All right, let's do this. Peanut, if you're staying in the room, no talking. Hello and welcome to the Photo Work podcast. The talky and touchy feely version of my book, photo work. 40 photographers on process and practice. Hello, everyone. I'm Sascha Wolff, recording from Woodstock, New York, and joined as usual by my friend and producer, Mr. Michael Chovendalton. Hello, Michael.
Hey there.
So how are you doing?
Well, semester started, there's a class running outside, so if there is a knock on the door, that's why.
All right. Someone who needs their professor urgently.
Yep, yep. But everything's good. But I don't want to jump in too early, but I got to do something a little different for this show and I had a lot of fun doing it.
Oh, yeah, you had a in person recording?
Yeah, I was like a real producer. I went to our guest's apartment and made sure everything went well, but also just got to hang out with the lovely Vince Aletti.
Yeah, that's a real treat, Vince. People should definitely, if they don't know Vince, do a little googling. His collection, which we talk about, of course, in the show. But his collection of magazines and prints and books is legendary, as is where they're all stored in his apartment. So if one gets to go to Vince's, it's. It's very special. And yes, you did go. Yeah.
Incredible.
Yeah, we were doing old school. Vince was on a landline, which.
That's right.
It's different for us. And anyway, it was wonderful to talk to him. So we'll get into that in a second, but I think we have a couple of announcements. What do we got?
So, photo work. Junior Fellowship applications are opening September 15th.
Yay.
And help me out with this. This is the third one.
Yeah, this is the third year.
That's incredible. It's already the third round.
I know. We're really just so thrilled at the way year one and two went. Incredible. Fellows. I think that the fellowship has been really life changing for a lot of our junior and senior Fellows. And so I'm really proud of the work that everyone's done, particularly our incredible group of mentors. But we also have.
Yeah. And I didn't. I have to admit, I didn't realize that not only do they hang out with the mentors, but there's sort of like custom meetings that they get towards the end with sessions on post production and professional practices and other things. But it's including meeting other mentors and including meeting with you, right?
Yeah, it's the way we've set up the fellowships is to make them as holistic as possible so that all of the. Or as I don't know about all of, but as many of the needs are met of our fellows. And so we're always sort of changing and adapting. But the Junior Fellows always meet with the folks at Picture House in a small darkroom for these incredible post production sessions where they learn all about the intricacies of post production and making, you know, a final image, a final print, and then they do a professional practice session with me. But we do other things. We've had people come in to talk to them about shooting on assignment. Right now we're working on oral and written statement session because that's something that a lot of folks have indicated they have trouble with their artist statement with the seniors, I won't get too into that, but because they're focused on bookmaking, we've been doing a lot of bookmaking sessions with them on design and sequencing and whatnot. So, yeah, so we try and make them really holistic and fill all the needs in addition to working with their mentors for six months. So it's a really. It's chock full.
Yeah. Yeah. I got to sit in on one of the bookmaking ones. That was amazing.
Yeah, amazing. Yeah, I know. Listen, I love sitting in on them. It's just. It's really incredible. So the whole team gets something out of it, which is, which is really neat. But anyway, yeah, the portal will open for applications on the 15th and all the information's on the website on Photowork foundation, so check that out. Yep.
I've come to realize I maybe I say that expression too much.
Oh, I listen, we could do a whole like, just who gives a shit show about all the things I say way too often. I'm like, that's right.
That's right. When you hear it later, it's like.
Oh, man, I need tough saying that. It's painful.
But also, we are still accepting messages for our special hundredth episode. And if you click on the podcast link on Photowork foundation, you can see the record message button there that Taylor so wonderfully put together.
Yeah. We've gotten some amazing messages from folks from around the world. So thank you so much for those and keep them coming. It's really fun to hear your thoughts and don't be shy. All you have to do is click a button and talk for 30 seconds or a minute. No biggie. But we really, really love gathering those and hearing from everyone. So please.
And hopefully we'll get to play A lot of those.
