CENTERQuarterly is publishedby the Centerfor Photographyat Woodstock((PW), 59 TinkerStreet,Woodstock,NY12498.(914)679-9957.Copyright1989,the Centerfor Photography at Woodstock.Allrightsreserved.Nopart of the contentsmaybe reproduced withoutwrittenpermissionof the publisher.Allworksillustratedin the Quarterlyare copyrightedby the individualartistswhoproducedthem;copyrightfor essaysbelongito the authors.All opinions,ideas,and illustrationsare thoseof the writm and artists themselvesand do not in anywayrepresentofficialpolicyof CPWor its membership.All manusaiptsand an worksubmittedmustincludeSASEfor return.CPW,whiletakingall reasonablecare,cannotbe responsiblefor unsolicitedmaterials.ISSN0890-4634
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by Gay Leonhardt
Kenro Izu' s work can be seen in fashion magazines, in ads for Tiffany or Cartier, or at PhotofindGalleryin Soho, New York City. He is a commercialphotographerwho specializesin jewelry and small objects, thoughhe can photographa Canon copier. He is also a photographerof stone monuments and still lifes with flowers. In both the commercialand thepersonalwork he's known for his handlingof light.
When he camefrom Japan to the U.S. A. seventeen years ago, he apprenticedhimself, workingas an assistantto Ken Mori, a commercialphotographer.After threeyears heopenedhisown commercialstudio. Beginning in 1979, when he went to Egypt to photographthe pyramids, Kenro has beenphotographingancientstonesites. He workswith a custom-builtl 4x20" camera to create platinum/palladiumprints. He has brought this camera into the studio to do his still lifes.
I met with Kenro to talk about the relationshipbetween his commercialand personalwork. The phrase"personalwork" was given to me with the assignment.If elt awkward with it, as though it suggested there was nothing personalabout working commercially.Initially, when talking on the phone, I fudged the phrase, saying, "commercialand your own work, or whatever you callit. " But I fell into thephrase. Kenro is a relaxed, very attentive, direct man who is easy to talk with. He jumped right into the thick of it on answeringmy first question.
GL: Tell me a bit about your background. How long have you been a photographer?
Kl: I opened my own studio fourteen years ago. Originally I wanted to be a fine-arts photographer, but there were financial considerations. I always wanted to be a landscape photographer, but since I got to do commercial studio still lifes, I became more interested in still life, but with a personal approach.
GL: So you feel working commerciallyinfluenced your personalphotography?
Kl: It used to be that I never thought of doing a still life as a personal work. It was always bread and butter to me. You photograph some object, and granted, you try to make it look beautiful, but. . . At that time I began to feel something about the still object. I wanted to do my personal interpretation of the still object. I wasn't especially trying to repel the commercial influence at all, because I wanted to take advantage of the lighting, the composition techniques that I established in my commercial work. I wanted to challenge myself to see how far I could go with my personal work without being spiritually influenced by my commercial work. At that time, about four years ago, the Catskill Center [now the Center for Photography at Woodstock] gave me an exhibition, and I showed the "white series" of still lifes.
GL: So you felt you couldtake the commercial techniquesand leave the messageof the commercialpackage?
Kl: I was always taught that as a commercial studio photographer of still life, you can't avoid doing cross-over commercial kind of things, not purely personal work. I was challenging myself to do personal work with lots of commercial techniques. First I thought I would do it outdoors with natural light, but then I intentionally went into my studio and used whatever equipment I had.
GL: To get the control?
Kl: Yes. I had total control, and I let my spirit control the work as freely as possible.
GL: I was thinking that the two worlds of advertising and. still lifes aren't that far apart; in advertising you work with the evocative nature of objects-you try to create an evocative scene-and with still lifes you work with the evocativenature of objects. The only differenceis that in commercialphotographythe goal is to make the viewer desire to buy something, to enter the evoked world through buying, whereas in the personal work you're showing the viewer somethingof your visionfor its own end.
Kl: Uh-huh. [This was followed by a silence. Kenro had little response to intellectualized questions. Later he told me that sometimes at a reception someone will ask a long question that they then answer themselves, and it just made him uncomfortable. "But if a na·ive," he said, "someone who doesn't know about art, says, 'That's beautiful'. "He beamed as he trailed off.]
