The Education of a Photographer

I have been a photographer all of my life. It has been
my life and will continue to be that way until the day
I leave this earth. I am a photographer through and through.
—Douglas Kirkland

Let’s say that after much soulful assessment about your skills, experiences, and interests, you have come to a decision that there is something so intriguing about photography that still keeps calling you, and you know in your heart of hearts that you must heed its call. It could be the travel involved in photography, or the technology that interests you. Or maybe it is the lure of meeting the important people who make up our world that piques your interest. But you also realize that you will have to learn new techniques, new ways of doing things, things that will take you out of your comfort zone. The prospect of doing all that work seems daunting, and you don’t know where to begin.

Education, in any field, is an ongoing endeavor, and photography is no exception. I have met photographers who, figuratively speaking, have never put down a camera since they were first introduced to one, and I have met people with widely divergent backgrounds who took up photography after attaining degrees in other fields but didn’t feel complete until they brought the camera into their lives. And that is what is beautiful about the photography field: you can enter it at any time; you can change directions within it; and you can be anything you want in the photography arena—because photography is not one thing, it is a language that unifies us all. We live in a visually hungry world, and photography provides us with a window on every aspect of our world. On top of that, photography as a field of endeavor is very egalitarian. All anyone cares about is, does the image communicate, does it motivate, does it instruct, does it make us laugh, does make our blood boil, does it magnify our humanity?

I have had the honor of being involved in showing portfolios and reels thousands of times, and there is one thing I can categorically say about those presentations: no one ever asked me to show them a diploma of the talent I was representing. The creative directors, art directors, art buyers, producers, and photo editors I have met over the years have never asked where the talent I represented ranked in their graduating class. They just wanted to know if that talented person could produce the work on time and on budget and infuse it with unique vision. Of course, if the talent had a solid, formal education in photography, the work should display a high level of professionalism, right from the start. I happen to be an instructor at the Art Center College of Design, which has very rigorous requirements for entrance and insists on a high standard of professionalism in its graduates. I always write the following on the chalkboard the first night of each semester: “Paying your tuition is not the same as paying your dues.” We want our students, who will be the next generation of professional photographers, to know that there is no free ride in our industry. You are always gauged by the caliber of your most recent work.

The Importance of Reeducation

We are now going through one of the most dynamic times in the history of photography as an industry. Technology has changed everything, and we are not turning back. Whatever you learned in the photography classes you took way back when has been an important foundation, but it is no longer enough. Traditional, film-based photography will continue to dwindle, and digital photography will continue to grow in the hands of amateur and professional photographers alike. I remember looking over the floor of the PhotoPlus Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City not that many years ago and seeing small booths for digital products in the shadow of the big names of photographic film and equipment. It has been a relatively short time, but the marquees of new digital equipment manufactures have gotten bigger and caused the floor plan to change. Digital products have taken over the marketplace. Those small one-hour photo shops in strip malls are now turning into passport photo shops and are selling frames and scented candles.

Here is what Ryszard Horowitz, who has been in the advance guard of digital discovery since the beginning, had to say about the impact of new technologies on photographers’ sensibility, sensitivity, and craftsmanship: “I am one of the first photographers who went digital. I got started in digital technology years before it became fashionable. I remember when I went to Germany, I met the people who had the first so-called paint box, which was interactive. I met somebody in Hamburg, Germany who had it. [I wanted to see what my images would look like if I used it.] I started working with some programmers and instantly knew this was it. When I brought some samples with me back to New York, I faced tremendous opposition from my colleagues, other photographers and most of my clients, and nobody wanted to hear about it. And now we sort of take things for granted.

I interjected: “You may appreciate this but I remember sitting on a panel discussion about twelve or fifteen years ago in which photographers were saying, ‘Oh, my god, the digital world is going to take us and swallow us all up and nobody will want us any more, and it will be the end of the world!’ I listened to this for quite a while until I was dizzy and then I said, ‘Gentlemen, I am sorry, but why do I have the distinct feeling that a similar conversation to this may have been going on in Paris in 1836 among the fine artists, saying, ‘Mon Dieu! Daguerre has made the machine that takes the picture and nobody will want us to paint anymore!’ We had to be reminded that this is a tool and there was nothing to fear.”

