Archive for the 'in the spotlight' Category

GIGI GIANNUZZI….at the “Kibbutz”, Brooklyn…December 8, 2008

I was just getting ready to write my goodbye to Gigi Giannuzzi , founder of Trolley Books, who died Christmas Eve of pancreatic cancer at a very young 49….but I just cannot do it….So Candy and Eva went back through the Burn (Road Trips) archive and found this story I wrote….Nothing I could write now would be better than this one I think…Gigi was definitely a man after my own heart..Crazy, irreverent, and passionate about presenting in a special way the work of great photographers…The man loved books and the man loved photographers and the man made it happen….I love you Gigi….

EXCERPT FROM THE BURN ARCHIVE……….DECEMBER  9, 2008

nobody loves books more than Gigi Giannuzzi….he loves them so much that he publishes instinctively and without any thought of “commercial appeal”…he does not do “readership tests”….he goes by his gut and then scrambles like a madman to try to sell enough of his little masterpieces to be able to go on to the next….

Gigi claims he was “conceived in Sicily,  born in Rome, and never grew up in Turin”..if you know Italians, Gigi pretty much has it covered..Trolley Books, his mastermind and “baby” has for ten years created quite a stir in the publishing world…”unconventional wisdom” comes to mind when i think of Gigi….and his authors form a prestigious list..

Philip Jones Griffiths, Carie Levy, Stanley Greene, Nina Berman, Deirdre O’Callaghan, Tom Stoddart, Alex Majoli, Paolo Pellegrin,  and Alixandra Fazzina just to name a few…please go to: trolleybooks.com to see Gigi’s entire lineup of artists and titles….

you may not find Trolley Books everywhere….like many fine objects, you have to look to find…and Gigi is the first to recount the trials and frustrations of the book publishing world….if you wanted to go into a business , you would not try to make photo book publishing your business…nope, only love gets you to do what he does…

last night Gigi slept on my sofa…but, not for long….he stayed up late and got up early..my kind of guy!!

click here to see the original post.

GIGI BIO

Source: Photo District News

Gigi Giannuzzi, the founder of Trolley Books and publisher of innovative and award-winning photo books by Philip Jones Griffiths, Paolo Pellegrin, Alex Majoli, Stanley Greene, Carl De Keyzer, Nina Berman, Alixandra Fazzina, Thomas Dworzak, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin and others, died December 24 in London. Giannuzzi had announced in June that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was 49, according to Hannah Watson, his longtime business partner in Trolley Books.

Born in Rome, Luigi Giannuzzi (known to all as “Gigi”), grew up in northern Italy. He worked as an editor at the book publisher Allemandi, but left in 1997 when he got a chance to collaborate on a catalogue of Nan Goldin’s work. Its success inspired him to launch his own company, West Zone, but after five years he ran into financial trouble. In 2001, he found financial backing to start a new company, based in Venice. Trolley got its name when Giannuzzi used a shopping cart to push his book proposals around the floor of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Watson says. In its first two years alone, Trolley Books published such award-winning books as Alex Majoli’s Leros, Chien Chi-Chang’s The Chain, Carl De Keyzer’s Zona: Siberian Prison Camps, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s Ghetto, and Thomas Dworzak’s Taliban. Giannuzzi published the first books of many photographers, including Deirdre O’Callaghan, whose book Hide That Can won an ICP Infinity Award, and Carrie Levy’s 51 Months. In 2005, Trolley Books won a citation from the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards for outstanding contribution to book publishing.

I tasted Donna Ferrato’s blood. Pretty damned salty, just like Donna of course. Donna had just cut herself opening a bottle of Chardonnay during the upcoming interview. Her wrist and thumb now covered in blood. “David, dammit, taste MY blood” was the missive, the command, the attack, the sweetness. So, I did. I mean, we share the same birthday, so it seemed like the thing to do. Gemini all the way. That pretty much sums up all that I know about Donna. A woman on her own terms all the time, a champion of women’s rights and all human rights, the biggest man eater in the biz who has always been the hottest girl in the room. She won’t mind right now that i used the word “girl”. For she is not a man hater. Quite the contrary. 

Yet forget her espíritu de la alma… Donna makes images. Powerful ones. Pictures that mean something, were made FOR something. Donna bites, fights, and claws at society with her work. She wants stuff to change. Mostly she wants men to stop beating their wives and girlfriends. She demands we all be aware. “Living With The Enemy” will tear at your heart. Yet she will totally switch gears (or not) to take us into her “other Donna” and take us into the dark sensuous drama of Love & Lust. For sure Donna lives inside, way inside, her work. 

I met Donna years ago on a beach. Along with Philip Jones-Griffiths, Sebastao Salgado, Alex Webb, Susan Meiselas and a host of other “100 Best Photographers”, sent to Australia’s Bondi Beach to begin shooting “A Day in the Life of Australia”. History. We knew it at the time. The beginning of surely one of my “families”. 

David Alan Harvey: We’ve come to hear an original Donna Ferrato story.

Donna Ferrato: You want a story never told before?

Candy Pilar Godoy: A Donna Ferrato exclusive.

DF:  Well, here goes. Ages ago when Rick Smolan was creating his dream team for Day in the Life book series, he wanted the best photographers in the world. He promised they would have fun, shoot however they liked, all expenses paid, free apple computers, cameras, film and cash. I was nothing more than a spit in the bucket so being invited on the team was a lucky break.

DAH: Get famous overnight. It was like the Brat Pack in Hollywood. Everybody got “famous” ha ha.

DF: Yeah? Weren’t they famous already? I wasn’t with an agency nor did I work for National Geographic. For me it was a chance to watch the big guys work. When I say big guys I mean women too, like Susan Meiselas, Jodi Cobb, Penny Tweedy, Mary Ellen Mark.

DAH: Mary Ellen wasn’t there.

DF:  She probably said no. Soon after the first book was a wrap my daughter Fanny was born. From that point she went where I went. The next project was “Day in the Life of Canada”. Time Magazine’s golden boy, PF Bentley taking the group portrait up on a ladder, working with a large format camera, megaphone in hand, telling everyone where to stand. Bentley stutters. I wondered what kind of photographer gets so famous with a bad speech impediment. My curiosity was piqued.

CPG: Uh oh.

DF: So later on, at the bar among the flank of photographers I saw PF Bentley and asked him. “Don’t people get exasperated when you take so long to explain stuff?” He stared hard in my eyes and said, “Yeah.”

“Well, isn’t there a way to cure it?” He says, “Right after an orgasm, I don’t sttttutter for hours.”

CPG:…and you have to see if this is true?

DF: Yes.

CPG: What a smart guy!

DF:  I took him up to my room. He wasn’t lying. For the rest of the night he spoke the Kings Speech.

CPG: (laughter) That’s an incredible story. Classic Donna Ferrato, almost too good to be true. Your personality, your hold no bar sense of being, how do you work that into taking pictures?

DF:  First of all, I really want to be there in people’s lives and so because of that I’m good at convincing people, explaining my case fast, why I want to be there, etc.  I’m not just there to take the pictures and run away. I want to understand what’s going on and most of the time people have to give me permission. I’m 100% invested.

CPG: Do you ever shoot digital?

DF: Sure. I’m using the SONY NEX-7 now. It’s nice but not as fast as a LEICA. The best is film. The proof is in the negatives.

DAH: You still have the same green and red tape on your camera as you did 30 years ago?! ..When I saw her, the main thing I remembered about her other than that she was really cute was her M4.

DF: Leica. M6. In the late seventies, I was getting to know Paris, didn’t know anyone, slept in the parks at night to save money. Custom camouflaged it so nobody would know it was a Leica.

CPG: What made you start taking pictures?

DF: A burning desire to tell stories and have as many adventures as possible. First my girlfriend and I hitched across the plains. I wanted to see things, we had dreams of opening a shoe salon in Key West.

I wasn’t thinking about professional photography. My dad was the most committed person I’d ever seen when it came to getting a picture of ordinary people in every day life. That didn’t mean he made any money at it.

Later when I met my main squeeze, Philip Jones Griffiths, and we made Fanny and then her half sister Katherine came along 9 months behind her, we began shooting each other, Dad, Philip and the girls, and our friends. It was like being on a never ending “Day in the Life” book project.

CPG: Something great about you Donna is that you’re a beacon for women’s rights, yet you’re not a man hater. You love everyone, don’t you?

DF: Is this a trick question? Sure I like men as long they aren’t abusing or holding women down.

CPG: Hearing you both (DAH + DF) tell stories about the past and relive moments is priceless, yet I really get a sense that photojournalism has changed a lot over the years. I think a lot of young people feel that way.