I was thinking on my way here about what the difference is between my commercial and my personal still life. In both I try to make something of beauty, but one is under conditions such as clients, a deadline, layout, budget, and media and the other is unconditional, just chasing the beauty I can feel or create.
When I began, I was afraid I would unconsciously apply the commercial to my personal work. For example, the worst thing is to be thinking of the viewer's point of view, the client's point of view. That's the bottom line in commercial work; if the client says no, I don't get paid. I was afraid of what the viewer would think if I had a show or did a book. Fortunately, once I begin a series of work, I just get into my work. So in a sense I feel very successful doing personal work in the studio circumstances. Everything is the same, except my mind.
GL: In your commercialwork do you find having your own vision is a positive thing, or do people treat it as something that just gets in the way of what they want?
Kl: That depends. Some art directors just give me a concept, and I have to
Still Life #51, 1986, platinum/palladium, llx9" Advertising campaign, Tiffany & Co., 1987
JAft\NESE TEMPLEFOOD ISVEGETABLEWOKERY AT ITSl!EST
BY ROBERl rARRARCAPON PHOTOGRAl'HSBYKENROIZU Ido everything to visualize it. Others tell me exactly what it will be, and all I can do is just the lighting.
GL: Do you like to put your name on your commercial work?
KI: Some yes, some no. With editorial work I like to put my name on it unless some designer chops up my picture, but most of the time I feel good about seeing my name. With advertising work, it's so heavy-duty commercial that I don't care about seeing my name on it. If someone asks me, I can say, proudly, I did it.
GL: Does it matter to you how people respond to your commercial work?
Kl: I find I'm choosing only clients who appreciate my work.
GL: Is your commercial work in color and your personal work in black and white?
Kl: I do some black and white commercial, but my personal work has never been color. In my personal photographs my main tool these days is a 14x20" view camera and contact prints. I can't use that huge camera for my commercial
work, so that separates the two.
GL: How much time can you give your personal photography?
Kl: I can't just squeeze it in. I take two weeks off at a time and just do personal work. It's easy when I travel-I'm gone.
GL: Do you feel you get to show your personal work enough?
Kl: I'm not the fastest-producing photographer, but I'd like to have more exposure. Sure.
GL: Do you find the personalwork sustains you, and conversely, if you didn't have to work for a living, would you just drop the commercialwork?
KI: Though the personal work does sustain me, I wouldn't drop everything. I like some stimulation; sometimes an art director will come up with an idea that will help me with a composition I wouldn't think of. I think I'm still young enough not to retire from learning from other people.
GL: My last question is, if you were me, what would you ask?
Kl: I'd ask how can I stand it? That's the question I ask myself. On the other hand, if I were famous, able to sell my personal work enough, would I just close the door and live in my own world with my own imagination?
Izu's clients have includedThe New York Times Magazine, American Express, Diner's Club, H. Stem]eweler, B. Altman, Canon USA, Harry Winston Jeweler, Conde Nast Publications,and Lear's.
GAY LEONHARDT is an artist who creates, generally, with watercolor/ assemblage and a writer who writes, generally, on landscape and ways of seeing. Her current focus is on the relationship between art and money. She lives in Willow, New York.
Whatdo LynnDavis,KimKnott,Annie Leibovitz,RobertMapplethorpe,StevenMeisel, PerryOgden,LaurieSimmons,andMaxVadukul havein common?
They'reallphotographersrepresentedbythe uniqueagencyArt+ Commerce,foundedinNew YorkCityin 1981.
Theaimof the agency,as describedby co-founderAnneKennedy,whomwemetthis January,istomatchphotographicartistswith advertisingagencies/magazines/editorsalwayskeepingtheartist'sbestinterestsinmind.
Purposefullysmall(representinganaverage oftenphotographers),theagencyseekscollaborationsso artistsmayusetheirmaximum creativityandfreedomwhileearningsignificant sumsfor commercialwork.
Recentcampaignshighlightingthe success ofthisagency'svisionincludeAnnieLeibovitz's portraitseriesforAmericanExpressandSteven Meisel'sBarney'sads.Otherclientshave includedItalianVogue,LizClaiborne,Reebok, VanityFair,ValentinoBoutique,an~the Anne ColeCollection.
