An Interview with John Bolloten

Copyright John Bolloten

RH: Who is John Bolloten

JB: John Bolloten is a documentary photographer based in Bradford, UK.  He is particularly interested in documenting people and subcultures that exist on the margins of society. His book “Nothing To See Here” (2017) opened a window into Bradford’s gritty underbelly of drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness and vice. He has continued to photograph within this community and published a second book in this series “Love Story” (2019) which gave a very intimate view into the lives of drug-using couple. Other books include “Bradford Street” (2014), “Belgrade” (2015), “Shabash” (2016), and “Field of Broken Dreams” (2018).

John is currently putting together his third and final book about people who use drugs which is planned for publication by Bluecoat Press in 2020.  He is also working on long-term projects on the grime and battle rap scenes across the north of England. 

 

Planning

 

RH: What attracted and inspired you to your current documentary project?

JB: My current documentary photography work has been a natural evolution throughout the years. I started with exploring the life of people who use drugs in Bradford which was published as the book Nothing To See Here. That led onto much more personal and intimate work where I spent eight months visiting and photographing a couple in their flat. This has just been published as the book Love Story. Right now I am almost at the very end of the last part in the series for a third book which will feature people telling their life stories as well as following them as their circumstances and conditions have changed. This is expected to be published in late 2020. 

I was attracted to doing this work because I used drugs when I was younger and I understood issues around addiction. The bulk of my photography focuses on people and (sub)cultures on the margins of society. This has included areas like battle rap, grime, old school punk and religious rituals.

RH: Can you talk us through the planning stage for your project?

JB: I don’t really plan anything when I am about to start long-term work. Obviously I have the idea and I turn it over in my mind quite a bit about how I am going to approach it. But I like to work with a very open mind as often opportunities arise while I am doing it and this can affect the direction of the work.

RH: Is there anything you wish you had done differently?

JB: In the work with people who use drugs then the photos I take are directly linked to what is happening on the ground. The situation is always quite fluid so flexibility and patience have been essential. With hindsight, if was starting from the beginning then I may have done things in a different order like working on stories but I was a lot less experienced then and didn't have any contacts. In most cases it has taken a lot of time to get peoples’ trust.

Copyright John Bolloten

Implementation and Completion
 

RH:How have you dealt with any challenges and difficulties within your project?

JB: There have been many challenges and most have been around the lifestyle of the people I have photographed. It would be common for people not to be in (if they had a place to live) or they didn’t turn up when planned. I learnt to accept this early on and just have the patience to try again or visit somebody else. There were also concerns around people overdosing but I was prepared for that and I am trained in life support and also carried naloxone with me.

RH: How long do your projects tend to take from start to finish?   

JB: The work with people who use drugs has lasted five years. This is almost complete and I will need a good six months to edit it and pull it all together. 
 

Editing and Sequencing

RH: Do have several images to edit of one fleeting moment or do you have one well-constructed precise image that you have captured?

JB: All of the stories I work on are long term so my main issue is having enough depth so I will shoot thousands of images.

RH: Within the editing stages, have you felt the project has taken on a different narrative than first envisaged?

JB: Once I am some way in, then I usually have a narrative established. I never seek to put my own agenda on the work. I photograph what is happening in front of me. I will have ideas about sequencing but when I am putting a book together then I will actually start the physical sequencing then.
 

Tips and hints 
 

RH: What would you recommend for people starting their own photographic project?

JB: I found that doing long term projects taught me more than anything else about being a photographer.

RH: Does the camera really matter? 

JB: Only in the sense that one must find one that works for them. The camera is only a tool.

RH: Any books you would recommend reading to get the creativity started?

JB: Some photobooks that have had a big impact on me would include those by Eugene Richards, Boogie, Miron Zownir, Scot Sothern, Josef Koudelka, Tom Stoddart, Jim Mortram and the British classic photobook Survival Programmes.

RH: Would you recommend attending photography workshops?

JB: It’s not for me at all but if someone feels like they need it then why not.