DF: It has. It used to be that media companies made good photographers better by investing in us and encouraging us to follow our nose. The world revolved around photographers and vice versa. Photographers worked like dogs to earn their day rate. Today photographers are completely taken advantage of as if there is honor in working for free. Once photography was a religion. Today it’s business. I try to understand where photographers think they’re going when they take an assignment for a fraction of the conventional day rate. That’s not the way. Photographers must respect themselves and stick together.

CPG: When did it change? When did you see that flip happen?

DF: After 2001 the fad was war and war was the most fashionable thing for a photographer to do after 9/11. I think documentary photography lost its moral compass because it became too obsessed with war and the war on Iraq was built on lies.

CPG: It’s changed so much and now there are new generations coming in, trying to find their place within the medium. What advice do you have for young emerging photographers today?

DF: Find a way to make money. Be smart. If you want to be a photographer, get ready to live on the edge. There are plenty of good photographers concerned with feeding their families and paying the bills. But if you want to break new ground, come up with your own ideas and forget about stablility. Don’t let anyone control your mind.

CPG: Can I ask you about your latest project? Tell us about “I Am Unbeatable.”

DF: Unbeatable is… happening. I didn’t understand it when I started putting it together five years ago. I wasn’t sure how I could make a convincing collection of images that relayed the importance of women leaving abusers sooner rather than later. 30 years ago militant defenders of women’s rights established a comprehensive network of battered women shelters. The grass roots movement did an incredible job of pushing the real question to the forefront – why do men beat women?

The hope was to stop blaming the victim. But I say it’s not good enough anymore. Everyone has to hold violent men accountable, including the women who live with them in state of love or fear or mostly likely both.

CPG: How did it come about?

DF: Last winter the NY Times Lens Blog published images from “Living with the Enemy” and an interview by Jim Estrin. After that an LA woman looked me up to talk about her mom. Her mom sounded like my dream come true, the original “I Am Unbeatable” woman.

Last spring I flew to SF and stayed with her a few days to get to know her better. Margo’s life story exposes why women must reject abuse early in the relationship before the monster is made. She gave me insights about the support women need to leave their abusers, how important it is to see violence and name it for what it is.

After that I started the Indigogo campaign “I Am Unbeatable”. It was a wonderful experience – I am thankful for all the help I got, especially from photographers. And, more emails from women who’ve experienced domestic violence followed. One person had written to me about his daughter back in 2001 when she was just getting involved with an older guy who was controlling her. Everything I heard about him painted trouble for this girl. She had no freedom. He kept getting her pregnant – she wasn’t allowed to be a girl ever. And she had to obey him 24/7. At that time the parents felt helpless because the girl was afraid to tell the truth – how scared she was. She thought it was her fault and she had to make the best of her situation.

This young woman’s story is important on multiple levels. She left him, but he controls her life the way he always has by remote control.

Society is colluding with her abuser.

After a woman leaves, it gets worse before it gets better. But then after it gets worse it starts to feel insanely good. This is also the part I must show, how good it gets when you get the hang out of living without being under the threat of constant rape and violence.

I believe this will change the way people think.

CPG: Is this what you will be showing the public with “I Am Unbeatable”?

DF: Look, nobody should think it’s easy to leave an abuser. Of the total domestic violence homicides, about 75% of the victims were killed as they attempted to leave or after they left. Many women stay because they are scared. They know better than anyone else what he is capable of. First they think they can change him by proving their love is unconditional and they are better than any women he’s ever been with. The meaner he gets she sees more clearly it’s time to leave. The whole time she is hearing him say if I can’t have you, no one will. That’s how they weave their spell. Batterers are deceptive, especially with themselves. The courts make it easy for them to get away with every trick in the book.

This is what I intend to show. Because once you have an abusive man in your life its not just a matter of walking away – you are stuck with him until he is arrested and held accountable for his behavior.

I hope to show the aftermath, the problems with the courts, the police, financial burdens, and the time it takes to look after kids with endless emotional problems.

I’ll move in with them and document everything.

I hope to show that the rewards outweigh the dangers. When a woman becomes unbeatable she will not allow that man to destroy her life anymore. Even if the system fails her, she will persist until she finds the way. My job as a photographer is to expose how negligent our society is and how ignorant attitudes can get innocent people killed.

CPG: Obviously you have done this topic before. You have a lot of experience with it, but how are you going to undertake it for a year or longer and still maintain your sanity?

DF: Do I seem sane to you?

(long pause from Candy…)

DF: You can say no.

CPG: No.

DF: So, what do I have to maintain? Nothing.

CPG: I don’t know. I just feel like it would be so hard. So intense. I’d be a wreck. To be around this kind of abuse, to see it and live it along with these women would be incredibly taxing on your own life and your own emotional and mental health.

DF: Another thing that photographers need to have if they want to do this kind of work is grit… grit from head to toe.

When I’m working in places where there’s been violence, I never know when someone will explode. The difference is where I go there is only one photographer and one family. One on one.

CPG: That’s my point. Its gonna be insane. People need to know and see this abuse, see the face of it. You’re brave for opening the door. For exposing it, giving it a name, and creating a discourse around something that affects so many lives everywhere in the world. It will be so intense.

DF: Thanks. Who knows what will happen. It could turn into a reality show, if everyone collaborates. I want everyone to be real and let the world see their true face. Women, kids, abusers, lawyers, judges. Neighbors too. Only then will it work.

Related links

Donna Ferrato

“I Am Unbeatable”

Interview with Susan

David Alan Harvey: Young photographers are looking towards us to help them find the way. We are struggling with that, but you’ve evolved from a photo journalist at a very early age, and now you’ve become a curator and you’ve been leading the Magnum Foundation. So, I am sure you don’t think you’ve got all the answers, but how do you see the Magnum Foundation and the role that it can play in helping to shape young peoples aspirations?

Susan Meiselas: I think, if we go back to why we started the Foundation (and it was many years of thinking) we were anticipating the crisis that we now are experiencing. I think there were a lot of signs that there was going to be a shift that photographers such as ourselves, people working for the most part in long form and the documentary tradition, would face. We saw that we would no longer have partners for production which were needed to do the kind of work we are still committed to doing. Whether it was the National Geographic (as in your case) or a variety of news magazines, when you were out in the world covering events that were unfolding over time, let’s say — witnessing, observing, following — and trying to make sense of history-making of various kinds… your ability to do so was sustained either through assignment partners or the possibility of reproduction later. So, you invested your time with the belief that there would be a vehicle, and those partners were very strong and essential support.

The founders of Magnum were smart about figuring out very early how to create a network of sub agents so that there was an international framework of exposure and distribution for the work they created. That was a huge gift that our generation inherited from those who invented it, in particular at Magnum, but other agencies formed similar networks over the last decades as well. That international reproduction machine for “second sales” made it possible to work over longer periods of time, with multiple channels of financing beyond the original assignment.

So, how does a Foundation fit in now? First of all, it’s just as important to document the world. That has not changed. And you have an easier means of distribution now with the internet, so the question is how do you generate funds to produce, especially if you can’t easily monetize through the resale of your work, for the most part, or one does with greater difficulty..

DAH: You need sponsors.

SM: You need people who believe that it is still important to see what is going on in the world at whatever level that means. You know, I never thought about it in terms of ‘news’. What we used to do very well was anticipate. I mean, that’s really important to think about. We had to anticipate, because it took weeks or months for publications to prepare to go to print. In fact, even that’s part of the reason I personally never worked for National Geographic. For me, the difficulty of Geographic was that the anticipation cycle was so long. So if I was working on a timely subject, I wanted to see the publication in relation to the production in a closer cycle. And Geographic was so extended; it might be six months or a year after you did the work that you would see it in print. So it didn’t seem optimal or advantageous for the kind of work I was doing at that time. It was a more reflective space lets say.

Now, that’s a very valuable space; to have the opportunity to be more reflective and not have to be as immediate which is what this new medium has created and now demands in some ways. This intensity that we have to produce and deliver and disseminate instantaneously — so that there is no time for reflection. The MF’s Magnum Emergency Fund is trying to create a margin in which photographers can still have a degree of independence to reflect and create work.

DAH: How many photographers have you supported through the Emergency Fund?

SM: Well, the important thing to understand is that it is a nomination process, not an open solicitation. We’d be swamped and overwhelmed and we don’t have the staff. Each year we choose ten international nominators — picture editors, curators, publishers — who propose up to ten photographers each, so we have a pool of potential projects from 100 candidates.

DAH: Are they Magnum members?

SM: One of the nominators each year has been a Magnum Board member and sometimes we have had Magnum members as candidates for support.

DAH: So ten percent of the nominators are Magnum, ninety percent are not.

SM: Yes, but in fact that’s not fixed. It happened the first year, because one of the invited nominators bailed out.

