| Photographs produced by someone with a truly trained and experienced eye are a rare find these days, especially when you look at the abundance of photography in galleries today. There is so much accessibility to digitalization, auto focus, and Photoshopping that just about anyone has a shot at getting at least one great photo now and again. But when someone takes hold of a camera, and intends to capture the essence of a moment in black and white, and does this for four decades, that is something very special. Steven Poster is perhaps best known for his long professional history as a leading cinematographer for the Hollywood studios. Early in his career he worked on major motion pictures such as Blade Runner and Close Encounters. His work as a director of photography includes Someone to Watch Over Me and Donnie Darko. |  |
D. Dominick Lombardi
Photographs produced by someone with a truly trained and experienced eye are a rare find these days, especially when you look at the abundance of photography in galleries today. There is so much accessibility to digitalization, auto focus, and Photoshopping that just about anyone has a shot at getting at least one great photo now and again. But when someone takes hold of a camera, and intends to capture the essence of a moment in black and white, and does this for four decades, that is something very special.
Steven Poster is perhaps best known for his long professional history as a leading cinematographer for the Hollywood studios. Early in his career he worked on major motion pictures such as Blade Runner and Close Encounters. His work as a director of photography includes Someone to Watch Over Me and Donnie Darko. His most recent work will be released later this year, The Box and Spread. It is Poster’s still photography, however, that he has been faithful to for over 40 years, which led him to the world of movies at an early age.
From the start, Poster’s creative expression and a sense of drama bursts loose, and breaks barriers in works like Living Theater 1969. Then there are celebrations that unfold in the hip-shot photograph Accordion Man 1997. Sometimes there are lone figures that find that place in between in the compelling O’Hare Tunnel 1989, the magical Sortie 1992, the memorable moment in Bicycle Dream 1971, the strangeness in Picasso’s Door 1995, or Mount Rushmore 1975, which makes an incredible social statement about living and experiencing life in the 20th century.
Poster handles many concepts with great ease. Nature and the elements blend beautifully in the pin-hole-like photograph titled Horse & Barn 1972. Fear can be felt in the creepy content of Halloween Hollywood 1993, while Poster’s sense of humor shows through in Ford Carburetor 1972, in the hilarious Morse Ave Barber 1966, and in the oddly situated and darker Hiding Doll 1993.
With all this said about Poster’s storytelling ability, he is best at formulating and recognizing quality compositions. The composition in Circles 1969 is in a class by itself. The action, the motion, the thoughts projected, and the spaces around the figures is electric, powerful, even musical. He takes risks too, playing with the horizon line, throwing it off level which can easily be seen as too playful or easy. But Poster pulls it off. Especially in works like Porcelain Dolls 2001, and Devil Woman 1994. Then there are works that tell quiet stories which are miles thick, like in Dead Table 1973, or Farm Sale 1970, where the lost and the forgotten meet in the bright sun.
I asked Steven Poster a few questions as he prepares for his one-person exhibition Around the Edges at AFP Galleries in New York City.
D. Dominick Lombardi: What first got you interested in photography and cinematography?
Steven Poster: I got interested around ten years old—I’m sure it was unconscious at that age. I felt good when I was composing an image. You keep doing the thing that feels good, don’t you. By the time I was 12 I knew that photography was going to be a big part of my life, and when I was 14 I met the coolest man I had ever seen, a news cameraman. That’s when it really hit me. I wanted to be him. Best of all, he moved in next door to me, and became my mentor. Fortunately when it came time to go to college he insisted that I study still photography, and he was right.
DDL: Who or what inspires you?
SP: I am inspired when I see photographs that feel like there was some intuitive sense involved in capturing that image. I’m inspired when I see a photograph that tells a story. I’m inspired by everyday life—just watching people really inspires me. Kertez is a great teacher, as is Robert Frank. Lartigue amazes me. Disfarmer saw people in a way nobody else did. I could go on forever. There were so many that said, “My photography will tell you a story.” And that is what they did for their life, and that is what I have tried to do with my life.
DDL: What is usually the first thing you look for when taking a photograph?
SP: Content, then composition. Often, my sense of humor has to be tweaked first for me to be interested. Then, as I lift my camera, the composition becomes clear. My fingers start doing the technical stuff, and when the timing feels right I push the shutter, and that’s a pretty clinical way of explaining something that can happen in an instant without much conscious thought.
DDL: Is there one thing or subject you can never photograph too much?
SP: It’s a matter of having my camera with me as much of my life as I can. I wish I carried it with me every day. There have been long periods where I did that. I was never without my camera. Even now people accuse me of having a fashion accessory (the camera) because it’s with me so much of the time. Life is what I can’t stop shooting.
DDL: How have your 40 years of experience as a cinematographer for some of Hollywood’s best films specifically affected your still photography?
SP: It’s odd, but when I’m in production on a movie I don’t shoot much personal stuff. I have my camera with me every day. But it’s mostly used for reference material. Sometimes during the scouting period I may make an image or two for myself. But my focus is on the cinematography. To me, it’s all the same thing. When I am shooting on the street or making a movie I am doing my photography. On some level they both have a sense of that satisfaction I got when I was ten years old. There are vastly different skill sets in play, though. The work I do in movies is like painting a mural. I have control to mold the image, tools to create the tone, and movement and help to do it all. In my personal work (as I like to call it) I am free to lift the camera to my eye and take the picture. The difference is a little like throwing a pot on a pottery wheel or building a sculpture. There is a more immediate satisfaction in throwing the pot.
DDL: What is the shot that got away? That one great photograph you missed because you didn’t have your camera with you?
SP: Oh my gosh, this is such a loaded question. I miss shots all of the time. We all do. It’s a bit of a percentage game. Timing is everything. The more I shoot, the better my timing becomes, and the more immediate and real my photographs become. I often remember many of them. But there is one opportunity I didn’t take, and I kick myself every time I think about it. I was doing a movie with French actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon together again for the first time in 30 years. We were shooting our last day on location in New York. I had my camera on me. We were in front of the Paris Theater, and it was playing Day for Night, and I didn’t photograph the two of them with the theater in the background. It might not have been a great picture, but it was an historical moment lost to my camera. I hate that.
