Interview: Sarah Small

Kathryn Von Marks In Larissa′s Lap © Sarah Small

Andrea Bartley: Where did you grow up?

Sarah Small: I grew up in Washington D.C. My dad played the piano and my mom was a photographer, although not a professional. My mom didn’t have so much to do with my getting into photography. She wanted me to be a musician, so I played cello for seven years. I have a younger sister Rachel and three cats.

Andrea Bartley: Where did you go for school?

Sarah Small: I went to school in Providence, Rhode Island. I earned a bachelor of fine arts degree and majored in photography.

Andrea Bartley: What was your most memorable moment at school?

Sarah Small: I remember freshman foundation year, students had to take the same foundation classes. They were all over the board and I had very little experience in and weren’t very good at. I took a drawing class and I would take photographs in drawing class, and montage the images that I took. My professor would critique them as drawings.

Molly Watching Wes © Sarah Small

Andrea Bartley: When did you start photographing?

Sarah Small: I was 13 years old and at a summer arts camp. I began photographing with a Pentax k-1000. My friend Anna introduced me to photography.

Andrea Bartley: What camera do you use now?

Sarah Small: I use a Canon 5D MarkII. I use all digital cameras now.

Andrea Bartley: Where did you start work in New York?

Sara Small: Working for the New York Post was my first job. It was my first freelance job, directing clients and making Studio One, which was a photography studio rental house. Different clients would come to shoot there. My job was to serve them cappuccinos and direct their calls. It was the groundwork for networking in New York. The main part of networking and being successful is to socialize.

Andrea Bartley: What was your favorite subject to photograph when you first began shooting?

Sarah Small: My sister. I would photograph her all the time. She was my first real muse. She would dress up in different costumes and go to the beach. I shot her with black and white film with the Pentax.

Andrea Bartley: Do situations with models ever go wrong? How much direction comes from you and how much is a reaction from the model?

Sarah Small: Working with models the way I do is about the conversations ahead of time. It is really about building trust and relationships with all the different people I work with. We talk about boundaries and certain poses they will and will not do. Some are professional models and some are just people. I tailor each relationship to fit each person. Working with

models is half direction and half improvisation. I don’t know what I want it to be until I see it.

Molly and EllyMay © Sarah Small

Andrea Bartley: Tell me about the your new project: the performances of The Delirium Constructions.

Sarah Small: In 2009 I decided to do a promotional event for my photography. Some of my models were walking around serving drinks. Then I had models in various stages of reactions and different poses. I gave them direction to activate and deactivate them. Now I want to do it again with 120 models. I have been working the past year and half to get Living Picture ready for this spring with 120 models. Now I am starting to interweave music with the performance. Some models will be singing. It is a way to intersect all different elements into one live performance.

Andrea Bartley: Where do you find inspiration?

Sarah Small: I get my inspiration from riding the New York City subway station and watching the interesting people. I like to see people in the same space and see what will happen between them. I have no idea at all what the final image will be. I go into it with a playful spirit. As if I’m painting with them. It’s really very much like playtime. They are not preconceived. I choose the models and set up lights, but that is the extent of the setup. What ever happens, happens. I like to get to know the people that I am working with, and to have a specific dynamic. Like a tango back and forth. The more I put into the shoot the more comes back to me.

Mimi and the Girls © Sarah Small

More of Sarah Small's work can be found on her website:

http://www.sarahsmall.com

© Andrea Bartley

The first image is of my boyfriend, Ben. A casual image taken while we were visiting a friend's house. The next image is of that friend's mother's fiance: Patrick for short. I had met him the day before and in this image he is describing a living space on a sheep sheering farm. Ben was a much easier subject to photograph because I had no problem directing him and getting a direct gaze from his big, beautiful blue eyes. Patrick, on the other hand, was a much more difficult subject. I did not have the same comfort level with him as Ben and therefore did not feel as comfortable directing his poses. I think the photograph of Patrick speaks to his comfort in a farming lifestyle: his tattered sweater, sweat-stained hat, and dirty boots, but does not in the least suggest a comfort level with me, the photographer. In the other photograph, Ben's gaze and nearness show a level of comfort that the photographer and subject have with each other.

Project: Insecurities

Allyson © Andrea Bartley

This project is a look at women and their insecurities. I plan to interview and photograph women that I personally know to find out what secrets they have about their insecurities. I want to delve into the thoughts of these girls to get to know them better and achieve a certain level of comfort. I want them to be comfortable looking into the camera and explaining an embarrassing feature. It will help me to understand my own insecurities and give me strength to own my dissatisfaction with certain things about myself. This is an image of my roommate, Ally, who already has a certain level of comfort around me. I asked her personal questions and recorded her answers and her body language on video and in still photographs.

Self-Portrait © Andrea Bartley

Andrea Bartley is a junior studying photography and writing at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Her habits include a wide range of activities, from sitting at home curled up with a good book to hiking in the Appalachian Mountains. She is kept company by her sassy calico and a bake-savvy roommate on the East Side in Milwaukee.

Her interest in photography began when her stepfather lent her an old Nikon 35mm camera. He was about to sell this gem on Craigslist when Andrea intervened and asked to experiment with it. She was fifteen and her love for the medium blossomed into a career-forming habit.

From her piquant youth, she has developed into a strong-willed independent photographer ready to take on the changing world of media consumption.

Newly Born © Eugene Richards

Eugene Richards was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts.  He graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in English.  He then studied photography with Minor White.  He has works published in Life, The New York Times magazine, National Geographic, Esquire, the New Yorker, and he was a member of Magnum Photos for a total of eighteen years. He has also published fifteen photo books, and wrote and directed a short film.

This is an image of a Sicilian woman just after she gave birth. The image was taken in 1990 in Washington, D.C. for Life magazine. The tears running down her face are tears of joy, which were, at first, misleading because I assumed something went wrong with the birth.   I am interested in this image because of how close Richards got to the subject during such an intense moment.  The woman's husband was just about to lean over and give her a kiss when Richards took the shot.  Richards takes photographs of intense situations, which is unusual because he says that he is a shy person. Although, when photographing he finds it easier to get up close to his subjects and he prefers shooting with a wide-angle lens.  I find his images captivating because of his lack of self-consciousness when he is getting in close for the shot.  His images suggest that he has no fear stepping into someone else's reality to record their most emotional moments.  

More work by Eugene Richards can be found on his website http://www.eugenerichards.com/

Home © Andrea Bartley

This image is a result of one of my visits home during the summer. I had the opportunity to go home to Zionsville, Indiana to shoot a wedding for a friend. One of my favorite things to do while visiting home is to drive around town to see all of my old familiar hang-out spots. New shopping mall strips are being built on the outskirts of my town, much to the chagrin of the locals who have lived in town their entire lives, and so each time I visit more of these spots are being replaced. I am opposed to the new construction as well, but I realize that there is nothing that I can do about it. This site is an abandoned farm house that rests on several acres of lovely farmland that has overgrown with daisies and tall grasses. I have biked and driven past several times without mustering up the courage to explore the area with my camera, but with each passing year and all of the changes that have come about, I did not want to miss another chance to immortalize this farm house.

Although I have photographed abandoned buildings before, the focus of my photograph is usually a human subject. This time I am more driven to create an image that evokes nostalgia in myself. It is more of a document of what is there now and what might soon be gone. It is unlike my previous work because of the lack of a human subject, and I am not sure that I want to continue seriously photographing abandoned buildings. I will continue to explore this sense of nostalgia with my work and perhaps direct my attention toward a human subject instead.