All right, let's do this.
Peanut, if you're staying in the room, no talking. Hello and welcome to the Photowork podcast, the talky and touchy feely version of my book, 40 photographers on process and Practice, published by Aperture. This is Sascha Wolf recording from Woodstock, New York, and joined as usual by my friend and producer, Mr. Michael Chovendalton. Hello, Michael.
Hey there.
How are you? Good morning. Good morning to you.
Yes.
How are you doing?
Doing all right. I'm actually gearing up to teach a summer photo workshop. I think I probably had mentioned that once before in Trenton, New Jersey. And so far I have two people signed up.
People.
So it's either going to be incredibly intimate.
Very, very intimate. I mean, this is the sort of thing that like, not great for you, but you know, honestly, if you're a student, you want, I mean.
Oh yeah.
You know, it's like a one on one and they get, they get a
show at the end of it in the gallery. So it could end up being a two person show. How about that bonus?
Well, I hope you get more students, but for those two students, that would be pretty special. So.
It will be. Yes, it will.
When do you start teaching?
June 30th.
Okay. Need to know your schedule so I can figure out when you're going to come help lay flooring. I need. Please send me your calendar. So.
Yes, yes, I will. I'll share my teaching calendar with you.
He thinks I'm kidding, people. Not kidding. Yeah. So, well, let's get to the show because I think you and I feel very similarly about it. This is a two guest episode with the wonderful Cheryl St. Ange and Scott often. You know, I've done a number of two person shows in the past, but we had decided a number of weeks ago to try and make this summer the sort of summer of two guest episodes for various reasons. And so this was our first and I think it's like a proof of concept. It's a really wonderful episode and I was, I just, I was so into it. I love hearing them talk to each other. I love this sort of dynamic, the similarities and I love the juxtapositions. So we will continue on this summer with two guest episodes. But this is setting a high bar. Both Scott and Cheryl really showed up very open hearted and really ready to talk about the process.
Yeah. So the difference between this two person guest episode is that this was not about collaboration. This was not about an editor and a publisher and an artist, some combination of those working together.
Well, it's about A different collaboration, different kind of collaboration. But yes, your point is that it's not about. Normally we have people who have worked together on a project and these two have made two totally separate projects, although both very much projects with collaboration as a central.
Oh yes, they are collaboration. Yes, definitely and definitely. And that's what's so wonderful about it, is that the constructs are so similar in their work. They both, you know, we get, we get an episode within an episode, sort of in this we hear about the artist's work like we normally do, but then we also, you know, live in the moment, hear how the work is similar and different between these two artists. And that's because of that collaboration and those similar constructs, the people they're photographing are very different people. And so to hear them describe their approaches, their process and the ability to have a different kind of collaboration, that's what's really special about this episode. And they're also both incredible speakers.
Yes, they are. And they were. They showed up really, like I said, very open hearted. And that's, you know, honestly, not every guest is in that head space, which I totally understand. I mean, it can be intimidating to come on any podcast. It can be overwhelming and, you know, a little frightening to talk about your process or to talk about your sort of innermost feelings about making work. And I don't begrudge anyone who's not, you know, willing to or not interested in bearing all on the photo work podcast. No problem, I get it. But these two really showed up about as open as you could be.
There is a level of intimacy and honesty in this that is. I think I told you I had to stop editing, get up and get myself a cup of tea.
Yeah, it was Michael's referring to a point that's very emotional and I went through that myself when I was talking to them, so. Well, let's get to it. I do just want to clarify something that gets mentioned in the episode, just sort of very quickly, which is that Scott Often's book Grace, which we're talking about, was shortlisted for the 2026 Book Awards at Arles, something Cheryl sort of mentions in passing. But so big congratulations to Scott for that recognition. So, yeah, without further ado, Michael, why don't we get to it, if you don't mind, Please take it away.
My pleasure. And here is your conversation with Scott Often and Cheryl St on.
Scott Often. Cheryl St. Ange welcomed the Photo Work podcast. It's great to have both of you on. Very fond of both of you as people and admiring of you both as artists and really doing this, not particularly on the occasion because as you'll explain, both books have been out for a little while. Just seemed like a no brainer as my team and I were working on summer podcast ideas to have both of you on to talk about your wonderful books that are made in collaboration with very, very, very close family members. And we'll get into all that. I know you two are also friends, but let's start as we always do. Cheryl, why don't you go first and tell us a bit about yourself and your journey in photography.
Yeah, it's an honor to be here, I should say, and with you and then also, of course, with Scott. My photo journey is long because, of course, I'm of a certain age and I started quite young. I would say that I started drawing when I was about 5 and quickly sort of went through high school, college, grad school, and started teaching and making work. Really kind of rolled out from there. I studied under the three wizzes or three gods of large format, Nick Nixon, Barbara Bosworth, and Abe Morrell. And I count myself extremely lucky. And I started making work with an 8x10, really, because I am a small woman and I felt like I both loved the way it looked. I sort of fell in love with Nick's work a long time ago, but also just that sense of trying to do something that would look different. And I kind of love doing things that are difficult. So I jumped in and it was sort of off to the races after that. I did a number of projects that sort of involved, I guess, inadvertently, family members, though I don't think of my. Somebody who had made pictures of my family until really my mother.
Yeah.
And that I'd say it's a nutshell, Scott.
