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 4D photographers on process and Practice. I'm Sascha Wolf, joined as usual by my friend and producer, Mr. Michael Chovendalton. Good morning, Michael. How are you?
Good morning. Good, good. I've been driving all over the place. I picked up my son from college in Ithaca and then drove down to Philly to record a show, my own show. And then. Yeah, we have honors convocation today and graduation tomorrow, and it's just sort of a non stop back and forth.
Yeah, tomorrow.
Otherwise great.
Yeah.
Yes. It. Every morning I wake up, like, where am I heading? Like, what part of the compass am I heading towards today?
Well, we got to see each other the other day, I know. Which was absolutely wonderful.
We were up on the third floor of ICP just watching. Watching everything going on.
We were. We were spying. We were at the ICP Photo Book Fair. And, yeah, we perched on this sort of catwalk area to watch all the goings on. And that was fun. Really fun. I thought that the book fair looked great. It was terrific to see so many fantastic publishers, a lot of really beautiful books. And I think I remember when the ICP Book Fair started, and it's really developed into a wonderful event. So congratulations to them.
It's really also an event where you can run into people you haven't seen in a while. Maybe you only see them once a year when they're at the book fair. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's set up very well where you can just talk and hang out with people and look at all the wonderful books. Yeah.
Everyone seemed to be in a very good mood, which isn't, you know, at APAD a few weeks ago where we saw, you know, some of the same publishers in the photo book section at apad. You know, that environment, although wonderful, is also very intense. And, you know, you go over whether you're, you know, seeing people at their booths or whether you're in the publishing section, people have a sort of overwhelmed, sort of. So, yeah, it does.
It feels more high pressure.
It does. Definitely. Yeah, definitely. So seeing folks at icp, everyone seemed much more relaxed
for whatever reason.
That was nice.
It does. It does feel like that.
Yeah. And then I was with my partner, Jessica, and I got to meet Jessica. You got to meet Jessica. That was wonderful. Ships passing the night before. But you finally got to hang out, which was really lovely.
And I think I felt like we knew each other for years already.
Right, for sure.
Yep.
I think that we may have already started, like, laid the groundwork for coercing you into manual labor.
Well, you have some big plans and changes, and I'm happy to help out.
Okay. Yeah.
On the home front, Jess and I
are selling our house and buying a new one with just a little bit more land. Also in Woodstock, sort of a swap. But we're buying a fixer upper. 1950 fixer upper. And so we're gonna be counting on the kindness of friends. Yeah.
I have lots of duplicate tools. I can leave some up there.
Okay. By the way, it was Jess birthday the other day, and I bought her a Sawzall. So that should. Yeah, just say something about where we are in our rifle.
But, yeah, first anniversary Sawzall.
Yeah. Right. First anniversary. Five year combo.
Maybe first is sledgehammer. Yeah.
Oh, man. Yeah, Lots to do, but it's gonna be really, really fun. Starting with demo. Anyway, so, Michael, today's episode is really wonderful. It's a conversation with the photographer, Eli Durst. And Eli is such a lovely person. I loved talking to him, and he's very open and generous, honest, and, yeah, it was a real joy, I have to say. Just one of those episodes for me personally, I just had such a good time talking to him.
Yeah. You know, I think the good news is I think this happens more often than not. The people we speak to, and I get to talk to them before and after the show with settings up and all, and we're just hitting a streak of such generous, wonderful people to speak with. And I think that speaks to what the two of you speak about in this episode. And Eli talks about learning how to be a professional artist. And I'm not saying that they're not genuinely nice people, but they also know that every exchange is an opportunity to, you know, be gracious and respectful and helpful and generous, all those things. And Eli is definitely one of those people. I really enjoyed speaking with Eli off the air and on that idea of being a professional artist and being someone who is intelligent and respectful and easy to talk to, you have a pretty intense conversation about the idea of what documentary is how much to inform your audience about your work, how much to sort of let them figure it out for themselves. And it's a really good back and forth that you have.
Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, you guys work. There's a real opacity to it. He's. Yeah. Eli is really on the far end of the spectrum when it comes to you know, how much he wants to tell the viewer up front about what it is he's trying to say what the work is, quote unquote, about. He's holding a lot back, including a complete lack of text and captions, so you don't even see titles, you know, and it's intense. And I. I did push him a little bit on that. And I have to say, you know, it's rare, as anyone who listens to this show knows, it's rare that I sort of challenge a guest. You know, I really am so grateful to the folks who come on. I think you and I feel the same way about this. I'm not a journalist. I'm not, you know, here to give my guests a hard time. They've been invited and.
And usually to celebrate something. Yes.
And it's irrelevant, for the most part, whether it's my favorite work in the world. You know, I'm just trying to give people a platform to talk about what it is they do with the hope that it will be meaningful and resonate with our listeners. And certainly, if I'm being honest, there have been times where I wished I'd sort of pushed someone a little bit, but for the most part, that's not what the podcast is. And we need guests to come on. And frankly, people have enough anxiety about it, and it's quite common that you and I have to really. And Noah, who's on our team, podcast team, we have to really talk someone into coming on. I mean, we deal with guests anxiety about it constantly. So, you know, I can tell someone who we want to come on. Well, listen to the. Listen to some episodes, and I think you'll feel more comfortable. So I think if I were to take the role of someone who was really challenging the guests on their work, on their output, on their methodology, you know, that would make it even harder to get guests to come on. So, you know, you have to sort of walk that line. And I will say, though, this was sort of a perfect storm. I've known Eli somewhat for quite a while, and he is very confident. I think that's an important key to this. He has a certain confidence that's not easily shaken, and he's extremely good natured, and I think he trusted me. And so I don't want to set this up as though Eli and I had some, like, you know, really
on the ground grappling.
