Sasha Wolf: 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 talking and touchy feely version of my book, 40 photographers on process and Practice. Hello, everyone, I'm Sascha Wolf, recording from center for Photography Woodstock in Kingston and joined as usual by my friend and producer who I got to see a couple of days ago. So I'm in an extra Good mood. Mr. Michael Chovindalton. Hello, Michael.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Hi there. I know what a thrill that was. I mean, we actually said we were going to get together. We got together.
Sasha Wolf: Yeah.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: It was real follow through.
Sasha Wolf: Oh, my God.
Wow. I didn't.
Sasha Wolf: Gosh, I have to rethink the whole thing now. I didn't know it was like that much of an accomplishment.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Well, sometimes we make plans to see each other. It's mostly on my end because I have to figure out time to travel, things like that. And sometimes, yeah, we miss the mark.
Sasha Wolf: Yeah. I think that what you're saying there, and I accept it as a fact, is, is that when we make plans, you're the one who always has to travel.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Yes, that's true.
Sasha Wolf: I'm never going anywhere. You are always coming to me.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: But I mean, let's be real. I mean, what are you gonna do? Come down to Jersey? What are we gonna do?
Sasha Wolf: Well, listen, you said it, not me.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: I mean, I wanna come up to Woodstock in Kingston.
Sasha Wolf: Yeah, it's fun up here.
Yeah.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: I get a little fresh air and nature and see some art.
Sasha Wolf: Yes. Yeah. One of the magical things about this area is you get art and nature, which is really pretty special. So let's tell folks why you were here. So, yeah. The occasion of our most recent hangout, which was two days ago, was the opening of the winter shows at cpw, which I had talked about, I think, in the last podcast. I'm not gonna go through the whole list, but you came up for that. It was an incredible event.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: I mean, what an event.
Wow.
Sasha Wolf: I just wanna say, actually, I texted Brian Wallace, the executive director, CPW on Sunday morning. Like, I could not, not like I was bursting with just, you know, I don't know how to describe it. Like, Brian is a friend of mine, someone who I'm just, I love, I'm so fond of and I mean, what he's done here in such a short amount of time is so incredible. So basically it was absolutely packed. There were hundreds, hundreds of people here.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: We're talking about a night that would keep most people home.
Sasha Wolf: Right. It was incredibly cold. It is In Kingston, New York. It wasn't New York City. So many people came up from the city. People came from all over to be at this event. Not just because quality of the work. And honestly, of course, that is a big part of it. They opened four extraordinary shows, amazing shows, including an exhibition by our guest on this episode, Ocean Vom. And we will get to Ocean. But Brian has created such an incredible sense of community. I mean, this is like the hub for the photo community now. I mean, it was like the who's who. I felt like every.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: It really was.
Sasha Wolf: Where I turned, I saw someone I knew and was just so happy to see. You came up with your students.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: I mean, I know my students were blown away. By the way, shout out to Ray Meeks, who spent a nice amount of time with my students, talking to them. That was really generous.
Sasha Wolf: Well, Ray is very generous, and that comes up.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: And that comes up in this show, in this episode.
Sasha Wolf: So this is like this episode rattled up for Mr. Meeks.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Yes.
Sasha Wolf: Which he deserves. But yeah, just really an incredible evening. The energy was just so hard to describe. I mean, it was just like buzzing and engaged and I mean, there was so much socializing, but there was also so much close looking at the work. And C, the exhibition spaces are really large, so even with hundreds of people here, you could really get in and see the work. It wasn't one of those situations where you're like, oh, my God, I can't even see anything. I mean.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Yeah. And there were different things happening in different rooms where totally, like, someone would see someone and they'd start a discussion and that crowd would get bigger and bigger and suddenly it was like a talk happening here.
Sasha Wolf: Absolutely amazing. And you and I got to really spend some time time together, which was so nice. And we got to. I mean, you know, this is, for me, one of the great perks is that in the midst of this crowded event, you and I got to sneak off to my office and just hang out, just the two of us. And that was really, really nice.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: That was a lot of fun.
Sasha Wolf: Yep. So, yeah, the opening was for four different artists, one of them Ocean. And he was our guest today, the great writer and photographer, Ocean Vong. So what did you think?
Michael Chovan-Dalton: This is one of those episodes where I think I could sit back and listen to it multiple times because it's so filled with, you know, I'm sure our listeners are used to process heavy conversations, but Ocean has such a different way of looking at photography coming from the writing world, and he takes nothing for granted. I wrote down the word appreciation over and over again. Appreciation for the people who helped him get to where he is, appreciation for this show and the book that accompanies it, and appreciation for just how he ends up getting here. It's inspiring. And not that I think we talk to a lot of people who are jaded, but there's just an incredible openness to the way Ocean talks about photography and what it means and the power of it. You have this, I think, really beautiful conversation about the pitfalls of wanting effortlessness and without this labor. And you talk about this, you know, the importance of the labor, and that's really an inspiring conversation. So, I mean, really everything about it. If you've been sort of questioning yourself about, you know, the value of what you're doing and the, you know, the goal of what you're doing, I think this is just going to be a great episode for you.