So when I was a kid, my dad had great cameras. He had a Leica and a Rolleiflex. But he wouldn't teach me photography. So for years I would walk around saying, that's a photograph, that's a photograph. But I never did with it. But it was something that was constantly on my mind and in my professional life. I became a portfolio manager at fidelity investments for 32 years. And in 2012, someone in our immediate family was diagnosed with a chronic illness for which there's no cure. And I was miserable. And misery is not sadness, it's not depression. It's the confrontation with the lifelong suffering of another person. So in 2014, I decided to do the thing I always wanted and I started to photograph at 54. I picked up, I got a cheap digital camera. And I started with street photography because that was what I was, what I was most familiar with. And I brought this body of work to MassArt in 2016 and was accepted to the BFA program and promptly resigned my job to go back to school and study photography. And later I got my MBA there as well. And I started Large Format photography in my sophomore year with 4x5 and very quickly graduated in interest to 8 10. I think this is a wonderful, wonderful experience. We can talk about more of that later on.
You know, one thing that I mean, I think you two would have been a really beautiful pairing for reasons that we'll get into, you know, based on the work. But I do want to say, and I think this is really interesting so, you know, just a little behind the scenes of the podcast, we were planning, we are planning to do pairings through the summer and when we decided to pair you two, as I said, it was really about the subject matter of your two recent books. But it is also really interesting that you're both, you know, neither of you are spring chickens, nor am I. So and you're really both having a certain amount of recognition now, you know, later in your careers and in your, in your lives. And I just think that that's something really worth talking about. And I just wanted to throw it out to you guys because I just, I don't want to start with it, but I do want you to know I want to talk about it because, you know, obviously it can be a little sensitive, but I think it's important and I think I know for a fact that people of all ages listen to the podcast. So I think it's worth discussing. But let's start with the books. So Cheryl, can you tell us a little bit sort of the basics about your book Calling the Birds Home? And then Scott, can you tell us a little bit about your book Grace? And then we can sort of get into the ways in which you both dealt with these collaborations that could have been quite fraught, may have been fraught and also obviously filled with tremendous amount of grace, no pun intended. Cheryl, tell us about your book Calling the Birds Home.
I would say really is. The book really came significantly after the project was done. I had done a body of work that I got a Guggenheim for in 2009 and had worked on a work that looked at things that my kids would have sort of brought along, dead snake skins and such. And I thought that was great. It was sort of mid career and if you hadn't seen it, you're probably Living under a rock was sort of all over the place. I was kind of wonderful. I was teaching at a place I loved, and all of a sudden, things weren't going so well at home. My mother had been widowed for a number of years, and she was working. She lived in an apartment that my husband had built on the property. So we shared this large piece of property. And it was clear that things were going south. And I had no experience with someone who had dementia. And I love my mother. My mother is just like this beautiful, effervescent human being that you'd. You'd want to spend time with. And I thought, I'll stop teaching. I'll stay home. This will just be. It won't be a very long thing. And she means so much to me. So the pictures really were a way to go outside and to have an event. Because I could say, like, let's go to the river and we'll make a picture. Let's go outside in February and let's make snow angels. Let's do all these things that were really part of her life. She was a big gardener. She was an academic. She carved birds. So we had a long history of talking about art. And I think other people might have read poetry to their parents or cooked a meal or sat and knitted, but all those things kind of made me sad. And I'd say both my mother and I were definitely dealing with some depression about the pending loss. She was still quite lucid. She understood that she was losing her mind is how she described it. But she was also, you know, functioning in that world of wanting to still be outside. I mean, my mother was also very healthy. I want to say that, you know, many people look at this and say, I couldn't have done that. And we were very lucky. We lived in a place that was very manicable to that very rural. I'm an only child, so I didn't have siblings to really answer to about it. And we would go out and make pictures. If she fell down an embankment, and that was fine, you know, if she nibbled on some cat food by mistake, that's life. You know, we really kind of spent time together in a beautiful way for a number of years. And I slowly started sharing this work because all I did was cry. And the pictures were a way that my friends and I could communicate about what was happening. Because something we might talk about later is that I think as you get older in life, you form these beautiful connections with people that help you understand your work. And these are other artists, of course, and so I had this posse of friends that really were encouraging me to make pictures about her. And I thought this was. Was just sacrilege. And it was only really on a dare of a few of them that I finally said, okay. And I was shocked by my mother's reaction. She kind of sat up and, you know, seemed to really almost like muscle memory, understand, like, oh, somebody's trying to make my picture. It wouldn't have been the sort of picture that she and I would have ever made together, but for that moment it really surprised me. And then that work kind of sat around for a while as I sort of was working through the mourning process of losing her, which was, you know, it's kind of the end of the world for me. And I ended up meeting.
You lost her in 2000, in 2020.
Yeah. And beautifully not to Covid. She was. She just died of natural causes at home, which is really her plan. And I met the twins at APAD after a few different introductions and I honestly didn't think that it would go anywhere. I approached several publishers and I was met with, you know, we love it, it's great, but wow, it's still at the end of the day about death and who's going to buy that book, which I totally appreciate. And I really, to this day still, you know, that's a battle. But the twins saw it. And when. I mean, the twins, I mean, the La Tier publishing really saw it in a different way. And it also had an exhibition in South Korea a year or two before that. And they really helped me to see how differently, different countries really approach death and loss. And all of a sudden I was like, okay, if you think you're not going to get a couple months into this and then go, nevermind. And they didn't. They completely embraced it. It was a beautiful collaboration. They put together a sequence that I could never have fathomed. Their designer, Teresa Piarde, is just brilliant. You know, it's just. It was a beautiful collaboration and it actually got published, which is remarkable.