Copyright John Bolloten
 

An Interview with Karl Baden
 

copyright- Karl Baden

An Interview with Karl Baden

RH: Who is Karl Baden

Karl Baden has been a photographer since 1972. His photographs have been widely exhibited, including at the Robert Mann Gallery, Zabriskie Gallery, Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Howard Yezerski Gallery, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Decordova Museum and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Musée Batut in France, Photokina in Cologne, Germany, and The Photographers Gallery in London. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Kenan Foundation and Light Work Visual Studies. His photographs and visual books are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Addison Gallery of American Art, Polaroid International Collection, the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, the Guggenheim Museum, the New York Public Library and the Boston Public Library. He has been on the faculty at Boston College since 1989. In 2000, Baden was the subject of a 26-year retrospective exhibition at Light Work Visual Studies. “How did I Get Here?”; a 48-page catalogue, accompanies the exhibition. The 1980s, entitled “Work from two Bodies”. In 2016, Retroactive Books published “The Americans by Car”.  In 2016, Retroactive Books published “Taking Sides”. Karl Baden is represented by the Howard Yezerski Gallery howardyezerskigallery.com

Planning

RH: What attracted and inspired you to your current documentary project?

  KB: If you are referring to the photographs I made from cars, it was, not unlike many other projects I've ended up working on, a case of not choosing it; rather, it choosing me. More specifically, while there are a number of bodies of work I've preconceptualized; thought through to some degree before I took them on, most projects evolve from the practice of always carrying a camera and using it frequently, taking pictures of what strikes me at the time as some composition or situation that I think might make a decent photograph. Most of the time I'm disappointed by the results, but every so often i find an image that resonates with me, and if I'm lucky, I can build on that. Lots of street and documentary photographers work that way, or at least they used to. Instead of walking around with some kind of a priori notion in your head, you simply pay attention and allow the world to surprise you. This allows your contact sheets - or in a more updated sense - your pictures in Lightroom or Bridge, to show you what you're interested in. There's still a lot to be said for serendipity and surprise as part of one's working method. They offer a freshness and spontaneity to work that is generally more difficult to achieve if you already know what you're doing, because if you already know the answer, it makes the question a bit irrelevant, and posing the question is really the more exciting, fresh and important part of a photograph.

  If I recall correctly, I had just finished working on a project about having cancer in 2000-1, and I was more or less at a loss for ideas. While I walked around and looked, shooting rather randomly, i found myself taking a few pictures through the windows of parked cars, interested in the way people decorated the interiors, or even the things they left on their seats. some cars were filled to  mid-window level with all kinds of stuff, a lot of it what you might consider trash. I got a few interesting pictures, but more important, 

I got to thinking about all the time we spend driving from one place to another, and the kinds of things we keep and leave on the seats, the floor, dashboard, ceiling, windows. Our preference for outfitting these containers on wheels that we sometimes spent more time in than our actual homes.

  Photographing what people carried in their automobiles led to photographing the people themselves, driving this way or that, stopped at traffic lights, alone or with others. I guess that was somewhat of a natural progression, but the work didn't really gel for me as a series until I began to photograph the world that passed by outside a vehicle that I was happened to be in, either as a driver or a passenger. This idea, of course, did not originate with me, but goes back through a number of contemporary photographers to Robert Frank, then to Walker Evans, and even to J. H. Lartigue at the beginning of the 20th century. But I've long since known that most things have precedents, and just because someone did something 20 or 50 or 100 years ago, perhaps even  better than your version, it can still be worth doing, and if you are sincere the work will be personal and accurate to your own sensibilities.

  In the case of the car, I saw the window glass and door joints as establishing a kind of proscenium, inside of which a fast moving drama was constantly unfolding. It became a physical challenge as well as visual, because if you're not stopped, you need to watch where you're going as well as pay attention to what you're passing or what's flashing by you.

RH: Can you talk us through the planning stage for your project?

I think I just did.

RH: Is there anything you wish you had done differently?

KB: Hard to say. I suppose it would have been helpful to drive as many different sorts of vehicles as I was able, which would mean borrowing friends cars and even renting or leasing. I'm pretty sure that's what Lee Friedlander did in his terrific book America by Car. But he can afford that sort of luxury much more easily than I can.

copyright- Karl Baden
 

Implementation and Completion

RH: How have you dealt with any challenges and difficulties within your project?