Right.
In fact, it's a very brief part of the whole conversation, but it was nice to feel like I had a chance to sort of push a Little bit. And that I was dealing with someone with such maturity that, you know, they were perfectly comfortable having that conversation with me. So it was really nice. I have to say. I want more of that, but it is a. I want more of the ability to do that. But it is tough.
You have to find that relationship very quickly in order to know how much you can push.
Absolutely.
When it's a guest who's never been on and someone you haven't had a lot of interaction with.
Without a doubt. Without a doubt. And I don't talk to the guests ahead of time. You do. So, you know, they don't know what I'm going to bring up, and I
just tell them to expect the worst, that's all.
Oh, it all makes sense now. Well, it's a really wonderful conversation and huge thanks to Eli for being so wonderful and gracious and all the good things. So, yeah, we have a lot of great episodes coming up. We're on a tear. Got a couple of curators coming up next, and, yep, some wonderful artists, of course. So keep listening, everyone. And Michael, I guess we'll get to it. If you don't mind, please take it away.
My pleasure. And here is your conversation with Eli Durst.
Eli Durst, welcome to the Photo Work podcast. It's great to have you on. I've been looking forward to talking with you. Haven't gotten a chance to talk with you in years, I think, at this point. So welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is one of my favorite podcasts, and I love you and Michael are kind of like celebrities now, to my ears, so it's an honor to be here.
Well, thank you very much so, so much. To get into your work is really sort of occupying a very specific space, and at the same time, I think very much its own space. And I don't think I've had too many guests who are really working in the space. You are so really looking forward to this conversation. But let's start as we always do and tell folks about yourself and how you got into photography.
Yeah. So I'm Eli. I'm originally from Austin, Texas. I started taking photography seriously in undergrad. I went to Wesleyan University and I studied with Sasha Rudensky, who I know. You know, another Sasha, Indeed. And I just fell in love with it, and I went to Wesleyan to study Cinema Moving image. It has a very famous program. And I was a little bit put off by how just industry centric it was, how much it was geared towards sort of going to LA and working within the industry. And at the same time I was doing my intro film in cinema classes, I was also taking photo one darkroom. And the contrast was amazing. In my darkroom photography class, you could just go out into the world. And what was so exciting and maybe liberating to me was like, I felt like I didn't need to know anything. I mean, I didn't know anything. I was 18 years old. It's like I didn't know shit, you know? And it was just so. It's great to be able to learn from the world, to discover from the world without picking a genre or writing a script or doing all these things I felt like you had to know something about. So that's how I got into it. And I fell in love. And I just, I sort of, you know, I like to, you know, I don't know if I really knew, but I feel like I knew on some way this is what I wanted to do. And then I moved to New York City. I worked at Griffin Editions, a fine art kind of boutique printing studio in Brooklyn. And I also assisted Joel Meyerowitz, the legendary street photographer Joel Meyerowitz, for about three years working in his studio. And at that point I knew I really wanted to go back to graduate school. So I went to graduate school at Yale. I finished in 2016 and lived in New York for a little while afterwards. Worked for On Me Le and then got a teaching job here in Austin. I'm at the University of Texas at the art school here. So that's what I'm up to. That's my biography. I'm happy to talk more about my work if that's, you know, if that's.
Well, we're definitely going to talk about your work. So. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it was Sasha who first showed me your work. Actually, I just saw her the other day. She's working on an amazing new project. So shout out to Sasha Radensky. And I love the way people in our community are constantly connecting one another. I think it's really beautiful, really important too. So. Well, let me just. I mean, I really, you know, I have a lot of notes about your work, but you mentioned working for Joel Meyerowitz, and I heard you say about working with Joel that that's where you learned about professionalism and the seriousness and the rigorous and what really goes into being an artist. And I actually, you know, I think these things are really important. We don't talk about enough, really, the sort of the professionalism of it and what that, what we mean by that and, you know, can sound sort of yucky, but I, as someone who represents artists, find it incredibly important. Can you just actually just talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely. I think I learned a lot from Joel, and when I finished grad school, I worked for an Melee, and I think I learned a lot from her in the similar regard. But just like, I was just so curious, like, what does it actually look like to be a photographer, to be an artist, to make a living, to keep track of your work. I mean, you know, the way often photographers and artists like make work in school or when, you know, when, when we're young, it's so. It's kind of unsustainable in a way, or it's so. It's so complete. It's so. It just takes over your life. And what does it look like if you want to have kids, which I do, you know, it's just like, how do you actually integrate, build a life and be an artist and maintain that creativity? And I think Joel was such an amazing example because he was in his, I guess maybe early 80s, late 70s. At that point. He's kind of ageless. His energy, I mean, he had more energy than I did when I was 24, 23. I mean, it's kind of shocking, but it just was eye opening, you know, and all the things behind the scenes of being an artist, communicating with galleries, museums, planning shows. I mean, I wasn't shooting with him really much that, you know, he was working in his studio, printing, preparing exhibitions, archiving, scanning, all that stuff. Also, here's another thing I learned. Just how much work you have to make. Like, how much, like, what you see is just the tip of the iceberg for someone like Joel. You know, like, he has all these famous images and books, but when you like get into the archive and you see the others, like the stuff that never makes it anywhere, and you're like, wow, this is amazing. Like, this is a better photo than I've ever taken. And it's like never seen the light of day. Like that is. That's humbling and also kind of inspiring in a way. Just the amount of work it is work like that is.