Yeah. And Scott, your book Grace was published by the same publishers. And it's interesting, there's ways in which. So Cheryl, your book was published, I think in. Was it 25?
Yes, in the fall.
Yeah. And Scott, you as well, I guess, or the. Really, it was.
I think it came out in May. It was at apat, Right. Yeah.
So I wonder if you had a similar experience working with the twins.
Yeah. So, I mean, John Luca and John Marco are just incredible people. They're just very generous. I really can't say enough about about them. I got to them in sort of a different route. I during COVID I took off a semester to study 5x7 with Lois Connor. And during that time I was putting together the Grace book and I got very far down the road with extremely well known publisher who said it looks like we're going to go ahead. And then I never heard from them again, which I understand is a common experience. And so Lois said, you should talk to my friend Andrea Modica, which is how I got to know Andrea. And Andrea said, oh well, you know, you should go talk to my publishers, Larchieri. So I did. And they were, you know, very eager to make a book and incredibly wonderful to work with, very open and generous. So they made the sequence, you know, you. And I actually did a lot of editing of the work and I did editing of the work with other people and the sequence they came up with, the designer was Teresa Piardi was really incredible. It was very different from anything anybody had thought of. And I think it very effectively told a story that we were trying to tell. But we worked with them.
Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was going to say what was the story?
So. Well, I just want to say that we worked. They worked really wonderfully with me on the selection of the paper, on the printing. We would have zoom calls and you know, they would send me something. FedEx is actually three days from Italy, not overnight. And then we would zoom and we would sort of critique the sheets that they sent and then they would send me another. I mean, it took so long to really for all of us to coalesce on how the book should look that at one point John Lucas said, if we don't stop, we're not going to ever get this book done. We won't be ready for apad. We just have to stop. I mean, that's how open they were to my suggestions and to trying to satisfy what my vision for the book should be in terms of the story of the book. I had done the street photography before I came to MassArt and my professor, Laura McPhee said, why don't you try to for something different? Why don't you try to photograph your family? And the only person that wanted to be photographed was Grace. So from the outset this was an entirely collaborative body of work.
Grace is your wife.
Grace is my wife. And the book is called Grace. But I think it's really about a state of grace more than the fact that it's her name. I think it's just a coincidence. And we worked together Very deliberately on how these photographs should be made. So we made them to look like they plausibly could happen in the real world. But in fact, they're all elaborately staged photographs. And, you know, Grace talks about we had to get supplies, food and water depending on the conditions. We had to have, like different outerwear and hats and tick spray and bug spray. And we had cutouts from a yoga mat. So that if Grace was in an uncomfortable position, we could stick this yoga mat underneath her, which we did many times to sort of take the pressure, you know, off her hips and sort of. It was like going camping, you know, like every week. And because these were staged photographs, we were trying to make the most beautiful photographs that we could. So Grace had costumes that she would wear to transform into a Persona. It's very important to think that this is not the real Grace. This is an aspect of Grace. This is a Persona of Grace. Billy Mandel, one of my professors, said, the real Grace and the Persona of Grace can never meet in the same frame. And so we bought a lot of costumes. We went, you know, vintage shopping. We bought dresses and coats. And Grace would often wear layers of these costumes, and she would peel them off as needed. We would shoot in the water. And Grace is a fly fisher person, and she would wear her waders with voluminous dress over it. And it was about not only outlining her as a person, but also about creating a world in which this person could live. And the person that she was and the person that she is is. She's an older woman. You know, older women go through a lot of important transitions in their lives. Among other things, they become entirely invisible both to other people and to the culture at large. And we were trying to make a statement about that by presenting an older woman in an interesting way, right up front, without any shyness about the fact that, you know, you're older, you look different, and you go through transitions about who you are, reconsidering the fundamental aspects of your life. And it mostly takes place outdoors in this sort of magical forest that we created, because Grace is an outdoor person, and she is her freest and happiest outdoors. So she's sporty, she skis, she grew up riding horses. And it had to take place outdoors because that's the place where Grace is herself.
It's interesting because, you know, there's so many similarities in these books. Same publisher. There's sort of aesthetic similarities in the object of the book itself. You're both photographing people. You have very, very intimate relationships with But Grace is a full collaborator in this project. And Cheryl, your mother, although from what I've read and what you said sounds like she was, would sort of, in her way of communicating, really let you know that she wanted to do this, that she was game. But obviously, you know, it's much harder to know what her feeling would be about the project. How did that. And look, I went through that. You know, my mother had Alzheimer's, and I'm very, very, very familiar with the different sort of stages and that sort of losing of the person that you knew and sort of trying to embrace this. This new version of them, but it's extremely tricky.
Yeah.
But I wonder.
Yeah.
How you. How you navigated that very consent question.