DAH: Yeah, I am just trying to get people the idea that you’re a Magnum member, it’s a Magnum Foundation, but in fact I think the point that’s interesting about the Foundation is that obviously it’s supposed to help Magnum photographers to some degree but you’re supporting a lot of non Magnum photographers as well.

SM: I don’t think we do think of the MF as support for Magnum photographers. I think we think of supporting photographers who share a set of values that Magnum is founded on, but they’re not the only photographers who have these traditions now. But there is a tradition we still stand for.

DAH: Oh yeah, there is certainly a Magnum philosophy.

SM: And there is a sense of values that we want to sustain, and it’s really important because with our principle funder this was a very critical discussion. Could Magnum photographers be or not be nominated? There is no reason why they should be penalized because they are with Magnum, IF they are nominated. So in the first year I think there were twelve projects supported, 3 were Magnum photographers; the second year there were eleven and only one Magnum photographer. This year we have supported 8 photographers and none from Magnum. We have given travel grants to photographers from NOOR, VII, VU’, Getty and about one third of our funds have gone to regional photographers based in India, Bangladesh, China, Kenya, among others. In total 30 photographers so far and about $350,000 all together, with grants ranging between $5,000 and $12,500.

DAH: So how many years is this?

SM: We have now given out three years of Emergency Fund support. During the nomination process every photographer is invited to submit a portfolio and a proposal, and then there is an editorial board that is not from Magnum at all. Three independents, not on the Magnum Board of the Foundation, not within the photography circle, and that’s the editorial board that really makes the decisions to distribute whatever funds we have raised. We’ve given out about $125,000 each year. I actually hoped to double that, but we have not succeeded yet. And I think it could be tough to sustain it. It shouldn’t be, but we haven’t yet been able to find the significant partners or patrons that we need to be able to double the funds. We are trying to come up with various strategies to build interest and partnerships within the media now.

DAH: But isn’t that what we’re trying to think about? Think about ways to make the Magnum Foundation viable in terms of actually taking production and somehow getting it out there?

SM: Yes, but I think what we’re doing is clearly supporting many photographers who haven’t actually worked within the media the way maybe our generation has. And that takes a lot more mentoring than just giving people funds to help create stories to distribute. We’re giving more than just money, in many cases we’re giving them the narrative and editorial support they need, and then finding partners who will publish their work. The MF does not benefit from the publication of the work financially, the photographer does completely, along with their agencies, if they have them in place. But that’s a big piece of work. A huge piece of work that we didn’t really anticipate we would need to do. We didn’t imagine it would be very difficult to find the media to reproduce work that they haven’t had to pay to produce. So we keep on working to find more media partners, such as Time Lightbox, we’re talking to Harpers and the New Yorker… already we’ve seen a lot of publication of the work we’ve supported, so that’s very positive. We also just created a long term partnership with Mother Jones who will feature EF work online bi-monthly.

DAH: You just need more of it.

SM: You need more of it. And I think we have to find more strategic partners who believe in the importance of keeping eyes on the world. I mean that’s the work on my shoulders principally.

DAH: It’s an incredible amount of the work. That’s kind of what I wanted to get at with this.

SM: The point is that you can see very quickly that in this vast array of emerging photographers that Burn is touching and the VII Mentor program is taking under their wings, and we have to together find means and strategies to sustain the next generation into the future.

DAH: Well, yeah.

SM: Though we don’t support each other and when you think about the fact that although the Magnum Foundation has supported photographers from NOOR, VII, and VU’, there is still this suspicion as to why we are doing that. We need to collectively embrace the sharing of values and strategies in relationship to a landscape that is pretty aggressive against all of us.

DAH: Against the whole group, yeah. It’s like four rebel armies that all have the same philosophy, so we ought to get together.

SM: Well sure, and there are definitely differences and there are differences in the way they are organized, different traditions, etc.

DAH: Well sure, and they should have their own marketing.

SM: But there are many more basic values that we share.

The MF Human Rights scholarship of the MF is really different, even though there is an overlap with the EF at times. For example, Karen Mirzoyan benefitted both from the fact that he was nominated by a regional nominator for the EF and then he also became aware of the fact that we had a Human Rights scholarship, so he then was chosen to be a Fellow in that program and was sponsored for six weeks in New York which I think was very important for him. Then he goes to Look3 as part of our Human Rights Program and was exposed to a larger network of photographers there and editors who have helped give some exposure to his work. Or Sim Chi Yin who also was our first Human Rights Fellow along with Karen, and is now in the VII Network. She too became more visible through the MF opportunity. We helped link her to the New York Times who she now strings for in Beijing.

DAH: They’re going to look very good, and the Magnum Foundation is well credited.

SM: And so the point is the way in which somebody, by shining some light on work that’s done and deserves to be known, you know, for me just going back to when I did my first work in Chile and El Salvador with regional photographers, this isn’t anything new for me. The MF is just a different mechanism now in place. The challenge for us all to figure out is who is really interested in the work that we do and will they in some way contribute to the creative production of it?

So for example to me, even what we’re doing now with these photo auctions, trying to figure out if art’s organizations, patrons of the arts, who are very happy to have the product of our labor as a print on their wall, to what extent will they help pay for the process of creating work? Just as you see that somebody really likes what Burn is doing, and now will support an Emerging Photographer’s Grant through your online community, that’s great!

We need more of exactly that kind of commitment to what we do, either support for our process or of course, for our prints.

DAH: Yeah, well we are like you are. We are structuring and ready to change and come up with new and better ways. We don’t have a dogmatic set of rules for how we’re going to do. We try one thing and we try another thing and we’re hoping for stuff to work. At what point in your career, just to take it back to you as a photo journalist turned curator turned Magnum Foundation creator and interested in lots of other photographers besides yourself, when did that happen to you?

SM: I think that was very early. I think when I was in El Salvador in the early 80’s. I don’t think of it as turning, I just think of it as a dimension of work that I do in the same way Martin Parr does a huge amount of curating of photographers books now.

DAH: Ok, so you were always like this?

SM: Well, very early in El Salvador there were photographers all around me and when we tried to figure out collectively could we produce something that related to the civil war there…

DAH: You were the one that pulled everyone together.

SM: I was the one that naturally coordinated the project and saw the value of our different perspectives, which complimented each other to create a historical and collective narrative. Harry Mattison and I worked together on the book and traveling exhibition, El Salvador: The Work of 30 Photographers.

DAH: So you’ve always had that in you then.

SM: Well, that’s thirty years ago.

DAH: Yeah, so that’s pretty much always.

SM: It’s not new in that sense.

DAH: Taking it inside Magnum and officializing it in turns of the Magnum Foundation is relatively new.

SM: Yeah, I believe the Magnum Foundation should be magnanimous.

DAH: Well, I believe the same thing.

SM: And I think what’s complex about it for both of us is also that we’ve been, (and I even need a longer conversation with you which we really should be having now), is in what way we, Magnum, will continue to be exclusive and to what extent we can be more inclusive. In other words it’s not realistic that Magnum can service everybody. I mean what can we do well together and be a beacon for, and to what extent can we be more embracing and how broadly can we embrace. But you know the fact is that it’s a very complicated and shifting environment. And the few last standing small agencies or communities could all go under. Three strong forces surround us all, a declining economic model, a culture of free exchange and an expanding circle of image-makers — anyone with an iphone, etc.

DAH: But you’ve got your own books, your own things, and you’re supporting lots of other photographers.

SM: Yes, I’m not worried for myself. I mean there is the challenge to balance; doing your own authoring work, and what you then do editorially and obviously for me the Foundation is the biggest challenge I’ve faced because it’s not like a book that simply at some point gets done. It’s trying to create something that has continuity and sustainability financially and creatively and engages the energy of other people. So building a team is the most important thing for me to be able to do. To seed the ideas and to have it grow and be relevant by the fact that other people participate in a meaningful way. So that’s my goal. The question is how long is that going to take?

So when you say it’s my Foundation… that’s a little scary to me because I thought I would dedicate some years to try to anchor this, believing that it should exist, and the only question now is, is it going to be viable and sustainable? Will there be a large enough commitment to the MF from outside and within the organization, meaning amongst the Magnum membership, to understand the necessity for it… and fully accept that it isn’t there just to serve them which is very important, and from the broad public, who have to value the contribution documentary photographers with these values still make.

DAH: There will always only be a handful of people, or one or two other people that will ever probably feel the need or desire to put that effort into others. Most people are spending their time working on their own careers. Well, that’s kind of what I want to do with this interview, this little piece, to suggest to people that maybe they could play a larger role.

SM: Yes, there is no question about that. I mean the larger role could be at the level of just ideas about partnerships, whether they be for distribution or production of the work, or it could be contributing directly, financially. It could be suggesting people they know who would be interested in the actual work produced with innovative strategies of exposure, etc.