It's work. Absolutely. I think that it's really important and
the name of the podcast, you know, I mean, photo work is work.
Absolutely. No, it's really important to always remember that. Like, I think of myself as incredibly blessed to do the work that I do. I love my jobs, but that doesn't mean there aren't dreary parts. It all has to get done. To keep everything tight and afloat. And it's really important to understand that. I'm not sure that always sort of gets across to folks, but let's move on to your work because you have definitely become known through, I would say, mostly a series of books that you've done. And we wanted to talk to you today on the occasion of your most recent book coming out, I guess a few months ago now. Yeah, the Children's Melody. Sorry, that's the most recent one. But I'm sitting here with a stack. So let's talk about. Tell folks about your different publications and the type of work you make. I'd like to hear you describe it, and then I want to get into it.
Yeah. So I. I published three monographs, and they all revolve around, I think, stylistically about, you know, sort of. And thematically as well, blending the languages of sort of documentary tradition with something more staged or intervened or constructed and creating work that hopefully has this very strange ambiguity where you're not quite sure what's real. There's sort of an uneasiness. And I published three books. One, the first was the Community in 2020 with Morell Books, the. The Four Pillars with Loose Joints in 2022. And then in this past September with Nomic Book, I published the Children's Melody. And they're all. I mean, to me, they're all quite different. I think they all revolve around the same questions. I think they're different approaches to some of the same underlying, fundamental, animating issues that I'm thinking about, which is, you know, put succinctly just how social forces shape us into who we are and the sort of tension between individualism and collective identity and the need to sort of belong with the tension of maybe kind of giving up part of yourself in some way.
Yeah. So tell folks really what. You know, I don't want to say what the books are about, because I think that that is what the books are about, but tell folks how they are sort of, you know, what parameters you were using and what you were looking at specifically.
Yeah, of course. So the Community that Was, which is my first monograph that grew out of my work from graduate school. And I was photographing within kind of church basements. I started photographing Boy Scout meetings in Connecticut. And I had this idea sort of like, what about, what if I just photograph anything that's happening within a church basement or these sort of church annex buildings, which are so mundane and everyday, but also so specific and so interchangeable? And if you're familiar with, you know, kind of American suburban landscape. You're familiar with, you know, these spaces. So I photographed New Age spiritual classes, Bible studies, Boy Scouts, corporate team building exercises, theater rehearsals, all these sort of different activities. And the idea with the work is, I mean, I think visually it's indebted to certain documentary style. I'm not. I don't consider myself a documentary photographer.
No, definitely.
I think the term is extreme. The term is obviously extremely problematic. I teach a whole class. It's like basically unpacking this term. But I am interested in the language of documentary, its authority, its proximity to what we think of as reality. But in the book, as opposed to focusing on these individual groups, right. Here's the Boy Scout project. Here's the New Age project. I put the images together and it became a lot more interesting to me. It became a lot more interesting in conversation when you juxtapose images from disparate groups that feel like they could fit together. And so in my mind, what I was doing was just trying to build a fictional world out of these photographs from real activities, thinking that this could all be happening at one really bizarre community center. And then the second book, the Four Pillars. A lot of those photos were made during COVID during the pandemic, where suddenly my entire MO of going into these poorly ventilated basements with strangers groups, strangers, was not possible. It just wasn't feasible. And so what I did is I paired. I took some of the images I made of this New Age spiritual group that I'd been photographing for several years in graduate school. And I made pictures kind of inspired by them. And this is this group of, you know, middle class, upper middle class, affluent, you know, people in Connecticut who felt, despite these very, you know, ostensibly comfortable lives, unfulfilled in some way. And so they would meet and discuss all these, like, New Age, you know, kind of Christian ways of improving their lives or self actualizing. And so I made pictures that were sort of inspired by them and paired the pictures. So that work is much more directed, it's more staged, it's a little more cinematic than the community. And I was really, with that project, I was really interested in complicating this dichotomy of staged and candid, which as, you know, as opposed to most of the listeners know, I'm sure it's like that is it can be very reductive dialogue in photography. Is it staged? Is it candid? Is this real? Is it not? And of course, things are so much more complicated than that. And So I got really interested in what I call aspirational imagery, like holiday cards, maternity shoots, like these things that, you know, they're staged. Right. When you get a holiday card in the mail, of course, implicitly, you know, like, oh, this family wasn't just like frolicking in the autumnal leaves together in matching plaid. But I'm not, you know, they're in. The photographer is not necessarily in charge. It's like there is a. There is a staging, there is a choreography, There are these. And, you know, like when you go back to Winogrand public relations, like, there's all this. It's a lot more complicated, right. When you really start to unpack what is staged and what is not, for sure. And that really led me into the children's melody, which I'm looking at various children's, you know, groups, young people I'm defining, like kindergarten through college, people who are still attached to institutions, and institutions are very visibly shaping them. And so I photographed a cotillion, church groups, dance recitals, school plays, rotc, all these different organizations. I focused on young people for that project just because I felt with young people, that sense of still forming who they were. I mean, we're always forming who we are, but with young people, it's so pronounced, it's so visible and legible. And that work really focuses on performances or more rehearsals. Really just the idea that we're constantly performing these versions of ourselves. And this individual collective identity is never fixed, it's always being negotiated. So anyway, that's a rundown of the three books.
