[b. 1951] Canadian-American photographer
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I walked all around it [the Guggenheim Bilbao] and couldn’t find one clear, clean shot. To make things worse, the weather was lousy. Nothing about this rang “commercial money shot.” In a situation like this there’s only one thing to do: forget about pleasing editors, please yourself.
Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher.
I’m not a believer in the future. The most interesting things are always behind us. I look at everything as archaeology.
My belief is that you should take stills of what doesn’t seem to move, and take movies or videos of [what] does.
My photos are physical graphic records. A lot of the places I’ve photographed simply won’t exist – many have already ceased to exist in the state that they were photographed in. They’ve been bulldozed over. Photography is collective memory – that’s its nature...
I’ve always been accused by my detractors of some sort of moral failure, cowardice, or even lack of humanity by not portraying the human form. I respond that I do better by portraying traces of character and intentions of human volition that no mug or body shot can ever exude.
Doing editorial work is like being on the road with a band. You don’t do your best shit, but you raise the level of your mediocrity and it makes you ready to do your best work when the opportunity comes along.
I would say that the emblematic photographic image is a picture from inside a room looking out. I think this defines photography. It’s the metaphor for the notion of first sight. What one saw first.
When I shoot I don’t feel anything. I feel before and after, but I come with a pre-loaded gun. I just do the labors, the proper labors of doing it. I try not to feel too much.