Ryszard continued: “There were painters, Degas and many others, who immediately got a camera and started photographing their models, looking for unusual angles and painting from them. When I was an art student, I sensed the camera was a fabulous tool to make notes for perspective, things that had been in existence for ages, using the camera obscura and using all these optical devices to see perspective from different points of view. My teachers were very traditional people who did not like the fact that I attempted to draw from my photographs. They wanted me to study from the painters by copying great works of art and painting, but not from photography. And now everything has become interwoven, and there really is no distinction between photographic and nonphotographic optical manipulation. Everything goes, but it is very difficult for people to change, and so few of them have any vision to see the possibilities of new technologies being introduced.”

I followed up with: “Do you shoot mostly traditional film or digitally?”

Ryszard explained: “I stopped shooting film quite some time ago. Ever since they introduced cameras that offer high enough resolution so my eye could not distinguish the difference, they made me totally satisfied. The same is true about inkjet printers as opposed to working in a darkroom. I’ve spent years in darkrooms. I built a fabulous darkroom with all kinds of special tools and gadgets. I invented all kinds of things for myself. And as things progress in digital, I realize there is no need to go back. I mean obviously you draw from the experience, and I am happy to have the experience. But I worked for years in a field called photocomposition, which involved making little masks, multiple exposures, working on the enlarger creating all kinds of images. Now people are convinced they were done digitally. They look at the date, like at a published book right now, and they look at some pictures that were done in the 1950s and 1960s, and they don’t believe, you know. And I am happy in a sense, because my point was that it is one’s vision—not what tools or technique one uses—that really makes the difference. It’s the ability to communicate what you have to say, and you have to have something to say. So, how you do it, I don’t care, I really couldn’t care less. You have to master whatever technique you need, and it has to come like a second nature to you—like you learn a language, or play an instrument, and you don’t have to think about how to do it, you just do it. You think more in conceptual terms, not in technical.”

Ryszard Horowitz: Nedda, 1969

Ryszard Horowitz: Peeling Desert, 2003

A Willingness to Learn

All the photographers I interviewed for this book had one more thing in common. Right from the onset, when they became committed to photography, everything they had done in their past was somehow worked into their becoming a better, more well-rounded photographer. Their beginnings may have been humble but they successfully parlayed their experiences into broadening their photographic skills.

One pro who has never shied away from an opportunity to learn is Phil Marco. Look his work up on the Internet and you see him listed as a highly respected editorial and commercial photographer, a winner of the most prestigious awards for his photography as well as motion film work. Phil recently formed a company to execute computer-generated visuals. His work has always intrigued me, and it was a treat to interview him and dig into his willingness to transform creatively. I asked Phil about his background:

Well that’s both very simple and a bit complex. I was born into a musical family. My father was an opera singer, and my mom was quite an accomplished pianist who would accompany him when he rehearsed his arias. At an early age I was a bit of a prodigy in music. I played Bach and Beethoven when I was four, and I gave a concert as a boy soprano when I was eleven. My father had moved from opera into show business, to choirmaster and organist of a parish church in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Most of my early life I sang in the choir as a soloist. Around the same time, I became interested in art and began to paint and draw. To skip ahead quickly, what I really wound up doing was a little bit of each, but I was very passionate about being a painter. I also used the camera on occasion just to record ideas. But no other focus other than that. So in need of money I hustled and I did a number of things.

To earn money, I could always go back and sing weddings or funerals. I also made pizzas for Joe the Boxer in Brooklyn. And sang club dates in some of the fancier mob run restaurants in Bayridge, and at a few places in Manhattan, like the Limelight in Greenwich Village. I reached the point where I was getting tired of hustling, and felt that I was spinning my wheels. Maybe I’d try getting something steady, painting after work, and snagging some additional gigs on the weekend. I came across an ad for a photo assistant. I had a very light knowledge of photography, having used a camera only as a sketching pad to record ideas for future paintings. I really didn’t have too much to offer in the way of experience. But I had a lot of nerve and confidence that I could to do anything I needed to do if I put my mind to it.

So with that motivation I answered the ad. I walked up the steps, which were dripping with water, and I came to a door gushing water from beneath, flooding the hall. The photographer answered the door. He had been photographing people showering, for a series of ads for Dial soap. I told him that I knew very little about photography but I was willing to learn and do whatever was necessary. I guess it was my directness and the fact that he was flooded and he needed somebody to help him at the time. He handed me a mop and said, “The job’s yours kid.” So I started there part-time because the whole objective was to secure more time and funds to pursue painting. The job paid $37 a week to start.