DAH: Because of the subject…

SM: Yes, thematically. Our vision is to take the work to the streets, broaden the visibility from contained print publications, back to communities or new contexts where it can be experienced and have greater influence.

DAH: Yeah, it seems like it’s primarily solving the problem of just communication because it’s just a huge job. You can only do one relatively simple thing at a time, right?

SM: Yes, I mean you know Magnum has always had this duality of a certain amount of individual authoring, and those authoring partners becoming brands of their own in balance with a very strong brand that Magnum has collectively. And the question is, what do we want Magnum to stand for beyond our individual identities.

DAH: Well to my mind, the Magnum Foundation would be it. In other words, I need stock sales, I need editorial representation, and print sales, and everything for my own career to pay my rent so to speak. But when it comes down to the ideal of Magnum, which is the main thing — like I said I need to earn my living, but if I was just looking at the ideal of Magnum — it would be represented by the Foundation. I see it as a real beacon. Now if that can somehow turn into production…

SM: So yes, that means how do you support thoughtful, critical, substantial work? That thing that you look back on in your own career and are the most proud of having done.

DAH: Well, that’s it.

SM: That’s sort of what we want to inspire and find a way to support. We’re not going to be able to fully support it, unless someone dies and gives the Magnum Foundation a million dollars! You know we would be in a different situation if someone would endow us such that we could really have that kind of stability and focus only on increasing our impact.

DAH: Well, the fact that we are even having this conversation means that you’ve started the ball rolling, right?

SM: Yes. But here is an interesting idea that any photographer could contribute to. We decided that when asked to give prints to auctions for the wide range of art organizations, (everything that we’re expected to support as members of a photographic community and do support with prints), that we would now ask for a small percentage of that auction sale to come back to the Foundation so that the auction print also supports on-going photography.

So, just as an example, we just did one for Photo Review, a small publication, which for years has been dedicated to letting people know regionally what’s happening in photography. Seven Magnum photographers are contributing prints to their auction and 25% of those sales will come back to the MF. It may only be fifteen hundred dollars that we bring in at the end, but it’s a symbol, a sort of gesture and it’s a symbolic act that we need to co-support each other. So whether it’s going to be Aperture or ICP or other such partners, the point is that inevitably, it is the photographer that gives and gives and there is the assumption that we should somehow miraculously be able to continue to create. So we want to be in a circle of relationships like that, building collaboratively new models of sustainability.

DAH: Right.

SM: And I think it’s really important to figure out ways to do that. It’s like, what does the patron want? What do we give the patron? There are definitely things we can do to support patrons.

DAH: Well, the de’ Medici, they supported a lot of people and they got a lot of art out of it. They made an investment and look what happened. It’s still rolling.

SM: We would love to have a circle of patrons that really believe in what we’re doing. So it’s not only a few who are supporting Burn’s Emerging Photographer’s Fund, but it’s a growing circle of people who say this is important, we understand the value of this independent documentary photography with critical eyes on the world and let’s work together to make sure it survives.

DAH: By the way, why did you call it the “Emergency Fund”?

SM: We didn’t mean a crisis like an earthquake or tsunami that needed to be covered. We meant the looming reality, the “emergency” is the challenge we face to sustain the production of quality in depth narrative photography that can inform and inspire global consciousness and hopefully engage paths to action.

Photography can be SO powerful!

Related links

Susan Meiselas

Biography Susan Meiselas

Magnum Foundation

A CONVERSATION WITH CHRIS JOHNS                                                        FIRST IN A SERIES ON “DECISION MAKERS”

Chris Johns was named editor in chief of National Geographic magazine in January 2005. He is the ninth editor of the magazine since its founding in 1888. His extensive redesign of the magazine and focus on excellence in photojournalism and reporting have revitalized the magazine into a timely, relevant read for people looking for deeper insight into environmental and energy issues, world cultures, science and the natural world.

Johns’ editorial efforts have been recognized with 13 National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors in the past five years, most recently for Magazine of the Year and Single-Topic Issue in 2011.

Born in Medford, Ore., Johns began his career in photojournalism when he joined the Topeka Capital-Journal as a staff photographer in 1975; in 1979 he was named National Newspaper Photographer of the Year. In 1983, after three years on the Seattle Times as picture editor and special projects photographer, he embarked on a freelance career and worked for Life, Time and National Geographic magazines.

Johns’ books include “Valley of Life: Africa’s Great Rift” (1991), “Hawaii’s Hidden Treasures” (1993) and “Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa” (2002). He wrote the foreword for “In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits” (2004) and the introduction to the National Geographic book “100 Days in Photographs: Pivotal Events That Changed the World” (October 2007).

Chris was awarded an honorary doctorate from Indiana University in 2010. He studied photography at the University of Minnesota and holds a bachelor’s degree in technical journalism with a minor in agriculture from Oregon State University.

He lives on a farm in Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains with his wife, Elizabeth, and their three children.

David Alan Harvey:  You, Chris, are the Editor of this magazine, of National Geographic Magazine.

Chris Johns:  Pretty shocking development actually.

DAH:  Well, this is the thing. When I met you, you were an aspiring photographer. Am I recalling that correctly?

CJ:  That’s right I met you…gosh you and I met a long time ago. You had come to town on an assignment for the Geographic and you came into Topeka and I think we went over to KU together, didn’t we?

DAH:  Yeah we met at a restaurant in Lawrence, Kansas.

CJ:  That’s right.

DAH:  So you were a student.

CJ:  No no, I was working for Rich (Clarkson)  then. I went to the University of Minnesota.

DAH:  Oh that’s right.

CJ:  That’s where I went to grad school.

DAH:  Ok. So you were working for Rich as a staff photographer at that point, right?

CJ:  Right. I had come over as a summer intern from Minnesota.

DAH:  Were you an intern when I met you, or did you already have a job?

CJ:  No I think I had just joined his staff. You had left Topeka a few years before.

DAH:  You had just joined the staff when I met you and you had an assignment in Lawrence?

CJ:  Yeah I did a really bad job on the assignment and I can’t remember why I was there. Rich was giving me hell about it in front of you, which was probably completely justified but I was mortified at the time. It was a picture I’d taken at Storemont Vail Hospital.

DAH:  Oh my. Well you know we can’t have this entire interview be about Rich Clarkson, although he would love it, but we do  have some parts of our background somewhat similar…there’s some crossover there.

CJ: Absolutely.

DAH:  Midwest universities  and same boss out of college. We both worked for Rich right out of grad school.

CJ:  You finished grad school and I didn’t though.

DAH:  No I didn’t finish either.

CJ:  Oh you didn’t?

DAH:  No I had Cliff  (Edom) as an adviser, remember?  He didn’t know how to get people to do their masters thesis. So there’s like twenty people out there who became significant people in the business, but all of them did not actually get their masters degree.

CJ:  So you’re like me.

DAH:  Same road map

CJ:  Well I’m a grad school drop out.

DAH:  We are both college dropouts. Laughing. No we just didn’t finish our thesis. Nor did anyone in my class. I am waiting for an honorary degree, laughing.

CJ:  I wanted to get to work.

DAH:  Well same here.

CJ: Of course I had Smith  Schuneman…at Minnesota

DAH:  Cliff did a lot with the Missouri workshop, well he invented/created the whole world of photo workshops, Cliff did, Cliff was a catalyst, yet Schuneman was a force in another way. Not better, just different. Same values.

CJ: That’s right.

DAH: Things that get established when your young, getting started, and those things don’t change. Your first hero, your first boss, I mean, you know, nobody occupies those places at any other point in your life, right?

CJ: Well, that’s right.

DAH: Well, ok, so right now, right this minute, you’re the editor of National Geographic Magazine, and yet you are a photographer. I know you as a working photographer. Tell me about this. Now this is a first for somebody who has come right out of the working photographer gene pool and into a position of making decisions. The series of interviews that I’m doing is on the decision makers. Everybody wants to know what the editors of these magazines, these top magazines, are thinking. And so that’s why I am here. I’ve got access to you, I’m going to take full advantage of that, and because the readers of Burn are interested and I’m always interested.

CJ:  Well we are  just snoopy by nature, David.

DAH:  Well we are journalists, we are curious. I think If we weren’t we wouldn’t have this kind of work. But tell me about this relationship between you as a photographer and now as an editor. What does that mean? Tell me about that.

