Notes on Photography: The Photographer's Body

In Push Process, I tried to argue – and to dramatise – the idea that photography is something one does with the whole body, not a disembodied eye. Below is an extract from an interview with Stephen Shore on the same theme:

Stephen Shore: I was thinking of how I would approach the issue of embodiment in photographic terms, and that is if you become aware of yourself as a physical object in space, as though you were a dancer moving through the space of a room, your perception changes, your perception of space changes, your perception of time changes, and to the degree that that perceptual change is visual, it could be communicated in a photograph. So the sense of space is often the easiest of these subtler qualities to talk about, but if your physical awareness of yourself changes your perception of space, if you are a photographer that has had a lot of experience, a practiced photographer who has control of the medium, the picture you take can communicate that.

Michael Fried: Yes. What struck me in [your] landscape photos ... is that I felt something intensely empathic about, for example, the way they depicted the unevenness of the ground. And about the way in which they treated the whole question of relative distance. It had to be read. I mean I was keenly aware of the visual work I had to do to make my way imaginatively through the photos, to figure out distances, to read scale relations. Let's say there is something at a certain distance, it might be a big rock or it might be a smaller one. Everything depends on whether it is a big rock at 800 yards or a small rock at 75 yards, and those photographs don't immediately deliver that information. They make you work for it, and I came to feel that the labor of construal they forced me to do was implicitly physical, if you see what I mean. It was more than just mental, it was equivalent to imagining myself having to physically negotiate that space. So they were for me extremely interesting photos precisely with respect to the issue of bodiliness and empathy. Also, they made me register the unevenness of the ground in a more than strictly visual way -- the way I would have done had I been walking on it, climbing that slope, or coming back down. 

From the recent Phaidon volume on Stephen Shore

Interview for Joe Bedford's 'Writers on Research' Series

I did a written interview for Joe Bedford's 'Writers on Research' series, which you can find here. A brief excerpt:

What I draw from Twin Peaks is the juxtaposition of an achingly sincere, even naïve, depiction of goodness – which Lynch associates with images of 50s America – with disturbing intrusions of adult complexity and supernatural evil.

Psychology

S: You have often expressed contempt for psychology. Yet you keep talking about the mystery of personality in ways that sound psychological. What's the difference between what you want to understand and what the psychologist wants to understand? 

B: The psychologist discovers only what he can explain. I explain nothing. 

S: You are a person with no preconceptions. 

B: None at all. 

S: Whereas psychology is a closed system, whose premises dictate its method. Therefore, it discovers evidence in support of a preexisting theory of human behavior. 

B: If I succeed at all, I suppose some of what I show on the screen will be psychologically valid, even though I am not quite aware of it. But of course, I don't always succeed. In any case, I never want to explain anything. The trouble with most films is that they explain everything. 

....

S: What I am trying to explore with you is the emotional problem for the spectator [in Pickpocket]. 

B: I never think of the spectator. 

S: But you can see that your hero might appear unsympathetic. 

B: He is unsympathetic. Why not? 

S: I am also puzzled, in view of your uninterest in psychology, at the heavy psychological emphasis in this film. Let me explain. As we see the hero stealing, we don't know his motive, but toward the end of the film we find out that he previously stole from his mother. We then realize his psychological motivation; he stole from his mother, felt guilty about that, was ashamed to confess to her, and, therefore, commits crimes so as to be punished and fulfill his need for penitence. 

B: Perhaps, but only a psychiatrist would explain it like that. As Dostoyevsky frequently does, I present the effect before the cause. I think this is a good idea because it increases the mystery; to witness events without knowing why they are occurring makes you desire to find out the reason.

From this interview with Robert Bresson.

Chris Ware Quotation

CW: I don’t want them to be interesting lines or interesting drawings, because then my hand comes into it too much.

Q: Why is that a problem?

CW: Because I just think it’s harder to read, in the same way that I wouldn’t want to read Ernest Hemingway’s rough draft of one of his novels, I would want to read the typeset, clean version, because I don’t want to be aware of his handwriting or anything. Not that you couldn’t be, necessarily. It’s certainly interesting to see an author’s corrected proof — you can see his scratch-outs and things that are added in — but fundamentally the intention is to have it read smoothly. It’s the words that matter; it’s the story that matters, and fundamentally, I’m interested in the story ...

[From this interview]

'John Saturnall's Feast' by Lawrence Norfolk

A long time ago, I chaired a discussion on historical fiction featuring A. S. Byatt and Lawrence Norfolk. I'm a great admirer of Norfolk's work, and it's been a long time since his last book, so I am very excited about the publication of John Saturnall's Feast:

'There's this boy and he's an orphan and he becomes a chef in the 17th century. He falls in love with the wrong girl. The civil war happens so he loses everything but they can be together. Then when the Restoration happens, he gets everything back: he can be the greatest chef of the age and she can be lady of the manor and they have to decide what to do.' Carole said: 'Well what do they do?' I didn't know at that point but I knew I had to write the book to find out.

Illustrated by ....