Well, Michael, why don't we get to today's guest. A really special person, someone I've known a very long time and was very supportive of my career. And I think I would love him even if he hadn't been. But I love him doubly. Just someone who's helped so many people, created so many unique and edifying exhibitions, and has just generally contributed so much to our field. That's Vince Zoletti, who we've mentioned. And yeah, I mean, I love talking to him. He's just such a wonderful person and incredibly interesting. So it was a joy. Did you enjoy the conversation?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, to first hear about his sort of early years and his interesting upbringing and then he goes on to write for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice. Oh, and not to mention rat very early on. And then he comes to the New Yorker and you know, what I took away from all this is that I think what he learned was how to connect art to culture, how to connect art to the general reader of these magazines, because these are not specifically art magazines or specifically for one audience. These magazines crossed pop culture in so.
Many ways, particularly the New Yorker. Yeah, yeah.
And he just connected people, including my wife, who knew about his writings long before she got involved with me and my boring conversations about photography.
So, yeah, you can send Vince a thank you note.
That's what I'll do. Yes, I should have mentioned that.
Laying the groundwork.
That's right.
For your marriage. Yeah. No, Vince is really a very special person. And you know, as you just sort of mentioned, like, you know, sort of alluded to Vince's writing. He just doesn't have a pretentious bone in his body. He's a wonderful, wonderful writer, but everything is. Is really relatable and to the point and as a way of pulling you in. Right. And making the reader really want to engage with what he's writing about, as opposed to so many people who write about art who, I'm sorry, don't mean to, you know, smack. It can be highly entire group of people. Yes. It can be off putting. And Vince is the exact opposite. So grateful for folks like him. Anyway, it's a wonderful conversation. We cover many, many topics, so I hope people enjoy it. And Michael, if you don't mind, please take it away.
My pleasure. And here's your conversation with Vince Aletti.
Vince Sogetti, welcome to the Photo Work podcast. It is wonderful to have you on Than. Thank you so much for being with me today.
Thanks for inviting me, Vince.
I have A very big smile on my face because I've known you for a long time and incredibly fond of you and also in awe of you for many reasons, but just one of my favorite people, colleagues in our wacky industry. And so this is really exciting for me. And also I found out things about you I didn't know, and just all these amazing sort of chapters from your life, an incredible life. And I think it's just going to be so fun to talk about and share with the audience. So why don't we start, as we always do, if you could tell folks about yourself, where you were born, where you grew up and went to school, and how you, you know, just your journey.
Oh, that's a long one.
I know.
I was born in Philadelphia, the first child of my parents. We moved out to the suburbs when I was about three or four, and they had two more kids, my younger sisters. We lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia until I was about 10. And one thing I didn't really think about until more recently was that my father was an amateur photographer, a camera club photographer. And he had a dark room in the house. So I grew up with a dark room in the attic that I sometimes could spend time in with my father. And I, you know, more and more remember that. The sort of romance of the dark room with the red light.
Oh, yeah.
The sloshing water and those chemical smells and seeing a picture, you know, come to life. My father's photos were framed on the wall in the living room, which, you know, when I think about it, that was. None of my neighbor friends had things like that on their wall.
Right.
So there was, you know, something unique about all that that I didn't really think about until it was over. My father died in a plane crash when I was 10, in a small plane crash. And my mother didn't want to be in the same house anymore. So she moved us to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she bought a motel, a very small motel, only four units. And we lived in one right on the beach area of Fort Lauderdale. Again, which I didn't appreciate until I was going home for visits, because I hated Fort Lauderdale at the beginning. I didn't want to be there. I did. I missed my Glenside, Pennsylvania, friends.
Mm.
