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Leah Oates: How did you find artists for this show, and what was the curatorial premise? |
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Lesley A. Martin, interviewed by Leah Oates
Natalie Czech, from The Ubiquitous Image curated by Lesley A. Martin, New York Photo Festival 2008. Courtesy of the artist.
Leah Oates: How did you find artists for this show, and what was the curatorial premise?
Lesley A. Martin: Given that I had to basically curate this from my desk, I tried to work with ideas that are already on my mind, although I also tried to take the opportunity to do something I don’t ordinarily have the chance to do, which is to work with large-scale pieces, or with work of which texture and the object was also an important part. Some of the artists I had already been talking to and knew about their work, the others I found via books, catalogs, or the Internet. The show was called The Ubiquitous Image, and in a nutshell, I was interested in artists who are using pre-existing images as a way of investigating issues of reproduction, dissemination, and the incredible, seemingly non-stop accumulation of images that we all participate in.
LO: Is your background in art history, and are you an artist as well?
LAM: My background is in cultural studies; I have a particularly useless bachelor of philosophy, with a minor in photography and a partial museum studies degree, which I hope to be finishing soon…I am not an artist although I have enough technical background to get nostalgic about the smell of Kodak fixer.
LO: What are do you consider innovative photography? I’m seeing a lot of work that is similar in style to that of Nan Goldin or Gregory Crewdson. Both artists are great but I think a whole host of artists are riffing on their work and it’s getting a bit boring. What do you think?
LAM: Anything that succeeds in creating a strong image that has never been seen in quite the same way before is a welcome contribution. I like smart work that works on multiple levels—that has visual and emotional impact but also makes you think. I try not to be biased against a particular technique or approach, but I would agree that there is an awful lot of derivative work out there. When I teach, I try to encourage students to be fully informed about their influences, and then to work through them as best possible to get to their own voice, and to create their own style. I believe it’s perfectly legitimate to borrow the best things one likes from the people you respect, but to move beyond that to make those things your own is the really tough.
LO: What make a great photograph?
LAM: If there were an easy-to-repeat formula, the world of photography would be a really narrow, uninspiring place to live in. Consider the best photographs by Harry Callahan, Daido Moriyama, Nan Goldin, Stephen Shore, Susan Meiselas, Marco Breuer, Paul Graham, or Jacqueline Hassink. What can you say that would accurately describe all of them? In the most reductionistic summation of what makes a great photo: creativity and vision, visual intelligence, something to say. I should mention, too, that while I get excited by a great photo, I’m always even more excited by a phenomenal body of work.
LO: What makes photography a unique medium, and why should it be taken seriously in the market as painting, for instance?
LAM: Photography is a unique medium because of its indexical relationship to the real, because it is a part of all of our lives on a daily basis in some way or another, because it has power in our life to sell us things, to convince us of facts or fictions, to influence our thinking, to connect to others, to serve as our memory. … It surrounds us in ways that we take for granted, and that’s what I really looked for in the artists I included in my show. None of them take for granted the power of the image, and each presented their own analysis of the grammar, syntax, and use of photography. As far as the market goes, I really resist making an assessment of great art or image-making on the basis of what the market responds to. I think it’s obvious the democratic, complex, and multivalent power of the photographic image has been part of the traditional difficulty in being taken seriously by the arbiters of high culture, be it the market or museums.
LO: It’s fairly recent that photography has been taken seriously as an art media. As a result, photography as a media is a bit ghettoized within the art world due to it being non-unique and not as archival or as traditional as painting. What are your thoughts on this?
LAM: I’m sorry. I think it’s a really boring question and one the photo community needs to get beyond.
LO: What do you think of the art market and art fairs?
LAM: Well, it’s obvious the market is the dominant means, for better or worse, that artists have to disseminate their work. The art market, though, is not one monolithic thing. It’s the gallery system, it’s the auctions, it’s the art fairs, it’s collectors big and small, it’s selling your prints online. If you really want to be a “professional” artist, you had better be somewhat knowledgeable about how these things all come together, and figure out at on what level you want to interact with it. They are an unavoidable fact of life in the art world.
LO: What advice would you give to emerging photographers and artists in NYC?
LAM: Keep educating yourself, keep focusing on your work, try to understand how your work might fight into the larger picture of things. Try to be honest and realistic about that. Get connected to what happens in New York and in the art at large. Read art magazines, read books, go to shows, go to openings, talk to other artists. Talk to curators, talk to editors. And then get back to focusing on your work.
LO: What shows or projects are you curating or working on now and in the future?
LAM: I am thankfully back to working on books. The spring 08 list is just getting out into the world. I’m excited about all the great books on that list, like Takashi Homma’s first U.S. monograph. I’m excited about our fall 08 list, including a new iteration of Paul Fusco’s RFK Funeral Train with twice as many new images as the first trade edition. But I’m already thinking about spring 09, too. In particular, I’m excited about working with Lyle Rexer on his book, the first significant survey on Abstraction in photography. I’m excited about Doug DuBois’ first monograph and the first survey of Japanese photo books from the 60s and 70s by Ivan Vartanian and Ryuichi Kaneko. Lots of great stuff in the Aperture pipeline!
