2024 10 01

Moonlight over the horizon. St Germain, Wisconsin. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Notes From a Podcast (a semi-regular ongoing series??)
PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf episode 82 - Matthew Genitempo

While editing an endless pool of images, I often listen to Sasha’s great podcast full of interviews with fine art photographers (is there a better label than fine art photographer? photographer, I guess?). I feel the need to specify: not commercial photography, which is what I’m personally more familiar with. This was a standout episode and very much worth a listen, however the following things stood out prominently.

One: Matthew said he gives himself a geographical boundary and then goes out to make work and see what comes back; see what the pictures are telling him, instead of going out and trying to illustrate a picture he has in his head. His recent book project (Dogbreath) was made in Tucson, Arizona because he was drawn to the distinct sunlight quality and unique urban setting (you see things that are new to you and it sparks your imagination). He visited a school and found the local photo students were not as excited about their own familiar city as he was. Each morning, he’d begin his day with a jog and use it to scout the territory and even meet people that became subjects in the book.

I love all of this and strongly agree with the sentiments. My own personal project began this year with “Illinois outside of Cook County” as my boundaries. Quickly, I’ve learned these boundaries are likely too large, however, I’ve also been listening to what the images are telling me, and themes and ideas are slowly emerging and my approach is adapting. Hopefully next year I will have more time to dedicate to this project, but I loved hearing and learning from Matthew’s experiences in his existing book projects.

Two: Sasha made an amazing baseball player slump analogy. When a player isn’t performing, usually either their mechanics are off or they are pressing. They are trying to hard and overthinking it, instead of going on instinct. An artist works best under the same circumstances. Let the ball come to you and make contact. Don’t force it.

This analogy is amazing and I strongly agree with it. The other day, I was discussing my approach with a friend and explaining to him how, on my smaller shoots, I operate mostly on feel, while doing everything myself. Lights go up, find an angle, find a power setting to match some settings on the camera, ambient lights are considered, emotions of the subject are considered, etc, etc, all mostly on auto-pilot. Comparing this to approach to my commercial jobs, where the final direction and style are usually pre-determined and there is a crew constantly awaiting your direction isn’t always an easy task for me, because my intuition is to feel it out first, then act.

Three: There’s a quote from Judith Joy Ross that Matthew loves and thinks of as one of the formative ways he looks at photography and helped open him up: “I have a large beautiful wooden camera. I’m a quick talker and I can convince people in a few seconds because I’m sincerely interested in them, but I am more interested in capturing what I see in them. It’s not that I want to be their friend, it’s that I see their life and it’s amazing and I want to put it in an image. It’s a short but deep connection. Then I go back to being alone, but have one more lighting bug in a bottle. One more piece of evidence as to who we are.

This is beautiful and I aim to internalize this sentiment and allow it to help me in my process. Often, my instinct is to make photographs of people without them being aware of it. This is an approach which is increasingly frowned upon by a society sensitive to a constant and over-bearing surveillance. I love the idea of first better connecting with my subjects and then lowering the barriers to allow them to be themselves. This is my approach on every commercial project I undertake and there’s no reason I can’t also bring it into my personal work. Even if it takes more effort and won’t always work, I think it’s worth the effort.

Two final details that I jotted down and enjoyed:

Robert Adams talks about “the gift picture” … one image that sort of ties a project together and you can work off of.

Sasha: “There’s drudgery in every dream job” … on packing books into boxes all, day, long. Or, in my case, committing to write daily about it all.

-Clayton

EPISODE LINKS:

podcast link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3jMjkuu3kPl0N8GxX3tEZZ

photographer’s website: https://www.matthewgenitempo.com/dogbreath-1

to read: Core Curriculum https://books.apple.com/us/book/core-curriculum/id949942181