I think there's a couple. Yeah. The question of consent is huge. And I want to just say that right out of the gate, obviously, in life, like so many things, we do one thing in the moment because it seems to be the logical way to function. And then we may have second thoughts or we look back and understand that it might not be understood by a majority of people, even your peers. And I want to really preface everything I do and say that there is, of course, no way I could understand. Truly, she was. Yeah. That's the problem when you have dementia. How could I possibly know if this was a lot of fun or was she miserable? I mean, I can only tell you based on how it felt at the moment, in spending time with her and knowing her my whole life. So, of course, sometimes you just throw your hands up and say, we have to do what we have to do, and Sunny. And let's go outside. Let's get away from the kitchen table and whatever sadness seems to be ruminating in this room and do something which is what she just really would perk up about. So in the end, there was really no question for me about whether this was the right thing to do or how to spend your time. It just felt like you were. Anybody that was present in that moment would have said, yes, let's go do this. But of course, I do have to acknowledge that we just published a book where some people may look at this and think, I don't know, was this really a good idea? I mean, she's an older woman. The artist, myself is an older woman. I mean, how can you talk about consent? And it's a bit like making pictures of your own children at the moment. When you're doing that with them, they seem all gung ho, and then they turn 21 or 16 and they're like, yeah, Maybe not that one. And that's just sort of art, I think, evolving through time.
You know, I want to add something to what Cheryl said that I think is really important, and that is the intimacy and the knowledge that is gained through a long term relationship. Right. Cheryl knew her mother her entire life. I met Grace 45 years ago, and even though it was a collaborative project, it couldn't have happened if we hadn't had that longevity, that kind of trust and that intuitive understanding of where the other person was. In our case, Grace was often in uncomfortable positions and, you know, I had to know, not. She wouldn't say anything. Grace is a very. She's not a large talker, but, you know, you have to look at the person and see the person and hear the person, and that is what lets you know whether or not you have consent. I would say that more than any verbal agreement, you know, that's. It's that relationship, it's that knowledge that nobody else has. Because this person, I mean, Cheryl's mother was incredibly important in her life. And Grace is the most important person in my life. And you only get the most important person, right by being around that person a long time and coming to understand everything about them. Things that you love, things that you may not entirely be happy about. And that's what collaboration to me truly is. It's not stopping somebody on the street saying, can I take your photograph? Kind of clicking with them for 30 seconds and walking away. These projects, these long term projects are a much more profound collaboration.
Maybe I could add one thing to this too. Maybe Scott feels this way as well. But this was a beautiful slow time in my life. I had basically gone to college and high school and grad school, all that stuff. Started teaching right away and really just had this typical, you know, just trying to make ends meet. Life with three kids and sort of go, go, go. And then all of a sudden things slowed way down. But there's this whole history of that person that you've had. So your mind is kind of reeling when you're walking around, when you're making pictures, when you're going to an orchard. I'm remembering the times that she and I have gone picking when I was a kid. I mean, it's like this movie of your life kind of coming and going as you're walking around and functioning. And of course that comes into play when you're making pictures. And maybe it sometimes comes into play in terms of what she might recall as well. I think what Scott's getting at a bit in our Story is, you know, I would say, like, I'd really like to make this picture in this. There's a beautiful river near where we live. You know, do you think you could wade into the water? And she'd be like, well, yeah, maybe. And she'd go in a little bit and she'd be like, is this far enough?
Right?
I'd be like, well, a little bit further. Like, there's a little bit of sun over there. And she would be, okay, I'll go over there.
Right?
Like, she liked to please. But there was definitely these constant conversations. It wasn't like she was, you know, unable to speak about this stuff at all. She was very much lucid in that way. But of course, I just want to say, for the record, that some people will listen to this and say, that is not consent. It is just. It just isn't. You know, you're kidding yourself if you think it is. So I want to be, you know, open about that.
You know, it's.
Yeah, go ahead, Scott. No, no, go, go.
I was going to say what you said was really interesting because looking at the pictures, I see implicit consent everywhere. I would be surprised to hear that other people don't. But in our case, we had a lot of conflicts making our photographs. And because often I would be at some distance from Grace, we had to shout at each other and people would look at us. And so we made a rule. Everybody's pictures get made. Everybody's pictures get made. And it started in a funny way. Grace said, you have to make a bunch of pictures this way. And I said, these are terrible pictures. I'm not going to show them to anybody at school. They're just awful. And I brought them to critique against my will. And everybody said, oh, these are the best pictures you've taken in a long time. And I thought, like, okay, we're just going to have this rule. Everybody's pictures get made. So whatever Grace wanted to have shot the way that she wanted to have it shot, we would do. Whatever I wanted to have taken the way that I wanted to have it taken, we would do. And if you look at the book, somebody asked me a question, you know, is it 50? 50 in terms of the final selection? May, it's 60, 40. It's 50, 50. It doesn't really matter. It's essentially an entirely collaborative book. But one of the ways that we collaborated was learning to tamp down the conflict that we had between us, which is very different than Cheryl's experience.
I just have to say, I'm just smiling Ear to ear. It's so wonderful to hear Scott talk about this work. Right. It just. You can't help but just beam. I have the book in front of me and it's just great to hear one of your friends talking about their work. It just makes me smile.
Well, you know, the funniest things, to me, what's really funny is some of the pictures that are the most loved are pictures that were entirely made by Grace. So there's a photograph of Grace under some very large leaves, Pistites japonicus. And that was entirely her photograph. She said, and there are weird things about that photograph. It was made in a public park. Grace partly disrobed. Grace is very New England and very practical. And she said, well, I'm an old lady. I can take off my clothes anywhere I want. And sat down under these leaves. And she said, you just go back and frame the picture and. And then there's another picture that people like of Grace with this huge glacial erratic on the beach. And that was entirely my photograph. And it took five years to make because we had to coordinate the tide. It's an eight foot tide with the position of the sun in the sky to get the light right. And it took us five years to find the opportunity where it all worked out. And so they really balance each other. Grace's look is in that book. My look is in that book. And they really balance each other, you know, really, really well. But when people look at the book and say, I see love, I'm sure there's love in the book. Right. But there was a lot of conflict in making the book, and that's something that's not apparent.