Sasha Wolf: Yeah, I mean, I think Ocean is like, gratitude personified, you know, and maybe folks listen to the episode and then just think about that. Cause that's something that really moved me. You know, as I've read Ocean's work and looked at Ocean's photographs, there's really just such an incredible sense of gratitude and what gratitude produces. Incredibly moving. I just want to say that because we didn't get too many processy things, and.
That's right.
Sasha Wolf: You and I talked about. You know, I think I said to you, you and I usually talk right after I record with a guest, and you asked me how it went, and I gave you sort of the recap on this, and I said to you, I'd love to talk to Ocean again. What do you think? And.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Yeah, I think that.
Sasha Wolf: Yeah, go ahead.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Getting to that. The more process, like, questions would be also fantastic. But I love the way you connected with Ocean on film and literature and just more the philosophy and fundamentals of creativity. I think this is. This is what this episode is about. Yeah.
Sasha Wolf: Well, with that in mind, I did ask Ocean the other night at the opening if he would come on again, and he said, absolutely. So we'll get it all, kids in a candy store.
Absolutely.
Sasha Wolf: Well, Michael, why don't we get to it? And I think I can say in all sincerity that this is also one of my favorite episodes. So I hope everyone enjoys it as much as you and I. So, yeah, if you don't mind, please take it away.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: My pleasure. And here is your conversation with Ocean Vuong.
Sasha Wolf: Ocean Vuong, welcome to the Photo Work podcast. It's so wonderful to have you on. This is a real treat for me, all of podcast listeners know that I love, love my research as I get ready to talk with a guest. But I have to say, my research as I got ready to talk with you was a little different because in addition to looking at all your wonderful photographs, I also reacquainted myself with your poetry and your prose. So I've been really in Ocean Vuong, in your subconscious and conscious for the past number of weeks, and it's been a really moving, beautiful, glorious, sorrowful and joyful experience. So thank you so much for all of the work that you've put out in the world, and thank you for coming on the podcast.
Oh, thank you so much, Sasha. It's a deep, deep honor to be considered so deeply. And I had no doubt you would do such because I'm a big fan of this podcast and I know you do the deep dive for everyone. And that's, I think, with the Simone Veo who says the greatest form of generosity is attention. And so for someone to pay attention to what you do is such a gift, and particularly someone of your grace and mine. So thank you. It's an honor.
Sasha Wolf: We begin every podcast then, as you know, with guests taking us on a little journey to describe their journey through life. And that can be as short or as long as you'd like. Although I do have many questions for you, so preferably it won't take an hour. But please tell people about your, about yourself and whatever you think is relevant for them to know.
I suppose I can narrow it down to my life as an artist, because that's what people know me as, a writer and artist, which is an inerrant life. It's a life that I failed into, I fell into. You know, I. I grew up in a working class community in Hartford, and the choices growing up was factory, where my stepdad worked, he worked in the Colt Manufacturing, which made a screw for the Colt Magnum nail salon work, which my mother did. There's a Coca Cola factory that many people go to or the army. And so, you know, it became very. The same checkboxes exist from elementary school onwards. Some people throw in police officer and fireman into that mix. And so to end up here as an artist, I thought you needed like a card, you know, you needed to be born with a card in your wallet that said artist. And I looked at my wallet one day and I didn't have it, so I thought, all right, I'll just go about. But I ended up going to a community college nearby because it was free and the Pell Grant gave me after tuition, after the very modest tuition, it gave me about four grand a semester. And I've never had four grand in my life. And so I think that was my motivation to go to college. I said, gosh, if I can ride my bike to this little school and get $4,000 per semester, I'm in the golden years. At the time, there was all these kids who I knew were in these DIY punk bands. We were kind of these skater punks. You know, we would do Food Not Bombs, which is a program in Hartford, Connecticut. You go every weekend with your skateboards and then you volunteer to cook vegetarian food for houseless people. And it was very youthful, it was very cool, you know, and it was. That was kind of like where I had this radical anarchist youth. But I never thought it as an artistic impulse. I just thought, that's what you do. And then one day my friend said, we're in a punk band. You unfortunately have no musical inclinations, so why don't you. So he threw me.
Sasha Wolf: You're the photographer?
Well, yeah. Well, he threw me a Nikon D40 he brought brand new. And then he said, can you just shoot flash in the corner of these basements? And then just, you know, so we have some stuff for MySpace at the time. And I would just stand in the corner in these bars and house shows and just shoot flash with my eyes closed, sweating. And then I would look at them. I would look at the frames inside the digital camera afterwards. And I just. Something started to click. You know, it's like this natural impulse of understanding the medium that I never. It was never brought to me in any academic way. And I realized that I was punching holes out of time. But instead of an actual hole puncher, the world remained the same. And when I looked at. I reviewed the frames at home, I realized that when you took out the things outside of the frame, it becomes a different world. I was like. I stood here, I saw what's to the left, what's to the right, the top and the bottom. But now I'm looking at something else. What has ejected this world of. Captured in the image into a different plane, whereas the dynamism, the mythologies, are warped. I'm seeing a different world. And I was so infatuated by that. And I think I went to the library to the photography section. Unbeknownst to me, there was one. And it was the size of maybe. The entire photography section was the size of maybe two microwaves. And yet inside that is where I found Daido Moriyama, Nan Golden Larry Sultan, Todd Haido, Sally Mann Arbus. My mind was just blown. And I was seeing in much more resonant ways the same thing I was seeing in my little random shots that I was taking. And then I found Chris Killip's punk shows and I was like, holy crap, my head was just blown off. And I said, wait a minute, I don't know what this is, but I guess I'm doing this thing. And I still didn't think anything of it. So I think I just kept doing that and I would just take the photos and just throw in the camera and then that was it. And so my impulse as an artist started with photography, but I didn't know it was art. Neither did I imagine poetry was art either. It was just kind of what I failed into. I kept doing it as a kind of communal act. And then I went to New York to go to business school as like a good immigrant son try to progress in the upward mobility and get my family out of poverty. And I dropped out after four weeks. I couldn't do it. And through multiple other failures and grace of luck, I ended up as a poet.