I want to get into some of these bigger issues that you're raising because of course they're really interesting to me and I think they will be to everyone. But let's give listeners a sense of the way you shoot, because I will say that there is an Eli Durst type of picture. And I know that long ago you were shooting color film and that switched up. So can you describe the way you shoot now? Because I think it's really important for people to be able to imagine that and understand how important process is to what you're doing.
Yeah, so when I went into graduate school, I was shooting large format, 4x5 color available light, you know, mostly golden hour photographs. And then when I left, I'm shooting black and white. I use strobes. Most of my photos, not all of them, but most of them have multiple off camera strobes. So like when I, you know, I have a pocketwizard, you know, radio trigger on my camera. So when I shoot A picture, it will fire all these different strobes. And I'm also shooting. I'm putting the images in black and white, I should say. And it hopefully gives the photos a kind of strange, uncanny feel. And I think the reaction that a lot of people have to the photos is it looks familiar, but it just looks weird. You know, it's like it's. You're showing something unfamiliar with, but in an unfamiliar way. And hopefully there's that sense of sort of defamiliarization, like you're seeing something that you've known. You've known about for your whole life, like, you know, cheerleaders. I photographed new cheer teams for this new book, and. But you realize, like, when you see it in a new way, how strange it is and how odd and how strange the world is that we've built for ourselves. So, yeah, I'm often using lights in various ways. I'm often using them incorrectly or in ways that are maybe, like, aggressive or wrong, backlighting things. It's definitely not like your Lighting 101 class, you know, which I never took, so that's maybe why I do it.
But, no, it's very much like, wait, where's the sun? I mean, it is really disorienting. You. You stop and try and pick it apart. But I think, you know, on first look, as you said, it's just strange. You don't really know why, but, yeah, it's not naturalistic.
I had a student. I had a student once who was talking about my work, and he said, oh, I had a lighting teacher once who told me lighting patterns should always emulate, like, naturalistic settings. And I was like, God, that's. That's the worst thing I've ever heard. Like, that. That's the exact opposite of what I. What I'm interested in doing.
Yeah. So you said that you hope that the longer one looks at your images, the stranger they become. And I certainly think that's the case, although they start out pretty strange. But there's, you know, another sort of. I can't say it's a. It's the absence of something else that's really contributing to this. And I think it's hard to unpack completely, but you have almost no text or no text in your books and no captions. So, you know, you've gone all in on disorienting. And I'm fascinated by that. And one of the things that sort of popped up and made me laugh is when I was getting ready to speak with you today and I was reading different Interviews you've done and whatnot. Online, I would see, you know, the scroll of images between the interview text and, of course, right there under the images is a caption. And so for the first time with many images I looked at in the books, I was like, oh, that's what's happening. Which I thought was funny. And, you know, in some ways, it was too late for me to have almost a pure experience with just the captions, because I'd been reading so much about, or so much of you speaking about the work. I already sort of knew a lot more. But if I open this book, if I, you know, pull one of your books off a shelf in a bookstore, there's not a lot of clues. I consider myself pretty astute, but it's about as opaque as work can get. So how do you sort of reconcile what's of interest to you and what you just described. Described a few minutes ago as being sort of the motivating force behind the pictures you make, Which I think is really interesting, you know, this idea that in the United States. And I know I'm gonna say this somewhat differently than you did, but in the United States, there's this real emphasis on individuality, and yet there's also a constant sort of need to be part of a group, and there's this push and pull happening there, and a sort of ennui, of course, that I think is really present in a lot of your. Particularly the four pillars. But how do you. I mean, how do you think about this? You've gone to the far edges of saying to the viewer, I had very, very, you know, strict parameters in place for this project. This is exactly what I was doing. But good luck figuring it out. Like, how do you think about that?
Yeah, well, it is something that people have complained to me about at exhibitions. Several people have come up to me, and I guess I really hope it doesn't come up like I'm being obtuse or, like, intentionally cryptic. But I think I'm just. I work a lot editorially as well, for magazines and newspapers, and the photos are indebted to a story, to a text, to a caption.
Right.
And I think there's something that feels so liberating or free about making pictures that. That are not indebted, you know, to a caption and that you might know what a picture is of. Obviously, things like Boy Scouts are much more apparent, you know.
Mm.