Is Grace happy with the book?
Grace is delighted with the book. So we talk about, we never talk about, like my book, we only talk about our book. And in fact, I asked Lartieri if Grace could be listed as a co author. For various reasons, they thought it was not the best idea. But it's our book. Recently, Cheryl I and Kristin Joy Emack had an artist panel and the hosts invited Grace up to join us. That was wonderful because they recognized that Grace was so much a part of the process.
And Cheryl, do you feel as though your mother would be pleased with this book?
I think so. You know, the work got some beautiful press over the years, and when those pieces would come out in the Times or the New Yorker, she wasn't able to recognize herself, which is not unusual. So she would be like, oh, who's that lady? So it's hard to know that. Or she Saw herself in a mirror. But I guess the one thing that, of course, losing someone like this is that it's such a humbling experience. Hospice and a lot of other people, of course. You, Sasha, brought up the idea of meditation many years ago to me. You know, really this idea of kind of coming to terms with where you are and what's around you and what matters. And I. I grew up in a household. My father was a physicist and math was king. They were wonderful parents. I had a great childhood. But nonetheless, it was very logical. And I kind of love that logic. I like lists. I like, you know, parameters. And to be in this situation where I was having people regularly say, you can't really. I mean, you can know what she's thinking, but, like, how your mood, like your energy is also impacting her. And these other much more soft, intangible things came into being. And I would say I still wasn't always that comfortable with it in the moment. You know, I would be like, okay, I get that you might all feel this, but I'm still, you know, trying to get a shower and get her outside and do certain things. But I would say after the fact, after the years, that in the intervening years, and certainly, you know, literally the hour or so after she died, I just needed to be outside, see if I could feel her and sense her. And suddenly I found myself just so open to these touchy feely things that I had just no interest in. So it's a beautiful sort of moment at that point in time. And I would say to that question, when I'm doing those things and I'm aware of her and I'm thinking about the work, I do feel like, gosh, she really was, in my humble opinion, again, so much more a collaborator in the pictures than I gave her credit for. When we were making them, when we were making them, it was still just like, let's go outside, let's go for a walk, let's do these physical lists. Like, let's go here. We're gonna walk a mile, we're gonna do this. It's gonna be sunny, it's gonna be great. You're dressed for the weather. But after the fact, of course, when you have some time in your head and you really have to come to terms with what you've done or not done in life, it's important to. I could just feel a sense of like, okay, I think she really was saying yes to me in ways that I wasn't open to.
Both of you, as has become clear from this conversation, were Making these projects where you had a real. Well, you had one subject, one human subject. In Scott's case, Grace, Cheryl, in your case, your mom. How do you handle keeping. Well, let me put this in a more positive way. How do you handle pacing? How do you think about pacing so that not every single page is a picture of the same person?
Can I jump in? Scott? I think you do it one way, but this is a huge problem for this body of work. Again, since I'm just doing it to spend time with her, I only wanted pictures of her. I didn't really give a rat's ass about the landscape around her. And I certainly had my peers, Barbara, amongst others, say to me, you need to see her in context. Where are the landscapes? And I'd be like, well, when she's dead. When she's dead, I'll go make those pictures. And I certainly had friends who said, well, okay, now you've got this body of work where it's just, you know, Carol, Carol, Carol, 24 7, dead center of the frame, right? But again, I was like, what do I care? She's the only one I really wanted to make pictures of. But that's where I think sometime after her passing and really trying to struggle, having long conversations with a lot of my peers, you know, Scott being one of them, of just saying, like, what do we do when a project comes to an end? I mean, Scott and I talked about this. Like, his project does not have to end. I mean, Grace is still alive. Her mind has a finite end to it. And I'm somebody who really needs to be making pictures to kind of feel productive, as stupid as that might be. So as I sort of moved away from, you know, went back to teaching, and I was trying to think of, you know, what am I interested in? What am I going to make work about? And listening to people talk about the shortcomings of this work, which is it is just all Carol dead center. So I started to make pictures of her carvings and the bird nests that she'd collected around the property and these other things. And I think that those helped me to kind of see the way in which, you know, I could sort of mourn and also sort of start to play with what appeals to me that I then might make a new body of work about. But I have to say, the magic, of course, is that Laggieri got a dump of a huge, huge amount of work. Both all of my mother, but also all of this new work. And they were the ones who really beautifully created, like, these books within the Book that dealt with some of her carvings, some of the taxidermied birds that she'd collected over a lifetime. It sort of the book, if I can say, you know, in a very beautiful way, because I could never have done this. They weave the story about my mother that my pictures didn't tell. Right? Like, I'm really sort of like, here she is. And they're like, but wait, she did this? Or, oh, wait, this. This also happened. And it's. The book for me, is a beautiful conversation between the mother that I. The, you know, the real Carol, that. That actually was lucid and fun and, you know, just amazing. Is much more present in that book than in just the stack of pictures that I made about her initially.
That's really interesting. Yeah. Her artwork, you call them, her carvings, I mean, is at an incredibly high level. I mean, her work is really, really beautiful. She was clearly an artist.
