Oliver Weber wrote in to tell us about Michael Werner’s interesting interview project, Two-Way Lens. Weber wrote:

 

Two Way Lens is a project of interviews with international, contemporary photographers. Their answers to three simple questions about their career paths, presented in this project, should help, inspire and inform emerging photographers. The tips and advice provided will be of value to every young photographer. A new photographer/ interview is added to the project every month.

The interviews are short and sweet, but have some good information. Among those interviewed: Zoe Strauss, Richard Renaldi, Martin Parr, Lori Nix, Alec Soth, and Amy Stein.

The original context, of course, was the Vietnam War, a storm cloud that, through the last years of the 60s, overarched our daily lives here in America with a terrible weight….What had been general and unbearable became specific and agonizing. At least that’s how I felt as I set out on this project, a feeling I carried with me through the eight months that I worked on it and through Nixon’s presidency and the rest of the war….But while there’s an obvious parallel between that war and Bush’s wars today, and one I meant to draw with this book, it’s difficult for me to identify any existential connection between the hysterical state of things back then and the narcotised country I find myself living in today…”

-Tod Papageorge on American Sports 1970: or How We Spent the War in Vietnam in an interview with Foto8

Foto8’s just published a long interview with Tod Papageorge. Well worth a read. He discusses the recent publication of his books American Sports 1970: or How We Spent the War in Vietnam and Passing Through Eden: Photographs of Central Park, the nature of “documentary photography,” collaboration with Garry Winogrand, and other topics.

Related: here’s Papageorge’s Wikipedia page (2 Guggenheim Fellowships!), his bio at Yale’s School of Art, and a selection of his work at Pace/MacGill

Lu Guang won this year’s W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography with his work documenting pollution in China. The pictures are astounding. In an interview with China’s NetEase, Lu Guang discusses how he funded the project, how he found out about the subjects he photographed, and how he has built a network of people all over the country who keep him up to date with pollution in their areas. Thankfully, China Hush has a translation of the interview.

My RSS reader has been full to the brim with photographer interviews of late.  Here’s a few worth checking out to fill a lazy Sunday afternoon:

• Dodge and Burn talks to World Press Photo spot news winner Walter Astrada about his career and goals.
• Foto8 talks to Andreas Gursky about, among other topics, the evolution of his work.
• Voices of San Diego talks to Matt Mallams about his plans for the summer and his style.
• The Fader talks to Andrea Diefenbach about her excellent work documenting AIDS in the Ukraine.
• The New York Photo Festival talks with Jacob Holdt about his process and thoughts about photography (scroll down a bit) (via 2point8)
• Camera Obscura talks with Mehrdad Naraghi about, among other things, how he publishes and shows his photos in Iran. (via Asian Photography Blog)
• Conscientious and Bomblog talk with Will Steacy about the process and intentions behind his recent project “Down These Mean Streets.” (second link via Rachel Hulin)
• +1 Magazine talks with Boogie (in a pdf; here’s Boogie’s site, too.).
• 100Eyes Magazine talks with Brenda Ann Kenneally about her own history and how her life has intertwined with her photographic subjects.

“I’ve never seen myself as a war photographer. This is about narrative. I’m very open to any visual conceits and any possibilities at my disposal to better explain to people the ideas I’m exploring. I like art photography, I like still life, I like war photography. I like to include everything to weave a tapestry to explain to someone, ‘What happened?’” -Tim Hetherington

There’s a short and interesting interview with Tim Hetherington over at Scarlett Lion’s Liberia blog. Hetherington, who won the 2007 World Press Photo award, discusses his work on Liberia beginning with the 2003 battle for Monrovia; the pictures, which were part of Moving Walls 11, have just been published in “Long Story, Bit by Bit” by Umbrage. And, my rss reader just tells me, Art Buyer Heather Morton will be interviewing Hetherington tomorrow at the New York Photo Festival, so now’s a good opportunity to get questions in to him through her blog.

The book is also available on Amazon, though only 5 are left as of this writing.

And, if you’re in New York City on May 22, as we mentioned a couple days ago, you can hear Tim Hetherington in conversation with Gary Knight and Stephen Mayes on the subject of war and conflict photography. Friday, May 22, at 6:30pm at the VII Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn (28 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201).