CJ: Well you know I have been editor now for believe it or not seven years and its interesting for me to think about just sort of how my thinking has evolved and I think that the longer I’m editor, probably the more I’ve come to appreciate my roots of a photography creative person. When I became editor of the magazine I had a lot of catching up to do because I’d only been out of the field three years and I’d had a great opportunity that Bill Allen had given me to come in and basically supervise the picture editors at National Geographic and then eventually the last year I did that job, the third year, I also worked with Kent Kobersteen, the director of photography, as well and came under my supervision, but the thing I didn’t have a lot of experience in was of course managing a big staff of contract free lance people and staff people, and I didn’t have a lot of experience in the business end of magazines and then again I was very fortunate that I had John Q. Griffin who was the president of publishing group who really, really helped me quickly get up to speed, especially on more of the business end of things.

DAH:  Business side or the managing side?

CJ: Well I’d say both, but especially the business side. You know, I mean we had some other people helping me a lot on the managing side. You know, and that’s one of the things you learn as a field photographer is if your going to be a successful field photographer, you’ve got to develop alliances really quickly, everyday your building them in the field, and you better be very honest with yourself about what you know and what you don’t know and you just said it a few minutes ago, we are by nature curious, so when your curious, you want to learn, you want learn more, you want more experiences, and I think that was a real advantage. I would make the case that there’s no better training for me to be editor of National Geographic Magazine than to be a field photographer. I can’t think of how I could have had better training in many ways. You become self-reliant. You learn in the field that there is no point in making excuses. Its completely performance based.

You know, you’ve got to get the job done and you’ve got to figure out how to do it, and your going to have to figure out how to do it quite often with the odds seemingly against you. You’re going to be told no a lot. No doesn’t exist in your vocabulary. I mean your pragmatic, you know to not beat your head against the wall, you know that’s not what I’m saying, but you’ve got to take that story somewhere, you’ve got to refine your vision, you’ve got to be trustworthy, you’ve got to be authentic, you’ve got to know who you are, you’ve got to know what your strengths are, you’ve got to know what your weaknesses are, or your going to fail out there in the field, and there is nobody really there to pick you up. I mean, sure, you’ve got a good relationship, and a very trusting relationship with an editor, but its still your baby, and all the other things you’ve done in the past are important to you and you draw from them, but its still the pictures you produce during that assignment or during that personal project, whatever the case may be, and I say personal project for assignment because the longer I stay at National Geographic, just like you did, the more my assignments became personal projects. They were what I wanted to do.

One of the great things that happened to me in school was Smitty Schuneman, my professor at the University of Minnesota, gave me what I believe was a 15 hour class over the course of the year on the history of photography. We went from Fox Talbot to Daguerre all the way up through William Henry Jackson, Brasai , Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O’ Sullivan, Jacob Reese, Lewis W. Hine, clear up to your work, to Ernst Haas’ work, to Don McCullin’s work to Gene Smith’s work. The sweep of the great masters of photography and I had reached a point in my career at the Geographic where you ask yourself well what I am bringing to the table? I’m deeply steeped in the work of those masters. I’m still studying Edward Weston’s pictures.

I’m studying all kinds of photography because I love photography. And then you say to yourself, just over time, it’s a very organic thing, you say, well what am I bringing to the table? Now I’ve been given this gift, this career, with incredible opportunities. How am I going to contribute to this profession, to this craft that I love so much, and feel so strongly about? Where’s my voice? What’s my voice going to be? How am I going to refine my voice and amplify it? Well by extension, that’s what I do everyday as the editor of this Magazine. My job is to find the voices along with my staff, along with Kurt, Ken Geiger, and you, and Nick, and Bill.

We’re always out there, looking for talent, looking for young photographers who’ve got that spark, who’ve got that promise, who’ve got the hunger, and then you say let’s work with them, guide them, not tell me, guide them, council them, support them, and let them develop their voice, like I was given the opportunity to develop my voice. So you know that right now I would say is the great place…

DAH: That’s it. But you’re all alone. You’re all alone in the field and your probably all alone here too in another way.

CJ:  Well what you do, is you’re constantly refining your vision. When I was a photographer it was constantly refining my way of seeing, my way of feeling, my way of transmitting that to film and to some cases into writing too. But we’re by nature visual people. There’s no denying that, lets embrace it. So yeah your alone, but your surrounded by people who…(pause) help, collaborate

DAH:   I mean psychologically, I don’t want to ask the leading question, but out on the field you have to make decisions that are based on the story, based on all that stuff. Based on the animal behavior  in some cases, in your case in particular because you’ve done a lot of street level people oriented photojournalistic work and you’ve also done a lot of natural history work.

CJ: Which I would categorize as photojournalism.

DAH: Oh yes of course fine, I’m just breaking it down, I’m just refining the definition.

CJ: Yeah, sure.

DAH:  Still, your having to make decisions based on place, time, money, and everything else. Now here you are, in this office, elegant office I must say, with an incredible view of Washington D.C., and you’ve got a lot of support, a lot of helpers, still…I would imagine, that like being in the field, even with the support that you have out there, that this job would still be somewhat similar in that you’ve got to make a call.  A lonely call. If you are wrong , everybody points…

CJ:  That’s exactly right. And how do you make a call in the field? Well, the more mature you become, the more seasoned you become, the smarter you become, the wiser. That’s probably a better way of putting it. When your working on the Outer banks David, or your working on Rio, or your doing one of your own projects in Rio, the day’s that you really feel the rush are the days when you feel like things are coming at you so fast, things are happening, and everything that you have ever experienced in your life, is coming to bear that day. You’re in the zone as athletes say. And when you’re in the zone, you’re drawing on all this life experience and what you’re doing, too, is basically following your gut. You’re thinking, sure, but you’re not over thinking. There’s a visceral, gut way of working. And what I’ve learned here is that as you become more confident, as you make mistakes because if your not making mistakes, man your not pushing yourself hard enough.

If you get afraid of making mistakes, you are toast. You’re done. You’ve got to have courage. You’ve got to believe in yourself and the people who you surround yourself with, that you can go ahead, and your going to weigh the options, your going to be decisive, but a lot of its going to be visceral. This is really important because when it comes too intellectual, it becomes too cool. But when it becomes more visceral, and I’m not talking about flying off the handle, but there’s a gut thing.

And you could be looking at a cover, and your going, you know, man that cover, we’ve worked and worked and worked on it, but it’s not right. It’s not there. And I can’t really quite tell you why. Then over time you can probably figure out why, but it goes for a layout, it goes for a lead picture, you know, how we open the ipad, what kind of video we use, and basically what I’m talking about is a refined throughout your life to grieve taste. A lot of what you do at National Geographic is you’re an arbiter or taste. And of course what we want to do, I don’t want to be elitist, unapproachable, inaccessible, but I want this to be an experience of high taste. That you cant get any place else, and of course when you tap into that gut reaction knowing that there are times you’re going to be wrong, admit your wrong, move on, learn. It’s very analogous to being a photographer in a field, and everyday making decisions.

DAH: And even managing people.

 CJ: Every one of us have had assistants blow up in the field, you know. Every one of us has gotten furious in the field. I mean, every one of us has had profound disappointments. Every one of us, David, has had days, if not weeks where you think you may never see a good picture again. You know and I know how low you can be.

DAH: Down in the mud, and the blood, and the beer

CJ:  Yeah. And you and I know how high you can be. And you learn to deal with it. And that’s not necessarily dissimilar to now. The thing I have to do though is, when you’re in the field and your low, you cant be down in the dumps with your assistant, your interpreter, your guide. You can’t be rolling up to somebody’s place to make pictures and start bitching about something. You’ve got to put on the face, and drag yourself out of bed, or whatever it is, and deal with it. You and I both know some of those days when its been so dark and you can barely get yourself going, turned out to be some of the brightest days of your life.

DAH: Yeah.

CJ: So what comes with that hunger, is a sense of curiosity. And what comes with that hunger is passion and caring, and your really wanting to take their photography and their story telling ability to the highest plane they can take it.

DAH: You can’t just want it. You must have it in other words.

CJ: Oh I hear about people who want it all the time. Wanting is easy

DAH: I mean yes people want it (laughing). They may not still want it after they walk a mile in our shoes. Or, they may want it even more..

CJ:  Well people say ” I want your job”…well so what? No I want people who are hungry and are walking the walk. I mean just putting it out there and they really believe in what they do. They care deeply about what they do. And they want to be better. Yet, they’ve got their voice and what they want to do is not be like everybody else, they want to take the voice they have, the experiences of their life, their soul, your life’s experiences, and refine it, and amplify it, and bring it to another level to share. To share what they see, to share what they feel. It’s just this sensational honor. David, you’ve got it. Hunger.

DAH: And you do too.

CJ: Absolutely. Yes, hunger.

DAH: All of us. Deep.

CJ:  I don’t know why.

DAH:  I don’t know why either. I don’t know if we’ve explained anything to anybody but its true. That hunger is the thing.