And when. And when she was, you know, in her 40s and saying to me, like, well, you know, kind of I'm thinking about doing this new thing. And was I supportive? No, I was like, why? You're an amazing artist. Oh, my God, you're like, incredible painter. Like, why would you, like, you know, ditch all this? And. But my mother, of course, just was like, no, I'm gonna do that. And she went on her way. And I was, you know, I was dead wrong. And she was. She was right. I have a story. When I was still teaching, I came home one night. It was like a Friday all day class. And I remember driving in and, like, there's flowers that we planted together that are ripped up, which is not a good sign. And lights are on that shouldn't be on. And she's put herself to bed. This is when it was still pretty early on. And I'm just like, things aren't great. I need to leave. I need to start being home more and really kind of coming to terms with that. And then I walked into my house, and as I said, we shared this. There was a passageway that connected the two. Her apartment in the house and on the island was this chickadee that she'd carved. And there was a little light over the head of it that was on. And I walked in and it was just like the sky opened up. And I thought, I mean, everything is right with the world. I mean, my mother is next door. She's safe. Sure. She just ripped up all the flower beds that she planted a decade ago. And yes, you know, death is coming. But right now, right now, my mother has just made this Beautiful piece of art. And she's left it out for me to see. And as somebody who just spent their whole life looking at art, there's nothing like that. That was it. Like, if I just, you know, everything had ended that day, I would say, like, okay, you know, we've done our piece.
Scott, same question. How did you handle the challenge of something like this becoming sort of tedious and too repetitive?
So one thing is we could only photograph for very short periods of time. It was very intense. And we only photographed two or three times a week, not including transportation time. We only photographed for max was three hours. And then we would come home and take a nap. It was just a very, very taxing experience to do because it was just so emotionally intense. Because Grace is in some way bearing her soul. I mean, through a Persona, but she's bearing her soul and she's enduring. You know, modeling is. It's just physically taxing. The things that she agreed and wanted to do for the book. And then, you know, camera work is not the easiest thing in the world for me. And thinking about it was really hard. And a lot of the photograph, as I said, we tried to make it look as plausibly natural as possible. But, you know, we both grew up going to the mfa, and Grace does watercolor, and she drew for many years. And so we had a lot of ideas about art and about how to make portraits. And it was trying to make them. We consciously tried to make them in a variety of different ways, both because we didn't want to get trapped into the same thing all the time. And we also thought, you know, it was aesthetically more interesting. And I've had people. Before the book was published, many people would say the variety of work is too great. You pick one thing and stick with it. There are too many different kinds of photographs here. But we didn't want to make the same photograph over and over again. And we worked very hard for that not to happen. And also, we were guided by the seasons and by the locations that we went to. And so it wasn't tedious at all. It was extremely, extremely intense. And as I said, we're strong personalities that had very strong views of how things should be done. And a lot of the photographs were also made over long periods of time, like five years to get it right. And it's not saying that we took it multiple times each year. But, you know, the photograph of the Grace by the Rock, you know, we had to get the weather right and the tide right, and we had to get, you know, the schedule. Right. And so you go back three or four or five times over five years to make one photograph. Along the way, the photograph keeps changing as you're trying to. To make it something new or make it in new conditions. A lot of the photographs were dreamed by me. I would dream a photograph and then we would talk about it and we would photograph it. So there's a photograph of Grace in the pantry that also took a number of years to make, but started out as a dream. And there are a bunch of those that I actually dreamt. And I would say that Grace is quite sad now that we don't have a project together. She's really upset about it. I've started a new project. I don't know if it's going to be great. I think Cheryl's right that when you've done something so long and it's such a large part of your life and it's with somebody so important, when you're done, you think like, what's next? So I'm scratching around for different things. And Grace wants to be in it because it became just a super important part of our relationship and something that we could share, which was our love of the New England landscape. I mean, Grace's family came over in the 17th century. So I like to say to her, you know, she was the first generation of colonial oppressors. They're all so proud of it, but I don't know if it's. And we made these environmental portraits, and I didn't think we needed landscapes because I thought there was a lot of landscape in the photographs. But I also was told you have to have landscapes here to sort of flesh out the world in which this person is living. And so I hired a kid from s Art who's 63 and he was 23 years old and could carry all the 8 by 10 equipment up and down. We hiked for about four months, for about six hours a day. I went to sleep at 4 o' clock in the afternoon. I was so tired. I lost like 12, 15 pounds. And we sort of built out that world very carefully, referencing the photographs that we already had. Yeah, yeah.
So, Cheryl, you mentioned earlier, just. I want to just get to a couple of other things. You mentioned earlier. Sort of having work that you had done. Sorry, I'm Natural Findings. Right. Couldn't bring that to my mind for a second there. You had. Had gotten a lot of recognition. You received a Guggenheim for Natural Findings. And it's really a beautiful project. And maybe I'm wrong. It feels like calling the birds home. It just feels like it really got in the zeitgeist in a big way. I mean, I was sort of seeing it everywhere. I mean, even the other day I saw on Instagram, kai@photoeye giving the book a lot of love.
She was so beautiful.
Yeah, no, that was lovely. It was a lovely shout out by a lovely person.
Maybe I know where you're getting at.
Yeah, I mean, I'm just wondering. And then, you know, for you too, Scott, I. This is sort of circling back around to what I threw out when we started talking today. Sort of just wondering what it's like to be, you know, really in the community's collective mind now in a very big way at this point in your lives.