It took a long time for me to adjust. But to jump ahead. I left there to go to college at Antioch in Ohio. And that was, for me, the. The saving. A way for me to kind of start new and start in a whole other frame of mind. I could be somebody new. And I was. I was really Kind of. I loved Antioch. One of the great things about that college is that it's really small. It's very liberal arts. A lot of the kids there were from New York. And it has a work study program. So the idea is that we would be at jobs half of the year somewhere. And once I discovered New York, all my jobs were in New York. So I kept coming back here for either three months or six months. Really stupid jobs. I was a messenger. I worked at B. Altman's for a while. I just worked at anything that would get me to New York. And. And when I graduated, I came back here and took my last apartment that I'd sublet to another Antioch friend. So I moved into my apartment on Avenue A and 12th street, two blocks from where I live now, and stayed there for maybe 10 years and started writing about music little by little. Mostly for. At the beginning, for this magazine called the Rat, a newspaper, really a kind of underground newspaper that was one of several in New York at the time. And I kind of wrote about anything I wanted to. There was very little direction, which was perfect. And I wrote about Crosby, Stills and Nash. I wrote about James Brown at the Apollo. It was a great proving ground or testing ground, I should say. Oddly enough, it got some attention, maybe because the paper was kind of aggressive and. And really got itself known. So people within the music business kind of noticed this writing since there was all. It was still a time when a lot of people were not yet writing about rock and roll and pop music. So that was really the beginning for me. I started writing for other papers, for Rolling Stone and did that for another 10 years before I started writing about disco every week for a paper, trade magazine called Record World. And I did that for four years, every week. And after doing that very intensely, I kept writing about music for a while. But I felt like I was getting. I don't know what the best word is. I needed to change my focus. And I ended up at the Village Voice, where I was able to move from one area to another fairly easily. And that's where I started writing about photography.
I mean, one of the things that I'm just gonna mention to folks, because you're being very modest, but, you know, you were a really quite celebrated music critic writer. And, you know, that was a real career.
And. Oh, yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not, you know, shoving it off. It was. It was a serious career for more than 20 years.
And I think that that's, you know, one of the things that I really love and admire about you and I think is actually incredibly just a characteristic of yours that I think is really important to. To mention and talk about to whatever degree you'd like to, but is, yeah, like I said, this thing that I personally really admire, I've done it to a much less extent than you, but which is this ability to leave behind something when it's time and, you know, with great passion and focus, you know, move into something else. And you are so prolific, so productive. And, I mean, we'll get to a lot of this stuff. But you've edited. You have conceived of and edited many photo books. You have conceived of and curated many exhibitions. You have written so much on music and photography in your life. You just, you know, when you have a passion for something, you just seem to just say, well, I'm going to do it. And, you know, I just really think that's so important and something that most people, I think, have a very difficult time doing that leaving behind of one thing and, you know, being comfortable, you know, starting a real new chapter of their life. So, you know, I just want to point that out because it's a really profound thing in your sort of journey.
Well, thank you. It was, in a sense, it happened slowly but very naturally. I don't think it would have happened had I not been at the Village Voice. I started there writing about music. I had a column about singles for several years. I wrote about music video. But it all. I realized that I was kind of running out of adjectives. I was saying the same. Talking about similar things.
Yeah.
And it wasn't that I was losing my interest in Madonna or Aretha Franklin or anything else that came along, but I really felt like I needed to shake things up for myself. And I'd been all along going to galleries and being very interested in photography. And the opportunity came up for me to write brief, brief sort of choice reviews for the Voice calendar, which has continued to be my favorite thing to do. And also I came up with. On a weekly schedule with a lot of these sorts of things. The Voice was a weekly. I moved to the New Yorker, another weekly. It's important to me to write about material and work that people can see before it's over. It's partly whether I like it or not, I want people to go and see what I'm talking about and judge for themselves. So the weekly schedule is, for me, ideal. Also, writing less than 200 words is my perfect medium. So. And I really enjoyed working within those limitations. And they are, you know, something that allows me to expand from that at different times. But again, I don't think it would have happened had I not been at a paper that allowed people to sort of follow their instincts and move from one thing to another if they were comfortable with it.
I'm going to just probably continue to just embarrass you a little bit, but I just want to say that among my colleagues, you are known as the only person. I started in 2002 and opened as a private dealer of contemporary work and then opened my gallery in 2007. So in my era, when there were way more photography galleries than there are now.
Yes, I certainly miss that time.