CJ:  It’s the same thing. It’s this drive. You know, when I became editor of the magazine, the drive didn’t go away, it was channeled in a slightly…

DAH: In a slightly different direction.

CJ:  I still work 60 or 70 hours a week.

DAH:  Well I didn’t think you took this job to take a vacation. I don’t think anybody did.

CJ:  And frankly at age 60 I have probably cranked up more than I ever have because one of the things you start to realize at a certain point in your career…

DAH:  You edit. I mean you edit your life .

CJ: Right. When you’re a photographer you start to realize at some point, in your career, that you’ve only got so many clicks left. You’ve only got so many more times your going to press that shutter, so you better start getting with it.

DAH: That’s so funny, I agree with you one hundred percent, and yet people would look at that and they would smile. I mean that you’re thinking that after you’ve accomplished so many things. And yet your thinking” I better get my act together now”. That’s crazy. Yet I think the same thing.  I mean, its kind of humorous in a way. How many stories did you do for the magazine?

CJ:  Oh, twenty some.

DAH:  Twenty some! How many books?

CJ:  I’ve only done two decent books and I’ve done a few crappy books.

DAH:  Okay, so you’ve got two books that we can talk about and twenty some magazine articles, and at sixty years old your thinking its time to get your act together. Now that is so weird. Nelson Mandela wrote your forward. Amazing.

CJ: I’ve got to do better.

DAH: Yeah, I know the feeling

CJ: I can’t be slipshod here.

DAH: No but yet at the same time, you value time with your family. I’ve seen you with your family. You value time with your friends. I’ve seen that as well. You have Elizabeth, who you met in Africa and Nichole, Louise, Tim who are just the nicest young people.

CJ:  My family is number one.

DAH: So you’re not just a maniac. But it’s a work ethic thing. It’s a work ethic, it’s a passion.

CJ: It’s a deep thing where you know, you talk to a great writer, you talk to a great photographer, and you can’t help yourself. You have to work. You have to take pictures. You have to create. These are things that you are…these are almost obsessions.

DAH: Wait a minute. Say that again,  you can’t help yourself?

CJ: You can’t help yourself.

DAH: That’s it. You just can’t help yourself

CJ: Sure.

DAH: So this whole interview comes down to that?

CJ: Absolutely.

Interview with Robert Clark on this sequence he made on 9-11..Rob was my good neighbor for 4 years.

DAH…..

Rob tell me about the making of this picture..this sequence

ROB….

I had just come back from spending the night at the house of my girlfriend..Got to 475 Kent at 8:30am ..She called me after and told me a plane had hit the Twin towers…The view from my apartment was of the Twin Towers, but I was on the computer , my back was to this scene..

Luckily, I had my cameras ready to go and packed because I was set to go on a Natgeo story…So i grabbed the whole kit and headed for the roof

DAH  ..

How long were you on the roof before you saw this second plane coming?

ROB…

I got up to the roof at 8:54 a.m. and the second plane hit Tower #2 at 9:03 a.m., so I did not have much time to think. I had a 280mm (converted) lens and shooting film. I was composing and shooting Tower #1 burning, thinking that was THE shot. I had only 10 pictures left on the roll , when I saw the second plane coming…The first picture above was the second picture I took, frame #25…I shot the rest of the roll in the next 10 seconds….I knew i had it… Certain. Was also certain the world had just changed.

DAH..

I remember seeing you that day riding your bike up 6 th avenue, heading uptown..I was walking up too, and I remember you offered me your bike..This must have been just a few hours after you took this picture. I never forgot that offer. I think you have a real sense of community in you Rob. I mean you built population of the now famous Kibbutz where we all lived and from our roof this picture was made. Do you miss our kibbutz community since you have now moved away?

ROB..

Yes of course. It was a real photographic  inspiration just living in that building. After all we had Chris Anderson, Tim Hetherington, Alex Majoli, Stanley Greene, Paolo Pellegrin, Thomas Dvorzak, Lorena Ros, David Coventry and Alex Di Suvero and oh yea, you!! So many many good times and of course the list of visitors to that building is EVERYBODY in the biz.. I mean almost everybody in the photo world in New York came to our building. You played no small part in that yourself Harvey.

DAH

Well you made this historic picture before I moved into the building. But you were a great neighbor for 3 years . If I needed a cup of sugar , you had one. All good things do indeed come to an end. Damn. Those golden years at the Kibbutz went by too fast. Fortunately we all have so many other pictures from this rooftop , that we can try to forget yours. Great shot, but we do want to forget ..Right?

ROB..

Now on the 10th anniversary, we realize we really cannot forget. Because it is more than a memory. It is still happening. An ongoing attack. Or at least we think it is. Affects still today almost every aspect of our lives. Not just America. Worldwide.
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Rob Clark
Institute

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Anton Kusters

Odo Yakuza Tokyo

play this essay

DAH: Well, the bottom line is, Anton, you have your first book… Tell me, a first book is comparable to what?

AK: It’s… It feels like I actually did something for the first time. I mean, it’s not that the book was more work than the project itself, but… it does feel like I took a step in some way, like a kind of achievement in some way, for myself, personally. It really feels like a personal victory. And whatever that victory, that achievement, will mean to the outside world, I would almost say, that is out of my hands. I mean that in the best possible way. I love seeing cutting my book “loose” into the world, let it go, beyond my control.

DAH: So… Validation?

AK: Validation… a little bit a sense of pride deep down inside… that I could actually pull something off, because for some reason, it always feels like nothing is really complete, or at least this project could not be complete, without the validation of a physical object, like a book, an exhibition… like Massimo Vitali said at LOOK3 a couple of days ago… “I’m looking at the picture as that unique physical object, impossible to see separate from the plexi it is printed on”

DAH: …Yes… I don’t know if everybody feels that way…. I certainly feel that way also, if there’s no physical object then there is nothing, actually.

AK: Yes

DAH: There’s instruction, there’s information, it’s up there on the screen, but it’s meaningless without the physical object…

AK: … things remain fleeting until something physical is made.

DAH: and even though you reach fewer people, it doesn’t matter –

AK: Yes… You reach so many less people… I mean, the internet is like multiple, you reach multiples of the audience of the book… but… I think the feeling it will never change as to what it must have been before the internet… it must be still exactly the same, that kind of feeling… the internet adds to it, but the feeling of selling the book, making the book, is… is something… is a different category. at least it feels like that. And seeing friends and strangers, complete strangers, hold that book, and look at them while they are looking at the book. that’s the thing that completes the circle for me.

DAH: You don’t see that on the internet, you don’t see that with an international magazine either… occasionally you do by accident, at the airport you see somebody looking through one of your articles, and of course they flip right through it.

[laughs]

Let me go back on a couple of basic things: so… it’s fun to have a book out there.

AK: Absolutely.

DAH: I remember, Sam Abell said one time, to me, “David, when you do your first book, life will change”. And he was right about that: after your first book, life does change.

AK: Yea… I feel it does… I mean, I don’t know, I obviously it’s too soon to say because it’s only hitting the stands right now, I mean “the stand”, singular, being here on burn, so I don’t know what the actual impact will -

DAH: – Oh I predict that, I think this book will, I think this, your limited edition of 500 copies, of a very well priced book and a very high quality book, and a very heart felt… done book, I think that this book will sell out in less than two weeks. That’s my prediction. I think it’ll be gone in ten days. Something like that, I really think that.

I think that people will, people will feel that this is a one of a kind object, as you described, there are people who get more out of photography than seeing, to flick a page, or even on burn or anything, anything that’s online, and will go for that physical object. and they’ll see it the same way that they saw Alec Soth’s “Sleeping by the Mississippi”, and they’ll want to be one of the ones to have an original, first edition, from the first five hundred.

AK: Yea… and it’s, it’s almost like I wish there was this tactile… extension to the internet where you could make people reach into the screen and pick up the book to be able to feel it, that they can feel what the object is like, because I feel that that’s such an important aspect.

DAH: Your book is a physical object, it’s a beautifully done physical object, and the printing and the binding and the making of this book are clear, and speak to the subject… So tell us a little bit about… the making of the book in relationship to the subject of the book.

AK: That’s of course pretty crucial, as I regard the book as an integral object of what the project is about… I mean, I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked at a printer a long time ago, and that opened a whole new world to me back then. But it wasn’t until last year that I realized was using all that knowledge for this book.

I completely did the process all by myself, I designed the book, I found the right papers and the right printer, prepared for print, went to press, and oversaw the binding…. I learned obviously a lot during the process, but… it’s such a fun thing to do, it’s a lot of work, you gotta follow up everything personally, but you’re basically taking up the role of, of…producer

DAH: OK, so we’ve covered the thrill of having the book… and the physical production of the book. But I think the word of mouth on the physicality of this book will quickly get out there, and I think that, you and I are of like mind of what Burn does, and our basic philosophy is a quality one.