My job was to get there in the morning, wake up the photographer, walk the dog, and some very basic studio needs. In time I picked up on loading cameras, mixing chemicals, printing, and what ever else he needed as we went along. The photographer’s name was Lou Long. He was a brilliant illustrator with a wonderful sense for casting and people. We still keep in touch, and he’s as excited about photography today as he was then.

As I became more involved in photography and was compelled to use it more on the job, I realized that I was in awe of its ability to capture and convey ideas so rapidly and directly. The excitement I began to feel about photography as a medium totally sublimated my need to paint. And what initially had just been a means to an end became an end unto itself, and film became my canvas.

When a little studio on the outskirts of the Village became available, I made my move. It was on Eleventh Street off University Place, around the corner from the Cedar Bar, where Jackson Pollack, Franz Kline, together with a number of other Abstract Expressionists, would gather. And one of the former occupants of the studio, I learned at a later date, was Robert Frank. Things were looking up. I still painted occasionally, but it was becoming obvious that my interest in photography was taking over and growing stronger. My first professional camera was an old 1000 F Hasselblad that I picked up in a pawnshop. I began experimenting with color by flooding a small restaurant sink with water and immersing some stainless-steel canisters I picked up in the Bowery filled with various solutions of color chemistry. The process was crude, but the results were very exciting and genuinely inspired me to move on.

With no clients or layouts to follow, I just began to photograph simple images that inspired me; similar to the way I approached painting. My vision and concepts were strong, but my photographic technique left a lot to be desired. So I continued to reference and apply the lighting and compositional skills I used in painting to photography. I would take a simple circular form like an orange and photograph it in every conceivable light and point of view for days. Most of my first subjects were from the grocery store, and friends. Primarily because they were readily available, inexpensive, and without an hourly rate. Concentrating on still lifes, however, gave me the opportunity to learn how to apply light to a wide range of textures and shapes. It also satiated my interests in science and mechanical problem solving. As I became more proficient with my technique and began to learn how to create dramatic lighting for my concepts, the excitement I felt about photography as a medium of expression began to grow exponentially.

When I was in my early twenties, I created a few dozen images that I was pleased with, and I thought that it was time to go out and get some feedback. I came across a Milanese projector called a Farrania, which was totally self-contained in a thin, black-matte case. It had a pull-up arm with a lens that projected an image onto the inside cover of the case, which served as a screen. The 2¼" × 2¼" slides were then slid one at a time by hand into the gate. It also had a built-in storage space for thirty slides. I opted to use this method of showing my work, because I couldn’t afford quality color prints, and I didn’t have any of the lush 8" × 10" transparencies that would eventually become my format of choice. However the 2¼ format at the time served beautifully. It offered quality reproduction and a fast and economical way to capture and present visual ideas. I read all the trade magazines and award books I could get my hands on, looking for designers, art directors, and ad agencies whose work caught my eye. So I compiled a short list and began making phone calls. After numerous hangups and rejections, I finally began to get through. Armed with twenty slides and the confidence I gained from the positive feedback I was receiving, I would do whatever was necessary to provide the best lighting conditions for the slide show. Because if they weren’t shown in a fairly darkened room, it would be a total wash out, and any semblance of quality and color saturation would be lost. At times I’m sure that it strained the patience of my curious but confused audience. I would think nothing of walking into a room, and after a brief and polite introduction quickly start running around closing doors and drawing blinds or drapes over windows to achieve the right light level for the show. So if the conditions weren’t right, I just wouldn’t show them. However that was rarely the case, as I was always determined—possessed is probably a better word—to find or create the right light level no mater what convolutions it would take. After a number of successful showings, rumors began to abound about this young Italian kid who was going around the ad agencies with a little black box, and a bit of an attitude about not showing his work if the light in the room wasn’t just right. The general consensus was, however, that the images were so fresh and exciting that it was well worth the initial minor annoyance.

