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Interview with Elizabeth Moreno
Winner and Juror’s Pick (Vince Aletti), Daylight/CDS Photo Awards Work-in-Process Prize

Conducted by students at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University—Jen Skerritt (Herndon, Virginia) and McKay Ross (Whitney Point, New York).

Why did you decide to do utilize diptychs in your work?

This project started with the idea to portray the rancheros within their environment. Working with diptychs allows me to make more emphasis in the little details I find in their surroundings. By using two contiguous images I try to give more power to the images that show bits of information about their culture by pulling them out of the background, as they are generally used in a portrait, and setting them side by side with the person I am photographing. While I was working this way, I also started to photograph moments in their daily life. In this case, using two contiguous images allows me to play with time. It is the same event but each image is registered seconds, sometime minutes apart. I find these pieces more challenging to create because I have almost no time to scout the shot, it has to be identified and organized into a diptych at the time that is happening and you don’t know if it will work until you put the two images together. I find this way of shooting more exciting, even though I love doing the portrait part of the project too.

While observing your pictures, I noticed that the first two pictures contained religious figures. Was the inclusion of these religious figures intentional?

It is not my intention to include religious figures in the photographs; it is more to include anything in their surroundings that can portray or give more information about their culture. I am not attempting to go further with the meaning people might give to these religious icons, I am just capturing what I see that is relevant in the rancheros’ life. It is very common to find in almost every house these kind of religious figures and symbols, and that is why they appear in some images.

You say that the rancheros’ “sense of identity is quickly disappearing in the face of development”—you also say that you grew up in this area. Do you consider yourself a person of this culture, and if so, how have you adapted to this “development?”

I don’t consider myself a person of this culture even though I have been exposed to it since I was a kid; instead I grew up in a city, which is completely different. From what I have experienced and heard, they are forced to adapt to this new and “modern” way of life at a high price. The Baja Peninsula is one of the last territories in Mexico where a lot of the land is still (but not for much longer) in the hands of the people who work it (the rancheros). But the tourism industry and private investors will soon own the land as has already happened with most of the coast surrounding the peninsula. For me, development should mean something that can offer a better quality of life rather than earning more money, possessing more things, or making the biggest and most luxurious hotels.

You referred to the rancheros as “part of your past and present.” After documenting these ways of life through photography, are you able to relate to them more?

Definitely, I have a more thorough (but not complete) understanding of their culture than when I started this project nine months ago. Many ideas I had about them and their way of life have changed by spending a lot of time with them and being able to establish close relationships with some of them.

What I can share with my photographs is just a small piece of all that I have learned and experienced at their side, and I hope that they work as a way for others to know them a little bit more.

Read more about Elizabeth Moreno’s work
 

I like to collect things. As a teacher of (and also as a life-long student of) photography, I am always looking for articles, essays, interviews about my chosen medium. At one time, rarer pieces were hard to find - maybe in the bottom of a desk drawer in Xerox form, maybe in an old folder of readings I kept from college, acquired from barter and exchange w/ other teachers, or from just hunkering down at the copy machine in a good arts library. I have physical files and virtual folders of all the images and articles I come across that strike me as worth saving, for one reason or another. They contain articles about my favorite photographers, pictures torn from magazines, future (and past) readings for my classes. The internet has changed everything, though, with its encyclopedic, searchable base of knowledge. Long-lost essays form rare, out-of-print catalogs can now be found with a few correct search terms keyed in, such as Tod Papageorge's 1981 "An Essay on Influence" from the Yale Art Gallery catalog comparing the seminal books on America by Walker Evans and Robert Frank, which is currently listed on Alibris for an average of $200. (Sneak peek: you'll find it in the forthcoming Aperture book of that photographer's essays, "Core Curriculum," but more on that another time.)

