Branding. Utica, Montana. 1984. Sam Abell.
In today's story about photographer Sam Abell, I told you what you need to know: Born in Ohio in 1945, attended UK, created an amazing yearbook, worked for National Geographic, coming back for a weekend of talks and honors. If you've never heard Sam Abell's name before, that's the information that will help you win at Trivial Pursuit.
But I was on the phone with him for two hours. No person, not matter how accomplished, needs that much time to rattle off a resume and a few favorite childhood memories.
So if you're one to hang on the every word of smart photographers, here's the stuff you want to know. (For added insight, check out photographer Janet Worne's essay, How Sam Abell Helped me Find my Signature.)
Unless it's in bold, it's straight from Mr. Abell's mouth.
On studying photography at a university with no photography program...
When people ask me about going to college and studying photography, I name the colleges which have programs. Then I tell them to think about a school that has no program, because that’s what I did, and I was the program. Whatever was big on campus and in the state, I got to photograph.
Every year when I was at UK, I bought one new lens. It was what I could afford. I would devote myself to that lens, for a year, until I got the next one. I would master what that lens meant. Over time, by doing that, I learned chiefly what I didn’t want in the way of equipment and technique. There were some lost years, when I was infatuated with wide angle lenses or telephoto lenses.
On his current lineup of equipment...
My growth has been to use less. I now use a highly restricted array. I still photograph with film. I don’t use a digital camera. I use 35 mm or 28 mm lenses. I think those resemble how we see life. My photographs, I believe, aren’t suggestive of equipment. They’re more about the way that I saw the thing.
Also, I learned to use and like using a tripod to get the depth that I wanted in my photographs. Photograph is a flat frame, but within that flatness, I wanted to achieve as much depth as possible. That became my goal artistically. With a tripod and strict, conservative use of lenses, I could get what I wanted.
On how photography shifted from editorial-only...
Yes, there was studio and commercial and fashion and figure studies, and there was art photography, which was very small. Art photography has gotten exponentially larger; a very strong theme has been the manipulation and almost exploitation of classic editorial photography themes – Cindy Sherman, using cameras set up, documentary situations to look lifelike.
Part of that is what you might call art; a theatrical art of styling situations, the rendering of it, the exposing it, the staging of it. (Lexington photographer) Eugene Meatyard was a pioneer of this. His career has gotten much larger than it was in his lifetime -- an artistic pioneer of the staged, arranged and styled photograph.
I looked at that when I was at UK and scratched my head. What Gene was doing seemed interesting, but mostly odd. It didn’t seem like a path I would take, or photography.
I was right about myself, but wrong about photography.
On changing perspectives on documentary photography...
I think Susan Sontag’s essay On Photography cast a shadow of intellectual doubt on documentary photography. It was seen to be suspect and contrived. Suddenly there was authenticity in staged photos. The tables were turned.
When I was photographing the Aboriginal nation, I was a white guy from the North photographing dark people from the South. I had a camera, they didn’t. I was rich, they were poor. It looked exploitive. I felt always that I was pursuing artistic and editorial goals. I never looked back over my shoulder. I was not about to put on the brakes, call what I was doing corrupt and stage situations.
From the Kentuckian yearbook. 1967. Sam Abell.
On photo manipulation...
The golden age of post-production is here. I felt an allure to the dark room in college. You could go in and manipulate the image. When I left UK in 1969, I turned my back on the dark room and took up this challenge where working with 35 mm color slides. The image I took in the field is exactly the image I was obliged to show as finished work to the editor of National Geographic. It had to be impeccable, immaculate, original. With digital photography, I don’t think there will be such a thing. The result I just described is a raw file. No one, but no one uses a raw file.
On photography becoming videography...
The future, the near future, is still capture of a moving image. People are already doing this.
If there’s an arresting image during the World Series, it’s frozen and shown at the end. They can go in and grab a still image from a video clip. It will not be, probably, what we think of as a still image camera or a camera that produces only still images.
They are still, by nature. Technically still. It’s editing for the decisive moment, not stalking it.
Will there be other kinds of photography? Yes. There will be artists,
historically minded photographers, experimenters who will work with
what you might call a traditional still image. But the near future is
the still capture of video. Maybe even the mainstream of photographers in the future will be videographers.
When I was at UK, I had a Super 8. It was a joke amongst my friends. I didn’t photograph the flow of life; the movie I made was tableaus of still images. It wasn’t for me.
Round Pond, Allagash River, Maine. 1975. Sam Abell.
On what the definition of photography will be...
The very thing I took to be photography’s true test has become somewhat obsolete; solving all of the problems of a situation -- space, time moment, life, volume, light and dark -- in the viewfinder. Digital photography is very alluring is you can solve all those later.
The thing I say to myself lightly is, 'Gee, the test I took my life and strove to past, nobody in the future will take.'
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Meet Sam Abell at Fourth Friday featuring ‘Photography Now’
Presented by: Lexington Art League.
When: 6 p.m. Sept. 22.
Where: Loudoun House,
209 Castlewood Drive.
Tickets: $7; free for members.
Call: (859) 254-7024.
Online: www.lexingtonartleague.org.