But I guess I just like the idea that you could lose yourself in the work and have no clue what is actually going on. Or why these people are doing these things. And the idea that it's not. I just hate the like one to one thing of like, oh, here's the photo. What is it? It's Boy Scouts. Here's the photo. It's cotillion. Like, I guess that to me would be a, you know, that's like not the best way I would, that's not how I would want to experience the work necessarily, you know. And I think obviously if you're like you, Sasha or like the audience, it's like you're so steeped in photography and fine art photography and you kind of know the deal, but a lot of people who aren't, I just feel like they're like, what's this, what's this, what's this? And it just, it's not, it's just not that interesting of a conversation to me. And I guess I just, I've always liked books that are just so ambiguous and open ended and things and all my books, I think if you look at them, you know, physical copies of them, they're all sort of strange in a way. Like I feel like you might not know what it is. Like they don't look like the standard photo books. And that's by design. I guess I just love the idea that someone could stumble upon one of these books in a library and be like, what is this? Like what is going on here? And that for me would be a very satisfying result.
No, it's really interesting to me because you are so hyper articulate when you talk about what your work is about to you. I mean, that's the part that really struck me is I just really enjoyed reading various interviews with you and I listened to some lectures that you've given and you are so good at talking about what a project means to you. So it's just, it's really fascinating your desire to let that go at a certain point. Once you offer the work up to the viewer, in fact it's more than letting it go. I mean, you've said you have a real desire to in no way dictate to the viewer what the work even is. And I will just say for folks, the work is incredibly formal. So the pictures in the world of fine art photography are very beautiful by the marker, many of the markers we would use. And so there is that seduction, is there? I mean, you are giving the viewer something right away to hang onto, which is just these beautiful formal compositions. You know, everything after that is, you know, is a tussle. But for sure it's an incredible place to wind up as a viewer. And honestly, I'm not really sure how I feel about it. You know, the. There is a real seduction that happened for me with your work or happens. I've known your work for quite a while. Not at the sort of level getting ready to talk to you today, but I'm definitely hooked by your compositions and by. It's hard to say the subject because I don't often know what I'm looking at, but the setup, the situation. But, yeah, then I do run into a certain amount of frustration, and I'm not. Yeah, I'm not honestly sure how I feel about it. Your commitment is really admirable because you're not doing anything less than 100%.
Yeah, well, maybe I need to meet the viewer in the middle a little bit. But I think. I guess to me, when you work in a language that is adjacent or there's a proximity to documentary, suddenly the conversation often becomes, what is this? And I guess when I think about the work, when I talk about the work, I'm less interested in talking about literally, what this is. And, you know, oh, this is the Boy Scouts. Okay, what's this? And I'm more interested in talking about maybe what's at stake in the pictures or what the commonalities are or, you know, what sort of social forces are driving people to make decisions or, you know, and I guess it's just with work that's maybe more rooted in, like, conceptual, like fine art, I feel like you don't have to have those conversations as much.
Yeah, absolutely. No, I think you're right.
So maybe I just trying to free myself of that burden. But, I mean, I do like talking about work. And, you know, I'm a professor at University of Texas. That has forced me to have to, you know, be able to articulate things about work, you know, other people's work. And so it's not that I don't like talking about it or that I wouldn't reveal. No, you're not trying to.
I'm not good at it.
I'm not trying to keep any secrets. But I guess I, you know, I love music that sounds stupid, but I love songwriting. A singer song. I love, you know, music where the lyrics are really important and meaningful, and I like reading them. And there are just some times where it's, you know, many times over the years where there's a song lyric that, to me, is so powerful and evocative, and then you read a description of it or a songwriter explaining it, and it just ruins It. It just totally ruins it, of course. And you just. I just always wish I could go back to the point where I didn't know what that meant, or, you know, it'll be Bob Dylan or someone like that. It's like, oh, that's just. Like, I just made that up. That's just. It doesn't mean anything, you know, and it's like, oh, my God, I thought that was the most profound lyric I'd ever heard. So, I don't know, maybe some of it is an anxiety, a fear about closing the pictures down for people. But.
No, that's. But thank you for saying that, because that's really important. And this is what I wanted to sort of talk about. I mean, you know, I think you're so perfectly suited to have this discussion, and I don't know that I've really had this discussion on the podcast before, but what does it mean to open up or close down a picture for the viewer? And I think what you just described is so helpful and so spot on. It's like, of course, yeah, we have these experiences. We listen to a beautiful song and it means something to us. It relates to our life. And then do you want to know what the songwriter, what it meant to them? As you say often, that's not actually a win for you. And so I think that a lot of fine art photographers are often in this exact position. And I think it's always a, you know, strange negotiation. And, you know, so I really appreciate you talking about this because I think, you know, your commitment to where you've wound up, at least right now in your career, I really admire, if you and I were working together, I might try and push you on the. On the continuum or little bit more the other way, but I don't know exactly myself what that would look like. And of course, the conversation that this is sort of, you and I are sort of circling around, which is what is the truth and does truth exist in photography is ultimately really what we're talking about. Right. And that's conversation we'll be having for all of time. I mean, I think that, if I may say so, I think your belief is it really doesn't exist. I think that my belief is it really does exist. And so. But of course, it's something that, you know, if we were in a debate club, I could probably argue fairly well from both sides.
