photography

M o m e n t s M i c h a l R e e d

INTERVIEW with Michal Reed by Linda Deer

(You have lots to read while the images load).

LD: I had thought that when you took the high school job you'd decided to give up your photographic explorations.

MR: The first couple of years were not conducive to art making. I was mostly single parenting, working with a large amount of emotionally needy high school students, dealing with a major change in household economics, trying to take care of a large house. But then Nick got his driver's license, my reputation at school as a rigorous but caring teacher preceded me minimizing discipline problems, the Bed and Breakfast business started taking care of the house, and all of a sudden, for the first time probably since before I had kids over twenty years ago, once again I had blocks of uninterrupted time where my thoughts could really wander and explore. I had time to write down ideas, to begin taking photos, and then more time to work with the photos.

LD: But you always said that kids broke you of your tendency of procrastinating.

MR: True. Since both of them couldn't be relied upon to sleep the night through until they were three, never knowing when I'd have a clear head, I began to use every moment that I was capable of being productive to get things done. This was why I was able to do what I did in grad school.

LD: I've heard many teachers say that they can't pursue their own work when they are teaching.

MR: It's not just teaching, it's the mix. Like you can teach and make art if you don't have kids, or have kids and make art if you don't have to have a full time job. Or maybe you can even teach and have kids and make art if you have a full time cook, nanny . . .

LD: Wife?

MR: Yeah, OK, true -- most of our male professors had kids back in the 70's. But I wouldn't have wanted that old male role. I loved parenting my boys. I'm glad I made that choice. You know feminism is always saying we can do both, but the idea was always side by side. I'm hoping that I will be able to do one after the other. My youngest child will go to college this year and though I will still be teaching, after over twenty years of continuous interruptions, the training has been incredible, even though 185 days of my year will be spent teaching, I will still have all of those evenings and the other 180 days of time that I can set aside for uninterrupted thought. I will be able to put the energy and focus and love that I have put into my children into my self-indulgent art making practice.

LD: It seems like you already have a pretty big start.

MR: As I said, it started when Nick got his driver's license two years ago.

LD: You're calling this body of work "Moments", right?

MR: Yes.

LD: Are you familiar with Anna and Bernard Blume's "Moments Which I Intend to Remember?"

MR: Yes.

LD: Do you see yourself as working in a similar manner?

MR: I think we are both looking at what our culture considers important to record, however, and maybe I am stretching here, their work still seems to emphasize the preciousness of one moment over another. I can't help but wonder which moments do they intend to forget? What would those look like? What is lost?

LD: I like how they record the world of the ordinary as it is quickly changing at the same time as they photograph that which is staying the same.

MR: And I guess we have this inquiry into the ordinary in common. Much of my content has been chosen as acts that are unimportant, or mundane, or not worth documenting simply because they are so common place. Susan Sontag, years ago in "Plato's Cave" spoke about the parental responsibility, the social need, of documenting one's children -- birthdays, graduations, all the benchmark firsts. We tend to photograph the irregular rather than the every day, and I wanted to look at that. Our lives are mostly repetitions of mundane acts, and traditionally we have chosen to photo the unordinary, the unusual events, the poor the rich, whatever is the other to us. Rarely do we give attention (and value) to what is right there in front of us all of the time.

LD: Doesn't the series format almost invalidate the focus upon the individual moment?

MR: No. Rather I think that it reinforces the enormity of these moments. In having many, in being overwhelmed, one is reminded of just how much is left out in any given recording. I love how Monet in his Haystack and Cathedral work made all of these paintings of the same thing, but with different light. The same object became infinitely different. Yet many people when they see just one painting, go oh wow a Monet isn't it great, and they miss the whole point. I love when museums show at least four or five next to each other so that we can remember what it was he was doing. Similarly, though without the Buddhists jargon and intention, in a way, Monet, too, was exploring this idea of moments. In a photographic sense, I would like the viewer to question why s/he chooses to photograph a particular moment or collect some one else's idea of a memorable moment.

LD: How do you decide how many images to use in a series? Do you have an intended amount in mind when you begin? For example, Sol Lewitt's wall drawings were commissioned for a specific wall, but when exhibited or bought, they can be reconfigured to a specific site. How do you decide when there are enough?

MR: It depends on the project. The "Disrobing" series could be reconfigured to fit whatever wall, but "Yard Duty" really needs to be set up like a calendar, arranged into rows of five for each day of the week; the shape reinforces the content. Though I have to admit that I missed some days, the duty is really for nine weeks, and I just shortened the series to eight weeks in order to accommodate what I had.

