Q&A: Shane Lavalette

Shane Lavalette currently lives and works in Somerville, MA. His photographs have been included in well recognized exhibitions both nationally and internationally, he was awarded the Yousuf Karsh Prize in Photography for his project "Slí na Boirne" and has published editorial work with such names as the New York Times Magazine. He also edits the photographic periodical Lay Flat.

Shane Lavalette’s website.
Shane Lavalette’s blog.















Untitled © Shane Lavalette

Rose Tarman: Tell me a little bit about your personal background in photography.

Shane Lavalette: I grew up in a small town in Vermont, so I was never really “exposed” to the art world or fine art photography until I sought it out myself. My interest in images was always there – I obsessively photographed with my Polaroid camera as a child – but it wasn’t until sometime in high school that I began to look at photography more seriously. At that time, I found the Internet in combination with photographic books to be my primary resource for learning about the medium and its history. I moved to Boston to study photography at the Museum School and at about the same time began my blog in order archive the work that I was interested in: artists, books, exhibitions, etc. In the process, I spent a lot of time making my own photographs and continued to explore curatorial avenues such as my current publishing venture, Lay Flat.

Rose Tarman: How do you go about starting a project? Do you go through a specific process usually or is it a spontaneous creativity?

Shane Lavalette: In terms of my own photographic work, the projects seem to originate very organically. Ideas often come about about spontaneously but the execution generally takes time – months, years. The most recent project I’ve completed was made in a short amount of time that I spent living in Vrindavan, India – the birthplace of the Krishna Consciousness movement and, to Krishna devotees, “heaven” on Earth. The photographs were all made early in the morning as the sun rose; with this, I hoped to make pictures that were quiet and offered a view of India that was atypical (are we not all too familiar with the colorful and chaotic images that Western photographers tend to make?). To me, the pictures are an exploration of the spirituality of the people and landscape.















Offering, Vrindavan, India © Shane Lavalette

Rose Tarman: Though I have an immense appreciation of photographing areas you know well, I would love to photograph in places other than my immediate, easily-accessible surroundings. How do you build up the funds and resources for the trips you take, such as to India or Ireland?

Shane Lavalette: The relationship we share with our immediate surroundings is of course vastly different than our relationship to a distant land. But from my experience being in an unfamiliar place often triggers ideas and new ways of looking at subjects. In other words, I believe it’s important to photograph what you know as well as what you don’t. Both of the projects you mention were made possible in part by generous grants from the Museum School, but if you have an idea in mind there is a lot of funding available to the public in support of photographic projects, especially for students.















The Sea © Shane Lavalette

Rose Tarman: You’re so young to be so well respected and you have a show coming up with some pretty impressive figures like Alec Soth, Laura McPhee and Zoe Strauss — what has motivated you to get as far as you have? You have to be extremely confident to do many of the things you’ve achieved.

Shane Lavalette: I’m not sure about confidence – in fact, I think it’s important for artists to possess some uncertainly. I know I do! The opportunities that have come up for me have been pretty unexpected but my general passion for photography has been the motivation since the beginning. I enjoy looking at other work as much as I enjoy making my own. I’m always working on things, whether it’s my personal projects, curatorial endeavors or collaborations.

Rose Tarman: I hear from all sides that there are certain ways to “make it big” and certain procedures you must follow. This seems like a daunting task.

Shane Lavalette: There are of course things that artists can do to help get their work “out there” but I think artists become well-respected for other reasons. I forget how the quote goes, but Thelonious Monk once said something like “Genius is being more of yourself.” I think that’s what takes artists far in my book, being honest.















Blue Fan in Laundromat, Brooklyn, NY © Shane Lavalette

Rose Tarman: Where do you gain inspiration from? I’m talking anything — photography, music, films, books, colors, people, places…

Shane Lavalette: Poetry has always been important to me, particularly the works of E.E. Cummings, Ezra Pound and Rainer Maria Rilke. Other writers that inspire me include Samuel Beckett, J.D. Salinger, Milan Kundera, James Joyce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Some theorists and philosophers that have shaped my thinking include Dave Hickey, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, Vilém Flusser, Jean-Paul Sartre and David Levi-Strauss.

Then, of course, there’s music. To list some artists in rotation now: Yo-Yo Ma, Chopin, Philip Glass, Bill Evans, Billy Holiday, Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, Leadbelly, John Fahey, Devendra Banhart, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Cat Power, Neutral Milk Hotel, Jackson C. Frank, The Gun Club, Don Caballero, The Dirty Projectors, The Books, Sigur Rós, Tom Waits, Neil Young, The Velvet Underground and the “Goodbye, Babylon” box set (assembled by Bob Dylan).