Well, I think. I know that's a great point, and I value your opinion. I think you are someone, Sasha, who got the work early on before a lot of people Did. I mean, I think we first met way back in 2016, but I wouldn't argue that truth or truths don't exist, but just trying to complicate our understanding of what makes a picture true and what, you know, what makes it false. You know, I mean, thinking again about photographing. I have a photograph in the children's melody of a cheer, like a cheer stunt, like a pyramid. And I love that picture.
It's great.
Thank you. And so, you know, that was. I showed up to a practice, a rehearsal, and I don't really think of myself as staging. I think of it more as intervening in some way, like altering or tipping. And so what I did was, like, I just asked them to hold that pyramid as long as they possibly could. And at a certain point, the smiles fall away, you know, and the base, the young women. Yeah, the young women at the base, right. Holding them up, are quivering and shaking. And that illusion of effortless grace and perfection and beauty, hopefully it reveals itself to be a performance. Right. A facade. But that's not to say it's not true. And, you know, that picture is about precarity, about the idea that, like, at any second, and eventually it did happen, the base can't hold the. It can't support the illusion anymore, and the person falls. And that's what that picture is about. The labor, the energy that goes into supporting, you know, these ideas that we have about ourselves or want to have about ourselves. But again, that picture, it's partly observational. It's, you know, it's. It's documentary in a sense, but it's also. There's an intervention. And I guess I'm just more interested in the staging, the choreography that exists in real life and how meaningful that actually is. You know, when you get that holiday card in the mail, like, it is deeply revealing of how that family wants to be seen. You know, maybe not the kids. Maybe not the kids, because they're just doing it. They're probably bribed to do it. But, like, it is meaningful, right? Because it's like, oh, this is how they want to be perceived. This is the conversation they want to put themselves. This is the visual iconography that they are willingly making themselves a part of. I mean, they're paying a photographer to do it, right? It's like something is at stake there. And I guess that's what I'm interested in. Not the idea that there are no truths or anything like that.
Tell me about working on assignment, because I know you have, or I perceive it this way, that you have a Pretty rigorous assignment practice. And I love seeing your pictures. When I come upon them, I'm like, I know that guy. So tell us a little bit about how that started and how that integrates in your life.
Yeah, So I. I love working on assignments. I think it's. It's. It's often just a really interesting challenge. You know, it's almost like practice in some ways. There is a huge range. So some things are an assignment that you do because, you know, it's a day rate, and it's like, go photograph this woman in her office or whatever. You know, it's the CEO. It doesn't have that much connection to, you know, my art, my fine art, I guess. Other ones, there's like, you know, as you become known, as your style becomes more known, the great thing is that people reach out to you. Editors reach out to you because they want your style. Right. And so they want. So, like, I shot a story for the New York Times Magazine, the kids New York Times Magazine, about high school mascots, which was so funny. And. But that was perfect because I'd actually already been photographing cheer teams, and the mascot is, like, part of the cheer team. And so that was assignment where I made the work for the New York Times Magazine, and I made pictures for myself. And there was. There are two pictures that made it into the children's melody. And then there are actually assignments that I pitch because they're things I want to photograph for my art. So, you know, one, for instance, was like, I really wanted to go. So I moved back to Austin, where I'm from, and I went to elementary school, you know, nearby. It's called. When I went there, it's called Robert E. Lee elementary, and it was renamed Russell Lee elementary after the FSA photographer Russell Lee, who founded the program at
ut, which is like, that's awesome.
I know. For me, it was just amazing. And so I knew I wanted to photograph there and go back. And I photographed the school programs, like the plays, and that was something I pitched the New York Times opinion section and actually did a photo essay and wrote a piece for them about that. And there are. Most of the pictures that they ran are not necessarily ones that I used, although there is some overlap, I should say. But that was something where it was like I was pitching it because I. I really wanted to go photograph that. I was going to photograph it anyway. And so trying to, you know, for certain groups, having a story or publicity is really helpful. I did that for Cotillion. I've been shooting at Cotillion all last year. And I pitched that. And the New York Times rant did a photo essay about cotillion that ran this last summer. And that was again, something where it was like I was going to be doing that anyway. But for the people at the cotillion, actually having a story in the New York Times was a huge. I mean, that was a huge boon for them. So it was. It's. There's a combination, you know, there's a. There's a spectrum. But, you know, it's interesting on assignment, which story, which images they run. Because sometimes there's overlap, you know, but sometimes, you know, when you're doing a story, it has to illustrate certain points. Yes, of course, the pictures, they can't be too ambiguous, they can't be too weird. And of course, for my own work, that's exactly the metric I'm using is like, how weird is this? And so on. Often the pictures are very different. The ones that get picked for the editorial story and the ones that I
use tell me about. And I'm sure this works for both editorial and your own work. And as you're saying, there's quite a bit of crossover, but about sort of embedding yourself in these various communities. How do you. I know there's a lot of people who would like to move in that way with their work, but don't know how to do that, don't have maybe even the confidence, which is understandable, to present themselves to some group. How do you find your way in?
