Q&A: J. Shimon and J. Lindemann

© J. Shimon and J. Lindemann

Georgia Lloyd: On your website, it says you moved to New York for a year, then decided to return to Wisconsin because you believed you could photograph best what you know. How do you think your work would be different had you not moved back to the Midwest? Do you think you could eventually come to “know” New York as you knew the Midwest, had you stayed there? And have you considered moving elsewhere ever, or is Wisconsin your permanent home?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: New York is so often the subject of canonical fine art photographs, and when we thought about that, and realized that Wisconsin wasn't, it made Wisconisn more appealing to us as subject matter and as a place.

























© J. Shimon and J. Lindemann


Georgia Lloyd: How would you say your work has changed from the 1980’s to your most recent photos? If you believe it has changed, can you see yourself revisiting any of your past ideas? Is a series ever “done” in the first place?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: We took more assignments in the 1980s and photographed quantities of people either for magazines or for our own projects. More recently we focus on the metaphysics of place and often return to photographing the same people and locations over time.


Georgia Lloyd: Your website has a large variety of your artistic photographic work, available to be enlarged and seen on the internet. Your website also has a section for commissioned works of yours – however these images are only thumbnails and not available to be enlarged. Is this merely a copyright issue, or do you have different feelings about your commissioned work? If so, what are they?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: When we decided to do a website in 1996 we also decided it was better to put our work out there than not to. A lot of artists were very paranoid back then about copyright and misuse of their work and it was a constant discussion.















© J. Shimon and J. Lindemann


Georgia Lloyd: On your website, you mention using large format film and old photo processes (for some of your work) to push the concept of photographic print as object. Do you mean this as “photo as precious object?” How do you reconcile this idea with photos you have on postcards or on promotional materials, knowing they may likely be thrown out eventually?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: The labored over, hand-made print still means something to us. We like to slow down production. There is so much stuff in the world. How do we reconcile making more? We are aware that our prints may get lost or thrown away or they may just as easily keep coming back like phantoms.
























© J. Shimon and J. Lindemann


Georgia Lloyd: For “Unmasked and Anonymous,” you employed the use of other artist’s images. How did you collect these images? How did you get permission for their use? Additionally, what are your feelings on appropriating others’ images into a different artist’s work, with or without permission? Do you believe Copyright is something indeterminate and okay to “intrude” upon?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: The U&A show was our photographs shown in the context of from the Milwaukee Art Museum's collection. We sifted through something like 2,000 portraits in the collection and selected a range of work from the vernacular (old dags and tintypes and a mugshot) to the self-consciously high art (Stieglitz, Cameron, Kasebier). It seems a natural next step for artists is to sift through institutional collections and reconsider the holdings and for artists to appropriate clips from YouTube and remix them into something that makes sense of all this imagery. This is the only way to make sense of the flood of images that now exists.

Georgia Lloyd: You have a website, a blog, and a flickr account. Assumedly, you feel warmly towards these digital (and very convenient) outlets for getting photographs out to the public. Is this true? Was it always this way? How did you get used to this?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: We started using Web 2,0 features right away. Initially some technology-forward friends offered to work with us to design and maintain our web site. Years later as flickr, YouTube, blogspot, Facebook, Twitter, Lulu, et. al. became available, we found it useful to post videos, snapshots, make books, and write about what we're doing. In the 1980s-1990s we did photocopied zines and put out cassettes and LPs of our music so using Web 2.0 seemed natural and pretty easy.
















© J. Shimon and J. Lindemann


Georgia Lloyd: How would you describe working collaboratively for almost thirty years? What are some of the difficulties, what are some of the perks?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: It is a way of life. We've worked together longer than we worked on our own. We put all of our combined energies and skills into our projects.

Georgia Lloyd: If the two of you were working individually, how do you think your images would be different from what you are producing now?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: The work we do on our own is much less structured. John makes drawings, paintings, videos, makes music while Julie writes and makes digital snapshots. All of this ends up being research for the photographs that we make together but using much more rigorous techniques.


Georgia Lloyd: Hypothetically, if an irreconcilable conflict came up between the two of you, do you think you would continue working together for the sake of your artwork?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: Our work comes out of our daily life and the people and places that cross or path so the irreconcilable conflict might become the artwork.























© J. Shimon and J. Lindemann


Georgia Lloyd: What are the difficulties and rewards of maintaining your own studio, shooting work and also balancing time for teaching? What is the most fulfilling part of teaching for you, and what is the most frustrating or difficult part? (Assuming you’d even use those words to describe it.)