Sasha Wolf: And you obviously have had a very, you know, by sort of conventional and even unconventional measures, I guess we'd say very successful career thus far as a writer of poetry and of novels. And it seems like at this point in your life you're really starting to take a look at your photography with some of the same rigor and seriousness that you create your written work and start to really shape and mold and consider what these pictures mean to you and what they might mean or what they might give to other people. And you have a large show coming up opening on January 31st here at CPW that will be accompanied by a really spectacular artist book, I think you all have made three hundred and fifty copies of. I have mine reserved of an artist book that is a collection of these photographs and some really beautiful writing as well that weaves in and out beautifully like a, you know, is very. The way it's placed on the page and the number of lines and the sentiments and the descriptions in the prose sort of moves along like water through pages and interacts so beautifully with the photograph. So this is a really big moment, I think, to stand up and say, I am also a photographer and I believe my work is worthy really of sharing with people and asking them to spend time and consider it. So how did you get to this point? I mean, it's really a gift to all of us. I think the work is incredibly moving. And is a gift. That's my opinion. But how did you arrive here at this wonderful spot where you're joining our fantastic photography community?
Thank you. That's so kind of you. I don't think I can take any credit for what's happening on Saturday. And I don't mean that to be coy. I think, you know, watching Raymond Meeks and working with him and Vlad and Marina and Adam, who's a master printer, you know Marina's vision, she reached out asking to me to collaborate on the show. And Raymond Meeks has been someone since the jumpers I've been infatuated with. I mean, I think he's a visual poet. I'm just so moved just thinking about him because. So the funny thing was that I'll tell the story of getting to cpw and then I'll tell the long story of how I got here in photography. But I go to CPW for the first time, and I was meeting Marina and Adam and Brian, and I said, you know, you guys have this series of talks, and you have one of my favorite photographers, Raymond Meeks. And I just want to. I just want to thank you for having that because I learned so much listening to him talk, and I'm just so thrilled and that I can even be in the same space that he gave a talk in. And then they said, oh, raise up stairs. And I thought they. I thought they meant, like. I thought they meant, like, he had like a. They had like a print upstairs. You know what I mean? Like how people sometimes say, oh, we have one of those up there. I said, oh, I'd love to take a look what print you have. And he's like, no, no, he's sitting on the fourth floor. And I said, what? You know, like. And I thought it was some kind of.
Sasha Wolf: As he always is.
Yeah, I didn't even know that. I didn't know that he, like, lives there, you know, So I go. We go up, and it's almost like in a video game where you meet the final boss, you know, like, we go up and we see. We see Ray behind this giant wooden desk. And there's prints. Like, there's chairs, there's wood. He's like a mason, a woodworker, a mad genius, a chemist. And we both recognize each other. And I was so thrilled that he knew anything that I did, you know, and we just embrace, like, kindred spirits. And I just felt. And I've never. I must say, Sasha, I've never. I've been really blessed to know a lot of Artists. In my short career, I've never met anyone who loves making art, whether it's his or other people's, whether it's printing, you know, he was helping me print gelatin prints for the show. And I have never seen another artist who loves art making in every single form. The way I witness it with Ray, like, this man could go in on a Sunday. And just the thrill and the love for making images and objects is so moving for me to even see. And I'm like, I don't know how you keep it through the years, but he's so, so special in that way. He's like a wizard. And anyways, I'm just. I'm so blessed. So whatever merit comes out of that show is those people, they really made it. Because before that, it's just a pile of images, you know? And I'll go back into how I got here. I've been taking photographs and for 20 years, of course, you know, you look at those books that I saw in that library, and you never think, oh, I never even thought, oh, I should have one, or, how can I have one? I just thought, oh, I never. There's a pipeline for this, and I'm not born into it, so that's fine. But I won a local contest for my poems in this little journal called the Connecticut River Review when I was about 18. And it was my first, like, it was an adult contest, you know, Like, I was so happy because it was not like a specialized thing. It was for everybody, you know, around all ages. And here, little old me, like a teenager, you know, I was so proud I got the journal back. And it was a small local journal, but I ran to my mother's nail salon and I said, ma, look at this. I didn't waste my life. This whole thing about poetry. Here's my name in print. And it's not a government document. It's not taxes. It's not a detention slip. It's not a bill. And being a typical mom, she looked at it and she flipped the journal and she says, oh, they only gave you one page. I said, all right, all right, mom, come on. I said, who are these other people? You should have the whole book. I said, all right, well, it's a start, okay? But then her face fell, and then she said, oh, I wish I could read it. And in my foolishness, you know, in my little vanity pride triumph, I just was so stupid that I forgot my mother can't freaking read in any language. You know, here I am thrusting these petroglyphs in front of her. And I realized right away that my. My triumph, if I were going to pursue this art as a poet, was going to take me further and further from her comprehension. And I got. We both got really sad, you know, I just. It just deflated.