Yeah, that is a huge amount of the work. That is a huge amount of my practice. I would say actually photographing is a pretty small percentage of what I actually do. And some of it takes a lot of work. Like when I was in graduate school, I wanted to photograph Boy Scouts. I emailed every Boy Scout troop in graduating Connecticut that I could find an email for. Most of them did not respond.
Yeah, I'm sure that was fraught.
A few responded and were like, you're a creep. Like, don't email us again. I was like, oops. And one, one Scoutmaster, it was like, this sounds really interesting. Come present to the parents. One. At one meeting. Show your work, tell us what you're doing, and then you'll leave and we'll vote.
Scoutmaster was not risk averse.
Yeah, yeah, I think he just was interested in photography. But, but, you know, the parents, he. I presented my work, my portfolio to the parents. I explained what I was doing and they voted and said, okay, you can come back. So I would come back every Week. A lot of the groups on photographing because there's these organized activities, affinity groups, they'll meet like once a week, you know, for an hour after school or something, or, you know, cotillion met on Sundays. And, and it's challenging because you only get an hour, you know, of actually shooting. But what's great is that it's like, you know, it's going to be repeated in some version the next week. So generally the first couple times I shoot, I'm not very satisfied with what I get. I'm still learning. What's the cadence, what's the choreography, what's the routine, when are you going to get the good pictures? And so having being able to go back to all those different meetings is extremely helpful because I can go home, I can look at the pictures, I can see what works, what didn't work, what I missed. And it's become a very helpful way to hopefully make effective pictures.
Are you showing the work to the folks who you're embedded with as you're going along?
Sometimes, you know, sometimes they'll ask to see them. And because I am shooting with strobes, the reaction I almost always get is, you know, I'll show them, they'll say, hey, can I see that? And I'll show them the back of my camera because I'm shooting digitally. And they go, what? Or whoa. Because it just, they're not used to how it's gonna look. Right. And right. Of course, you know, if you're photographing, especially if it's in a well lit room or outside or something, the flash is just like a little blip. They hardly notice it. And, and when you see it in the image and it's the only light source, it's just very, it's very unusual, I think. And I often give them JPEGs, like not the images I use, but I, you know, I'll give them JPEGs that they can use for, you know, Instagram or Facebook. I photographed ROTC here at ut and I gave them a bunch of images that they could use. You know, of course, I think they weren't the pictures. I don't think they loved them because they, they weren't this like heroicization of it. But you know, I try to, like, I try to make it worthwhile for
the Twilight Zone version of rotc.
Exactly. But I try to make it feel like, you know, I think there's this, this debate in photography and art because I teach in an art school that like photography is inherently subtractive or exploitative or Relies on, like, taking things away from people, you know, and taking ownership, possession of their image. And I. Obviously, there's some truth to that, but I just think it becomes. It becomes such a reductive conversation. And I try to make my practice, you know, helpful to other people and the people who are generous enough to give me their time, their effort, you know, their attention. I try to, like, make it worthwhile for them in some way.
Yeah, I think we're moving away from that.
I think so, too.
Yeah. Into much more collaborative. And, of course, many artists were always working with collaboration in mind. And so I think, as usual with discussions around many things in life, but just talking about art, sometimes we get onto something and get a little extreme in our views. But. So, yeah, I wanted to just ask you also about working with different. Because each of your books has been published by a different publisher, so each time you're working with different teams. How has that been for you, that sort of intense collaboration with different folks each time you work on a book?
Yeah, it's been great. And it's one of the reasons why I've worked with different people is I've just learned so much from all of them and they're all so different as publishers, designers, teams. And when I first started out, like, my first book with Morell, with Aaron Morell, I was so much more, like, tightly wound. I needed so much more control. And what I found, you know, subsequently, is, like, I actually like giving up some of that control and, like, seeing what someone else would do with the edit, with the design.
It's another collaboration.
Absolutely. And I think I was so. When I was younger, I was so resistant to that. And now I'm. I'm actually fascinated by it. And of course, there are some things that are like, no, that picture has to be in there. Or, like, I know I prefer my sequence and, you know, not, like, not being, like, totally spineless, but just. It's been so amazing to help other people, other people showing me things that I didn't see in the work, especially with design. I mean. I mean, it's been so interesting to see the work framed or reframed or changed. And I just. I would honestly like to work with, like, every publisher I admire at some point in my life, my career. Like, I just, you know, I think there's, you know, kind of maybe a standard approach which you see in photography, you see in filmmaking, you know, like, actors always working with certain directors. But that seems to be kind of the standard thing is, like, you find someone, you work well with. And you work well with them over and over again. I think that there's a lot of value to that, a lot of merit. But I think there's also a lot of value to working with other people. And just seeing different versions of your work, I think is really interesting.
Well, certainly, I mean, the most recent book is that you did with Nomak is very. Just sort of starts out on a much more designed note.
Absolutely.
So with a cover that unfolds into a poster, which is really wonderful. And so, yeah, I'm sure it's very exciting to go in and sort of hear from other people what they're thinking.
So.
Yeah. Eli, thank you. I think I really just love talking with you. I could definitely do an episode with you on truth in photography, but I didn't want to give you too much of a hard time today, so.
No, that was great.
Just getting you warmed up for that.
That flew by.