I think it’s safe to say that I’m equally stimulated by non-photographic material.

Q&A: Jason Lazarus

To Abdul Abdi (who everyday in Mogadishu, Somalia makes signs that read 'Beautiful Mogadishu' to remind citizens what has been lost) © Jason Lazarus

Jason Lazarus is currently living in Chicago and teaching at Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago part-time. He produces work as a fine artist continually, and at the moment is celebrating openings in Chicago at the Andrew Rafacz Gallery, the Spertus Museum, Northeastern University, the Art Institute of Chicago as well as the White Flag Projects in St. Louis, MO.

Jason Lazarus' website
Jason Lazarus' blog

Rose Tarman: Tell me a little bit about your personal background and how it has influenced the way you work artistically.

Jason Lazarus: My undergrad was in marketing, at DePaul University. In ‘98 I graduated with a business degree. I think for me starting outside of art was great. Great artists usually have lived through a number of experiences that they bring to art...if I had kids I'd try to have them get an undergrad in philosophy, and then they could go into the arts, or whatever. It's all about critical thinking, critical observation, micro/macro thinking.















Kashmir and Lindsey (Easter) © Jason Lazarus

Rose Tarman: How do you go about starting a project? Do you go through a specific process usually or is it a spontaneous creativity?

Jason Lazarus: Making making making, later--sorting, editing, and 'whoa! I think I have the beginnings of a project here...'

Rose Tarman: A good amount of your work consists of found photography, altered photographs and performance. In projects like those do you still consider yourself a photographer or do you play a different role with the work?

Jason Lazarus: I consider myself a conceptual artist who uses photography.

Rose Tarman: I’ve always struggled with the pairing of text and image, a title can effect a piece so greatly that it can take away from the visual or lead the viewer in directions you don’t want. How do you get around that? You title pretty much all of your work and pair text with image to create connections and make your viewers think. Is it ever difficult for you to figure out what text to include or present and what not to?

Jason Lazarus: Yes it is. I make titles, change them, change them again. I get advice from peers I trust. No one ever taught me much about text/titles, I developed my own sensibility through artists I admired, art history, and artist-friends...













Otis Redding Motivational Poster Installation © Jason Lazarus

Rose Tarman: How did you start gaining recognition for your work and start marketing yourself as an artist? What would you say contributed the most to helping you get where you are today as far as marketing tools or personal connections?

Jason Lazarus: There is no trick--it's all about your enthusiasm! I got a gallery because I started my own gallery for a year in '02, met another gallerist. We became great friends. A few years later he started to ask me to participate in group shows. It all grew from there. If you're enthusiastic, you're already going to shows, meeting people, going out for drinks, participating in the community. My best connections have been made organically. Young people today are maybe too into marketing themselves without the patience to let relationships grow over time. People out there are paying attention...

Rose Tarman: How important do you find having the most advanced equipment? Cameras, computers, printers, calibration devices, scanners, etc: how high up are they on your list of priorities in terms of updating them?

Jason Lazarus: Ehhhhh.....I don't think that's so important. Do what you need to do to make your pictures look a certain way for aesthetic/conceptual reasons. That's it..

Rose Tarman: Personally I’m trying to figure out how I want to start my career after I graduate in 2011. Why is it you chose the path of teaching? Were there any other career paths you considered or tried out originally? How do you balance teaching and art?

Jason Lazarus: Teaching is awesome. Exhausting, but very reciprocal. The best, most honest, most satisfying/challenging path I’ve found...you just figure out how to make time for both teaching and making. the balance is hard…but starting teaching is the hardest part. You create an amalgam of lectures, books, videos, and other materials as you teach that grow with you...









Recordings (installation) © Jason Lazarus


















Recordings (detail) © Jason Lazarus

Rose Tarman: If you have any advice for someone like myself trying to find a direction and foothold within the fine art world, what would it be?

Jason Lazarus: Keep it real, reach for the stars.

Bio: Rose Tarman

© Georgia Lloyd

Call me Rose.

I’m currently nearly twenty-one and very proud of (and always homesick for) my liberal haven hometown, Lawrence, Kansas. I was bought up on granola, kefir and fresh snap peas and was constantly running around in the woods barefoot thanks to my parents’ hippy pasts. Bands like Pixies, Van Morrison’s early years, Muddy Waters and Old Canes to name painfully few, are always playing in my head.

Right now I’m in Milwaukee, getting my BFA in Photography with an Art History minor from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. There’s no such thing as the ‘real world’ in my book, only now, which makes my stomach flip every day (in a good way).