One of the handful of places online where this essay can be found right now is at American Suburb X, with a curriculum if its own. Since 2008, photographer Doug Rickard has generously provided us all with access to a fast-growing archive of interviews with and essays about and by the great photographers, with "Channels" for each of them easily accessible via a pull-down menu. There are interviews with artists like the now-deceased Larry Sultan, the long-gone Weegee (in audio!), and the so-called "Mexican Weegee" Enrique Metinides, a conversation between Stephen Shore and Gil Blank, essays about Robert Adams and Mark Steinmetz, and curated images by young, emerging photographers like Allison Sexton. There is the text of the important essay by Paul Graham, "The Unreasonable Apple," first presented at a private photographer's forum at MoMA, and also shared on his personal website. It's a photographic cornucopia, a feast of silver halides and pixels. Rickard's other online image archive is called "These Americans," which celebrates the less-sanctioned art of vernacular, documentary and commercial photography in America via the public records of photographic archives in the United States. Image sources include the Library of Congress, FSA and Documerica Archives, local archives, colleges, and even his own personal collection. You can find work by those who crossed and blurred these lines, like Hine, Evans and Weegee as well as anonymous sources and otherwise mostly-unknown working photographers. Of TA's, he says, "A sort of narrative formed via photographs into our nation and its "feeling/vibes/history/culture/nuances/sociology/tragedies/triumphs... a tightly edited narrative to try to maintain strength via strong photographs, so as to avoid much dilution by volume and growth as more are added." The sites are well-organized and give different options or ways in to various topics, so you can browse with or without a solid photo history background.

ASX: www.americansuburbx.com

These Americans: http://www.theseamericans.org/

Core Curriculum: http://www.artbook.com/9781597111720.html

Christopher Capozziello, a photojournalist currently based in Hamden, Connecticut, has worked on projects all over the United States, but for the past several years he has often stayed at home photographing his twin brother. Mr. Capozziello introduces his project, titled "The Distance Between Us," with the following statement:

It’s two in the afternoon and he’s finally waking up. Last night, Nick was alone in the basement surfing the Internet, playing games, and going outside three or four times for a smoke in the backyard. He is meticulous about a great deal of things because he has all the time in the world. Today, he will probably absorb himself in organizing his CD’s, folding his laundry or counting and wrapping all of his change. He has been unable to hold down a job because of the muscle spasms from his cerebral palsy. Often times his body becomes contorted as the spasm takes place. His right foot will curl under him, his right arm will pull behind him, his left hand becomes difficult to move, he is unable to talk, and he often has to crawl up our hardwood stairs and into bed if no one is able to help him.

One of the hardest parts of being Nick’s twin is living my life, realizing that most of my experiences will always be out of his grasp.

In a recent interview with Daylight (below), Mr. Capozziello discusses this project, and others, as well as his intimate approach to photographic storytelling.

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Interview by Trent Davis Bailey
Photographs by Christopher Capozziello/AEVUM

Daylight: What has your ongoing experience been documenting your twin brother? Has the act of photographing him changed or affected your relationship with one another?

Christopher Capozziello: When I first began making pictures of Nick, he didn’t like it. In fact, very early on, after I had just graduated from college and was living at home, I made a picture of him waking up. He immediately punched me in the face and said he didn’t want me making pictures of him. At that point I wasn’t making pictures with any real intention of telling his story, but what they became was a way for me to deal with our differences. In some strange way, as I’ve seen his story emerge, the pictures have brought us closer together. We spend more time together, talk on the phone more. That didn’t used to happen. The pictures have forced me to deal with the issues of guilt I’ve had about being the healthy [twin].

I have [photographed stories about] racism, drug abuse, cancer, and I ask questions of others, about how life is for them. In doing that it forces them to really dig deep and answer the tougher questions about life and why they do the things they do—or how their circumstances affect them. Somewhere along the way, I felt that I needed to do the same for myself and answer very personal questions. I think it’s only fair to do for myself what I ask of so many others in my other work.

From the project, "The Distance Between Us."