Sasha, I know it always. Well, it does for me when I'm having a good time. But let me. One last thing. I did want to ask you about sort of a little outside of our conversation, but I had taken some notes about it. How do you think about exhibitions compared to a book? Because I know you've said, because I have it written down right in front of me, that it doesn't need to be a summation or culmination in the same way a book often is of a whole body of work. So how do you think about putting. Mounting an exhibition of something very. You know, take the Four Pillars, which is sort of. The book itself is for. All the ways in which it is hard to penetrate is also very much its thing, as all of your bodies of work are, all your books are. So how do you think about exhibition versus a book?
Yeah, it's a great question. And I guess I think if you try to make them equivalent, it's not gonna work. Right. Unless it's like some retrospective book or, I mean, some exhibition where it's like, oh, I'm just doing the whole book. Or, you know, I know Gregory Halpern, who, you know, I listened to his episode you did where he had the sketchbook, Omaha Sketchbook, where it's like it was just the book on the wall, which was beautiful. But unless you're doing that, it's just an opportunity to do something different or to highlight different aspects of it. And I think that's what's exciting about working, you know, at different exhibitions, different spaces. I mean, we don't think about photography as being, like, site specific in the way that other, you know, sculpture is maybe. But I do, I really think it's like, okay, well what. How many images are gonna fit here? And what if it's only six? What can I do with six pictures? If it's 20, what can I do with 20 pictures? And just thinking about, I think, I think in music analogies all the time, which is ridiculous. Cause I'm like the least musical person in the world. I'm completely tone deaf. But like a concert, a concert, you know, they have those concerts where it's like we're playing the whole album. But most concerts are not that at all. And you have to think about like, okay, well what's this concert? How, you know, well, how big is the venue? Like, what's gonna play here? What instrumentation can I have just like trying to curate that experience but not, not make it a replacement for the book. And if you like the work, you can go get the book and look at 60 pictures instead of, you know, 12 or whatever.
Do you, do you think about including more clues for the viewers in an exhibition setting? Do you feel you owe that in any way to the venue?
Yeah, well, it is, it's funny because what I alluded to earlier when people like came up to me and complained those were both at exhibition, both the people that did that was at exhibitions. And you know, I was obviously there at the time. So, you know, I was there, I was available. But you know, generally there's a press release that I work with, you know, the gallerist or the curator or whatever. And there's usually someone there at these spaces, you know, to give you something. And so there is some framing there usually. Or if it's a group exhibition, there's usually some kind of write up or conceptualization about what this does is. So I think that is that that is available to you, you know, if you're in, in the exhibition space. But I guess, I guess I still just don't want it to become like a one to one. Like I'm just trying to break the images with the literal. I guess for me, what would be a successful outcome is if you went to my exhibition, you went to a show or looked at my book and felt like you knew less about the world. Like the world was actually more complicated than you had originally believed. As opposed to like, oh, I get it, it's been simplified and I understand it.
And is that because nuance? I mean, do you worry that people make assumptions about other groups of people that are unfair and that nuance lends commonality or compassion or what's the target there?
Yeah, I mean, I think thinking about commonalities, like what these people share, like what we all share. And I think for me photography has made me much more empathetic. You know, I've always been interested in the art of archetypes, stereotypes, you know, icons. But then when you actually photograph real people, right, who's like the cheerleader at the top of the pyramid or the high school, you know, quarterback these, these archetypes and, and we flatten those people, right? We see that, you know, and when you actually have to photograph the real human being who is occupying that role, who exists, and you think about who they are as an individual, what their hopes and fears and dreams and anxieties are, it just completely changes, I think, how you think about the world and people.
Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with that and I think it's, you know, photography's superpower is to make the world smaller in a good way and bring us together.
And here, also here, here's just one of my all time favorite photographers, my heroes is Chris Killip. And I think he's a great object lesson in like you look at inflagrante or in flagrante 2, this mixing of photographs. They're all so obviously connected and they, they paint this incredible portrait of, you know, England, you know, struggling, you know, post industrial England struggling. But then, you know, now, you know, since that book, and obviously since he passed away, they've published. I have his book, books right next to me. Sea Cole, Skinning Grove, the Station, his book about, you know, punk photographs. And I always buy those books because I love those pictures and I want to have as many of those pictures as possible. But none of them compare to the complexity of, of inflagrante, you know, because, because they become much more documentary, right? They become more about thinking about what makes a group unique or special or different versus like what makes what connects all these people. So like to me, when you look at inflagrante, it's like incredibly powerful experience. And I guess that is the model of what I'm trying. Maybe I'm just ripping off Chris Killip, but that, that is the model of what I'm trying to do. I think.
Well, great artists borrow from other artists. That's the way it's gotta be, right? Yeah, no, I think that's a really great example and yeah, beautiful. Happy to hear his name brought up and thrown out for folks. Okay, Eli, we're gonna wrap it up here, so thank you so much for hanging out with me this morning and yeah, it's been great talking with you.
No, thank you so much, Sasha. I really, really appreciate it.
Okay, be well.
Take care.
Photo Work with Sascha Wolff is a production of the photowork Foundation. Executive producer is Sascha Wolf and the associate producers are Taylor Salzback 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 PhotoArch foundation and be sure to subscribe and review with all the stars on your listening platform.