You said that art is seeing the world in a particular way and trying to communicate those ways to others? I think I make art for me but I make it for others too. I want to communicate with other people. I feel I’m very privileged to have a place in society where I can spend time looking at things and researching things, and there is nothing necessarily unique about my interests. I figure if I’m interested in something then there’s probably ten million other people in the world who would be interested in it as well. Maybe my job is to try and tell those ten million people about it, in such a way that a lot of people can understand. What advice would you give an emerging photographer or a young artist who is just starting out? My main advice is that at the end of the day you have to do stuff that you enjoy, and you have to do what you love. The best advice I ever received in terms of building a career is don’t get famous doing something you don’t like, and live below your means (laughs). What is unique about your creative process? I spend an enormous amount of time at different places, where I will go and try to find a spot, photograph it, and then come back and look at it. I then realize I could do something else. It’s a slow process, and there are definitely photographs that I’ve worked on for four years at the same places, trying new ideas, and trying to understand how these different places wanted to be represented. I’ve been offered commissions a couple times to photograph specific places, and I’ve always turned them down, because the idea that I have to go somewhere and take a picture to deliver on someone else’s schedule. It was just impossible for me to guarantee. ■
Interview by Andrea Blanch All photographs are Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures
Paglen’s visual work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Modern, London; The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; the 2008 Taipei Biennial; the Istanbul Biennial 2009, and numerous other solo and group exhibitions.