Servingasa bridgebetweenthesometimes differentviewsofgallery-orientedphotographers (orphotographersusedtoeditorialassignment but yet to experienceadvertisingcampaigns) and professionalsfromthe commercialarena,
AnneKennedyandco-founderJimMoffathave carveda special-andsuccessful-nichefor all concerned.Theyencouragetheirstableof talentedphotographers to regardprintas a nourishing,lucrativealternativetogallerywalls.
Notsurprisingly,bothKennedyand Moffat havebackgrounds in fine-artphotography. KennedywasassociatedwithCallowayEditions, the PaulStrandestate,andChristie'sauction house.Aphotographydealerofworkfromthe 1920sand 1930s,KennedyworkedwithDavid TravisandassistedTheWhitneyMuseumshow PhotographyRediscovered:AmericanPhotographs/900-/930.Moffat,withexperience at theHastingsGalleryinNewYorkCity,offered organizationalassistancetoAnnieLeibovitz on her firstbook.
Kennedyand Moffat'sbackgroundsprovide thespecialsensitivitynecessaryforthecurrent demandforsignature-style"artful"campaigns nowinvogue-a voguethisagencyhashelped to createand define.Futureplansinclude workingwithfilmmakers.
Althoughtheintentionistokeeptheagency small, a one-dayportfoliodrop-offpolicydoes exist.Allillustrationsincludedherearecourtesy Art+ Commercefromoriginalmagazine tearsheets.
TheEditors
IT'S NO PICNIC, BEING A CONNOISSEUR. TO MAKE THINGS A LITTLE EASIER, WE WORK WITH THE WORLD'S MOST DISTIN• GUISHED CLOTHIERS TO CREATE CLOTHING FOUND NOWHERE ELSE. WE APPRECIATE THE EFFORT THAT GOES INTO THE FINER THINGS IN LIFE. AND WE SALUTE CONNOISSEURS, WHENEVER THEY DROP IN. EXCLUSIVE LIGHTWEIGHT PURE WOOL SUIT BY HICKEY-FREEMAN. WE ACCEPT BAR,NEYS NEW YORK, AMERICAN EXPRESS AND MAJOR CHARGE CARDS.
BecauseDavid LaChapelle's January 1989 show of highly coloredphotos of religiousnudes at Trabia MacAfee ( the NYC gallerythat representshim) were inspiredby the colors of Japanese commercialphotography,I talked to the artist, expectingto find quite intensetanglesof fine and commercial production values in his art. But LaChapellesurprisedme. Insteadof the syntheticblenderof highand low, LaChapelle is of anothertype commonlyfound in theNew York art-world food chain: themental compartmentalizerwho separatesone world from another. In the mental governmentalstructures, so to speak, of art-careerjockeyers, thisformationatteststo the existence of a separationof powers, critical to mental democracy and postmodern survivalism. I talked about this with LaChapellein Floridaafter he had hada very longday on a commercialshoot for German Vogue for Men.
David LaChapelle's clients have included the publications Arts, The New Criterion, Interview, Details, The New York Times Magazine, Conde Nast's Traveler, Manner Vogue, Italian Vogue, British Vogue, Self, New York Woman, Connoisseur, Vanity Fair, Blitz, The Village Voice, Metro, Paper, and The New York Post.
RM: What was your original orientation as a photographer, commercialor fine art?
DL: I wanted to be an artist and felt I didn't need anything else in my life. I got my first big break when I was accepted by a high school for the arts in North Carolina and took courses in drawing and painting. Later on I took a course in photography. I loved it so much I had all my friends take their clothes off, and I took pictures of them. I still have that first roll of film. All my naked high school friends!
RM: You came to New York as an artist?
DL: I didn't think about anything else except my [fine art] photography. "303'' gallery in the East Village had their grand opening with my "Good News for Modem Man" show. I wasn't even thinking about magazines, but then the people from Interview came by my studio, including Andy Warhol. They really liked my work, so I started doing portraits for them. I was getting paid real money. I moved to London and back. It's been great. But the idea of being paid for taking photographs had never occurred to me. [In 1987 LaChapelle was selected by American Photographerto receive a "new faces" award.]
RM: Some artists build up mental barriers between their fine and commercialwork. They are afraid that success in one will make the other too "commercial"too. The internal liberalarts puritan rises up to cut off potential opportunities. Were you afraid in this way?
DL: I was just overwhelmed at the idea that people paid me to go take pictures and that they would pay to send me
Exposureof Luxury, 1988, Cibachrome, 96x216" unique triptych manipulated (courtesy Trabia MacAfee, NYC)
to glamorous places to shoot pictures. I didn't even think about it.