I remember going to Doyle Dane Bernbach for the first time in the mid-1960s having made an appointment with a young art director named Len Sirowitz. The light in his room was terrible, and I was just about to pack it in, when I spotted a janitor’s closet across the hall that he reluctantly climbed into with me. After a few uneasy moments in the dark, when I began to show my slides, he was so excited about the work that he called in Bill Bernbach, who in turn called out the entire floor to line up outside the janitor’s closet. As a result, all of DDB opened up for me, and Len and I worked together on the multi-award winning campaign for “Better Vision” that became part of advertising history.

I observed, “But the emphasis is that you are self-educated.”

“Yes, in reference to photography I’m totally self-educated. My education at Pratt Institute and the Art Student’s League was in fine art. I learned photography through books, experimentation, and practice.”

To me Phil is the spirit of the complex, eclectic visual artist who has not let technology or definitions get in the way of his passion to create. The world provides him with his artist’s palette, and he works without the restraints that hold so many back. He is self-educated because he learns from everything.

The Relevance of Every Experience

Usually, we think of our heroes of photography as always having the vocation of photography. But they are surprisingly like the rest of us, and they inspire us with their single-minded devotion to following their passion. One interview that I think may interest you, and at the same time inspire you because of his breadth of experience, is from Jay Maisel. As you look back at Jay’s work and you think of his use of light, gesture, and color, you can see how he has drawn from his fine-art training (mentioned earlier), and his appreciation for the variety of life. I asked, “Jay, what did you do for a living before you became a photographer?”

“I worked in a bakery up in New Haven. I mean a big, freaking bakery, not a little bakery, in a factory baking bread. I worked in a rubber plant making gloves. I worked in a delicatessen behind a counter. I sold sodas in an entrepreneurial way. I did sign painting because I knew lettering. I was a soda jerk.”

Jay Maisel: Chinese Policeman

I continued, “Did any of these things feed into what you do today, such as skills that you learned, like how to deal with people?”

“Of course. Everything feeds into it.”

I then asked, “I know you went to art school at Cooper Union School for Art and Engineering, but where did you get your education to become a photographer?”

“Out of Andreas Feininger’s books. Andreas Feininger did a book called Introduction to Photography, and that’s really where I studied photography.”

Jay Maisel: Akumal window

Imagine that. Jay Maisel taught himself how to use a camera by reading the popular Andreas Feininger book, and using his skills and personal experiences to bring forward a body of visual art that has touched us all for the past several decades. His recent portraits of a wide array of people looking at the destruction after the World Trade Center disaster on 9/11 is a hauntingly powerful testimony to his ability to capture the infinite variety of pain that coursed though the minds and hearts of the onlookers. Only a person who understands the complexity of our diversity could have captured those moving images that will live on beyond our time.

From One World to Another

As we read earlier, Ryszard Horowitz understands the healing forces of creativity. He has given us images that allow us to transcend our everyday experiences and raise our spirits. As a child Ryszard was separated from his family when the Germans invaded Poland, and his family endured the horrors of the concentration camps. He has never stopped learning, never stopped showing us an alternative world of wonder, and his story is an inspiration to us all. I asked about his education:

I started taking photographs when I was a teenager. I was about thirteen or fourteen when I got my first camera from my father. My interest in photography happened rather early in my life.

I was born in Krakow in Poland. I went to the High School of Fine Arts, and then to the Academy of Fine Arts, and I never finished because I came here. Here I went to Pratt Institute, where I studied design, advertising design, graphic design, etc. So when I was at Pratt, I had the great fortune of meeting a number of great American designers and photographers. People like Herb Lubalin, and Lou Dorfsman, graphic director of CBS Network, and other designers. Then I met Alexey Brodovitch. Through him I met Avedon, and then I became an assistant to Avedon and then I met a bunch of other photographers. And so, needless to say, slowly, I started working for some of those people and working for a number of film studios and advertising agencies. I also worked as an art director for Grey Advertising. I decided that I really wanted to devote myself full-time to photography. I was in a position to assign photography to others, but frequently I thought I could do it myself, and sometimes I did it better. I wanted to do what I always loved, photography. Photography became my full-time love and interest.

I asked, “At what point did you chose to be a photographer? Was there a specific event or time that you remember?”