D: When you first made your photographs public, you posted “The Distance Between Us,” as story about a man named Nick suffering with cerebral palsy, omitting the fact that the subject of your story was, in fact, your twin brother. What made you decide to reveal this information?

CC: A few years back, when I made my first run into New York to meet with [photo] editors, Nick’s story was part of a work-in-progress edit. Because I hadn’t approached telling his story in the sense that I had with other work, it was far from complete. At that point, to disclose that he was my brother would have raised so many questions about what was missing [from the story], but more than that, I thought it would sound trite to say, “This is my twin brother Nick. These pictures help me to deal with our differences.” I didn’t want people’s sympathy, and I didn’t want them feeling bad for him on the account that he’s my brother. If an editor or colleague asked questions about who he was I would come out with it, but five years ago I wasn’t ready to make that announcement on my own. Since the end of 2009, it has been such an emotional time for our family because of Nick’s brain surgery. [After the surgery,] it seemed like the right time to share his story and also to reveal that he was my twin brother.

I feel that, when there is suffering, it unites people in ways that other aspects of life do not. When I showed the work [at the LOOKBetween Festival] in Virginia, the response was more than I had expected. No one said, “Man, Chris, your pictures are amazing.” Everyone asked how Nick was doing, and then, almost always, people would tell me their stories, about their siblings, or a cousin, a friend, a parent, and how the suffering of these people affected them. Suffering unites. It brings about a solidarity that other aspects of life do not. [Sharing these photographs] has been extremely cathartic for me. This is the art of the ache.

From the project, "The Distance Between Us."

D: This addmittance of information certainly changes the viewer’s experience of your vision and subject. Has this changed the way you personally view and approach the project?

CC: I’m not so sure that the admittance has changed how I approach telling Nick’s story, or even our story. I have known for some time that if the story progressed to where there was real strength in the pictures, I would be very open about things, but me being open was contingent on that.

Part of the power of Nick’s story is how he has come to embrace what I’m doing. He used to hate when I made pictures of him, but I think he’s come to a place where he tolerates it. Even now, when I show him edits of the story, he says he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t like to see himself like that. That’s exactly my sentiment. But sometimes, he says, “You’re going to get me a girlfriend out of all of this aren’t you?”

I also am very careful not to make him feel like he’s some sort of project for me. I still treat this the same way I have always treated it. When I’m around it’s because I want to be around him or my family. When we go out and play pool and have a few beers, it’s because I want to be with him, not because I want to make pictures.

D: You also have created a multimedia piece for “The Distance Between Us,” which includes your narration and some words from your brother. Other than through your website, what are your intentions for how the work is to be viewed and displayed? 

CC: Recently I have been applying for grants so I can spend more time on this and not have to be so absent from him because I’m trying to make a living and pay bills. If I had it my way, I’d be around much more than I’m able to right now. For me, this project is far from done, and it will probably be something that I photograph for the rest of our lives. In the meantime; however, I hope to have his story shown in larger editorial magazines and in exhibitions. An excerpt from his story was published in Virginia Quarterly Review this January, and it will be shown at the Center for Fine Art Photography in November. I’m also collaborating with MediaStorm on a larger multimedia piece, one that will tackle more of our story. The short multimedia piece on my site has always felt like a teaser with something more to come, so I’m excited about digging deeper with them.

D: You have a less journalistic, more literary approach to writing statements for your photography projects. I think your writing style is indicative of your photographic style in that both share a similar intimacy. What inspired you to introduce your features in this way?

CC: I remember as a child always trying to pull stories from my older family members. When I heard an interesting one, I would ask to hear it again and again. I think that when I’m telling someone’s story, I want it to feel honest. I like the text to feel conversational, like I’m sitting next to you recounting a story. Narration can be extremely powerful and revealing in this way, and often times, when we (photojournalists) write our captions in a matter-of-fact sort of AP style, we lose intimacy. There is certainly a place for more journalistic style caption writing, but when I'm telling a larger story, and have intimate access, for me it is more interesting and more revealing for the text to work in the same manner as the pictures: intimately.