Yeah, no, that's a whole nother conversation. But you were really known as. You were the guy who everyone wanted to come in and review their show, and everyone knew that no one could capture the essence of an exhibition and the work itself in this short form. Like you could. I mean, you're just incredible. The economics with which you were able to really share with the audience what an exhibition was about was really amazing. And the other thing that I think was a real Vince Zoletti hallmark was that you were never unkind. I mean, you weren't someone. You know, you generally were reviewing shows that you liked. You weren't out to get anyone or. I always felt like you had a real appreciation for the whole structure of putting up a show and all the sort of pressures and difficulties, and there was just. Yeah, real sort of kinship there that I think everyone was really grateful for, so.
Well, one of the things. Let me. Let me just jump in here.
Yes, please.
One of the things that I always wanted to do was somehow understand what the artist, what the photographer wanted to do, what. What their intentions were. And it was the most gratifying thing for me when someone said, you got it, You. You got what I was looking. What I was trying to do, because that's ultimately, I want to figure out, like, why did they make this? And what's. Where is this coming from? And I guess it's partly having known photographers and. And always wanting to understand where their. What their motivations are, but also where, you know, just piece by piece, what are they thinking? And so most of my writing has come from that. And so, I mean, in a way, it goes back to music. One of the things that I most focused on when I was writing about music was lyrics and what are these songs saying and what are the performers saying to us? So it's. It's all kind of. It all fits through. It's. I'm concerned with what people are conveying and communicating whatever form it's in. It was exciting to me to write about photography because often I was seeing a person's first show and I realized how consequential that was for them. So I rarely wanted to write negative reviews. I wanted to tell people what I thought they would like and see. The only times I wrote negative reviews, when. When I was. When I thought a reputation had sort of gotten way overblown. But usually I was writing about someone's first show or somebody's. Somebody quite new, and I realized how tender that was. I wanted to go out and see everything, and I didn't. I couldn't write about everything, but I wrote about almost everything I really liked. And things that I thought, things that I thought I could talk about one way or another. There are things that I couldn't, and I just had to go by. But it was always my concern that I was conveying something that I thought about what the artist thought or was trying to do.
Well, I'm going to read one example so people have a sense of what we're talking about. And it was the first review I ever got, and it was November 2007, and it was the first show I ever did, and it was of Paul McDonough, who just recently passed away. But it is everything you just talked about. It was Paul's first show and he was in his early 60s, and it was my first show. And you wrote, by the way, you made my mom cry when she saw this in the New Yorker magazine. You wrote. A new photography gallery opens in Tribeca with one of the season's most rewarding shows. Although the series was his first as a photographer, the black and white pictures McDonough made of New Yorkers between 1968 and 1972 merit comparison to the street work of Garry Winogrand, Harry Callahan or Diane Orbis. Whether shooting up close or from middle ground, he always seems in sync with the city's jagged rhythm and. And his results feel loose and instinctive, full of exciting, serendipitous connections from expression. Every gesture counts, and there's never a dull moment in McDonough's Manhattan. So I think I can say for Paul is no longer with us, but certainly for myself, that we were very grateful for that. So thank you, Vince. I think it's a perfect example of what we were talking about. I mean, just a joyous, beautiful piece of writing that had a huge impact on not just the artist's life, but on my life, and I will always be grateful for that. So I want to move into some other aspects of your life that are just as, if not more consequential, which is you are an incredible collector. And I mean a true, true collector. And we'll talk about what that means. But through your collecting, which I think is what led you to writing about photography, because you were certainly. What's the word? You were perfectly capable. It's not the word, but of writing about photography. Because you had been collecting photography since you were very, very young. And there's so many lessons in this. I mean, one. And you'll talk about your passion, but one is certainly how passion for something really leads to, of course, with enough, you know, work and dedication and rigor in the process, but certainly is one of the key ingredients in excellence and success with how you interact with that passion. Because, yes, I mean, it's. It could go on, but anyway, so your collecting has led not just to your writing about photography, but equally to curating and publishing books and lending your incredible collection to museum exhibitions. And so this incredible archive now that you have. So tell folks about you're collecting, how it started and how, like all the branches of the tree that have come.