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's not lost on Scott and I, let's say we certainly do talk about that. First of all, we are of the age where we possibly could be, as David Sedaris says, we could walk into a bank and we are invisible. And we've made work about women that are also, for intensive purposes, would go unnoticed. And I do think maybe the world has finally come around to understanding that death is inevitable and we need to embrace it in some way or at least understand that it is pending and we should be having conversations about it. That it doesn't have to be this terrible darkness that of course, is associated with that. I think I would be a little remiss to say that if I didn't mention my father was killed when my mother was all of. He was 39 and she was 37. And I think experiencing a death early on and losing a parent is terrible. Let's hope nobody goes through it. Hope my kids, they didn't go through that. But nonetheless, it is.
Is.
It changes everything. And for me, I had a mother who really helped me to understand that the whole community, this university, that we were part of, the academic community, people that he was doing research with across the country, across the world, were also experiencing that loss. And I think at 14, to understand that you are not alone, to kind of throw away that idea of we're born alone, we die alone, and instead to say, that's just nuts. We. We need to feel this community. And possibly as an only child, it's something that I really, really love and I treasure my friends and I make a point of if I'm feeling something with somebody, to make a point of reaching out to them and sharing work or talking about their lives or just making some connection, because that's the only thing that makes the world go round. So it's wonderful that Scott and I, and our subject matters are older and maybe we are starting to see that, you know, these people and their lives are important. I mean, obviously we've known that, but for the rest of the, you know, the social world to see it that way. It's also interesting to me too that we are both dealing with a New England landscape. There's so much about photography that's the western landscape. And then here we are, you know, in New Hampshire, in Maine, in Massachusetts. And it's, you know, it's coastal and it's. And the subject, you know, both, both these women really grew up in that environment too. So it's kind of this beautiful generational experience of being in that.
Scott, what is it like for you? I mean, much more sort of clear cut in this way. As you said, you had a career in finance in a very different part of the world, and now all of a sudden you're very much a part of this community and people know, a lot of people know who you are, know this, this project and what, what type of both, you know, pressure does that put on you? Or, you know, it must feel also quite good.
I mean, let's mention the short listing of your book for Arles. A Lot of Pressure. It's amazing.
Thank you. Thank you for mentioning that. So, you know, it's really a complex thing in my case because I grew up in a very different world than the world in which I inhabit. I mean, I went to a private high school. I went to a highly regarded college. I got what many people would say is a very prestigious job. I was a portfolio manager for 32 years at the company that was the largest company in the world at the time, doing that kind of thing. And then I went to art school. I had this sort of weird break in my life. It was not something of my choosing, that kind of illness that it's, you know, misery. I was miserable. Okay? Misery is not sadness and misery is not depression. Misery is the understanding that someone you love is going to suffer for the rest of their lives. And that's, that's like a terrible thing. So I had to make a change. I had to make a change. And I was kind of lucky that there was this photography thing in the back of my mind that I had not never really fulfilled that ambition. And so to get out, literally to get outdoors, because I think it's very easy to be miserable indoors where there's nothing else. In my case, I'm looking at three computer screens. I went outside with a camera and decided to do something I'd always wanted to do. And that started changing my life. And then when I went to grad school or when I went to MassArt for my BFA and my MFA, it completely changed my life. I saw the world from the vantage point of people who look at the world, not people who look at screens, from people of all different kinds of economic circumstances, from people with all different kinds of expressions of gender. So I moved away from what had been a very conservative world. And it changed me profoundly. I mean, it changed my politics, it changed what I want to photograph. It just changed me enormously. And I am very happy, actually to be in a very different kind of world than the world that I was in. I wish there were more photographers that I like with whom I have long distance relationships. I wish they were closer. You know, photography can sometimes be a very lonely experience in the sense that you're out there by yourself with your camera. Luckily, I was with Grace a lot of the time, but I've had other projects where I was alone. But you meet people and you just wish they were closer. The photography world is, you know, it's a very democratic world. It's a global world and there are people all over the place. And so I'm happy to be with those people. I just wish I were with them more often. In terms of getting, well, like you, you live, you know, you're in New York. I'm not. I'm not in New York. We only meet up a few times a year. Thank you for your help. But, you know, I'd like to hang out with you more. I'd like to hang out with Barbara Bosworth more. I'd like to hang out with a whole bunch of people more. So it's great. It's great in terms of, like, being recognized. I don't really notice that except when I'm on Instagram. And I'm very glad of that. I think that can be very distracting. I really want to make work that is work that appeals to me. Now, the truth of the matter is, the irony of being an artist is you have to make work that appeals to you, but you also want to share it with other people. And so there's this strange dynamic that goes on.
Well, particularly with both of you, let me just say. Particularly with both of these projects, right? So, I mean, you know, you make Cheryl this work, these portraits of your mother as she's going through a metamorphosis. And Scott, you're making photographs of your wife. No one knows who she is she's not the most important person in the world to anyone but you and probably your kids. And, you know, she's also. Yeah, go ahead.
I just want to say Grace is not easy to know. She's sort of an unknowable person. She's a person who loves her own company and doesn't need other people, really doesn't need them. And that's reflected in the works. Yeah, it's reflected in the work. You don't see her face for the first third of the work of the book. She's always alone. She's doing her own thing. She wrote about herself that I'm just going to quote it. A solitary girl who's kind of different for having seen a lot of life. And she's not a lonely person at all. She has lots of friends, but she doesn't need that to be content with herself.