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: Maintaining the facility, equipment and archive is time-consuming and we often neglect one area to work on another. Squeezing in commissions
is getting increasingly difficult as our involvement with teaching has grown more consuming. We prefer to spend any free time we have on own art projects so we rarely take commissions these days and refer inquiries to younger photographers. We have a large organic garden and try to raise all of our own food so the little spare time we have goes into that project. We've met some incredible people while pursuing our projects and that's been the most "fulfilling"...


Georgia Lloyd: What advice do you have for young fine arts photographers straight out of college? How did you market yourself when you were young? Was it successful? Would you recommend young artists taking similar measures now, or has the means of marketing changed too much from then to now, especially considering the upheaval of “The Digital”?

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: It seems much easier for young artists to put themselves out there now using social networking web sites and all the Internet venues that essentially give you an international audience. On the other hand, there may be more clutter because it is so easy. Advice for fine arts photographers straight out of college? Travel and try to meet other artists or people doing interesting stuff. Be as informed as possible about all things. See exhibitions at museums. Post your work online and ask people to look at it. Be persistent. Not sure that we really "marketed" ourselves so much as just kept doing stuff and letting people know our names. That got us this far, but it seems like there's a long way to go.

Project: Eurydice

© Georgia Lloyd


This group of photographs is a series of projected self portraits. The mood and interaction between repeated elements in each of the images relate directly to personal feelings and stagnation from various life events. This relationship is not meant to be blatant; rather, the spirit of the images and each young woman can ideally compare to emotive situations the viewer has had themselves.

















© Georgia Lloyd
















© Georgia Lloyd
















© Georgia Lloyd

Bio: Georgia Lloyd

© Rose Tarman

Georgia Lloyd was born in San Antonio Texas. She always had a love for art with aspirations of becoming an artist from the age of four. Georgia pursued this dream by taking drawing and painting classes; during high school she attended a magnet school that focused her energy into these subjects. It was during this time that she found photography and decided to let go of the other fine art mediums. Georgia is now a student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design where she is studying to pursue a career as a fine art photographer. Her work concentrates on making abstracted and surreal images that push ethereal and whimsical perceptual qualities.

Q&A: Michael Wilson

Ben Taylor © Michael Wilson

Michael Wilson is a music, portrait and fine art photographer whose clients include Warner Bros. Records, Sony Music and Elektra Records. He's a photographer's photographer, shooting with older film cameras in a variety of formats, and working long hours in his basement darkroom. To top it off, he's one of the nicest, humblest photographers around. In preparation for their assignment to shoot a cd cover, we looked at Michael's work online and at 3 of his early monographs of personal work. Then the class asked Michael these questions:

Kayla Newman: How did you start shooting cd covers?

Michael Wilson: There are probably two basic things that led to my start in making pictures for music packaging. The first being that I had enjoyed making portraits of musicians. I had always been very interested in music, and in the people who make it so when I began making portraits (as a student in college) I was quite naturally drawn to make pictures of musicians who were in my world at that time... friends and acquaintances mostly. The second was a growing awareness of the potential life for the kind of photographs that I loved and was desirous to make in the world of record packaging. As a music fan, I used to spend lots of spare time at record stores reading album covers to see who was playing on which records, who produced the record, etc... I was also very aware of the record covers... and looking at who made the photographs or who did the design. I would occasionally see records with really beautiful photography... photography that was rooted in the kind of photography that made me fall in love with pictures in the first place, and inside I'd be jumping out of my skin thinking, "I wish I could make pictures like that for music like this." At this time in my life, I was 7 years out of college, 4 years of which I'd spent in a job as a photographer's assistant/darkroom technician at a text book publisher which had an in-house photography department. The grind of doing the kind of work that we churned had gone a long way to my becoming not very interested in photography. By contrast, when I saw a Robert Frank photograph on a "New Lost City Rambler's" record, or a beautiful Simon Larbalestier photograph on a "Pixies" cover, or a Stephen Shore photograph on some record that I knew nothing about, I would remember that I really did want to make pictures. In 1989, with the encouragement of a good friend and the help of my wife, I sent off a handmade book of about 10 or 12 portraits that I liked to a woman whose name I knew only from reading the backs of record jackets... her name was Jeri Heiden and she worked at Warner Brothers Records in LA. Other than that all I knew about her was that her name was listed as Art Director on a surprisingly high percentage of the records that I saw that caught my eye as being really beautiful. It was truly one of those "nothing to lose" moments and I've come to realize that no matter how old we are or where we are in our lives... realizing that we have 'nothing to lose' is a great gift. Anyway, I received a nice note from her a few weeks later and I was very happy and I thought that was the end of that. A short time later, I got a call from a manager of a band (which was from Milwaukee area, by the way) called the BoDeans and Jeri Heiden had given him my name and suggested that I do a shoot with the band as they were going to be close to Cincinnati on tour. I did and the pictures wound up being used in their package. A few months after this, I made a trip to Los Angeles and met with Jeri Heiden in person (she was the head of the art department at Warner Bros. at that time). That meeting led to the use of a personal photograph of mine becoming the cover for the Replacements "All Shook Down" record and Jeri also hired me to shoot the band in Minneapolis. That project probably did more than any other single thing to help get me started making pictures for music.

