KB: Well, there are several levels of response to that question. First, you'd want to be able to recognize the formal characteristics of the vehicle you're driving, so you can employ them compositionally. You also have to figure out inside vs outside lighting. This has been a particular challenge to me, as I almost always include part of the car's interior and I usually want it to be lit as brightly as the outside, tho not with the same source or appearance of light. To this end I use a small strobe to light the interior when I take the picture, which in my case necessitates a smaller and less powerful camera than I'd prefer, because I need the flash to sync at high shutter speeds, 1/1000 sec and up, and the larger cameras tend to limit their sync speeds at around 1/250 sec.

Finally, there are much more sensitive and complicated issues involving subject matter, which certainly includes people, but also property; other cars, houses and buildings, etc. "Street photography" (for lack of a better term) has become a much more complicated, problematic and even risky endeavor over the past 20 or 30 years, and even though it is still protected first amendment freedom of expression, in this age of smart phones, surveillance cameras and the paranoia surrounding spying, pedophilia, terrorism, et al, that may be attributed to these devices -not to mention the internet and social media platforms! - ones risk of being stigmatized and even physically harmed increases by orders of magnitude.

RH: How long do your projects tend to take from start to finish?

KB: As long as they need to. I have published small books of conceptually based images that have been put together in as little was a few weeks. At the other end of the spectrum, I make a photograph of my fave every day. It's a lifelong project, started on February 23rd 1987. That's 32 years and counting...

copyright- Karl Baden
 

Editing and Sequencing

RH: Do have several images to edit of one fleeting moment or do you have one well-constructed precise image that you have captured?

KB: I have both in this series, but primarily the latter.

RH: Within the editing stages, have you felt the project has taken on a different narrative than first envisaged?

KB: Sometimes. Like I'd said, I try to follow what the pictures tell me, and try not to impose my will on them, tho that can be difficult.

Tips and hints

RH: What would you recommend for people starting their own photographic project?

KB: It depends what stage they're at as a photographer, but in my experience, if you're going to be an artist of any stripe, you are going to make the time and priority to work, and pretty much do whatever it takes to get the work realized. There are million excuses not to, and frankly, most people i've known coming up in photography, even those who appeared to have much more talent than I do, have caved in along the way.

RH: Does the camera really matter?

KB: In my particular case with this project, it does, for above stated reasons. The pictures you make often indicate how you should modify your equipment. That said, in general terms, a lousy or beginning photographer can have the best gear in the world, and still take lousy or beginning-level pictures, whereas a talented, experienced photographer with a vision can use the cheapest of cameras and make superior images. They can squeeze blood from a stone.

RH: Any books you would recommend reading to get the creativity started?

KB: I tend to stay away from the self-help genre, and only read technical stuff when I feel I need to know it. With a few exceptions, I also try to avoid complex, opaque philosophical discourse, as in the past it made my resemble illustrations of someone else's ivory tower theory instead of being my own. I'm much more inspired by good books: Novels, biographies, histories... and it goes without saying' photography monographs and anthologies. in this case, looking is far more important than actual reading. Reading teaches, looking inspires.

RH: Would you recommend attending photography workshops?

KB: I fell into a few workshops, mostly when i was in my 20s. They never did much for me. The only reason I'd take one now would be if there was something specific I needed to know. As I indicate above, to be an artist, one's psyche requires a self-driving engine. Constantly showing one's work to well known photographers, curators or critics may get you someplace, but the odds are stacked against it. Plus, workshops are like being in school, and despite the fact that many have great nostalgia for the fun and comfort of school, if you remain a student all your life, chances of you being able to leave the nest and do good things on your own get slimmer as you get older.

copyright- Karl Baden

copyright- Karl Baden

copyright- Karl Baden

copyright- Karl Baden

copyright- Karl Baden

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copyright- Karl Baden

copyright- Karl Baden

copyright- Karl Baden

copyright- Karl Baden

copyright- Karl Baden
 

An Interview with Philip Chudy 

Copyright- Margot Duane 

RH: Who is Philip Chudy 

Hailing from Zimbabwe Philip Chudy studied in photography in Birmingham (UK) and subsequently worked from studios in London Edinburgh and Frankfurt, before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area. Shoots highly technical advertising and automotive imagery as well as fine art.  Solo shows: London, Edinburgh, Leicester, Amsterdam, Darmstadt, Napa

Planning

RH: What attracted and inspired you to your current documentary project?