AK: Yes… whatever the case, quality comes first, and that’s why I was so happy that you were willing to endorse and write the foreword for the book, because I knew that you would never, ever, even as a close personal friend, you would not do that if you wouldn’t be very sure about the quality of the work.

DAH: No, I would not do that. Of course I’m expecting a hell of a kickback from this book, I’m expecting a lot of money into my my bank account [laughing]

The thing is… photographers do want to do books, and I think everybody knows, that books are not how we make money, but you will, even if this book is a raging success, you won’t be paying your home bills with this book, no matter how successful this is….

AK: I might break even on some aspect of the printing, and I’d be really really happy if that happened, but I’m pretty sure I can forget about trying to pay for all the trips I took.

DAH: Now tell me a little bit about how the subject of your book.  Any way you look at it, is going to be controversial, inside Japan, outside Japan, all around the town. I mean, you’ve turned into a physical object of photography, a crime organization. So. justify that for me please.

AK: Justify…

DAH: I mean, don’t justify it for me, because I understand it…. Justify it to those who might be reading this.

AK: I think it goes back to the fact that I’ve always taken aback by… prejudice. I’ve always been taken, really taken aback by blanket statements, I’m taken aback by the judging of people and things… Personally, I’ve always asked questions instead, being inquisitive, at least in my mind ask questions, trying to understand things…

I do not want to be a judge in my photography. I want to be a witness in my photography. A faithful witness of my own vision. A vision which I know is shaped and skewed by my upbringing and my life’s experiences.

I guess that’s why the Yakuza project actually quickly turned into something different than I expected, I started to feel that it’s a way of life more than anything else… and that’s where I latched on. The bad part or the good part for that matter, very quickly became irrelevant after that. The subtle shades of grey are the key.

Who am I… can it ever be my right to say about someone that he is “bad”? about anyone?

DAH: So your essay, your book is, how would you describe what it is in relationship to a crime organization? is it a revelation, is it an exposé, is it a behind-the-scenes? what is it exactly? what are you telling us with this book?

AK: Well… that’s a good question. I might have to find that one out as we go along, because I actually just want to show, I think, basically what I just said, I started feeling that that Yakuza is many shades of grey, and not simple black vs white.

DAH: so is that your, your…mission?.

AK: It’s the subtlety of the story that hit me, I think it would be kind of easy, or cheap, in a way, to show the Yakuza and what they do, instead of what they are, because I would, in a way, stereotype them, and that is something I don’t want to ever do to anybody.

DAH: yeah… do you want me to get you another coffee?

AK: yes, sure.

DAH: you drinking it black?

AK: as always

DAH: OK. Here, think about this question: what do you think the Yakuza are going to think about this book? What are they thinking that this book is? You’re thinking that it’s a revelation of some sort, what do they think it is? Everyone wants their thing out of it.

[DAH gets a cup of coffee]

AK: Interesting question… The thing is, I think, and I have the feeling, that they want to have, kind of a chronicle of their family, of sorts, a chronicle of what they are about.

DAH: When I look at the pictures, I  don’t see them doing anything bad… If I weren’t reading about the Yakuza, or know about the Yakuza, your pictures here do require text, and context, which, I think, only adds to the texture and to the feel of these photographs. Is that correct? They seem here to appear as traditional Japanese businessmen.

AK: Yeah… Though you can’t really misinterpret the tattoos, covert training camps, prostitutes and severed fingers.

DAH: So aside from the fact that people who buy this book are going to receive a physical object, and a lot of visual stimulation, on a topic that you have decided was worth photographing, what do you, what do you think that people will get out of this book, or should get out of this book, besides the fine object aspect of the book? Because it is a documentary. it is not a conceptual thing.

AK: Actually, I would like to describe this as a conceptual documentary, because I have no intent, to tell the truth, but rather I have the intent of telling the Yakuza story as I personally experienced it, me, Anton Kusters, the person and character that I am, with all my flaws and shortcomings, and I will most probably see things in a completely different way and therefore be sensitive to, and concentrate on, the things that strike me or touch me… the shades of grey i see, the realization that being Yakuza is a way of life more than anything else. I hope others will see that too.

DAH: So in that sense you are being very documentary, mission oriented documentary. In that sense.

AK: Yeah. in that sense. I could even consider that a mission in life in general.

DAH: I know exactly where you stand on this. Personally, for me, I find any topic interesting, if a someone, if a photographer, if a writer, or a film maker is telling me that they are interested in whatever the topic is, whether it’s the sinking of the Titanic, as a piece of history, or Restrepo, a war story by Tim Hetherington, or your story on the Yakuza. I don’t really care, I mean, somebody who is a storyteller, or a visual artist, if they have decided that they’re going to do this particular thing…. i’m not ranking subject matter by some subject matter being more important, or right, than others. It becomes important by the fact that this particular storyteller is going to tell it.

AK: Yep. About Tim…. I met Tim only a couple of times, and the last time we talked at length about the Yakuza project, which was then only halfway, and he was the one who also told me, like you had always told me too, David, because there was one particular picture, when he saw that one he stopped in his tracks and said “this is the one” and that was the picture of the empty table with empty glasses and cups and a burning cigarette and the two empty chairs, the full ash tray, and he said “right there, that’s the kind of image, that’s the image you have to have in there, because there you are saying that you are personally telling that story that is your story, and that you are not just ‘covering’ the Yakuza”… and I hope I have taken that to heart.

DAH: well I think there is no doubt that you’ve done that. The only thing left I wanted to ask you is… you will now probably spend the next year working on the film, on the same topic.

AK: I hope that works out, yes. There is… we’re starting, my brother Malik and I are starting to, because obviously film is way more complex than photography from a production point of view, my brother will be doing sound, I will be doing video, the moving image…. I hope that works out… we’ve got a good story. And the book, offering the book to the Yakuza bosses now, tomorrow I’ll be flying over to Tokyo to, you know, present the book to them, give copies as a gift, which will hopefully open gates.

But again, this will be way more complex, also financially… so, I will be using the potential success of the book as a gauge for myself, if it’s viable to continue on that path or not. But I obviously feel I should do it no matter what. so I hope it will work out.

On the other hand, photographing daisies is great fun too.

(the limited edition sold out on July 21, 2011)

Bio:
Anton was born in Belgium. He grew up in Australia, Saudi Arabia and Belgium, and has been visiting Japan ever since his brother moved there a decade ago. The long term YAKUZA project started out three years ago, and the first major step now has been taken with the book “ODO YAKUZA TOKYO”.
Anton feels that life should be about going deep down rabbit holes as much as you possibly can.

Related links:

www.antonkusters.com

Alec Soth photographed in San Antonio , Texas by Panos Skoulidas , April 6, 2011

Here’s the transcript of the Soth interview….this is unedited…this is a FOR REAL CONVERSATION

DAH – Alec Soth Interview

Nat sound (ringing)
(banter)

DAH: Let me start with the most recent thing that I found out about, and that is Big Al’s printing. The thing that’s always fascinated me about you, other than your photography which of course is how I knew you in the beginning, is your versatility. I mean I knew your work only with Mississippi of course, Sleeping by the Mississippi, before having met you in person. And then very quickly you became a very popular blog person and you’re involved in a lot of stuff- soft industries as I like to call it. And then we’ve got Big Al’s printing. Tell me about this multiplicity of ventures for you, besides your photography.

ALEC SOTH: Well first of all, I mean, I’m talking to you from Minnesota, and I have this sort of midwestern sensibility in which I think everything is always going to come to an end, and I’m gonna fail. And I feel a need for job security. So the most secure thing has been diversifying everything so I don’t have all my eggs in one basket. So that’s where Big Al’s comes in. But I’ll tell you what led up to that is that I was in Alex Majoli’s place in Italy, and he’s got this set up where he’s got a studio, and then there’s this Chesura lab, which is this group of people that use his equipment, but have their own little printing operation as well as all sorts of other stuff that they do. And I thought that was really fantastic, and so I came back home, and I thought, this has always been an issue, where we have all of this stuff, all of this equipment, um, but it just sits there a lot of the time when I’m not using it, so it just seemed like it makes sense. I mean, the people who work for me use it, but why not have them expand that and let other people, charge other people to use it, you know, make a little bit of money. But also there’s this one guy, his name’s Eric, who wanted to do some work with me or whatever, so he can run that thing, it’s not really my business, I’m not that involved with it, a little bit involved with it, but it just made sense. But I’m not like Mr. entrepreneur, you know.

DAH : Well, you’ve definitely diversified, and of course I’m going to copy you on every single thing. Of course I’ve hated every minute of copying you.