RM: I operate under the assumption that commercial work means compromises. You are working for someone else, after all. Does this bother you?
DL: I don't look at them as compromises. The commercial and the fine are two completely different things. Fashion shoots are what I do instead of being a waiter. .. .
RM: This sounds like one of those mental barriers .. .
DL: I've always been able to work really well with the camera, technically, in the darkroom. I think of an idea in my head, and I get there by manipulating the negatives. [All of LaChapelle's effects are scratched or painted onto the negatives in the darkroom.] I attribute some of this to the commercial work. Working with magazines forces you to learn about technique.
RM: There is some influence, then, from the commercialwork?
DL: But I don't feel that fashion photography is art. It exists to sell something, to show a product. You're worried about how the clothes look and other things; you are not thinking about the art. It's a lot of fun, but it's not true art. It is not about inspiration, or ideas.
RM: You think up the ideasfor the commercialwork?
DL: I think up ideas for the shoots. It's a blast. But they, the people who hire me, know they should give me a lot
of freedom. They wouldn't have hired me if they didn't intend to give me a lot of freedom.
RM: Do you think the fact that you come from the fine-art sector results in Y?ur clients giving you this freedom?
DL: No; they usually don't even know I do the other work.
RM: They don't know you do fine art?
DL: They don't know. They don't have a clue. One of the models at a restaurant the other night was talking about my new show at Trabia MacAfee, and no one knew anything about it. That's fine with me.
RM: It sometimeshappens that fashion photographydoes, over time, come to be regardedas high art. I'm thinking of some fashion photographersfrom the thirties and forties. I think this is happeningmore and more, a migration of commercialwork into fine-art territory. The whole whirlwind of interest in Andy Warhol again is also due to the recurrent reproblematizingof the commercial/fineaxis: It's becomeso complicatedagain, we're lookingback to Andy to give us a simpleanswer. Variousreasons may cause fine-art impulses to crop up in commercial work: Maybe the artist is a failure at fine art so overcompensatesby pouring his creativityinto the commercialwork. Once he makes it in fine, he can point back to how he was doing it all along, under the surface of the commercial.
DL: No, I don't see that happening. I take a lot of pride in my fine art; I put everything into it. But the magazines get thrown away. There are so many now, there are so many people shooting. Only time will tell, but I seriously doubt it.
RM: In commercialphotographyyou have to abide by rules of display about the human body. Subliminally, the very poses of the models convey stratagemsof gender politics. There are also rules about how much of the human body you can show. The self-sexismof magazinesfor women is a very tight mental knot. For example, bodies there are like allegoriesof the knot. This is a generalization-but I was wondering, since your work is so figure-related, is this also true specifically?Is the posing, and are the bodies, different in each sector?
DL: In the commercial I have to try to make it as creative as I can, so the work stands out from the mass of other shoots. But this is advertising. The model has to look as beautiful as possible and be really new. She is exciting because she is new. She sparks an interest to buy something for as long as the reader doesn't tum the page. In fine art it is totally different. I want these pictures to last forever. I want people to be struck by the colors, to be ~plifted.
RM: There is no contagionfrom one to the other?
DL: I take time off almost completely from the commercial work when I am working on my shows. It is a separate state of mind.
RM: Are the models physicallydifferent?
DL: Yes. For my fine photography I use friends and people around me. I need a specific look. One of my best models right now, Bella-I just bumped into her. She had heard about me, she agreed to try out posing, and it worked. They [the models] have to give a lot, and, because it's obvious that I work with the nude quite a bit, they have to be completely uninhibited. And they have to know that my objective is not erotic stuff.
RM: Do you ever shoot men in the commercialwork?
DL: Yes, I'm doing twenty-six pages of men's fashion for Manner Vogue right now, and two covers.
RM: The male figures in your latest work seem more real.
DL: With "Atlas" I put real chains on the model's body and had him hold them up like that all day. The sweat was pouring off his body. It was real sweat, no spritz. Finally, when he was showing signs of real pain, that's when it worked. I needed to show Atlas with the weight of the world slipping off his shoulders. No stage effects-it had to be real.
RM: And in fashion those bodies aren't so real? What about body language?
DL: One guy today was very uptight. At first he was making model faces. I had to be patient. By the end of the day I had loosened him up and he, physically, looked really different.