Sasha Wolf: Heartbreaking. Yeah.
And so I went back to my friend who I was borrowing the Nikon. I said, can I just borrow your camera? Just shoot my neighborhood. And I was, you know, of course, you find Eggleston in the library. And you see these frames. You know, at that time, I think Alex Soph was coming out with Sleeping by the Mississippi, so there was a copy of that. And I wanted to show my mother where we lived. And, you know, in like, a working poor environment. I didn't realize this until I left Hartford and talked to other people, but, like, I never saw my mother walk in our local park, which is like a. In the retrospect, such a normal thing in that neighborhood to not see your mother experience recreation. But in retrospect, I was like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I've never seen my mother walk in a park. Our local park, her life was this triangle of nail salon, factory, grocery store, post office. On Sundays, sometimes we go to the mall, right? We drive 35 minutes to the mall. And so I wanted to just show her where we lived. And I went, I took a bunch of photos and I printed them out at cvs, as one does. And I handed her a stack of prints. I said, mom, look, this is our town. This is our neighborhood. This is where we live. I wanted to show her my interiority in ways that would be legible to her. And she looked at the stack and she became, I think, my first critic in a very fruitful way. She started to pinpoint something that would be my obsession for the rest of my career. And she looked at the frame and she said, I didn't know our life was so sad, son. And I saw. I was so surprised, you know, because I saw beauty. I saw these run down mills, these empty streets, these train tracks, you know, I was also so taken with William Gedney's work when he was doing the southern shots in black and white. And I saw so much beauty. And she said, it's so sad. And the word sad in Vietnamese is. And it has a different connotation than simply sadness. It's closer to the Japanese mono no aware, which is like the sadness and beauty of things leaving. So a common phrase for a Vietnamese person looking at the sunset would be, oh, bong wa. It's so bong. So sad. But it's not like grieving, pure grieving. It's more like there's beauty in this wistfulness, fleeting time, right? And I started to continue to take photographs of her and then our neighborhood and our family. And I started to study photography as I was. I was taking photographs of my friends, skateboarders, And I learned that I started to realize that taking a dynamic, well composed photograph in the. The tradition of photography, which is robust and myriad, was actually improving my writing. I wasn't just taking frames as reference to, oh, this is what a motel looks like, so I can describe it. But spending time taking a strong photograph embedded this subject into my brain in ways that taking a snapshot wouldn't. So then when I was describing the work later, the subjects in my novels and poetry, they were much more cinematic and dynamic because I spent embodied time taking the photographs. So I still feel very strange about what's going to happen on Saturday, Sasha. Because I'm in this kind of fraught space wherein my entire body of work was all procedural work. It was never. I never made this work with an eye for it to be shown. Like most, you know, young photographers aspired, you know, they aspire to get a photo book. And so this is all backstage work, but it was serious work, but it was all just for me and my family. So I still feel. I feel actually more vulnerable with photography than I do with my autobiographical writing, because in writing I can do smoke and mirrors, but in photography, you know, I don't edit most of my work. It's just light touches that you would do in a dark room, dodging exposure work. I don't use Photoshop. I don't do, you know, the fancy stuff. I want it to be historically true to how I experience, but that also means exposing myself to, like, a photograph. Basically says, this is where you stood in historic time. And that's kind of a new realm that I never expected to be in. So this is very, very fraught, I think, for me, and I still don't know how to feel about it. But I made the leap because after talking to NAN GOLDEN In 2022, she was shooting me for the COVID of Document Journal when I was releasing a book. And Nan is so, so special because usually you do these shoots and it's like a fashion photographer. They're blasting away. It's like 500 frames in a half hour, and then they're done. And with Nan, we were in the St. Mark's Church courtyard, this historic poetry place where Patti Smith Allen Ginsberg, David Wojnarowitz, Peter Hujar, Aline Miles. It's like, it's an ongoing historic place, a beautiful place of artists. And we were just talking and she would take a frame and then talk for like five minutes, smoking the whole time, you know, shooting, shooting, I think, like on an M6 or M8. And it was just two people talking in the courtyard and we just forgot. She said something at one point, so, so beautiful to me. It's so moving. And she said something, you know, we're talking about photography. Because I was telling her everything I'm telling you now. I said, oh, I took photos, blah, blah, blah. And she said, osha, sometimes the world is so beautiful to me that I wish the camera wasn't in the way. And I. I was. So I said, what artists would. Would be so courageous and true enough to say that, to say that I want. Sometimes I want the world so much that I rather not have the medium that made my world, that I would rather forsake the very medium that gave me this life because I want to be in closer contact with life itself. And we were just kind of. We would just go on this long talk and we kind of forget the assignment. We had like these people from Hermes, you know, like, it's so funny because I don't know what Hermes is, but they were coming and styling me and I was like, hermes, the messenger God. And they're like, oh, my God, no, it's Hermes. Are you kidding? And then was just like, never change. Just, you know, me and my partner had no idea what this was. And she was like, you guys should just stay this ignorant of all this stuff. But then she turned to me and she said, look, if you're doing something for that long, why don't you try sharing it? You know, you don't want to betray that impulse of being an artist for so long. And she mentioned, I was telling her, but all this stuff is just procedure. I don't know if I should show anything, she said. And then she mentioned Richard Billingham's Raise a Laugh, which of course I learned was this handheld work, snapshots meant for a painting. Like it was all supposed to be referential work for his paintings, but that of course became a central project. So the idea of the process being a project, but I didn't have any leeway, you know, So I just thought, and I think, Nan, she said that without seeing any photos of mine. And I think she would have said that to any, any young starting out photographer who's never shared their Work, because that's the kind of person she is. But it's Nan Golden. So I took it to heart. It's one of my heroes. And I just never stopped thinking about that. And so my only method was Instagram. So I just started sharing batches of my work on Instagram. And then that's when, you know, gallerists and museum curators and editors started reaching out. And it kind of snowballed in a way to where I'm at now. It all started because of that.