Lyle Lovett © Michael Wilson

Kathryn Kmet: When preparing for a musician photo shoot, does the musician tell you what they want out of the book you create, or do they trust you to create it on your artistic judgment?

Michael Wilson: Only very, very rarely have I been given direction going into a shoot and on those occasions the direction has more to do with things like, "make sure it is not too serious " or, "... you know that this artist hates to be photographed." Fortunately, most all of the time that I'm hired to photograph for a project I've been given the trust and free rein to make the pictures that I want to make. In most cases, the project is discussed beforehand with either the artist or the management, or someone at the record company so that I understand the "feel" of the record and so that they know how I go about my work. But beyond that it is usually me doing my best to make the most interesting and honest pictures that I can make.

Jenny Scheinman © Michael Wilson

Andrea Payne: How do you go about making the environment you’re shooting in comfortable for your client? How do you make them relax in front of you?

Michael Wilson: I don't know that I have any formula for this, but I do approach the portrait as a conversation and as such I follow those same instincts, behaviors and courtesies that that would lead to a (hopefully) meaningful conversation with that person or group of people. My being forthright and honest and vulnerable going into the portrait 'conversation' is where I hope to start. I'm not the kind of photographer who has a lot of ideas ahead of time or one who pre-visualizes what I'd like to come away with... so I am almost totally dependent on the subject trusting me enough to open up and welcome me in to whatever it is they might have to share. I really do think of it the same way that you think of meeting any person who you may know very little about and trying to have an honest/meaningful conversation. It takes a bit of time and it is certainly not without akward and uncomfortable moments... moments when I feel totally lost. When I feel that way, I usually will come right out and say so. Quite often that helps. I also keep in mind how much I dislike being in front of a camera -- try to understand some of the discomfort and reluctance that the subject might be feeling.























Bill Frisell © Michael Wilson

Aryn Kresol: Was your utilization of the square format influential to you photographing album covers, or did your work on covers influence your choice of format. In other words, which preceded which?

Michael Wilson: My interest in the square format came before any interest in or awareness of record covers. I became very taken with using a twin lens, square format camera when I first started making portraits in college. I had always been somewhat shy and had difficulty looking at people in the eye and when I discovered the twin lens camera I loved that I could be standing there, basically staring down at my feet, but I was looking into the ground glass of the camera and having this connection with whoever it was standing in front of the lens. As crazy as that sounds, that is where my interest in the square format started. The square certainly does lend itself to the shape of the covers, however.

Georgia Lloyd: For your album photographs, are you in charge of deciding how to design the cover, or are you only in control of the actual photograph to be used on the cover? How do you manage your framing based on this?

Michael Wilson: I have no control in the design of the covers that I work on and I don't want to control the design. I love great design, but I am not a designer. I am not thinking about the eventual design of the project or how my pictures will fit into that design when I am photographing, I just make pictures and let the designer sort out the mess.






















Mose Allison © Michael Wilson

Georgia Lloyd: Many of your album covers are monochrome rather than color. What is this reason behind this decision? Is it purely personal aesthetic, or does it serve more purpose than that?