RM: With bodies then, even though there does seem to be a common LaChapelle approach, the fine and commercial are separate in the way you think about them?
DL: Yes.
RM: Actually, this surprisesme. I had thought there was more interaction, more blurred boundaries. Maybe such problems develop down the road when you begin to think about it. Right now you seem to have the best of both worlds. As to that, where do you expect to be, jockeying two careers, in five years?
DL: Five years from now? Five years .... Well, I'll be showing my work around, moving ahead with the fine-art work. And I hope to be picking and choosing more among the magazine work, a commission here, a portrait there, but only the work that really interests me.
ROBERT MAHONEY is a New York City-based freelance writer who, while not working on his novel, contributes to Arts magazine, where he has been a regular reviewer since 1985. Other publications to which Mahoney has contributed include Architectural Digest, New York Press, and the Italian Terna Celeste.
Explaining Everything, 1988 Cibachrome, 62x48" unique diptych manipulated (Courtesy Trabia MacAfee, NYC)
Advertising campaign, Coup de Pied, 1987 (silver print)
Steven Kolpan has been making personal video ever since Sony Portapak hit the streets in 1971. He's had solo shows in more than thirty major venues, includingthe Museum of Modern Art, and several of his tapes are ensconced in the permanent collectionof the Jewish Museum. Some of his most compelling work is self-referential,and the self referredto is, if you'll pardon my French, formidable.
An imposingcharacter,he's capableof discoursingon Roland Barthes in one breath, R. Crumb the next. He's conversant with cinema, painting, philosophy, politics, Japanese tea ceremony, Balinesemusic. His knowledgeof wine would enthrall a Rothschild;he served a five-year term as sommelierand maitre d' at the Depuy Canal House, a four-star restaurant in High Falls, New York. He has a strong socialconsciousness,a warm way with friends, and a state-of-the-artbullshit detector.
For the past threeyearsKolpan has been seniorproducer/writer at the Learning Resources Center of the Culinary Institute of America (Hyde Park, New York). He's responsiblefor scripting and producing the school's instructional videotapes, as well as promotional tapes and specialprojects, such as a four-part study of sex equity in the food service industry. Recently, over bagels and lox at his home in Kingston's Rondout neighborhood,we discussedhis careeras a video artist in the context of his current employment.
MH: Steven, the tapes you make in thrall to your muse are very personal, often intensely so. But the work you've been doingfor the Culinary Institute-instructional tapeson theproper way to flambe, and so forth-would seem to be pretty tame for a person with your reputation as an aestheticrisk-taker. How do you reconcileyour own work with the work you're obligated to do for your salary?Are you conscious of a split?
SK: Personally, I don't really see much of a discontinuity between working in an artistic or commercial way, because the medium I've chosen to work in, which is video, is multifaceted, and the more I learn about the way television can be used, the more it helps me in my personal work.
People I know who consider themselves artists working in video often work on rock videos or commercial videos I myself cannot really support myself just by the triumph of the will or the integrity of my work, and so I've always relied on alternate sources of money to enable me to create new video pieces. You know, there's been arts administration, sommelier, restaurant consultant
MH: It's funny, but the ritual of food preparationhas always been a persistent motif in your work, and you've always gravitated to the restaurant businessfor your rent-paying gigs. . . .
SK: I want to get a little bit of perspective on this. Historically, the food industry has been kind of a refuge for artists. Everything from dishwashers, cooks, waiters, waitresses; you know, many are actors, artists Julian Schnabel cooked
at the Odeon in New York. That's just one example; I'm not comparing myself to him.
MH: Thank God.
SK: I am saying that there's a historical precedent for people involved in the arts to also get a job to support themselves in food-in a restaurant, in a hotel, whatever.
The work I do at the Culinary Institute allows me to use my aesthetic sensibilities, as well as my organizational abilities, my writing abilities .... Although at this point I don't see it merely as a means to support myself; I see it as something I do. I do a lot of things: I write, I make video art; I also produce instructional videotapes and write about culinary subjects. I conduct wine tastings, I do critical writing about video, critical writing about art, and I don't see it as a separation or as a dichotomy; I see it as part of a continuum.
MH: But what about the atmosphereat the Institute? Do you miss the kind of creativeferment you were involved with, say, when you were a part of Earthscore, working with other video artists in a mutually stimulating and supportive environment?