LD: Ed Rusha created photo series of the mundane in the 60's -- the gas stations, motels, parking lots. How do you see your work as different from his?

MR: Sorry to make such a simplistic feminist judgment here, but his content is so male. His gas stations, motels, parking lots, are all outside, impersonal, what we pass by. The objects are what is repeated, not the experience. His "Records" are more much more personal, as he demonstrates the process of selection from what is socially available, but then this work is also much less known. My work is more personal, more internal, more self-absorbed.

LD: Are you saying that "self-absorbed" is a feminist stance?

MR: Ha! Maybe. But I'm thinking more along the lines of the abject; looking at that which we don't want to examine but need to. When is it important to be "self-absorbed", when does this lead to growth and productivity, when is it of social value? I was just thinking the other day as I went upstairs to work on my writing and photo projects and my son went to his x-box, really what is the difference? Both of us are isolating ourselves, obsessing, hyper-focused for no particular social good. I can delude myself that some day my work might be shown or my writings read and this might give joy or insight to others, but while I'm working I have no assurance of that. Just like my son, I am not doing the dishes or mowing the lawn or feeding the dogs. I am escaping from the very mundane responsiblities that I am trying to give value to.

But sort of back to Rusha, even my "Way To Work" series where I photographed Lake Success -- isn't that a great name? Why fictionalize reality when it is already so well written? Anyway, even though there is repetition in this work, and it is an external, public subject, I was photographing the experience of repetition, the routine that so many of us experience, rather than the lake itself. I wanted the viewer to think about what s/he notices everyday on the way to work . . .kind of getting back to Monet's haystacks, even, and the changing light.

LD: The Bechers and their following photographed objects which they considered sculptures. They emphasized a certain "objectivity." Do you see your "Disrobing" series as having anything in common with the Bechers'?

MR: Well, I like the idea of a photo being a sculpture and many of the piles of clothes look like the body has simply melted out of them. I was conscious about consistent lighting (often using the auto flash), and the framing is consistent as well. I guess there is a sort of dead-pan play with "objectivity" just because the content is so silly.

LD: Candida Hofer also plays with formally balanced objectivity as she creates a sharp coldness -- her use of color and light is absent of human warmth. Do you consider that objectivity?

MR: She has so many human environments and they are all different yet the same in their absence of the personal, of the quirky, of the warm. Without being a bad girl Tracy Emin, I want to at least suggest some of the messy fun of being human. The human experience of doing, of engaging, rather than the human facade of what everything looks like. . . I guess that's why I like the component in "Disrobing" of literally stripping, leaving the social presentation in a pile. Hofer, even as she presents all of these public places, even as her work suggests narrative, also suggests an alien world through the absence of human clutter. I think it is our clutter that defines us, makes us individual and most interesting.

North Palisades, from the Mountaineering series 45" x 63"

LD: How did you become interested in photographing your feet?

MR: I didn't feel self conscious about it as long as I was alone in the wilderness, but when I started doing the urban staircases in hotel lobbies and museums I began to feel really eccentric.

LD: Really, you feel self conscious?

MR; Of course. Anyway, I began photographing my feet when I was immersed in a quest to challenge the Ansel Adams default aesthetic for landscape photography. Adam's agenda required his viewers to see vast spaces in order to understand the importance of putting aside and protecting the large areas and ecosystems that became the parks. I, too, value the grandeur and space of the wilderness. But that aloof distance that was needed to see things as a whole, at the same time, excludes any attempt to interpret or share the personal meaning and experience of that place at a variety of different moments. Much of my interest in mountaineering has been the appreciation of a context that supports a sense of presence, of being in the moment. I was thinking about this as I was hiking, while looking at the ground. I'm always looking at the ground as I hike, watching my steps. The distant views, the parts that get photographed, are such a small part of the expedition. The steps are where the rhythm, the transformation, the flow of ideas takes place. For the most part, it is the ground that significantly marks the outing.

LD: And the grand views are unimportant?

MR: No, not unimportant. In fact it is the view that motivates me to get up at four in the morning and to hike, looking at the ground, for hours. I usually include at least one context marker in a series, but the proportions are turned around. The small foot becomes very large and the vast landscape becomes very small.

LD: Are you familiar with Richard Long's photographs of his walks?

MR: Yes. I love how his work really gets across the sense of discovery, of obsession of a process that has taken over the recorder. I love how he moves over the planet, creating a context that then guides him.