Pictures need text for the viewer to truly understand what is happening in them, otherwise we can look at something and go on thinking the same way we did before. For example, how about the young woman I’ve been photographing who has a heroin addiction? She may have chosen this lifestyle, but I want to know why. For some of her friends, one drug has lead to another, and to another, finally bringing them to heroin’s door. As it turns out for Monica, from the ages of four to nine, she was repeatedly sexually abused. Now we want to listen. Now we want to look and get to the bottom of it all.

Text answers questions that pictures cannot. The two need each other, and when they’re married together in a compelling way, the truths about what a picture contains can cut deep. I hope with my work I’m able to do that. I’m as proud of the text I write as I am about the pictures.

"I received the email yesterday, telling me that their imperial wizard died and that I could meet them at the wake. In the early evening, I nervously drive an hour to Petal, Mississippi, and, with the sun setting behind me, I make my first photograph of a klansman." 

From the project, "For God, Race, and Country."

D: Your subtitles are also openly subjective, often describing how you came to make a specific picture. In your series “For God, Race, and Country,” for instance, you make it clear, as “a photographer from the North,” what your relationship is to your subjects. What do you feel is the value including this information rather than just describing what the image is depicting?

CC: Sometimes giving more context to the viewer answers some questions they may have about my relationship to the things I am photographing or about the specific moment I’m showing them. In the caption that you’re referring to, I made a portrait of Leonard, who in the middle of my interview, left me standing outside his trailer laughing as he ran inside saying, "You’ve never seen anything like this before." Minutes later he emerged with his robe and hood on. He did this because I was not from around there. I had no southern accent, and my license plate said Connecticut. So, he was trying to show me something I had never seen before, or maybe he was trying to scare me, to get a rise out of me. Whatever he was trying to do, he did it with laughter, and told me to make a picture. In this case, saying that I was a photographer from the North explains more of why he did what he was doing. It’s a very small anecdote that also tells us a little about him.

"David looks out the window down the barrel of a shotgun, and talks jokingly about how he'd like to go shoot up some blacks, reassuring me that he is only kidding; I believe him. And listening and photographing, and hoping this will say something, I can not help myself from looking at those open eyes that seem to look where David is looking."

From the project, "For God, Race, and Country."

D: It seems the Klan was very open to letting you photograph them. Was this the case and were their any limitations for you while photographing?

CC: There were always limitations. Some of them thought I was a sympathizer because I had the okay from their leader to make pictures. Then, when they would call me brother, or greet me with “White Power,” I would let them know that I was not a member. I didn’t do this in a judgmental way, but was gentle in how I handled these situations. Because of this, some didn’t want me photographing them or their family. Others were okay with it. There were times when I was threatened with guns and times when other members opened their homes to me.

There are no real limitations on how the pictures can be used, but once they’re published in a national publication, I will be done with that story because inevitably there will be someone who won’t like what I’ve shown or said, and things could, at that point, get dangerous. 

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For more information about Christopher and his work, visit: http://www.chriscappy.com

Interview with Nandita Raman
Winner and Juror’s Pick (Julie Saul), 2010 Daylight/CDS Photo Awards Project Prize

Conducted by students at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University—Jesse Forman (Bellmore, New York) and Danzhou Doujie (Tibet).

We read that the inspiration for the theme of your series, Cinema Play House, came from the fact that your mother used to own a movie theater. Can you talk about the connection you have to the cinema and why it means so much to you?

My inspiration came from the fact that I had spent interesting times of my childhood in a cinema hall where I had access to spaces which are usually out of reach, as an audience. I got to witness the cinema backstage. At that age it was a thrilling experience.