Off, it's a little daunting. But just to go back to the idea of me collecting since I was a kid, most of collecting photography, most of that means that I was collecting them in books or magazines. I really didn't have a collection of physical photographs until I was. Until the 1970s, when I could start, you know, buying small things. So mostly what I had, and I really did think of it in retrospect, as a photography collection, was that I was collecting magazines with pictures by photographers I was interested in. So that really, that was the beginning of a serious magazine collection that's now kind of insane, but that was really at the beginning, it was about Richard Avedon and Irving, Pennsylvania, and feeling like I had this amazing Avedon collection of material that was never anthologized. Same with Pen. Same with so many people. They did all this work for magazines that they ruthlessly edited out of their lives. And so it fascinates me to see what they didn't include in their books and also to get an appreciation for the magazine as a whole and the art direction and all kinds of things. And one of the most influential things for me, in terms of thinking about all this, was being asked to contribute to Andrew Roth's book of 101 books, Seminal Photography Books of the 20th Century. I was asked to choose half of those 101 books and describe them briefly. Most of those books I had never seen before. Most of them I hadn't held in my hands. But I had the opportunity to do all of that while I was writing those brief essays and thinking about the book in that way. Thinking about the photo book in that way was really important to everything I've done since to also especially to my own books and thinking about what a book should do and look like. So, you know, you asked me a very complicated question, but a lot of my. The beginning I collected magazines. I collected small things, and little by little, I was able to afford other small things. The most recent picture book I did was Physique. That collects a very small portion of the many physique photos that I had and that I was able to buy for a dollar in the 1970s and that I now have an insane amount of boxes and drawers full of these photos. And editing them down for a single book was difficult but fun. And that's so. It's a lot of my. I realized at one point, as everyone else realized before I did, that almost every book I've done is based on things in my own house and photos that I've collected or magazines that I've collected. And it's important for me to understand why these things are important to me. And especially the book I did called A History of Photography and Fashion Magazines, gave me a way to put all that material in context and to describe to other people why I thought fashion magazines, at least certain fashion magazines, were important and continue to be important. And the sort of things that I lend to museum exhibitions, that there's magazines contain all this material that you won't find anywhere else.
And just to be clear, I mean, you know, it's so interesting the way your mind works, but, you know, I hope so. I mean, you're so drawn to a certain kind of, you know, sensuality and sexuality. And, you know, you were very close friends, I know, with Peter Hujar, so you, of course, had someone in your life who was making these really exquisite photographs that really combined a lot of the type of work that you were very drawn to, from the incredible technique and craftsmanship to the very deep and personal and sensual and. And so I think, you know, thinking about, like, your love of physique photographs. And I have the book right in front of me and it's really incredibly compelling.
Thank you.
So much fun to spend time with, but to also, you know, your interest in not just the quote unquote, fashion photographs, but also the incredible art photographers, if I may just use that term, who showed up in those magazines, right? From Cartier Bresson to Bill Brandt to whoever.
Yeah, Walker, that was the reason. That was the reason I wanted to do that book issues. Not to write about fashion photography, but to write about fashion magazines and how they became a great place for photographers outside of fashion to showcase their work. So that, you know, there's, you know, Man Ray did do fashion photos, but he also used or published a lot of images that were not about fashion. And you mentioned, you know, Carti Bresson, Bill Brandt, Bresai Lisette, model Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, all these people who found a niche in fashion magazines, if only just to show a small showcase of what they were up to. And the idea that the magazines were. Were open to this and were really. That was part of what they wanted to convey to their readers. They thought of themselves as sophisticated showcases for the arts in general, in between tons of fashion pictures. So for me, it's not like fashion is weightless, but it gave the magazines a certain presence and a certain weight that I think was important to the editors. They were covering the culture, and I think that was what made so many magazines that I respect important.