Well, it's just. What I was going to say is it's so interesting that you've both made projects where it's so specific, so it couldn't be more specific. And yet, of course, there's such universal truths, if I can use that term, in both of them. And I think that, you know, we always. I don't know about everyone, but I know I talk to young artists a lot about the universal in the specific and trusting that. And I think you've both really proved that point.
It is interesting, too, that, you know, I think using a view camera really just slows you down, obviously, in the making of it. As fast and as capable as Scott and I both are, so there's fewer pictures to look at, you know, that's kind of wonderful. So you really feel like you know what you have. But there's also that sense of you're just not. I wouldn't process. I mean, I'm sure people will just cringe, but I would often not process them for months and months. It's almost better if I didn't. You know, you'd have to acknowledge that the death every time you process the film. Like, either you got it or you didn't have it. And there were certainly lots of pictures that were made on iPhones and DSLRs. But there is that sense, I think, as an artist, to understand how film kind of played a big factor in that. And I think, in a way, it was a beautiful. It kind of helped me cope with the pending loss. It's like I still had money in the bank if I had film in a box to be processed.
So much sense.
It's like there's just this great hope that a better picture is there. You just haven't. You haven't seen it yet. And you're also not micromanaging that. Like, you're really micromanaging the experience of making the picture. You're there and you're worrying about the light or the rain or whatever's happening or their comfort. Right. But you're not necessarily being like, oh, if I look at the back here, she should move to the left. Scott and I talked about something else too, which is, I think we both like lists and organization and there's that sense of, you know, we're both at a place in life where you can make a picture without thinking like, oh, I'm just going to edit that out later. It's like, no, if it's in the frame, it's in the picture. And there are certain things that we may or may not want, and we want to make sure that those things are either in or not, you know, and that comes from, I think, setting up a view camera, just the history of kind of slowly looking. And I think you end up doing that with 35, with iPhone, with anything, you know, one once you sort of have that mindset of, like, it isn't this rapid, oh, my gosh, I've got to catch them all. No, it's really. It's a very curated view. Right. I mean, both of us are making pictures about someone and, you know, there's complete chaos just outside of the frame. Many of these, I'm sure, but that's not what we're interested in portraying. And so the pictures are. One of my kids said, well, they're kind of like still lifes with, you know, with your mother. And in many ways they are. Yeah.
I think the view camera is an amazing tool. And I would say that it actually changed how I use digital photography as well. Because the temptation with digital photography is you can take a thousand pictures to try to get one, right? And with the view camera, you learn to actually look and see what you're looking at long before you decide to actually take the photograph. And then when you take the photograph, you know, especially with the view camera, because you see everything upside down and backwards, right? So you're starting already with a kind of abstraction that forces you to think about composition right away. And that sort of is, you know, you sort of learn to see the world that way, sort of upside down and backwards. And so it affects any kind of photograph you take. With every other kind of camera, It's. I mean, for me, it's A David Hiller doesn't always like the way I describe this, but it's like a very sensual experience. Right. You're in the dark under the dark cloth and you're very carefully, precisely touching this machine. You're like hugging this thing in the dark. That's independent of taking the photograph. I just love being under the dark cloth.
Well, that's a sort of intimacy in a way with you and your ideas and this equipment that's helping you realize your.
And that intimacy shows up in the photographs.
Yeah, for sure.
And then, you know, with large format, you have, you have selective focus that you don't have. You can use the movements to, to change the plane of focus to decide what's not in focus, what that is going to look like. Whereas in a rigid body camera you basically have two tools. You have distance and you have aperture. But because there's a bellows between the lens and the film, you can do all kinds of things that you can't do with any other tool.
Yeah. I would say students, anybody in the world should try it. Right. It's not the difficult thing that, that I think sometimes might seem like it's. Joni Sternbach said, it's like making brownies. Right? Like just set your camera up and go make a picture. It's not a difficult thing. And I. When you need a kick in the butt, that's what it's like. It's like, well, it's 11:30 or 9:30 at night. Some brownies would be great. Are we going to do this?
Well, yeah, why not?
It's not going to take very long. Let's go do this.
Yeah.
I'm ashamed to admit how much I relate to that analogy. Anyway, I will say that I often do wind up in this case making the cookies, the late night cookies. You guys, thank you both so much for being in conversation with me today. Calling the Birds Home and Grace. Both very, very moving and beautiful books that I think, you know, often I look at a book and I wonder, is it important? Do we need it? I mean, I, I love the explosion of photo books and I'm on the side of being just thrilled with how many more people have jumped into the publishing space. And I think it's just a real gift. And I think that if there weren't as many publishers now, we might not have these two books. And so I'm really thrilled because I think they are both important, which is not a word I use very often. But there's a lot to learn about humanity and humility in both of them anyway, so I urge folks to check them out. And Cheryl and Scott, thank you both so much for being with me.
Thank you. It was such a pleasure.
Yeah, thanks for having us. It was really great.
Okay, my best to you both. Bye Bye.
Bye bye.
Thank you.
Photo Work with Sascha Wolff is a production of the Photo Work Foundation. Executive producer is Sascha Wolff and the associate producers are Taylor Salzbach and Noah Lynn. The show is also produced and edited by me, Michael Chovendalt in a real photo show. Music is by J. Walter Hawks. If you like the show and wish to find out more about the foundation, please visit Photowark foundation and be sure to subscribe and review with all the stars on your listening platform.