LD: Do you see a similarity between your work and his?

MR: I am impressed that he has so many walking projects, that there is this incredible sense of time and commitment. He too gets close to the absurdity of making personal sense of an activity. Is our work the same? Yes and no. Obviously we are both walking, and somehow working to document the experience of this, but I feel that he still places more emphasis upon the visual record of a visual experience whereas I would like a visual record as a marker of a physical experience. If this makes any sense. We may be both up against the line that separates visual and kinesthetic experience, and I may not be able to get across as much of the kinesthetic-being-there experience as I'd like, but my sense is that this is an intentional difference.

Sea Hands, Puerto Rico 57"x 52"

LD: How did you make the jump from all of that rock and feet to water and hands?

MR: Again it's the braking down of moments, this time swimming instead of waking. My boys and I were surfing in Puerto Rico, I'd taken lots of "steps" through the rain forest. Originally, I wanted to show the moments of swimming: one hand, one school of fish, one bit of brain coral at a time. I collected my swimming hands, and then, since there was film left in my Fuji disposable underwater camera, I took various pictures of my boys snorkeling. Initially, I approached this work as with the mountaineering series, wanting to document the moment-by-moment observations. But with swimming, unlike with walking, one's view is always, simultaneously, the greater view. The movement of the body is in synch with the scene to be visually explored. When I arranged my one-hour photos, I slowly took out images of the hands and found that the movement was still present, though the concentration became distracted. I slipped into the story. Stand back and one gets the impression of the movement of swimming, one hand stretched out after the other. Get close and one becomes the swimmer, seeing beyond the hands. The hands at times become like shells, transformed by the presence of the environment. Within this environment enter the figures: unobserved, observed, playing, interacting, leaving.

LD: Was the experience of working on the rain forest steps different from your Sierra steps?

MR: With the rain forest images I was sort of just exploring my own formula. I didn't know if I would get anything that would be of interest to me. I was delighted to see how lush they were -- what did I expect after all of that rock, right? But whereas the mountaineering images were for the most part pretty straightforward, plodding images, the rain forest ones had a sense of mystery. I photographed hundreds of steps through the rain forests of Puerto Rico. Finally, I reduced the images from El Yunque, to three sets of two. Two steps are beautiful on their own, but the six suggest the continual process of stepping into consciousness again and again and again. The feet step out of the darkness into the light. They do so again. And again. Nothing is fixed. Awareness is contextually and materially fleeting.

Stepping into the light 36"x 26"

LD: And why did you have them printed at Kinkos instead of producing an Iris print?

MR: Because the best quality of print that Kinkos offers, usually suited for advertising and family photos, will only last for a year. As in much of the Moment work, the process questions what we choose to consider as significant moments that we want to remember and record. It just seemed strange to me that someone would request a huge blow up of a family member knowing that it would only last a year. Do they figure they'll just get a new photo, or a new person the next year? It's such a big shift from the precious document of not too long ago. I plan to re-print these same images, once a year, to further explore the ephemeralness of our experience and intentions.

LD: And what about the size? Aren't you suggesting that these are personal, intimate moments? Wouldn't a smaller format perhaps be more appropriate?

MR: By printing them large, and using the one year process, a shift in the social photographic purpose of personal photography is exposed. For forty dollars, one can have their precious moment magnified through reproduction as a poster though these objects are only guaranteed to last up to one year. Presumably we will then have another moment of significance that will take over that other moment both in our memory and on our wall. Material and cultural values are connected. For better or worse, what we value today we may no longer find suitable for tomorrow. In an age of rapid change and growth, reality as we know it can be recorded for less than a year at a time, replaced again and again as if the past never existed.

Green Meditation 36" x 90"

LD: Didn't you experiment with exterior vinyl posters too?