You had another big impact on my career when I went to see a show you curated at the International center of Photography, when it was still in midtown, called Weird Beauty Fashion Photography now, where I have to admit I had been fairly dismissive. You know, it's funny. It's like there are just areas that we find ourselves sort of settled in and comfortable and other things just. I don't know if I was dismissive so much as. Just wasn't anything I really thought about. And maybe I was dismissive. I don't know. I.
It's okay. I mean, you're not. Certainly not the only one.
Yeah.
You're the person we made that show for.
Yeah. So totally worked. Like, I was mesmerized by that show, and it was an incredible experience of, I have to say, like, it's one of the best shows I've ever. Well, let me put that a different way. It's one of the shows that I was most engaged by that I've ever seen. Like, it's in my top 10. I've seen so many exhibitions and been underwhelmed, as we all have, you know, and that's the nature of the beast. A lot of shows come out that aren't fully baked, and that's part of what's wrong with the system. And. But I'll save that for another day. But I went to see this and it was so riveting. So can you tell folks about that? Because I really think it had a big impact on a lot of people.
I'm so glad to hear that, because it was a show that I did with Carol Squires, who was already on staff at icp. It was the first of what was called the Year of Fashion.
Yep.
And it was Brian Wallace who encouraged us to do something contemporary. It wasn't our initial plan, and so we decided if we were going to do that, was going to be very contemporary. We didn't go any further back than two years in the material that we were looking for. And we went to the magazines mostly because many of the pictures that we used were never made as prints. They only existed on the page. And it also meant that we didn't have to go to the photographers. We didn't have to ask anybody for permission. We just chose the pictures that we thought were important and we made. The important thing for us was to show them on the page. So there was almost everything in the show was a tear sheet. The installation people came through for us and figured out a way to put them on backing and put them on the wall. But it meant that we could show not just a single picture, but a sense of the sequence that these pictures had. Ideally 4 to 5 spreads. So after we made all those decisions, we did ask a number of photographers for individual photos, most of which they had to make just for us, and put them in frames. But I think there weren't more than 12 of those. Everything else was on the wall as a page. And ideally, we wanted people to have a sense of how they worked in the magazine. The fashion photo is not necessarily a single image. It's not like looking at Dovima and the elephants. And that's it. It's like everything else that came before that and after that. So our main thrust was to show people how these pictures worked in the magazine and how they really, for us, had real substance. And also to discover. We were very conscious that most of the people we were showing in that show had not been in a museum show at all. And it was really important for us to have that kind of exposure, to put them in front of people and, you know, make it clear that these were important photographers in their context. And a number of them were also people who sort of came from outside of fashion and were working very actively in fashion magazines, like Bruce Weber, Philip Lorca, de Corcia, Collier Shore, Nan Golden. All of them were happy to be in that context. And most people had not seen their fashion work, especially in the context that we presented them in. It was such a gratifying show for us. We were challenged all along the way by ICP because they thought it was going to be a disaster to open this year with a show of frivolous fashion photos because we had just gone through. This was just right after the recession year and everyone was scared about money and. And were we ever going to be able to, you know, get this show on the wall? And it was one of their most successful shows in years. So it was. It was. We really were happy. We were so happy to have these people on the wall to give them, you know, a showcase that we thought was. Was suited to work that we loved. Anyway. It was. It was one of my favorite shows as well. So it was. To be able to work with Carol was great. She. She had a history with icp, so she could ground things at the museum while I was, you know, grabbing magazines.
So, I mean, I. One other thing that I think is worth noting about this is that there are a lot of ways to correct and a lot of ways to. I mean, I don't. Look, I love the object. I can be really activated by a beautiful print. It gets, you know, my eyes pop out of my head like a cartoon character. I recently.
I know what you mean.
When I went to visit Sage Sawyer recently and got to look through her silver prints from the late 70s and early 80s, and I just, you know, I was at peak level of excitement. You know, it was just. That's my idea of a good time, but.
Well, you know, let me stop you there for a second.
Yeah, yeah.
Having spent a lot of time with Peter Hujar, I also came to understand and respect the importance of a great print and all the qualities that went into that. So it's not something that I am not interested in, but.