SK: You know, I was thinking this morning, as I was taking a shower, that if I invite a bunch of artists to come and see some tapes on poaching fish, nobody's gonna show up. But if I invite the people I work with at .the Culinary Institute to come and see my art tapes, a lot of them would show up. So what does that indicate? Well, it indicates to me that the popular perception is that industrial or commercial work is one-dimensional. But I think the relationships you develop with the people you work with can be multidimensional, whereas my experience with artists, with the exception of close friends, has been strictly unidimensional.
If you create your own art, then theoretically you're freer than anyone, because you're creating something that comes from your own imagination-from your perceptions, your emotions, your intellect. But with video, it's almost the equivalent of the tree falling in the forest-if no one sees it, did you actually make it? It's something that needs an audience. There's been a couple of times when I've walked into the Culinary Institute and seen a bunch of students sitting around and watching my instructional tapes, and I get as much of a rush out of that as in having my work shown in a museum gallery.
MH: Your personalvideo is very elemental;on occasion,you've even describedit as "crude." The stuff you do for the Culinary Institute, however, is conceived and executed with equipment that's on the cutting edge of video technology. Do you find it liberatingto have such an arsenal at your disposal?
SK: It is, because you get a chance to play, and you get a chance to learn things that, in the normal course of events, you couldn't. At this point I could go into any television studio and feel reasonably comfortable producing, editing, doing any kind of post-production electronic graphics .... My latest personal tape is in black and white, which is very hard to do these days, because you have to adjust all the color cameras to make them black and white. So, yeah, it's been fun. We just got some new software that allows us to miniaturize, expand, stretch, colorize, and I've been encouraged to use it to the hilt.
MH: In purely creativeterms, how much leewayare you allowed to use in producing tapes for the Culinary Institute? I mean, how radical can you get, say, in terms of imagery?
SK: Look at the montage I did for the admissions tape. It starts off with a helicopter shot of the school from above, and dissolves to a continuing line of students, dreamily opening bains-marie to display the food; then it dissolves to another helicopter shot of the campus .... It's all continual dreamlike imagery of flying, and it's all accompanied by music that fits the rhythm-in this case, Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. You know, for a cooking school, I think it's kind of out of the ordinary.
In terms of the instructional tapes, there are very rigid culinary standards that have to be adhered to; I mean, you can't just make up a new way to saute. But they've actually encouraged me to be as creative-whatever that means-in whatever way I want to be, as long as the tapes convey the essential information. If anything, they've challenged me to come up with something new every time. I wouldn't say the images are in any way radical, but they certainly would be contemporaneous with, say, MTV or VHl, because we're reaching a young audience, an audience that's been watching TV from the time they opened their eyes, so we want to create a product that's appealing.
MH: Even so, for all the creativefreedom you apparentlyenjoy, working for such a no-nonsense institution must involve some degreeof self-censorship,however subtle.
SK: The self-censorship I deal with on a day-to-day level really is contextual. I understand that I'm here as an employee to fulfill certain obligations, whereas in my own work the only obligations I have are to myself. I don't think about "radicalizing" the content of the tapes I do for the Culinary Institute, because the context of instructional media is totally different from the context of personal video. I mean, what I would consider to be quite conservative in imagery or sound, other people, who are used to a kitchen environment, might see as radical.
The only problem that comes up, of course, is time. You
have to be somewhere every day, and you sometimes wish you h-ad the time to work on more personal projects.
MH: If you hadcarte blanche to do a tape that would be taboo, or impossible to shoot in the present context of your position at the Institute, what kind of tape would you make?
SK: I think I'd like to, perhaps, talk in a very personal way with the students, separately from the chefs, and then talk to the chefs separately from the students, and keep talking and talking so that it gets beyond omelettes, you know, and into something meaningful.
MH: Like pork chops?
SK: Like something about their lives. I'd try to structure it so the students could see the chefs as human beings and not as figures always in authority, and the same thing with the chefs-to let them see the students as human beings and not just underlings. Also, I'd like to like to elevate the awareness of world hunger at the school. There's a campus organization forming to try to work with that, but the consciousness should be really strong wherever food is the focus.
MH: Apart from the culinary tapes, what are you cooking up in the personal arena these days?