Sasha Wolf: But I think that in some ways you have to say, now I'm going to share this. And after I jump off that cliff, make that decision and jump off that cliff, while I'm flying through the air is the time to start then thinking about, you know, the rigorous work of putting together a body of work is going to come for many people, like, I think you in the time after you decide to share, because that's when you have to make real decisions. And so it's fine to be exactly where you are right now. It is the process, and you have to just walk through it. You have to get through it. And, you know, it's a beautiful thing, you know, in taking it seriously, even if you were anxious and had some feelings of, you know, who am I to be asking people to look? The intelligence and the sensitivity that was already there in the individual images attracted, you know, wonderful people who you've mentioned. And together you have collaborated to do all the things that must be done. The hard work of editing, of sequencing, of putting parameters in place to determine what story or stories do I want to tell here. I have to make choices. And all those things are part of the process. And they don't often happen in the shooting. They often happen for many artists later. And so you're right where you need to be. And I really sympathetic to, you know, the idea of the sort of, how did I get here? And, oh, my gosh, what am I doing? Asking people to spend their time and attention. But it's really, there's nothing more beautiful than sharing. And, you know, we're all so grateful to everyone who does. And I think that, you know, it's trite, but it's like you have to start somewhere, you know, and then just keep moving forward. And, you know, you already have such incredible skill and instinct around the editing process. What's more brutal than editing a sentence? I mean, you know, so you have those skills and that discipline already, and that's like such a huge part of photography. So it seems to me like you're like I said, right where. Right where you need to be.
Oh, that's so kind of you. Yeah. And I must say, like, I think with writing, it's something that you do pretty much alone, because you don't really get an editor until you accomplish something. You don't get an agent until you're close to accomplish something. So you really have to get close on your own. And writing is full of doubt, as is photography. But in the composition, you know, a sentence is something that has been wrought through with doubt, hesitations, erasure. But a photograph, even if the photographer is doubtful, the frame says a unanimous yes to the world. And I think that's what attracted me so much, which is why I think I was a photographer before I was a writer. But the photography informed my writing. The camera has to say yes. It's an entire shot. It says yes not only to the subject, but everything in the frame. And that's such a magical.
Sasha Wolf: It's very generous.
Yeah. Like, I'm like, what other. I don't think we have another technology that says such a unanimous yes to something. And sometimes the frame starts to tell me things much later that I didn't see before. It has a kind of mind that's larger than mine, than my mind when I took it. And so that discovery is such a thrill in the editing process. But with writing, you do it mostly alone. But with photography, you know, like I said, everything that you said, I think it owes to the credit to the people who saw something in my work and helped bring it to the world, because, you know, I was reached out by Jackie Bates at the New York Times when I was sharing my Instagram stuff. And working with her was such an incredible education. She pushed me. We worked, like, nine months on that project. You know, she just said, go out. You need take different seasons, think about environment, think about different locales, and then, like, go to the outskirts of the project and then work your way in. And it was such. And, like, these are all the things I tell my students in poetry. But I never applied it, you know, like, so, like, I was recognizing them as they're coming at me from her. And it was so liberating to see that, oh, I can take the same audacity in literary work, and I can just apply it into the image work, and it can still widen the scope. But she was so patient and challenged, you know, she challenged me to expand the project and work through the seasons. And what. What editor would allow that? You know, some people have tight deadlines, particularly at the New York Times. And she just said, just keep going. I'll be here, you'll be there. And so, nine months for this project, and with Marina, like, putting edits up on the wall in Rhea, you know, like, I was like, ray, I wanted to. To me, like, the powerful thing about photography exhibitions is that they're like performances. They're ephemeral, you know? So I did not want to micromanage it. I want to look at the show and see Marina all over it. You know, like. Like this CPW show. It's Marina show. The book is Vlad and Ray all over it. Like, I want that. I don't want to see my thumbprint, you know, Like, I did the work, but I want to see them. So I let them lead. And the dip text that Ray was coming up with, you know, because he kept on saying, like, I'm like, here's the project. He's like, no, give me the archive. And I was like, you really want 8,000 images? Ray is a kind of, like, animal, like this unicorn, beauty, beast that's summoned from another world. He's like, yes. You know, and he would come up with throwaway images, and he would throw them down on the table and next to something completely from left field. And the poetry. And that's when I realized, oh, this is like putting together a poetry collection. Because a poetry collection has no plot, it's no thorough line. You have to make the themes through the radioactive power of proximity. But in photography, it's even more open because you can just slam a pile of prints on the floor and there will be resonance, you know, like, you can find it even as a random gesture. So, again, like, whatever merit is here, I really mean it when I say it's these curators who spent decades in this world that has really helped put the show together and make me at least legible to myself.