I was an art director and group head at Grey Advertising with a secretary and a big window, you know, and money, and I knew it was time to go. I met some people who were very helpful in lending me a little bit of cash to get my own business started. They were friends, but they were also directors with Grey Advertising, and they believed in me. And they said, “Look, you know we’ll lend you some money to set you up in your own business.” I took the money that they offered, and I found a great place on Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street—a place I couldn’t afford now—and I stayed there for ten years, with my rent going from $250 to $5,000 a month. And the beginning was rather fascinating.

Work started coming from different places; also right away I began traveling to Europe and working in Paris and in London. I found that my work was received there with greater understanding. Even then, and I am talking about mid-1960s, I already began to experiment with photography. Very early in my life I realized that I am not interested in using photography in a straightforward way; I wanted to capture what’s in front of me whether it is set up or I just happened to [catch it while] traveling . I wanted really to make pictures. My art background was very helpful, because I was able to make little sketches to memorize some ideas and also to be able to share them with other people. Remember, Polaroid then didn’t really exist. There wasn’t too much you could share with people, and I started playing with experimenting in the darkroom, playing with the optics, doing all kinds of things people told me not to do. And I began slowly developing a unique style of my own that enabled me to position myself in a little niche within the advertising business and within the editorial business here in New York. Through Avedon and some other people, I became acquainted with Harper’s Bazaar, which, at the time, was the greatest showcase for photography. And I began doing editorial work for them that only now is beginning to be truly recognized.

Lifelong Education

Education sometimes becomes more of a way of life than a means to an end. One of the most influential photographers who has had an impact on commercial and fine art photographers alike is Jerry Uelsmann. Through his evocative imagery he has always pushed the limits of what can be done with the medium. His story gives an inside look at how our medium has evolved, and is a metaphor for our own evolution. I inquired how he started in photography:

I got involved in photography in high school. And then after high school I went to Rochester Institute of Technology, and from there I went to graduate school. From graduate school at Indiana University, after I got my Masters of Fine Arts degree, my first job was at the University of Florida. I taught for thirty-seven years, and now I am retired. I taught photography in the Fine Arts.

When I first started teaching, back in 1960, there were very few places that recognized the potential of photography as a serious art form. You had to teach the basic craft, but at the same time you had to teach the history—as much as was available, because the art historians were not familiar with it. And you presented an aesthetic stance of what the potential was. I mean there were a lot of issues to address. It was a very dramatic time because you served all roles. There was not a lot of critical writing about photography other than Aperture, and I constantly made slides to introduce photography to my class. I gave them possibilities in terms of things they might be interested in trying.

All the art students took a variety of courses. I was the only photographer for many years, and so all the students I had were painters, or printer makers, or sculptors, or potters. They were fine-art students, so they had all these other disciplines in addition to photography. It was many years before they could actually have their main emphasis be photography. And we didn’t really have studio facilities.

I asked, “Would you consider yourself more of a teacher than a practitioner?”

Jerry responded, “Well, you are both actually. The big difference between my life [and those of] other photographers was that no one was buying fine-art photographs, I assure you. There weren’t any galleries, even in the 1960s. So your main support system was the university. I worked hard at being a teacher; and it was, in a way, a wonderful time, because you really had a cause—photography was an underdog.”

When I interviewed Douglas Kirkland, it was a few months after I had listened to a lecture he had given. The lecture was titled, “Douglas Kirkland—A Fifty-Year Love Affair with Photography.” Douglas had that single-mindedness right from the start, when he wrote letter after letter requesting an internship with Irving Penn. That perseverance turned into an opportunity to work for Penn, and set him on a course to photograph some of the world’s most recognizable people—people whose personalities were enhanced by his indelible images.

I started out the interview with, “What did you do before your involvement in photography?”

High school. In other words, I have been a photographer all of my life. It has been my life and will continue to be that way until the day I leave this earth. I am a photographer through and through.

Douglas Kirkland: Audrey Hepburn

I grew up in a small town in Canada, Southern Ontario, near Niagara Falls, and the most exciting people in the world, those in the midst of the things that were happening, were the photographers. I was made aware of them through Life and LOOK, and comparable publications, even daily newspapers in our area. That was a very, very exciting world, and that’s what drew me to it. The excitement of travel, the excitement of being in the middle of things, in the middle of Hollywood, in the middle of China, in the middle of Europe, in New York City—all these things that a young kid dreams about in a small town.”