ALEC: But that’s what it is, I’m copying Alex. (laughter)

DAH: I know, I know, he’s got an empire there. But it’s a very interesting model for all of us. So you’re main person I guess who was your printer for your shows ended up sort of creating his business through Big Al’s operation.

ALEC: …A little bit, we had a printer that worked up to a certain size, and then we had to outsource a bigger size. and so, at a certain point, it’s just like “I’m going to buy that printer, it doesn’t make any more sense.” But if i’m going to buy the printer we might as well use it, you know, that kind of stuff.
But the thing is, it was being exposed to Majoli’s way of doing things, which isn’t for me, I mean, I’m not gonna have…it’s like a commune out there. You know, they’re all sleeping in rooms above the studio, I don’t want to do that. I just want to pool our resources. I mean, that’s what it’s about, and when you talk about Magnum, that’s what it’s about. It’s pooling resources.

DAH: Right, is that the modus operandi for Little Brown Mushroom as well, is that the same kind of thing?

ALEC: That’s a little bit different. I mean, Little Brown Mushroom is about having fun. So, and, Big Al’s is, well, who knows what it is, it’s about we’ve got some equipment lets use it. Little Brown Mushroom is about having fun, and making cool things. And it’s not about the art world, it’s not about getting caught up in that, it’s not about trying to make money, and if it makes money fine, if not that’s ok, you know, I just want to break even ideally. But it’s about that spirit of when you’re a teenager and you’re just making stuff because you love it. It’s just remembering that feeling you know. When you get caught up in the professionalism of everything, you can forget about it.

DAH: Oh yeah, it ruins everything, right?

ALEC: Well, it’s a danger, and that’s what I would say about the blog. You know, I started the blog as a retreat from the art world, as a place to just talk about issues, and then all of a sudden it turned into another business, and so I dropped it. Little Brown Mushroom hasn’t yet, it’s still, it’s like we’re just having a lot of fun with it.

DAH: Yeah, it looks like it. Yeah, it’s great. Who did the design work, did you do that or did you have a designer do that?

ALEC: It started off, I mean, I don’t know anything about design. You know, I don’t know cmyk from… I’m an RGB, photoshop, that’s all I know. But I wanted to make little things, so I just started making little zines. you know, the kind of thing where you go to Kinkos, you know, staple-bound little things. And then one thing led to another and I met a designer named Hans Sieger, who lives in Wisconsin, and uh, it all kind of came together in my head. Little Golden Books was something I was interested in, do you remember those children books? They were published out of Wisconsin, and it just felt like something that was meant to be. And so here’s this really cool designer, who happens to live there, you know, he does most of his work in New York, really high end, but he lives in Wisconsin. And here’s Little Golden Books, and merging these ideas. And he works unpaid, he just works just for the fun of it too, he’s just into it, and so we collaborate on it, we print it in Wisconsin which is great. It’s a little cottage industry.

DAH: Yeah, well, that really is cool. That’s interesting. You say that you’re, that this was one of the things, Big Al’s, and then just your mentality in general is kind of a midwestern job security thing, which you know, I understand that. And the other thing is just to have fun and a little bit of an escape from the art world. On the other hand, you’ve busted your ass to make it in the art world. So is it just because…you don’t really want to escape the art world do you? I mean, isn’t that your mainstay?

ALEC: Yeah, that’s how i make a living. Um, it’s not that I want to escape the art world, but I have to keep it fresh, and it’s kind of like, uh, to use a music analogy, it’s like. Ok. Maybe I’m not playing arenas now, but I’m playing big venues. And sometimes you have to just go down to the club, and just play, and play some new stuff for a real audience. That’s what I mean, it’s just like keeping it fresh, you know, and also keeping the experimentalism alive so that you can try things. So maybe you can screw up at the little club with 30 people, it’s not that big of a deal.

DAH: Yeah, everybody loves the garage band. The garage band stage of anybody’s career is THE stage.

ALEC: Absolutely, right. Its just keeping some of that alive is all.

DAH: I understand that completely. That’s a pretty good analogy.

ALEC: You know, I want to play arenas, I mean, don’t get me wrong I want the big audience still, I just want to keep it fresh.

DAH: Now, you’re in the art world, you’re selling prints, you played the arenas so to speak. At the same time, you’re doing some editorial work. That certainly isn’t for the money, that editorial work. So is that just part of the fun thing? Or keeping yourself fresh? Or where does that come in? That’s more of the, why would you be in Magnum in the first place since you’re so successful in the art world?

ALEC: (audio missing between clips???) one iota. And if you think about what that collective artist could be, it’s gigantic. The thing is, I started big al’s last week, and I email some people or whatever and it goes around the little blogosphere. But I ask Magnum to put it on their facebook, and to do a tweet about it, and that’s a lot of people. And, we can access just a much larger audience as a group.

DAH: So distribution is still important, it’s just a different kind of distribution. It’s a twitter, facebook fanclub thing. Plus we bring our own audiences in there too.

ALEC: Yeah, absolutely. And bringing our own audiences into that is something that we haven’t really done, or figured out how to do. Um, but we’re working towards it.

DAH: Yeah, well, that’s what you and I are supposed to do. We’re on the committee. I’m a little bit out of the loop. I saw the note from Jonas this morning, but it’s the first time I’ve heard from him, so. There are a lot of reasons for that. I do wish we were a little more coordinated with those kinds of ideas and thinking, cause I think that if we actually really did get you and jonas and chris and I in the same room, even for a short time, we might be able to come up with a bunch of good ideas that could push us forward. Unfortunately we don’t really have the mechanism for that because we’re all out in different places all the time. That’s the bad part about Magnum. The good part is that when we’re together there’s magic often times. But then we go off in separate directions, it’s very hard for us to stay coordinated.

ALEC: For me, I mean, and I talked about this, I don’t know what’s
(rambling about what part of this conversation will be used)
2:45

ALEC: This is a real taboo, but it’s something I wanted to talk about…it’s the club element of it. And I hate the word club, but, I think it’s a significant part of what it is for people. You have this brand, you’re attached to this thing, and these other people, and I think so much of the business stuff, which actually doesn’t work, just gets in the way of all that.
(laughing)

ALEC: The retreat was really successful. And it was like, wow.

DAH: Well, I can see, I mean I couldn’t even be there but I was all over that psychologically from the very beginning because I thought, if I can have the Magnum crowd down here like where I’m sitting right now. I mean, I’ve got dunes, I’ve got water, and I’ve got a great front porch. I’ll just show you (sounds of david picking up computer and walking away). This is where I want to hang out with you guys. I’d like to invite a bunch of you down here, you know (sound of creeky screen door opening), and uh sit on my porch right, and look out at the sand dunes over there.
(sound too faint to hear). I would love it if you guys were sitting down here by the fire, and it would be a great meeting of the minds. The truth is that when I do meet Magnum photographers, like one on one, and on assignment, we really do have a lot of good stuff in common, and I’m sure you found that out on the retreat.

ALEC: The business stuff comes out of it too. I mean, like I said, just going to Majoli’s place, suddenly Al’s opens up 3 weeks later just from that experience. And it’s that kind of pooling of resources, which we don’t even have time for, and that’s how the retreat came about is my frustration that the AGM (??), at least for the younger generation, cause we used to not have to be involved, and now we have to be involved, and it’s just ruined it, where we don’t get to hang out.

DAH: It’s a slug, you never get to go out and just have a beer, and somehow you don’t even end up talking about the business stuff. You end up getting into spreadsheets instead of the business, and there’s a difference. Now listen, I know you have to go, and I think we probably have enough…
…wait, but I have to show you my window, just to see where you don’t want to visit. Let’s see if we can get the exposure right (laughing).

ALEC: I have this feeling that Magnum’s just going to turn into BURN.

DAH; No! I don’t mean…

ALEC: No, I mean it in a good way.

DAH: No, to be honest with you, what I really really want to do is probably quit burn in June, or have it evolve into something else, or have somebody else run it or,

ALEC: I know what you mean, but it’s just that the spirit of it, it’s just like funding Paolo’s thing..No, but it’s just like, that’s the kind of energy that we so badly need.

DAH: I know it, but the thing is what I don’t want to do, and I’m sure that you of all people can totally appreciate this, I don’t want to get so involved in minutia and local politics that it just burns up all of the energy. There’s x amount of stuff that we’ve all gotta do in our lives, we’ve all gotta pay taxes, you need to get your kids off to school, you need to fix the garage door. We’ve already got lots of stuff. And I can’t take on a whole other thing with Magnum beyond a certain point. Anyway, many thanks amigo..

Postcards from America

Little Brown Mushroom

Big Al’s

Alec Soth