Continuing our posts on Seamus Murphy, here’s “Carry on up the Gulag: Interview with Seamus Murphy” at Dispatches’ site. Murphy talks a bit about the process of photographing Russia for Dispatches’ issue “On Russia” and shares some stories behind individual pictures. And if you’re in London on Wed., April 29, 2009, at 6:30 p.m., head on over to the Honduras Street Gallery for a conversation between Seamus Murphy and Gary Knight. (both via the Dispatches group on Facebook)

I’ve just run across recent interviews with a couple of long-time favorite photographers: Bevis Fusha and Alex Majoli. For reference, here’s Bevis Fusha’s portfolio and Alex Majoli’s page at Magnum.

(Fusha interview via the Click; Majoli interview via Matt)

Found via lightstalkers, Bruce Haley’s excellent Tao of War Photography is 60+ nuggets of wisdom from a career spent in the trenches. Worth a laugh, worth a tear, worth a read. Among the treasures:
”

• 10. It is said that sudden fright causes people to soil themselves… I have noticed that sustained fright causes increased flatulence: fear-farting… I have also seen Afghan mujahideen run out into a heavy rain of incoming artillery rather than shelter in a small crevice with two fear-farting Western journalists……
• 18. If you don’t understand the entire concept of indirect fire, do not go to a war zone… If you only remember one thing from this article, let this be it…….
• 23. You know you’re in trouble when the new head of your once-reputable agency sends out a form letter asking his photographers to shoot “quirky Americana” stories…..
• 30. You will see the exact same wretched mongrel dog in every third world country you visit… after a while you will come to believe that it has a passport and is following you from country to country……
• 31. Huge, menacing rats like to perch upon sleeping photographers’ faces at 3 a.m in seedy hotels in warring portions of the former Soviet Union…..”

more here

And while we’re talking about Bruce Haley, he had a conversation with Joerg at Conscientious a while back. It’s a great discussion of, among other things, the purpose and effectiveness of conflict photography, public reaction to conflict photography, personal philosophy, how he approaches stories, and what venues are most appropriate for which images. Lots of wisdom there.

Not sure how far this has made it around, but I saw a small link to this on the lightstalkers alerts section and was enchanted. Robert Frank spoke to, and was recorded by, the New York Times. They put together an ‘interactive feature’ called On the Road.

There is also an article and interview with Frank appearing in the Times: “Robert Frank’s Snapshots From the Road”. The first fascinating thing is that there is to be an exhibition in Washington DC at the National Gallery of Art titled “Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans” from January 18 through April 26, 2009. The article is unclear (really really unclear), but there might be some (or all? that’d be nice) of the contact sheets from the 767 rolls shot shown at the exhibition or published in an accompanying book.

In the multimedia piece Frank describes the above picture as his favorite from the book, because of the movement and variety of people on the street. It has always been a wondrous, cornerstone picture for me too. (One of so so many from the book). It has such a new feel, such an important composition and feeling. There is a connection between the photographer and scene far beyond the surface.
I first saw The Americans in highschool and it really did change the way I looked at pictures… “you can really take pictures like this?”. So it must have had something to do, subconsciously, with this picture of mine, which is also a favorite of my own work … for many the same reasons as Frank likes his picture. ‘Decisive moments’ with crowds of people… I for one can admit to not even remembering snapping the shutter at the scene. It was a wonder to find in the negatives.. a magical moment. Another one of those scenes felt more than seen.
Another place I’ve seen a similar photograph is this fascinating image from Brazil by Alex Majoli. I’d love a print of that..

The Guardian’s been publishing the weekly “My Best Shot” series for a couple years now. It’s a great little column in which photographers (often well-known) share what they feel is their best shot, and why they think it’s their best. A lot of gems in the archive, though there are a few that leave me scratching my head. Here are a few: Bob Adelman, Elliot Erwitt, Lise Sarfati, Nadav Kander, Thomas Struth, Thomas Joshua Cooper (an innocuous landscape that likely would’ve landed him in jail), Edward Burtynsky, Joseph Szabo, Tod Papageorge, Tim Walker, Steve McCurry (not the first image that comes to mind…), and many more. Be sure to click on the pictures being talked about…some are cropped very awkwardly.

Don’t just look at the “My Best Shot” series, though, the Guardian’s whole photography section will keep you busy for a long while.