MR: Yes. I was thinking about the trendiness of Buddhism, how it has become comodified, and was wondering how much of it would become assimilated into an inherent aspect of our culture and how much would quickly become passé and fade in the next decade. I have been concerned with the commodification of Asian practices, from Feng Shue wind chimes to the ubiquitous use of "Nameste" with hands folded when coming and going among hip affluent consumers. I fear that as our culture inevitably dismisses the surface aspects of the practices to the designation of yet another fad, people will also dismiss the deeper, more healthy aspects of the practice. Much as the fitness craze of the 80's once labeled, allowed our culture to dismiss the integration of a healthy physical body into our lifestyles. Once one has bought all of the associated objects, we tire of the practice; it is time to move on to another lucrative market and the values along with the objects of that phase are sent to the thrift store. One sends off the leg warmers and no longer needs to maintain a healthy body; one sends away the chimes and the meditation cushions and no longer needs to think about loving-kindness. "Oh yeah," we say, "I did that." I printed Green Meditation on vinyl, at a Kinkos banner poster sale. This object, whose process Kinkos assures me is suitable for everything from advertising to family photos, is guaranteed to last up to six months. Memory of course is a way of not being present. The flip side of using a process that quickly fades is that one does have to produce a new image. Since we can't take it for granted that that place on the wall will always be filled we need to reevaluate. What is important to me now? What is it that I want to inspire or soothe me? What do I want to discard?

LD: I don't know why, but when I think of "green" I also think of a putting green. I think of the green of the golf course, where people drive and putt and exercise specific control for specific goals.

MR: Yes, that works. The piece itself demonstrates a walking meditation: the subject can wander in all directions with very little difference. Individually, the focus shifts within images, the ground changes slightly, but for the most part a balanced pattern is formed that suggests the peace of meditation.

LD: However, though a walking meditation is supposed to provide peace, the manner in which the leg is cropped, and the way that the photos are arranged as a pinwheel, the peaceful intention seems to be transformed into a frenzied activity.

MR: Yes, and meditation becomes one more task of amusement, one more practice to be consumed, and to fade. The original piece is quite faded. I put it up on the side of the house and it didn't last the summer.

LD: With your newer work you've changed the title from "Moments" to "Watch Your Step?"

MR: Actually, all the work is still under the umbrella of "Moments". "Watch Your Step" has many references: literally, watch so you don't fall; emotionally, be careful of what you say; consciously, be present with whatever you might be doing. Weston changed how we look at bell peppers, I would like to bring awareness to how we view the auto-pilot moments in our lives. Both the living and the recording. Like triggers within lucid dreaming, I would like for viewers to remember aspects of my images as they recognize the significance of the mundane in their own lives whether it be watching feet while walking, doing dishes, laundry, taking out the trash, whatever.

Watch Your Step 36"x 105"

LD: But in the "Watch Your Step" work you have added staircases. Man-made objects. Some seem private and some seem like they are from urban settings.

MR: Do you know Martin Creed's work?

LD: Some. He's concerned about the relationship between the object and its context.

MR: Yes. Like the balloon installation where the room had the exact same amount of air inside and outside of the balloons. The importance is the relationship between the two. In my new work many of the pieces are composed of both external and internal environments, reinforcing the emotional relationships of each upon the other.

LD: They have a sort of formal beauty. Like Sam Taylor Wood's Five Revolutionary Seconds. MR: Oh dear.

LD: What?

MR: I like the post modern play of multiple perspectives and narratives in her work; also the seduction of beauty after all the 90's abject work. But there is something so slick, so for the museum. And though I am interested in beauty, I'm not interested in simply replicating what is expected but in questioning and challenging and hopefully opening up our assumed default notions of what exactly beauty is. It's difficult and maybe this is why it is sort of compelling.

LD: What about the work of say, Nan Goldin?

MR: Maybe I'm not looking at her work closely enough, maybe I am not open enough, but I see her work as more about the erasure of beauty than the implementation of a new kind of beauty. In my (landscape) work I'm very aware that the lighting isn't zone, the color isn't Rowell, yet there is always a conscious, playful rhythm to the arrangement of the objects. This becomes the entry point. There is activity in following the arrangements.

LD: There seems to be a way in which the addition of the stairs adds an assumed cultural notion of beauty as you choose locations that already lend themselves to accepted design standards. Didn't you say the red piece is of the Drake Hotel in Chicago? Isn't that cheating a little? Or maybe being lazy even?

MR: It's interesting that you would say that. Dagny Corcoran Grant was looking at my work and sharing her books with me and she suggested that I consider beauty and discovery. I was thinking that I wanted to include walking in my house but realized that I don't look at my feet when I'm walking on flat carpet and know where I'm going. Except for the stair case. It wasn't until I printed the pictures that I realized the formal connection between the oak staircase and the granite floor with the dried grasses and boulders of the sierras. Then I wanted staircases to match all of my mountaineering steps. For the first time I was thinking about collecting images in terms of how they looked instead of what they meant.

LD: Why didn't you pair up all of your stairs with your steps?