Michael Wilson: The work I've been most interested in during my life as a photographer has always been the b/w work. Certainly, I do think that there is a distillation or intensifying reduction that occurs when the world is seen without color and this distillation can lend a special weight to b/w work which I love and look for. The more practical reason for the predominance in my work is that I've always been most interested in the work with which I've had the most intersection. By that I mean, when I develop b/w film in my basement, I see the film when I hang it up to dry, I see it again when I cut it and sleeve it, I see it again when I make the contact sheets and then I study those contact sheets quite hard. By the time I get around to making prints (or scans as it is these days) I've had a lot of intersection with the work... I feel like it is mine. I feel attached to the work. I remember when I used to shoot color transparency for assignments, I would drop the film off at the lab, pick it up the next day or so, and then have to send it off to the client right away... and my work flow was such that I really did not spend very much time with those pictures. Sometimes I'd see something color in print and not even realize that it was mine.

Sarah Moore: Do you think a degree in photography is necessary to succeed as a professional photographer?

Michael Wilson: I don't think so...(but stay in school anyway). Quite honestly, I feel very much at a loss when I'm asked questions such as this about what it takes to succeed as a professional photographer. I think that each person will have to determine the definition of success for themselves. If "succeeding as a professional photographer" means making a comfortable living, making good money, it might be wise to spend as much time around photographers and groups of photographers who have developed business models and practices that have proven successful for them... photographers who are making good money. I've been making my living as a freelance photographer since 1987 and I still feel at a loss as to how to succeed as a professional photographer. I feel incredibly fortunate (and grateful) that I have been able to make a living making pictures but the reality is that there are a lot of people looking for the same jobs and I can't imagine that this trend will change. At the end of the day, I guess my opinion is that to succeed as a professional photographer you will have to either love succeeding in your profession as a business person or you will have to just plain love making pictures... whether or not you make money.






















New Orleans © Michael Wilson

Aimee Keil: Does your personal and your professional work ever merge, or are they completely separate?

Michael Wilson: I think that my personal and professional work do merge... they are by no means completely separate. The same instinctive love of pictures, love of seeing is what drives any picture... any strong, meaningful picture, whether the initial impulse to make the picture comes from my personal interest or whether the initial impulse was that I'd been hired to make pictures for a project, it is the same love of seeing that will make either picture work. That being said, there are those times when I've been asked to make pictures of things or people or events that I have very little feeling for... when there is little more than professional obligation at work in the work it usually shows... and I usually don't want to look at it very long.

Rose Tarman: It seems many of the opportunities in your life have come about serendipitously. Do you have any particular advice for an in-progress photographer that has high hopes for the future?

Michael Wilson: As far as advice relative to a career in photography, I would go back to the ideas that I was clawing at in attempting to answer Sarah Moore' s question about what it takes to succeed as a professional photographer. The most specific and particular advice I can think to give anyone who is giving serious consideration to photography as a major part of their life is to look at as many pictures as you can... especially look at the pictures that have been made by people who have spent their lives making pictures for the love of making pictures. When you find work that moves you, be grateful and lap it up. There is probably something in that work that was motivated by the very same things that are at work in you. Make pictures whether people want you to make pictures or not... whether people pay you for your pictures or not. My experience has been that I cannot rightly determine photography's place in my life by thinking about it -- it has been by making pictures that I've come to find out photography's place in my life.

© Georgia Lloyd

For the H2O assignment, I wanted to create an image that pushed the title's concept without having actual water within the photograph. The end result is a time based sequence of the sign language motion for water. I feel satisfied with the end result as for most, it's not plainly clear what the purpose of the images is. Only those familiar with the signing will understand the cover right away. Additionally, these images were shot on a fairly plain background with soft lighting to push the calm mood that water can have.

Great Shot: Sasaki

© Kanako Sasaki

Sasaki's images from her series "Wanderlust" play off ideas from novels, paintings, and the artist's childhood memories. Most from the series include a female in a large scale environment. The resulting images, aesthetically, are ethereal and dreamlike, justly capturing a childlike nostalgia. The feeling that pervades the images, however, is one of being trapped. Some of the images show a girl in unplaceable locations; others show a girl laying face down, possibly physically impaired and seemingly apathetic. The figure is trapped in the mysterious locations by her own detachment and indifference.

To see other photos from Sasaki, visit her home page: http://www.kanakosasaki.com/

Untitled © Georgia E. Lloyd

I have recently fallen into a mode of photographing where I seek ordinary spaces that can be flattened through compositional selectiveness. Since January of 2009, this kind of view has been developing without intention through my work. I have decided to embrace and push it, as ignoring this need is utter torment. For the most part, the flattened images I have been shooting are a therapeutic outlet for my very hectic and anxious mind. Simplifying, minimalizing, and focusing on one plane (or forcing one plane) is a near meditative process. I hope to develop this vision through complete dedication to my newfound visual craving.