Sasha Wolf: Well, I want to read something that you said. You were in conversation with Joey S. Kim at the Toledo Museum of Art, and I think it's connected to what you're talking about in some ways. I guess what I'm thinking is I think you know a lot more than you think you do at this moment that we're talking. So you said the poem is a provocation moving forward, particularly in the Eastern tradition of poetry. These poets saw poetry as something that should beckon the viewer forward and less so about telling them how to feel. And so I think photography and poetry are so similar because they both signal mythology without narration, and so they're built on tension alone. I thought that was very beautiful, hence why I wrote it all down. But I. I think you know exactly what photography is and this beautiful connection. And so you being a poet and a photographer, I think makes perfect sense. I do want to ask you a little bit about that balance between how you think about and, you know, if you want to talk about poetry, that's fine, photography, whatever. But how do you think of the balance of legibility and where you want to be on that scale? Because this is, you know, something I think about a lot. And I think, you know, most people who are deeply committed to art and to photography think about. And I see it also, of course, as being very connected to poetry, which, depending on what poet we're talking about, can be. They're very opaque. You know, I don't know. Emily Dickinson, maybe, or very, very transparent. Like when I was younger, I was obsessed with Raymond Carver, maybe because I understood it, but, you know, Raymond Carver, a lot of people probably don't realize, in addition to being a wonderful short story writer, was also a poet and wrote poems that were extremely clear and really not challenging as far as legibility goes. So, you know, how do you think about photography? We'll just say, and that legibility and where that tension should be.
I mean, it's a perennial question that I'm teaching now. So, you know, my students are all in my head and all 30 of them, and I think that's a question they always tackle. And I tell them that it's a lifelong balance and you'll have phases, you'll have your. Your more legible phases, and you'll have your more opaque phases. But I think. I think it's all. It was always helpful for me to not consider the audience. I say often the greatest respect you can have to an audience is to ignore them. Because when you start to imagine an audience, and especially like a hyper political, politicized body, like my own queer, working class, Asian American, blah, blah, blah, whatever they want to put on you. It's a difficult kind of matrix to navigate because on one hand, these are all true, but then the culture, you know, journalists, even curators, editors, have a different vision, a very reductive vision of what these things are. And so, like, I love, like what Teju Cole said once where he says, a hyper politicized body. The greatest rebuttal to a body that's hyper politicized is to work through specificity. You know, then it's like, oh, what. What happens if an Asian American, you know, farms or hunts or does things that you don't Expect, right? Is that no longer. It's now outside of that frame. So. But. So when you start to think about, oh, how do I satisfy these tropes that are expected on me? Even, like a quote, unquote neutral, and I put this in heavy quotes, Identity, like, white male, right? You know, a lot of my white male students like, should I write just poems about horses and fishing with my dad? Like. And I'm like, well, you're also welcome, welcome. You're trapped. You're starting to see the trap that identity is, right? You're starting to see the trap of audience. Like, you think people want that from you, but what do you want? And so I think for me, the North Star is questions. What do I want the medium to do for my consciousness? So what I love about multidisciplinary work is that it's very antithetical to how art usually traffics in our country, which is first and foremost through specialization. You know, like a kid who wants to be an artist at 1920. The first thing people ask them is, what kind of artist you want to be? Photographer, novelist, poetry. Even my students, they introduce each other by saying, oh, I'm so and so, I'm poetry. What are you? Oh, I'm prose. Right. And we ask students to choose the medium before developing the questions from which those mediums could be executed. So we kind of funneled them into sites of expertise. And this was never really true. Like, you know, if you look at medieval Gothic architecture, the architect was also the mason, was also the woodworker. It was all one person just kind of like figuring it out on the go. And now we have specialized everything, and we've kind of isolated each other. And so I think, for me, if the questions are inexhaustible, my approach is to always push it into different mediums, including, like, you know, screenwriting is what I'm doing now. And I think, yeah, take the same questions and filter it through the parameters and the rigors of the form, and then see what comes out of it. So the curiosity is much more powerful than an anxiety around audience. And I think, for me, I love. And Raymond makes this one of them. You know, someone like Anne Carson as a writer is another one where there's one artist where you can tell they're like, so sitting in front of a panel and they're presenting something to you, something they think, you know, that you wanted. And then there's another artist. You read a book sometimes, or you look at a photo book, you're like, all right, they're Just kind of handing me what they think I want. When I got here, they're facing me. It's almost like a show, like a, you know, a forum or something. There's another artist where you're engaging with their work, and you just see the back of their neck. This is a metaphor, of course. And you see the neck, like, sweating. You can see the sweat in the back. And you're like, oh, my God, she's digging a hole. And you get engaging with the art is looking over her shoulder. And this is true with Nan's work, Sally Mann's Arba's An Mi Le as well, especially, you know. And then you get to participate in watching someone dig up a hole out of curiosity and questions, and the work is so much more urgent. You feel on the edge of yourself, and you feel like you're on this journey with the artist as they're figuring it out. And that is when art, to me is so transportive. And it's when the audience. I want to be that as an audience, when I look at a film or something, I want to be just looking over the shoulder of somebody, digging.