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.

© Rose Tarman

As I was considering the guidelines for this project, I decided I wanted to show sides of water other than it's physicality. I considered hinting at it's presence, conveying other things through it's powers and making images that utilized non-traditional forms of water. Though the approach I chose didn't really fit within those ideas, it was a product of them. Through this image I want to capture an experience of heightened emotion, of a heart pounding and a rush gathering. I want to make those who see it feel what the model was feeling as she was getting water poured over her body. For the most part, it is successful, but I believe making the images I did was more of a progression into making more successful images than actually being the final images.

Great Shot : Lavalette

© Shane Lavalette

Twenty-two year-old Shane Lavalette has accomplished quite a bit in his lifetime. A resident of Massachusetts, he travels and shares his experiences with the world through blog and print publications as well as an expanse of beautiful photographs. In his series Song to a Seagull from 2007, Lavalette gives a goodbye look to Coney Island's Astroland amusement park through photographs. He shows the place's oddities and nuances that hold a sense of comfort for us all, even if we've never been farther east than Cincinnati. This image holds some sort of nostalgia for me, though I've never been a fan of cotton candy and as a child was allowed to indulge when hell froze over. It's something in the soothing palette hazed through rough smoke and harsh angles that both quiets and excites me. The strange combination of childhood death-by-sugar, an undetermined source of smoke and a lone-but-poignant bottle of beer fit quite normally within the contents of the series. All in all I highly recommend taking a gander at Lavalette's website (which hosts links to his other endeavors).

Q&A: Susana Raab

© Susana Raab

On the first day of class, we had a chance to visit the Dean Jensen Gallery to see Rank Strangers, an exhibit of work by Washington D.C. photographer Susana Raab. Dean spent time with us, discussing Susana's pictures, and how the show transformed from an initial idea to pictures on the gallery walls. Susana kindly agreed to participate in an interview with the class. Each student submitted 3 questions, of which I selected ten below. - Kevin J. Miyazaki

Andrea Payne: Do you prefer to work independently or is it nicer to work with a company like the New York Times? Does one give you more satisfaction than the other?

Susana Raab: I prefer to work independently, I view my paying assignments as creative exercises that will build and inform the performance of my personal work. That said, most everyone treats you exceptionally nice when you are working for the Times, so there is no denying the benefit of that aspect.

Mandie Louiser: Do you think color plays an important role in providing the intended meaning within your work?

Susana Raab: I think color helps seduce and create a mood. Of course it's very important to my fast food work because color is such an important factor in the advertising industries' strategy, and I am trying to mimic that strategy in that project. People respond to color, and understanding this does help create a more successful picture, in my opinion.

















© Susana Raab

Rebecca Gaimari: Are the people in these towns fairly willing to let you take the images?

Susana Raab: People never seem to mind me taking pictures, if they did I would just move on, there is always another photograph around the corner. I think you have to be comfortable with the idea of taking strangers pictures, and when you project confidence and security, people respond to that. On a few occasions I have had people tell me not to take their picture, to which I always acquiesce, but by the time we finish having a conversation they are literally begging me to take their photograph. Just happened last week.

Mandie Lousier: After working on a project for over a year, how do you begin making a rough edit, followed by the final edit?

Susana Raab: I love editing, and find as my projects evolve there are so many ways to edit the project. For me the most important thing is how the pictures play off each other, the flow. There are a million ways to do it, and I usually just make thumbnails and storyboard them out. After you play with editing and sequencing for long enough, the process just becomes kind of intuitive. Stephen, my partner, is usually my only other editor, he understands how I think and we banter about different sequences, but I have never been one who needed to show my work before ten different people to get a sense of how it should be edited. I know what I want to say and how I want to say it. Probably am too decisive!!!

Rose Tarman: I personally tend to work with color medium format imagery quite often, what is it that draws you to the format? How do you think it relates or fits with the subjects and ideas you portray? It can be a difficult medium to work in at times, there are challenges with speed and agility and many of your images depict candid, quick flashes and moments, which I find difficult in my own work much of the time. What are your thoughts on working with medium format?

Susana Raab: I love working in medium format analog. I love the process, how you have to be completely focused on technique the entire time, no chimping on the back of the camera, the uncertainty of the capture, and of course, the quality of the print achieved from the format. I find I respond more to prints made in medium and large formats than small. To be able to capture moments with the medium (am still working on the large format achievement of this) is just a question of practice and patience. It brings to mind Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, and the 10,000 hours spent practicing a skill before becoming intuitive or proficient in it.

