Right.
That. For me, I guess one of the things with the weird beauty show is that Carol and I realized that the reproduction, especially in a lot of the European fashion magazines, was so extraordinary that we would be. We'd be lucky if we could get a color print that was that good.
Right? Exactly. No, I mean, I think that that's. That's exactly right. And that's what I was going to say is that there are so many different ways to correct. And it doesn't have to be. A lot of people can't afford print, so they focus their correction on books, on photo books. And then a lot of people can't afford photo books. I mean, photo books are not inexpensive. And so There are other ways, as evidenced by you, to collect and so many of these. First of all, the great thing about that exhibition was the content, you know, first and foremost. And the way you guys hung it was just so fantastic. I mean, you know, it wasn't some linear, boring hang. So. But you know, as you said, so many of these magazines had these just beautiful reproductions and a lot of magazines still do and a lot of great photographers are still shooting for magazines. And so it is another way to collect. And I think it's really important that, you know, people are reminded of that.
Well, and yeah, because I think Wolfgang Tillmans, I think is a really good example that he's been able to work in various magazines and do like, you know, 30 page portfolios that are so completely true to what he does. It's not like he's compromising to make a fashion picture. He's basically being given a showcase for his work.
And that's the way it is. Yeah, right. I mean, people aren't hired. A lot of the artists and Sasha Wolf projects shoot for magazines and they're not being hired to shoot like someone else. They're being hired because of the way that they photograph.
Yeah.
So let's talk about your books and this sort of chapter of your career where you're really, you know, you've put out a couple of books in the past few years. Physique, which just came out recently, the Drawer, which came out to incredible enthusiasm.
In 22, which was for me the most surprising response. I really, I had no expectations for that book.
Well, tell folks about that book and talk about it. It's really wonderful.
The drawer is, is really the contents of one drawer and one cabinet in my apartment. A drawer that's sort of a catch all, where I put things that sometimes were already on my refrigerator or on a wall in my kitchen that I hang stuff on. So it's a whole range of material, often gallery announcements, pages torn out of art form, pages from the sports section of the New York Times, all kinds of things that I found at the flea market. Anything but an actual photo. It's all reproductions, all pages, and some of them go back to like, you know, a page from a Sixteen magazine in 1965, a spread of the Rolling Stones. So there are things that I've had for a really long time that sort of circulate around and often end up in that drawer. And I had never. Every time I open and close it, I kind of arrange things so that I'm pleased by the way it looks it's just a group of images overlapping one another. And when the publisher of Bruno Seychelles of Self published Be Happy was visiting at one point, and I opened that drawer to show him something and he said, oh, what's in there? And that ended up being this book. I mean, literally, we shot it in that drawer on the floor in my apartment where I shuffled things around and then shuffled them some more until we were.
We had 75 pages, which is just amazing. And this book has. Was a real triumph and people really loved it and it led to exhibitions. So incredibly exciting. I was thinking, as I was sort of, you know, diving into this chapter of the drawer, I was thinking, Vince's next career is going to be as a designer, you know, But I really just want to just highlight again about this. Wonderful. So for folks who don't know, your apartment is a famous apartment in New York, in the art world, you have a large East Village apartment, sort of rare. Those. Yeah, I got so lucky in New York. You got so lucky.
I got so lucky when I moved.
To East Village Apartment. They usually don't go together, but so you have this large apartment and it's just filled in a pretty organized way. I want to give people the right idea. I know that you don't know where every single thing is since there are tens of thousands of pieces of material. But for the most part, there's a method and structure. And so your apartment is just filled with books and particularly magazines, and you might have a huge stack of British Vogue or French Vogue or Harpers from some time or physique photographs, and you have shelves and stacks and. Yeah, I want to just go back to this idea of sort of passion and how it's really guided your life because you have so much passion for these things, and out has come a career. And I just wonder if. Could you ever have imagined when you were younger that, you know, you would wind up being one of the most influential people in the photo world following these sort of idiosyncratic, wonderful passions of yours?