Sometimes you have to find your way as you create your career, but when it all falls into place there is a sense of well being that can only be described as coming home. Ken Merfeld has had a lot of formal and informal education, and his story is compelling because nothing is wasted, every experience is utilized in the art that is unique to this extraordinary artist. I asked Ken how he got started in photography:

I was a student, two college degrees worth, and then I dropped out and was a ski bum for a while. A girlfriend gave me a camera and I started to get interested in photography.

I first decided to be a photographer when I was in the mountains. I took a photograph of a very special dog, an animal that was my buddy. Every spring the porcupines would come out, and my dogs would chase the porcupines and would get zapped in their face with the quills. And I did a portrait of this wonderful part-collie/part-wolf dog that I had up in the mountains, and when I looked at that portrait I decided that meant more to me than both the college degrees that I had spent years working on. So I thought, when I rejoin civilization, I would check into the art side of the coin and photography.

I came back down to Los Angeles and heard about a couple of art schools. To put myself through art school, I was a bartender. It was flexible hours, late hours, and I could work part of the night and then tend bar till the middle of the night, stay up and keep on working. That’s literally how I put myself through the Art Center College of Design, where I graduated.

[I also have] a degree in psychology and another in marketing management. The degree in marketing management always told me not to go into business, that I wasn’t a business person. I went into psychology because I do love people, and psychology is an amazing help. I don’t use it on a day-today basis, but I would have to say that having a background in it, and being highly observant of people, and looking at people on a variety of levels has helped me tremendously. A little bit of psychology goes a long way.

New Opportunities

Who knows where the inspiration will come from? Just be assured that the inspiration will come if you invite it into your life. One thing about a camera: if you are good with it, it can help you gain entry to places you never dreamed of; it can even start you in a new direction which becomes a new industry, which becomes a world of opportunities for others. One such case is the story of how fine-art photography gallery owner David Fahey began his career. When I asked David what he did for a living before he got into his line of work, he said:

I worked as a photographer actually before I got into the photography business. I had a series of part-time jobs through college. But I dropped out for a semester and got drafted to Vietnam, to the infantry. When I got out of the Army in 1970, I went back to college and I continued my studies in photography. Along the way I actually taught photography studio classes at a junior college while going to college.

The way I got into photography was that I was a musician, and I wanted to get in to hear music for free. The club in Los Angeles in the late 1960s was the Troubadour. Every major act that came West usually opened at the Troubadour. So I went up to Doug Weston, who owned the Troubadour, and I said, “If I can get in free, I will take pictures for you.” And he said fine, and he introduced me to the doorman, the ticket people, the waiters, and the manger, and he said, “This guy gets in free.” So I would show up every week, sometimes twice a week, and get in there before they opened the doors, get the best seat, and I photographed all these great musicians on stage. That’s kind of what got me into photography.

[I got my formal education in photography] at Cal State Fullerton. I have an undergraduate degree in photo communication, and a graduate degree in art with an emphasis in creative photography. Outside of UCLA, it was one of the first fine-art photography programs in Southern California.

It was a very close community back in those days. We all knew each other. Quite quickly the students became very friendly in a social way with the teachers, and so we all used to socialize—Darryl Curran, Robert Heineken, Edmund Tuskee, and Eileen Cowin. We all belonged to an organization called SPE, the Society for Photographic Education. That’s kind of where all the early photographers met and got together and exchanged ideas and hung out. That’s where photographers had conferences. Every year it would be a different location, and people would do slide lectures, that’s kind of where it happened. They would use the conference facility up in Carmel at Asilomar, for example. That was open to not only the teachers but some of the graduate students, too.

When I was going to graduate school, I was teaching photography, and I taught at Compton Junior College. That was a job so I could finish college. Then close to when I was finishing, I went into a gallery in L.A., and they had been open only a month. I got the impression they could use some help, so I offered my services. That was the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery. I went in and said “Can I work here?” and G. Ray Hawkins said sure, and after a few months I began to direct the contemporary art part of the gallery. Because I knew a lot of photographers, it was natural for me to be in charge of that area. So that’s how I got in the gallery business. That was in 1975.

I wondered out loud, “How did you recognize the fact that there was a future for fine-art photography? I mean ‘fine-art photography’ was not necessarily the buzz word of the day.”