MR: I guess this is where I admit to an ethically aesthetic laziness. Some were so complex and wonderful on their own. In a way this extended my idea of losing consciousness. The red one of the Drake lobby that you referred too just took me over. There is enough information to play with a narrative, but I also just love all of that red and gold and blue.

LD: Do you think the beauty becomes a distraction?

MR: In a way, given the context of that piece next to the others, that is the point.

Yard Duty, 10:22 40 x 8.5" x 11"

LD: I was thinking about your earlier work, "Yard Duty" and how you said that you were drawn to the beauty of your surroundings, but there was still more going on there. You have the lovely changing sky and seasons, but the piece is funny.

MR: Lots of people say that.

LD: You don't think so?

MR: I know it's quirky . . . maybe it's less funny if you're the one standing out there every day at 10:22.

LD: You did mention the first shot's tower as a prison reference.

MR: Yeah, students aren't the only ones who feel the confinement of bells and locked gates.

LD: But those palm trees. . .

MR: Oh yes, sunny California.

LD: And why do you focus upon the sky rather than the kids?

MR: Back again to routine. Most of us have lives of routine, moments in our day that are comprised of tedious duty, moments that are seemingly inescapable. Commuters take the same route, workers eat lunch in the same place, we pick up the mail, all of us have some moment in our day that is unexciting and predictable. However, what we do with these moments addresses our most intimate individuality. We can focus upon the task at hand, we can escape into Walter Mitty fantasy, we can split our attention between what we are required to do and something else. Though we may have tedious tasks in our day, there are many ways to avoid being consumed and made miserable by them. The attention placed upon the shifting sky and the changing leaves suggests that we can use our time and attention to find some aspect of pleasure within the tedium of the repetitively mundane.

Disrobing 120+ images, 8.5"x11" each

LD: Was it this interest in routine that led you to the "Disrobing" series?

MR: Actually, I'd been meaning to do that for years. Friends have always commented upon how I take my clothes off in a lump and often leave them on the floor as if I had simply melted out of them. With the "Moment" umbrella I now had a context.

LD: How often did you photograph your clothes?

MR: Once a day, at the end of the "work" day. I started in the fall and went through winter. You can see it's not like I dress up for work.

LD: Many of the image are rather androgynous.

MR: Except of course the ones with the bras, the bloody underwear, the tampons.

LD: I was thinking jeans and tees . . .and I have to admit that after seeing this work I have become much more self conscious about how I leave my clothes.

MR: Surely you don't leave them as much a mess as I do?

LD: Yes I do and I love the images where there are clearly three or four days of accumulated clothes all over the bath room.

MR: I wanted to be honest. When we clean up for guests they see the socially generic way in which we are supposed to present ourselves instead of the quirky individuality of our lives. The blood is an element of lack of control, no way of knowing, part of moving on anyway, what women do, what we all can do. I like how this work can signify the body without representing it. We become more what we buy and use than our actual bodies. To leave the clothes on the floor is to disregard the importance of the skin of the snake as it is left behind. But where is the new person? Back again with a new skin to shed night after night.

LD: The photographs seem to serve as testimony to the moment of transition in each day, from most often the public persona to the private one. That moment when we take off the clothes of our day, that time of day when one lets go of who one is in the world, and strips down to the private self in the private space. I like how the piece lends itself to narrative; like the one of the dog looking in and the pile of clothes right by the door

MR: For me the piece is also a journal. The three images in a row in the green bathroom that have different night gowns on the floor are from when I was so sick I stayed in bed all day and only got up to take a steam bath. When I'm in the black and white bath it is because I am displaced by b and b guests. . . .Viewers wouldn't know this, but I do. They can make up their own stories. Or not.

LD: Visually, the work is simultaneously overwhelming and soothing. With so many images, one feels overwhelmed with information, with the responsibility to pay attention.

MR: And that is how our lives can be, if we try to take on more than a few moments at a time. However, one doesn't need to step back very far in order to let go of the information, and see the sensual color and the shapes of our lives. When we step back, when we let go of the detail, one can witness a lovely, sensual flow. The effect of the energy of the wall, is to reproduce the energy of consciousness; isolation can become grounding and comforting rather than alienating.

LD: What's happening with the breakfast dishes, laundry, and trash series?

MR: I'm just collecting images at the moment. I can see them as wall pieces as with the "Disrobing" series, or I'm thinking about integrating them with other water, hiking or stairs photos. I don't know. The "Moments" Umbrella seems to keep getting larger and larger.

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