PC: Three things

One: the amazing evening light here in Northern California and the way it is accentuated on all colorful the fairground stands.

The second reason is more technical: I used to shoot street people with 8x10 plate camera and whereas one can include some spontaneity into such scenes, it is basically posed. The Summer Fairs series was a way to capture humanity on the hoof. I transitioned to shooting spontaneous imagery at Burning Man some years back where I shot mainly on 6x7 film hand held with Mamiya RZ camera. The Summer Fairs series has been shot entirely with DSLR and a mixture of long or wide-angle lenses in poor light which would have been impossible to shoot with film in the olden days. The speed and accuracy is liberating after having constrained myself over many years to choose fidelity over spontaneity.

Third reason is how ‘humanity’ and racial/age/ethnic/cultural diversity is on show at these events hereabouts. And, having grown up on Zimbabwe where a lot of things happen on the street but I only ever captured a tiny bit of it, the chance here was to make amends and go for it.  

RH: Can you talk us through the planning stage for your project?  

PC: There was pretty much no planning for that other than showing up at fairs and shooting. Mostly I go late in the day and shoot for perhaps 2 hours in the sweet light. It is total immersion and I am shooting many frames per minute till it is dark and then I go home mentally exhausted, before the other revelers start to enjoy the fireworks

RH: Is there anything you wish you had done differently? 

PC: This is a thing I know I will want to have done differently – sometime in the future (when equipment is way better than it is now). I will wish that I would be able to drag new equipment back in time. So can reshoot the best photos I already did better. 

Looking back in time - there are two regrets. I shot a few rolls or street photography in what was Rhodesia in 1971. After that I turned up my nose on 35mm and lost touch with the small camera version of the decisive moment. I wish I had continued to shoot action people pics alongside my mania for ‘larger than street life’ large format fidelity. Also – having worked on Advertising for a decade or more from a big studio in Wapping in the 70’s, apart from a few rolls of Kodachrome I never bothered to lift up a camera and shoot street action or even static large format landscape in London. How lame to have professed (as I did) that London was not interesting in a visual sense. 
 

Simple fact - street photos get better with age but they never can do that if you did not shoot them.

Implementation and Completion

RH: How have you dealt with any challenges and difficulties within your project?

PC: You might mange to be sneaky and hide somewhere in an attempt not to influence your subjects by being present in the scene. But it would probably be uncomfortable in that mailbox. I get around this by not being a purist. I let go of the idea that there will never be anyone looking into my lens with a ‘what is that idiot photographer doing’ look on their faces. 

I tend to stand in full view of everyone often wielding my long lenses and wheeling about in what might be deemed a threatening manner. Or I dive into crowds camera at eye close to the people rushing past me. I find that people find you interesting for a while and then get bored and ignore you. I scowl a lot as if I am really finding nothing of interest to shoot. I lift up my camera a lot and point it at people as if to say ‘I wish it were worth shooting you but….’ I try to look impatient for them to get out of the way of the real photo I am taking and usually I get the ‘screw you, I am doing what I am doing and will move when I am ready’. I acknowledge people and smile when our eyes meet as if to say ‘what an idiot I am – you should be glad you are not struggling to get shots like I am’. I look past them a lot as if I am waiting to shoot someone behind them and that party is not cooperating. All this meant to make them get bored with me and discount my presence. 

On a personal level, I look like a real jerk – if you want people to ignore you I think that helps a lot. 
 

RH: How long do your projects tend to take from start to finish?   


PC: Each Summer Fairs shoot is usually 2 hours or less shooting and many hours of post – trying to see if I got anything worth preparing. The Summer Fairs project is ongoing. So basically as the collection grows some stuff needs to be retired. It takes me a year or more before I don’t care anymore for what I once thought was an exciting or interesting photo. Then I find it easier to dispose of it. 