David offered, “I remember when we sold our first Cartier-Bresson piece for $700. I think we sold four or five of them one month, and that was a big deal. And then we sold an Ansel Adams for $1,000 and that was huge, unheard of. Then, three years later, we sold one for $40,000. Then we began to exhibit and sell Paul Outerbridge’s work and that was when everything was changing.”

So apparently timing has a lot to do with success—timing, and serendipity, and passion, and on and on.

The Value of Tenacity

Education—scripted or by total immersion—sets the patterns for work ethic and discipline. Acclaimed cinematographer and director Dean Cundey is a special effects maven, a man whose film credits reads like a list of your favorite blockbusters. But to hear the story of how he got into the business, it sounds like an unbelievable script for an adventure comedy with a protagonist who never takes no for an answer and is always driven by the next creative challenge. His story will give hope to anyone who is fighting the good fight in the film industry. I started the interview by asking Dean how he got into filmmaking:

I went to UCLA Film School, and I started studying a broad course of study. There they make you take editing, film writing—all the stuff, so you can understand the whole rather than a certain area. When I was at UCLA Film School, I was taking film, and I was minoring in architecture and graphic design.

Then they announced there was going to be a special class that was going to be taught by James Wong Howe. Howe was one of the preeminent cinematographers in Hollywood—he started in the 1920s—and he went all the way up into probably the 1970s. He was a famous Academy Award–nominee, a very distinguished fellow.

To me it was the most fascinating class because it was unlike the others that were so much theory. He made us all be the crew, and he would show us how to light a set. We had a small, three-wall set on one of the stages at UCLA. Each meeting he would say, “Okay, now we’re going to make a seedy hotel room,” and we would have to do it with just the lighting—thinking about the mood and style of the lighting. “Perhaps there’s a neon sign outside the window blinking,” someone would say. We learned what the actual, practical work was of cinematography, not just hard shadows and soft shadows.

And there was crew group dynamics, like who was in charge. He would say, “No, no, no. You don’t come and talk to me, you talk to the gaffer. He is the guy who is in charge of the lights.” It was a great class, because he was very deliberately immersing us in the politics and protocols, as well as the practical use of light—all of the stuff that is part of the job. I got completely swept up by how a cinematographer was the dynamic creator of the image. I got fascinated by the fact that cinematography was where you got to work with the director and the actors, and it was the responsibility of the cinematographer to take the production designers work and make it look as good as possible; to enhance it by lighting the strong areas of the set to add really interesting shadows and textures. So I immediately got fascinated by that, and I focused, as it were—no pun intended—to work in cinematography. I spent the rest of that year taking cinematography classes and learning about that, so when I graduated I said, “That’s what I want to do. How do I do it?”

Now, I hate to do this to you, but you will have to go on to chapter 8 (on Networking and Preparation) to see how Dean’s story turned out. The rest of his story gives us a glimpse of how important it is to keep the chain of associations intact and never to burn any bridges behind you. But I want to get back to education and its role in establishing a career and then redefining it as you progress. What we have seen expressed by the interviewees is that education comes from every quarter of our existence.

We have also seen all of the interviewees express their willingness to learn. To them, a new technique or technology is not a roadblock but a new adventure that gives them more chances to express themselves. And since many of them see themselves as works in progress, learning a new idiom frees them from the indulgence of boredom. Actually “boredom” is not in their vocabularies.

Answers to the Question, “Who Are Your Photography and Art Heroes?”

We read that several of them talked about their teachers, and that encouraged me to ask them who their heroes of photography were. The list is revealing in itself, because it reminds us of the great artists whose works we must go back and review from time to time, and from whom we receive inspiration. Because the spiral of creative evolution allows us to build on the past and create our future. I am going to give you the extensive list of names the interviewees mentioned, so you can cruise through the list and envision in your own mind those luminaries who have given so much to our profession. I encourage you to use the list as a reference and go back and visit the work of those mentioned. Maybe it will shake something free in you as you create your personal path to rediscovery.

Jay Maisel: I would have to say my heroes were everybody’s heroes—Robert Frank, Irving Penn, Ernst Haas.

Eric Meola: Ernst Haas, Irving Penn, Ernest C. Withers.