From The Paris Review interview with Robert Crumb:

INTERVIEWER

Genesis is obviously a graphic novel, but the cover is like a fifties comic-book cover.

CRUMB

It’s a Classics Illustrated! I had to argue with them to let me call it “illustrated.” They wanted to call it The Book of Genesis According to R. Crumb but I preferred “illustrated by.” I wanted a humbler position. It’s an illustration job, OK? Illustration has a bad name in modern culture because for decades artists who were “mere illustrators” were considered inferior to fine artists. Being an illustrator was looked down upon. It meant you were not really a creative person, you just had the technical skills that you were lending to someone else’s ideas. It’s all bullshit though—the fine-art world, the myth of the creative genius artist.

Interview with Zoe Sadokierski

A nice interview with Zoe (the designer of Five Wounds) about her work on two recent short-story anthologies has been posted at Allen & Unwin's Tumblr. Here's an excerpt:

The initial direction was clear in terms of what kind of mood needed to be communicated, but initially we were going to use another illustrator whose work was much more linear in style. It was a collaborative process to get to the rich, layered illustrations these covers ended up with. Designers call this the ‘rebriefing’ process; over the course of a project, you need to keep re-looking at the brief and reassessing how to keep all parties (publishing, marketing, sales, the authors) happy. Sometimes this means stopping, reflecting, and changing tack.

Terry Gilliam explains his animation techniques

Fantastic archival footage of Gilliam.

Interview with Art Spiegelman

Style is a capitalist invention. It’s a trademark. It’s very useful in the world of commerce to have a good trademark, but it wasn’t my first concern. I got restless…

[Found at Austin Kleon's Tumblr.]

Podcast of session on 'Modern Dystopia' at the Melbourne Writers Festival

Back in August, I appeared with DBC Pierre at the Melbourne Writers Festival in a discussion on 'Modern Dystopia'. This session was recorded by Radio National, and an edited version was broadcast on Monday 17 January as part of their 'Best of the fests' programming. The discussion moderator was Justin Clemens. 

UPDATE: You can now download a podcast of the programme. I have also uploaded the relevant section of the audio below. 

SECOND UPDATE: There is now further discussion of the ideas raised in our discussion here.

  

N.B. I am actually talking about Five Wounds in the session, even though the presenter mentions Pistols! Treason! Murder! in the introduction.

Video Interview for The Wheeler Centre

 

This is an interview I did recently for the Wheeler Centre on Five Wounds. Thanks to George Dunford for setting it up.

Interview on 'The Comic Spot'

Above is the audio file of my recent interview on 'The Comic Spot', with John Retallick and Jo Waite, broadcast on 15 July 2010, on 3CR Radio in Melbourne. I have edited the clip so that it only includes my interview, but the full show is available to download from the podcast archive.

Melbourne Writers Festival: Modern Dystopia

I shall be appearing at this year's Melbourne Writers Festival, on a panel with Booker-Prize winning author DBC Pierre, whose new novel Lights Out in Wonderland is about to be published. The panel is on Modern Dystopia, and it takes place at 4 p.m. on Sunday 29 August at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Tickets are on sale now.

UPDATE: You can now download a podcast of this session. I have also uploaded the relevant section of the audio and added some further written discussion of the ideas raised in our discussion here.

Interview on 'The Comic Spot'

I will be a guest on 'The Comic Spot' radio show on 3CR in Melbourne this Thursday afternoon (15 July) at about 5.30 p.m. You can listen in Sydney via streaming (as I do!).

Pistols! Treason! Murder!: Interview on Radio National's Late Night Live

Another one from the archives: This interview was originally broadcast on Radio National's Late Night Live, in February 2007, for the Australian release of Pistols! Treason! Murder!



The interview refers to my facetious manifesto on 'punk history', as discussed here.

Five Wounds: Interview in 'The View From Here'

An indepth interview with Dan and I has now been posted at The View From Here online literary magazine to accompany their review of Five Wounds. An excerpt is below.

Q. Was the collaboration on Five Wounds a more straightforward process for having previously worked together on Pistols! Treason! Murder!?

A. The illustrations for Pistols! Treason! Murder! were completed in a rush on a very tight deadline. That had its advantages: it means they have a certain crude aggressive energy to them. It’s punk history, after all. For Five Wounds, I had the chance to think things through, and to theorise it more. And there are several different kinds of illustration, several different layers, which involved different methods of working. So Pistols! was more like the first rush of discovery, live on stage, and Five Wounds is more like tinkering around in the studio for months overdubbing. Pistols! is an amphetamine book; Five Wounds is a morphine book.

Thanks to Paul Burman, who conducted the interview and wrote the review.

Also out is an interview I did for The Cairns Review.

Five Wounds: Interview on FBi Radio

Below is my interview on Canvas, the arts programme on FBi Radio, 94.5FM in Sydney, which was originally broadcast earlier this month. I sound reasonably coherent for a Sunday morning, although I am obviously trying to set a record for how many times I can use the words 'weird' and 'garbled' over the course of twenty minutes. Thanks to host Anna Burns.