Sasha Wolf: I totally. I get exactly what you're saying, and I completely agree. I've seen so many films the past couple weeks that feel so much like what you're describing, and even if there are, what I would myself consider or feel is a misstep here or there, still, the thing is a masterpiece. Because of everything you just described. I'm thinking of sentimental value, which just blew my mind. And I'm thinking I actually just watched the Vinvenders film Perfect Days.
Oh, that's. Isn't that such a beautiful ode to.
Sasha Wolf: Photography, too and forever? It's an ode to art, really, isn't it? To photography and to literature and to film and to music. Oh, my God.
Oh, my gosh. And self worth. Dignity in labor.
Sasha Wolf: No, no. That film just really blew my mind. But I feel like I've been so lucky lately. I've seen so many really beautiful, beautiful films. But, no, the trying, the authentic trying, is the thing really that we connect with, I think, on screen many different levels. And, you know, I think as we all go through life trying, you know, we are actually not only quite comfortable seeing the trying by an artist, but I think it goes beyond being comfortable with it. I think we are, you know, grateful for it. I think it's part of the connection. I was thinking the other day about the book Goddess Now Praise Famous Men. And I was thinking about the way in which James Agee, who was Doing the writing part of the book. And it was a book of. For people who don't know, I think most people, I hope, do. But maybe I'm just so old that. Because it was a part of my childhood. But Walker Evans did the photographs and James Agee, his good friend, did the writing for this book. And it was very much about exploration and connection with tenant farmers in the 1930s, post depression. And Agee's struggles in the writing, his struggles with himself, his struggles like it's all in the book. His struggle to feel comfortable even writing on the topic. His, you know, it's like it's all there. And there's something so like, you know, you have gratitude for that in a way, for that struggle that's right there in front of you. I mean, it's so connected to the subject and it's so connected to everyone's experience in life. Life is a struggle, I think, in many ways.
I mean, I'm so happy you mentioned now let us praise Famous Men because that if there was one book that I would say is like the most permission giving cornerstone of my life as an artist is that book. Everything like, I'm coming out of that book, you know what I mean? Like, there's a radius.
Sasha Wolf: Tell me more.
Well, Agee was a poet. He was deeply closeted, right? You know, and he had this beautiful collection of letters to Father Fly, his teacher in this Catholic school that he was at throughout his life. He would have this long. It's letters to Father Fly. That book. It was like Melville, you know, like the style was nebulous. It was not. Capote's In Cold Blood hadn't come out yet. Didion's journalistic fictive work hasn't really take hold. So there was no blueprint for what he was doing. And you're absolutely right. It's the vexations, the doubt of self worth, of art itself that really makes. Like when he describes being bitten by fleas, sleeping with the family, and he can't sleep because he doesn't know how to describe it, you know, like he's just like, I can't describe this to you. And also, like, Walker's not here to take this shot. It's also like the camera gives and also it can't give enough. You know, like life, the majority of life is outside the frame. And it was so honest. And I think that's it. It's effortful. And I think like in our culture, particularly in literary culture, there's this fetishization of effortlessness, of ease, you Know, I think a lot of this is in fashion as well. And I think in a Protestant inflected culture like America, that is founded on hard work, and that hard work is a kind of virtue, it becomes incredibly powerful to then be immune to hard work. So that when something arrives effortlessly, it's fetishized as a kind of divine providence and therefore better than thou. And so we fabricate effortlessness all the time. Right? The no makeup look.
Sasha Wolf: I agree. Yeah, I agree.
And I always love to see, like, effort in the work. Like, I hope, you know, my readers can feel that I labored over the sentence I worried over. And you can feel. You can feel all of that in both Walker's and Agee's work in that collection. And it's hybrid. It's strange. To this day, there's no clear follower to it. You know, and funnily enough, Jimmy Carter, our former president, said that's the greatest American book he's ever read, which makes me love him even more. He's like. I'm like, wow, of course you would get it. Peanut farmer from the South. But also someone who's absolutely tolerant of strangeness because that book is really strange. It doesn't resolve anything. He breaks off into weird meditations. I mean, it's like an odd avant garde book. It totally flunked because it came out at the heels of World War II, and it was. It took a long time to kind of really salvage Agee. And he. He really beat himself up for that, you know, and he never really recouped. And. But there's a. What you said about effort and trying, Sasha, was so illuminating because there's a kind of novel strategy. And it's true with filmmaking, too, where one way to kind of bring sympathy and camaraderie with your protagonist is to show the viewer the protagonist attempt to do something rigorously, you know, so if you depict someone trying to tie their shoes and failing, or trying to clean up a bag of garbage that's spilling everywhere, like these little moments, like, Kenneth Lonergan is really good at this, particularly in Manchester by the Sea. You can just. So he sets up this intimacy with the protagonist by showing labor. And that's so brilliant. I think, like, Malik does this a lot too, like labor and work. And I think that's also true with a lot of photography. You show people doing work. You know, this is true with Gedney and Evans. And there's a kind of kinship that comes when you see somebody trying to. And it's so interesting that a lot of times in the art world or literary world, we kind of ignore that or we pretend that trying is like blase. Or if you try or you have effort or something, you've been duped into trying too hard. Like a derogatory term is a try hard. Right. So I just love that. It just clicked to me that that's actually a major part of how we evolved as human beings. When we see somebody struggling, struggling to do something, we're compelled to be closer to them.