Douglas Kirkland: Besides Irving Penn and Gordon Parks, a friend of mine is Pete Turner. He’s a great guy. I could go on to others, but those are the ones that have influenced me the most.

Barbara Bordnick: Sarah Moon for the exquisite work she does; Richard Avedon for the miraculous energy and power in his work; Edward Steichen, Baron de Meyer, Josef Koudelka.

Bob Krist: I’ve always been a great admirer of the National Geographic guys—Jim Stanfield, Bill Allard, Dave Harvey, Chuck O’Rear, those guys. The classic Geographic photographer type has kind of been my ideal all the way along.

Pete McArthur: Landscape photographer John Pfahl.

Phil Marco: My heroes first and foremost are the painters. For lighting: Caravaggio. Joseph Wright of Darby, Rembrandt, and Vermeer to name a few; and for concept and imagery, all the Surrealists—Magritte and Dali in particular.

Ken Merfeld: The people that just struck me from the get-go are people like the reclusive photographer Michael Disfarmer, and August Sander and his plight, what he tried to do with his photographs of the Germans, I think that was amazing. Diane Arbus, just what she did to open the world of photography, to push the limits of what was accepted. That probably hit me strongest of anything, because I understand where that comes from: I’ve spent twenty-five years exploring that same journey. I appreciate the finesse of someone like Irving Penn, his compositional brilliance and his way with people. I am an old soul, so I also look at some of the older people. Julia Margaret Cameron, back in the 1860s, was an absolutely incredible image-maker and the process that she used is something that I have stumbled into and found absolutely amazing. And I appreciate people like Edward Curtis, someone who will spend thirty-five years working on his passion without any kind of acknowledgment.

Ryszard Horowitz: I love all kinds of photography. I love Henri Cartier-Bresson, his work. As for contemporary photographers, I love James Nachtwey, a friend of mine, I would love to death to do what he does; I can see his passion and his sensibility, and intelligence and sense of composition. I love Irving Penn, his intelligence and style. I love Arnold Newman’s portraits, especially the portraits from the 1950s and 1960s, which mean a great deal to me. I hate to mention names, because it becomes almost too personal, but I’d like to get it across that I don’t look for inspiration to people who think the way I do, or attempt to see things the way I do. I’d rather go to the opposite. I’d rather go to extremes, and I’d much rather get influenced and excited by artwork in general—you know, painting—and also cinema.

Jerry Uelsmann: I was raised in a classic tradition, so I had the normal historical figures, although I was a big fan of the manipulation of people like Rejlander. But in today’s world I think there’s such a wonderful broad span of stuff happening in the world of photography with all the crossover digital stuff, and it’s hard for me to name individuals. I’ve always been a fan of Duane Michals, who added a sort of narrative to his work. And I still have tremendous respect for what Ansel did, his accomplishments with the vision and the craft.

David Fahey: Gee, that’s a long one. I like a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. I think as it relates to being a gallarist, you have to genuinely like a lot of different things, because you have to be enthusiastic about a lot of different things. In photojournalism there is Jim Nachtwey. Of course Bravo and Weston, and people like Peter Beard. William Claxton I think is one of the top two or three jazz photographers. Melvin Sokolsky is very underrated and I think is a great photographer. There’s Penn—can’t get much better than Penn, he could do just about anything. But then I like the documentary style of Robert Frank and Allen Ginsberg in particular; he photographed the whole Beat Generation. I mean, go down the list. Herb Ritts, who is Los Angeles born and raised, totally unique photographer—who, as big as he is, is yet to be recognized for how great he is. And then in Hollywood photography, George Hurrell just stands apart from everyone. Then you have someone like a Phil Stern who is kind of like the Cartier-Bresson of Hollywood, he made a different kind of environmental portrait that was more of a reportage style. I love young contemporary work that is being done. It’s like I said, I genuinely couldn’t sell anything I didn’t feel excited about. I have been showing pictures for thirty years and I’ve generally been excited about everything we’ve shown. I like all of them equally well. Some are favorites you know, Kertesz is great, Brassai is terrific, it just kind of goes on and on.

Obviously, learning and relearning the tools of our trade are imperatives, and they are an outward expression of how we interpret the world. Now let’s examine the value of having a focus and why, out of a universe of options, we chose to shoot certain subjects. This leads us to the next step on our journey of rediscovery.