When I was younger. No, no way. I think I imagined myself as an interior decorator at one point when I didn't know quite what that meant. And when I was subscribing as a teenager to House and Garden, but that was a long time ago. Luckily, I came up at a time when you didn't need to have a career path to go to college. I had no idea what I was going to do. When I was at Antioch, I majored in literature, which kind of didn't lead me anywhere except to the idea that I could be a writer at some point. I didn't have to go through a career decision early on, which gave me a lot of leeway once I got out of college and just started doing things. And luckily it was also a time when a writer who had no track record could end up at an underground paper. So there were a lot of openings in that time that I'm sure there are still things like that now. But it was a much more free period when you could kind of find your way and make a lot of decisions that didn't need to be too firm. Anyway. I really feel like I had no idea where I was going. And I'm glad that I didn't have a set path because I probably wouldn't have ended up here having gone through music and photography and thinking about ways to make books. Also thinking about ways that things that I collect can be put out into the world in a way that I think is useful and instructive.
I wonder if you think about where all. Do you have an idea of where all your material is going to wind up eventually?
I wish I did. I am.
Gotta work on that.
Yeah, no, I'm concerned about that. I do have a few feelers that came to me. You know, there are things that are possible, but nothing is firm at all. And yes, I am very concerned about that because there's. There's way too much. It's way too much here. I need to find another place to that will welcome it, especially the magazines.
Yeah.
But also my collection of photography is kind of all over the place and I don't even remember half of what I have anymore.
Yeah, well, it seems to me very important because as I said, I think you're one of the most influential people in our field. And also, I mean, I think what's so important is that it is so sui generis. It is your. It's your brain, it's your life.
Thank you.
And I think that that's really important. Important to keep together because one thing informs the next. So what are you working on now?
I'm nothing major, but at one point. Let's go back to Brian Wallace. Brian Wallace, right. Brian found in a dumpster on Grove Street a big stash of erotic drawings that he left with me a few years ago and that I had been trying to find a way to get out into the world. The designer of the Drawer is starting his own imprint as a bookmaker. And we're talking about doing a book of these erotic drawings, basically anonymous material.
Wow.
So that's my next. Hopefully my next project.
Sounds fun and I love that Brian Walrus found them. It's so Brian, for folks who are just not putting this together, even though I do mention him regularly, is the executive director of the center for Photography at Woodstock in Kingston, formerly at the Ran the Walther collection and before that was a curator at icp.
So, yeah, he has another important film. Yeah. A history that's touched on many different people.
A wonderful person. Well, Vince, I think we're at that mark, so we'll wrap it up. But thank you so, so much for talking with me today. And I hope that your incredible journey is an inspiration to other people. It really is to me. I think, you know, following your. Your passion, as I said, is the thing that really gets us to really interesting places and also puts us in a position to share those things with other people. Because, as you know, we've always been told since we're young and I think is sometimes hard to absorb, but our love and enthusiasm for something is really contagious, you know, and makes other people really pay attention. And I think you've been sort of a master of that.
Well, thank you. Because, I mean, sharing. I'm glad you brought up that word because for me that's. It's really important that if I like something, I want to share it with somebody. If. If only the next person who comes to my house. But ideally, beyond that, it's one of the things I most enjoy is having people visit and. And look through a stack of pictures.
Yeah.
Either, you know, flea market pictures, new physique images, things that I've just forgot I had. So it's. I don't want to hoard things, I don't want to keep things for myself. I really ideally want them out in the world somehow. So, yeah, that's my. That's my next step.
So everyone who's. Who's listening, if you have a vehicle, a way of getting Vince's incredible collection out in the world, give. Give Vince a call, but don't bother him with nonsense.
Thank you.
No nonsense people, just the real thing. You'll know who you are. Vince. Thank you again. I look forward to next time I see you in the city and just so appreciative of everything you do and everything you've done for my career, my friends and colleagues, and for the photo community at large. Just such a treasure. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for including me.
Okay, talk soon. Take care.
Bye.