Sasha Wolf: I mean, I don't trust anything I do that I do too easily. I mean, yeah, I really believe in rigor and in repetition, and maybe you wind up back where you started, that's fine. But, you know, I once heard, I think it was John Irving say in an interview, this was so, so long ago that he could spend like a day on a sentence. And I've never forgotten that because, first of all, this is when I was still in my younger years writing scripts and making films. But I found it so liberating because I was just like, yeah, this is hard. Like, it's hard. And it's fine that it's hard. The thing is to not be worried that it's hard and not think there's something wrong if it's hard or not be mad that it's hard. It should be hard. Creating something out of nothing is difficult. And something that doesn't have. It's not a math equation where there's a right answer. So not only are you creating something out of nothing, but you actually have to decide when it's done, not when it's right. Because there can be more than one. Right? Yeah, you have to just decide when it's done. This is so complex and it should be difficult. And so I, yeah, I hail all hell difficulty, you know, and I feel myself, you know, most gratified when I go through the muck and the mire of working on something. I know that I've looked at it from every different angle, and then at a certain point, yeah, you put it to bed and that's fine. But that's what I see in this, you know, beautiful book project that you and Ray and Vlad have done. I see trying and I see effort. And that to me, as a viewer, I will match that in the viewing. You've given hard work to me and I'll give you hard work back. That's the deal, you know, so that provocation. Yeah, so we're sort of coming to the end here, but I'm very grateful for what you're offering to us. And I You know, I can't wait to see the exhibition. And I urge everyone from wherever to make the journey up here to CPW. As I said, the exhibition will open on January 31st, which is very soon. And the book folks should order the book. There's only 350 copies. It's probably already sold out, but you never know. And just, just thank you so much for talking with me today. It's such a joy.
Oh, thank you so much, Sasha. It's a, it's a deep pleasure to think through some of these things. And I think you're, you're so right. Doubt is often seen as an obstacle that you have to break through. But I think, like, what happens if we think of doubt as a collaborator? You know, it's, it's like, oh, what if it's not an obstacle, but an energy source? Like, oh, a doubt is something that creates friction that I can collaborate. I want my doubt with me when I work through things so that then alternatives come through and eventually those alternatives become the actual road forward. And it's a thing.
Sasha Wolf: Absolutely, yeah.
So many times, you know, and I think I, I have such kinship with that John Irving sentence quote, because a lot of times what we don't also realize that you can spend a day on the sentence and then you never use it. But that doesn't mean it's lost. It doesn't mean it's lost.
Sasha Wolf: But that's okay. Of course. Isn't that. That's the process? Isn't it just the process?
It'll take you to the right sense of it?
Sasha Wolf: Absolutely. I mean, I speak with young people as, as you do you do regularly as a professor? I do sporadically, but it's one of the sort of first things I have to sort of disavow them of is this idea that if it's really, really difficult, they're doing something wrong. It's like, no, it's the opposite. If it's really, really difficult, you're trying, you're really working at it, and that's great, you know, and maybe there will be some crazy lucid moments where it'll all tumble out, but that's not the norm for any artist. And, you know, that's wonderful. And if one's lucky, they. Well, maybe unlucky because maybe they think it'll happen again and again. But the process is tough. Whether you're writing poetry, whether you're writing a novel, whether you're putting together a body of work, of photographs, and it's important to find a way to love that process and be, I don't know, optimistic about it and find the beauty in that work. You know, it's its own form of labor.
Yeah, yeah. So well said. Thank you.
Sasha Wolf: Thank you. I really look forward to meeting you on Saturday. And until then, have a wonderful rest of the week. And yeah, thank you again so much.
Beautiful. Likewise. And stay warm. I'll see you soon.
Sasha Wolf: Okay. All right. Bye, Ocean.
All right. Bye. Bye.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Photo work with Sasha Wolf is a production of the Photo Work Foundation. Executive producer is Sasha Wolf 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 Jay Wynn, 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.
Sasha Wolf: Platform, mystic about it and find the beauty in that work. You know, it's its own form of labor.
Yeah, yeah. So well said. Thank you.
Sasha Wolf: Thank you. I really look forward to meeting you on Saturday. And until then, have a wonderful rest of the week. And yeah, thank you again so much.
Beautiful. Likewise. And stay warm. I'll see you soon.
Sasha Wolf: Okay. All right. Bye, Ocean.
All right. Bye. Bye.
Michael Chovan-Dalton: Photo work with Sasha 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 PhotoArk foundation and be sure to subscribe and review with all the stars on your listening platform.