I tend to find I fall seriously out of love with those photos which endure (ones which others call ‘the best’). I can see they are good but I can get to hate them. I would rather finish my project with an edit of photos which retain a subtle magic for me. It would take me years till I would have the courage to throw away the ‘undisputed best’ ones to give space for the magic ones to breathe. So, probably I will never do that. Thus the project is never finished.

Editing and Sequencing

RH: Do have several images to edit of one fleeting moment or do you have one well-constructed precise image that you have captured?

PC: Both can happen. Usually I shoot a stream of frames mostly because I don’t want to lose the pic just because it is not sharp, or the camera shook. I am surprised how often the one of the series of exposures I choose in the end is the very first frame. That is reassuring.
 

RH: Within the editing stages, have you felt the project has taken on a different narrative than first envisaged?

PC: Not for me personally. After all the years of carefully crafting my photos with a plate camera, where the narrative should be fully under control, I thought I would lose all that with more action based work. I thought it would be a giant crapshoot at shooting stage and a heavy dredge though at post, hoping to hell that you ‘got something’. I am gob smacked to find that I am almost always aware when shooting something good and I know why it will work when I press the shutter. I cannot really understand how this is, because there is so little time when shooting to think about anything. 

At the same time I tend to shoot even when I know it is crap. It is a bit like bouncing the ball to get your muscles warmed up. Or it is like a Mayan ritual sacrifice – forgoing some good photos just to please the gods.  My problem is that good images come in batches and you end up with 10 good pics with the same person in them. You cannot decide which ones to dump. Having to dump anything you like feels like having to accept a diverging narrative.

Occasionally I get the sense I am seeing the project through the eyes of other hypothetical people. When that happens there is not so much a change of narrative, rather there is absolutely no narrative left at all. That is quite strange. I have experienced moments when I look at my work and fail to see a single thing to be interested in or engage with. Seeing things that way would not be surprising if I was depressed but I am not. There has to be some salutary lesson to be learned – namely that whatever excitement one might find in such imagery, represents some crazy good stuff in the mind of the viewer, because it sure as hell is not inherent in the image itself. 

 
Tips and hints 

RH:  What would you recommend for people starting their own photographic project?

PC: Only one word – start. And ‘start’ means taking photos and editing them. 

In the main as this applies to photographers: preparing, researching previsualizing, planning are only precursors to nothing. They only serve to ensure that you never get anything done and you will whine on regretfully to your grave.
 

Another thought which can be useful – drop the idea that when you look at a scene you are seeing it. It takes a lifetime to learn to just stand and look at what is in front of you (even in a static scene) and try as you can you will never manage to really see what is right in front of you right now. In view of that, it is a wonder that you might expect to make sense of a dynamic moving scene (as with street photography). Anything you look at in a scene blinds you to other stuff you will fail to see. There is more in a scene than you will ever see and if you are good you will continually seek it out.
 

RH: Does the camera really matter? 

PC: It matters a ton what you shoot on (if you can afford it) and it matters also in the negative sense that the camera will destroy your photography if take any pride in, or even notice of what is in your hand when you are taking photos (well, it is ‘you’ really). If you have a crap camera you just need to adapt and shoot what it affords you to. Your photos will be way better than someone who is concentrating really hard to gain advantage from fabulous state of the art equipment.

RH:  Any books you would recommend reading to get the creativity started?

PC: What is a book? I remember a lot of photos but I stopped noticing books after The Family of Man. I have to say I am not proud to be a book cretin: a book is a fabulous exercise in curation/editing. I am making a couple of them as we speak. Owning a book is one thing, but emotionally I find it hard to imagine why any modern person waste the time looking through one. Not that I prefer online or real shows. Images exist in mental space for me, not in books.      

RH: Would you recommend attending photography workshops?

PC: Not really - unless you like paying to socialize. You will learn way more by editing and post producing your photos and shooting than trying to inherit a recipe or formula.

find out more about Philips work at:

Fine Art website 

http://www.philipchudyfineart.com/

Very Large batch of Summer Fairs photos

http://www.philipchudyfineart.com/projects/proj1/

blog 
http://www.philipchudy.com/blog/

Instagram 
https://www.instagram.com/philipchudy/

If you have a documentary project worth sharing please get in touch by leaving a comment below or email.