I'd love to we do photo book reviews and I have the shipping forecast at home and it's on my list to sit with my community for an hour and talk about this wonderful book.
So that might be a nice little opportunity to get you on for 10-15 minutes to say hi and talk about the book.
So oh, easy.
I'm I'm you know, I'm um easy, uh honestly, no problem.
That'd be wonderful.
Uh and until then, thank you so much, Mark, and uh see you see you again soon.
Are you off to the beach now?
No, I'm off for dinner at 6 p.m.
Okay, all right.
You take care.
You take care too.
Thanks, Mark.
Bye bye, bye everyone.
Bye, bye-bye.
If you stayed with this conversation until the end, there is a good chance you're someone who values depth, reflection, and taking time with ideas rather than just rushing past them.
That's the spirit behind my Voice Alchemy Book Club.
It's a monthly space where photographers and creatives alike come together to sit with meaningful work, uh, photo books, books, essays, and long-form projects and talk honestly about what they're seeing, feeling, and trying to make themselves.
It's quiet, it's thoughtful and intentionally human.
There's no pressure to perform, no need to have answers.
We're all just figuring it out.
It's just time and space to reconnect with others, your work, and your thinking.
So if that sounds like something you would benefit from, you can find more information via the link in the notes and the description below.
Hope to see you there.