© Susana Raab

Debra Leal: With A Chicken In Love being one of my favorite images from the series, I wondered if you had to tell the models to hold the pose. If you did, do you feel that it could have been a better/more honest photograph if you hadn’t told them to pose?

Susana Raab: No posing! No models! Those are just real people, not posing, not paying attention to me. I find it amusing how seldom people will pay attention to you when you are holding a ginormous camera to your face. Of course, not using a flash during that moment helped. For me the story is truth is stranger than fiction. The photography is somewhat conceptual, but only in the way that I conceive of what I will say through the picture in my mind, not by setting up situations.

Aimee Keil: While we were visiting the Dean Jensen Gallery, he mentioned that you will be having a show in Shanghai. How do you think the Chinese culture will view these photographs?

Susana Raab: I have no idea how the Chinese will view my photography, since I have no conception of the contemporary Chinese art market. (My education sadly ends around the Terra Cotta warriors). And honestly, I just don't even think about it. It's like producing art with the intention of selling it, it is not how I operate (for my personal work). That would take the joy out of it. The joy is in the production. I don't want to overthink the process.

Priscilla Whitenight: What advice would you give young photographers who are interested in documentary and editorial photography, but have a primary focus in their fine art work?

Susana Raab: You know, I always think about Rilke, who wrote something to the effect of "You must ask yourself in the stillness of the night if I could not create would I die? If the answer is no please go and do something else." There are about a million different things you could do that would be easier than what I am trying to do. But if it is a compulsion within you, then do it. There is no path, but by being involved and pushing yourself, and working constantly you will make a way - and it is the way that is the important thing, not the result (I mean of course we don't want to die in complete obscurity, but if I am able to sustain the process than I consider that success). I am not trying to evade a clearer answer, I just feel that making a living as a photographer is about doing whatever you need to do, there is no straight way. For me producing work is the best part, making new images, and all the other stuff that goes into getting it out there is necessary drudgery. But for that 10 percent of time that I making work, it is sheer heaven. It is enough to keep me going for the other 90 percent.


















© Susana Raab

Todd Langkamp: Who are some of the people and artists who have influenced you in your work over the years?

Susana Raab: Stephen Crowley, Karl de Keyzer, Martin Parr, Margaret Bourke White, Steichen, Martin Chambi, Sam Abell, Edward Hopper, Turner, Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neel, John Singer Sargent, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Willa Cather, Wendell Berry, Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe; it's an endless continuum!

Andrea Payne: What is the best advice you can give to a photographer who is struggling to find their voice? How did you find your voice?

Susana Raab: Well if it wasn't a struggle to find one's own voice, what would be the point? Struggle is good! I think it helps to be an independent thinker. Be sure of yourself and your intention. Read and read more. The struggle is what makes it worth doing - what gives your voice the meaning. What is it that really motivates or engages you? Also, I don't go into projects knowing what it is I'm going to say or how I'm going to say it. The discovery is in the process. Allow the process to engage you and you will find the conversation flowing. That is really what it is about, getting into a kind of flow that happens when you are fully present - when everything that you have studied or read inhabits you unconsciously and it becomes a part of your performance. It's about practice. After you practice enough it becomes innate and integral. I always think of Faulkner and James Joyce who wove so many archetypical thoughts and images throughout their texts that everything became layered with multiple meanings. I love this idea of intertextuality, because everything informs us. At whatever locus you are standing on is a composite of cultural interactions that inform you. Use this vantage point to communicate your vision to the world. When I started thinking like this, that is when my images became more layered for me (maybe not for everyone else though!). Also working in a series form helps build the conversation. The single images are not as important as the story they tell collectively. Don't read People Magazine, tune out popular culture as a primary method of information gathering, turn off the tv, and pick up a book, go for a walk. Enjoy silence. Write a letter. Go to a museum. Be engaged in your world and don't worry about getting to Point B.

Thanks all for your thoughtful questions and for visiting my show. I hope I have enlightened you on your photographic journey in some small way!
Warmly,
Susana

Untitled © Rose Tarman

Something about this image breathes inside of me. A monster is growing. Arcing tendrils of leaves churn above a streak of wood and pavement. I’ve had this scene stuck in my mind for months; I’ve passed this spot only twice before I made this photograph. Originally I decided to finally confront the image in my mind because of something that has now been lost to time, a simple red spraypainted phrase “no magic here,” though for me that phrase holds everything I see in this photograph, even without it being spelled out in red. Once I finally got off the bus at the right stop the fence was newly repainted, I'd lost my prize. But then again, I still achieved it, didn’t I?