But of course my childhood association with movie theaters was a point of entry—I discovered these spaces in a very different way when I started photographing in them. There is a certain amount of fiction I associate with these spaces. The way different objects and parts of the cinema hall arrange themselves can be read like occurrences in themselves. The interaction of the people who worked in these spaces rendered a certain character to the place, perhaps telling of the people. I am drawn to these possibilities.

Given your personal connection with movie theaters, how do you feel to see cinemas in such disrepair? What are your thoughts about the movie industry in India, given that movies made in India touch the lives of over 3.6 billion people? How do you feel about the fact that newer, smaller cinemas are being built to cater to the middle class, and what happens to the lower class citizens who don’t fit in this category?

The way the cinema halls were designed and run until twenty years ago resonated with the social scenarios of that time in India. The work culture was different. Now, India has a different standing economically. It is becoming increasingly a consumer-based society with greater affordability and bigger aspirations. The state of the older cinema halls is, to me, a state of passing. I would love to see them restored and reintroduced, and at the same time I am curious to see what the new multiplexes will look like fifty years from now. I do feel concerned that the multiplexes sell cinema experience at a very steep price which forces exclusions based on economy. The mainstream films find their way into the more affordable, no frills theaters, but independent parallel cinema remains constrained to the elite spaces, barring a few exceptions.

In your photographs that did not focus on inanimate objects, such as the last image in the Cinema Play House series of the ticket window and the people in the background, how many exposures would you typically make until you found the moment you were looking for?

It really varies and works instinctively for me. For the box office window I probably shot 3 frames.

Was your work designed to entertain people or did you want to educate others as well? In other words, was it just coincidence that you photographed an old projector because it looked interesting and made a good photo or did you want to show people how movie theaters used to run?

It wasn’t my intention to explain the running of the cinema or educate an audience. It is an exploration of these spaces and the possibilities of narratives they contain.

We noticed that in most of your photographs, you choose not to depict people. Can you talk about your decision to only include, with one exception, inanimate objects in your work?

I think a portrait of a person doesn’t necessarily require his or her physical presence within the frame. The way an individual interacts with a space and arranges it, tells of the person. In the context of the theater staff, I felt their physical portraits were appropriating them to ethnographic and social notions. For me, they are individuals with unique psyche which is affected by the sociological context but not limited by it.

Read more about Nandita Raman’s work

I didn't intend to make a recurring theme of photographers' birthdays, but I just keep finding out about more and more of them. When there is a coincedence, a meaningful one in this case, it makes it all the more interesting. Lois Conner and Eugene Atget (not to mention Abraham Lincoln) were all born on February 12th, in 1951, 1857 and 1809, respectively. There is no denying the influence of the French master in Conner's work. She uses a Chinese version of a late 19th-century banquet camera to create a 7x17 inch negative of the changing landscape of China, and has been doing so since the Eighties. (A banquet camera was used to photograph, yes, banquets - the annual meeting of the Masonic Lodge No. 223 or the Funeral Directors' Association Annual Gala Dinner; you get the idea.) The images, originally inspired by a show of Chinese Scholar's Rocks, are of lotus plants, unusual rock formations, architecture, and construction, lots of construction. For years, she made contact platinum prints right in her own apartment, and her tiny brown glass bottles of chemicals sat on top of her bureau, like ladies' perfumes and cologne. Today, she mostly makes enlargements with an inkjet printer on high quality matte paper, which creates a similar effect, as the ink soaks into the paper not unlike the chemistry in a hand-coated platinum print. Recent work, including the new photograph of a wall with stenciled local contractor ads depicted here, is on view now through March 5th in London at Rossi Rossi: http://www.rossirossi.com/

Atget made albumen prints, not platinum, but the effect on Conner's work is recognizable. Perhaps she is the "Atget of China." If you missed last year's ICP show, "Atget: Archivist of Paris", take a look at the website: http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/atget-archivist-paris There is also a nice birthday homage to him here: http://www.photography-news.com/2011/02/in-photos-remembering-french.html

So, Happy Belated Birthday, Lois and Eugene!