SK: Just portraits of people that I know, often in a crisis situation; sometimes they're in a crisis situation and don't even know it. I'm not being judgemental; I'm just letting them run off on it, and restructuring the tapes to retain the integrity of the crisis, only showing my point of view. I'm trying to use the verbal randomness and emotional randomness they're dealing with in the way I structure the tapes.
MH: Sounds pretty raw. Video to tartare, if we can grind yet another culinary image from the interview.
SK: I think the best work I do is the most raw. I've stayed true to a concept of video minimalism. What people look for now is slickness and creating alternate TV shows; there's less interest in ideas, more in technique. That's not what I'm about-never have been, never will be. I don't like high-tech; never did. If I could make a videotape without equipment, I'd do it.
MIKHAIL HOROWITZ is the author of Big League Poets (City Lights, 1978), now thankfully out of print. Formerly the better half of the metaphysical comedy team Null & Void, he still finds sporadic employment as a performance poet in New York City and the Hudson Valley. At present, he's the Cultural Czar (says so on the masthead) "' of the weekly Woodstock Times.
Kolpan'spersonaltapesare distributedby: Steve Kolpan/Video Works, 50 German Street, Kingston, NY 12401.
AMERICA'SMOSTCELEBRATEDPHOTOG- BESTAFFEDBYYALEMFA GRADUATES THElf;!STRUCTORS RAPHERS,HAVINGPARTICIPATED IN INNUMERABLEWORK- FORTHEAPPLIEDAND FINEARTCLASSESHAVEBEENCARESHOPSOVERTHEPAST25 YEARS,HAS NOW CREATEDHIS FULLYCHOSEN BY ARTKANE, FOR BOTH THEIRABILITIES ONN SCHOOL THEARTKANEPHOTOWORKSHOP'Mll AS ARTISTSAND AS TEACHERSTHESEINCLUDEFINEART: COIIIMENCECLASSESTHISSUIIIMERIN THEIDYLLICSEASIDE BRUCEDAVIDSON • TOM CARABASI• JUDY DATER• COIIIMUNIT'f'OF CAPEfv\A.Y,NEWJERSEYTHEWEEKLONG LARRYFINK• RALPHGIBSON• GEORGEKRAUSE • DUANE WORKSHOPSWill BEGINJUNE5THAND END SEPTEMBERMICHALS• ARNOLDNfWfvl.A.N• ROSAMONDPURCELL • 1ST.1989,OFFERINGOVER75 WORKSHOPSIN 3 SEPARATELILORAYMOND• COLEWESTON• WILLIAMWfGfvl.A.N• DIVISIONS FOUNDATION: BEGINNERSTHROUGHINTER-GEORGETICE APPLIED:SARAHMOON • DICK FRANK• MEDIATE,APPlJED:ADVERTISINGAND EDITORIAL,FASHION, ARTHURELGORT• SHEILAMETZNER • PATHill • fvl.A.R1E STILLLIFE,ARCHITECTURE,PHOTOJOURNALISM;FINEART: COSINDAS• ARTKANE• JAYfv\A.ISEL • BURTGUNN • PORTRAITS,THENUDE,LANDSCAPE,REPORTAGE.PERSONAL HENRYWOLF • FACILITIESINCLUDE8Nv DARKROOMS, VISION ALSOBEINGOFFEREDARECLASSESIN PRINTING, j ,1 STUDIOS.CLASSROOMS. A CAMERASTORE, STUDIOLIGHTING,SELFPROMOTION,STOCK,EDITING, GRAPHIC DESIGN EVENING LECTURESGIVEN BY MASTERPHOTOGRAPHERS THE FOUNDATION COURSEHASBEENDESIGNEDAND PROGRAIIIMED
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The PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESS WORKSHOP 1989 June 26 - July 7 in Virginia City, Nevada For information contact: The Oliver Gagliani Workshop Phone: 415-949-5922 15833 Stonebrook Drive Los Altos Hills, CA 94022 • Workshops since 1972 • ______
g Changing Exhibitions by guest photographers :: Call or write for gallery calendar
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Country Club Lane, Woodstock. A short walk to town and The Center for Photography. Our rooms are in cottages with private baths, some kitchens. Excellent restaurant open to the public with full bar. Brunch Saturday & Sunday. Now serving Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner. Beautiful pool. 10% discount to CPW Workshop students. For reservations (914)679-2814.
addresscorrectionrequested
Shari Diamond
1825 Second Avenue Apt. 4S
New York NY 10128
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