67with another book proposal, I nudged him for an
answer why. I respected this man a lot, I liked him
before we had even shaken hands, and he tragically
died too young a few months ago. He sat up straight
in his chair and said, ‘In art and literature, the horse
is the magnificent and romantic beast, and your book
is not romantic.’ Perfect. A year after Body of Work was
published, a European reviewer said that this book
‘recalibrates the interesting and historical metaphor of
the horse’. It struck me in Paris that evening with the
publisher that they were both saying the same thing.
But for one it was a reason to loathe the book, and for
the other a reason to love it.
S.P.: Would you say you are motivated by an ethical
drive to create awareness of problems that you think
greater visibility might ameliorate, or by a more poetic
sense of truth about exposing realities of the world in
difficult places? What do you think about the ethical
responsibilities of a photographer?
B.C.: While I might hold strong ethical views amongst
my many flaws, I have seldom been driven to expose
realities for others, it is not my motivation. I am not an
investigative journalist. I look to see inside, and think
about what I might have seen. I want to make sense
to myself of what I might have seen. If others respond
well to what I might produce, or find it useful, that
will warm my heart, but it is not a motivation.
S.P.: Do you worry about people misinterpreting
photographs, or do you think alternate readings are
productive?
B.C.: Holy smoke, I have alternate readings for my
own work; nothing is settled, an image one day
can mean something else another, or a sequence
can change in your mind. Even a book can be seen
differently after the fact, a constant state of flux. A
US collector and patron of photography told me once
that photographers are the worst at changing images
within a series, trading off one image for another,
always wanting to fiddle with their idea. He said,
when he collects 100 images from a photographer for
a museum, the contract sets in concrete the edit and
the sequence, or knees will be broken.
S.P.: Can you tell me about one or two images that
altered your approach to photography, and how they
influenced your practice?
B.C.: No single document has affected my
photography as profoundly as Stravinsky’s Poetics
of Music, and that at an early stage, with not a single
photograph to be found in it. Otherwise, it’s an
accumulation of not only images important to me, or
series of images, but fine work from other disciplines
too, whether writing, film, music, whatever. How
could Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 131 not make
some impression on what you might think or feel?
Or up close with Mondrian’s rough straight edges,
or Picasso’s Guernica, or Goya even from a book, or
Robert Frank, or Don McCullin, or Diane Arbus or
Sally Mann or Susan Meiselas or Robert Mapplethorpe
and more and more and more; the history of
photography is plastered with the remarkable. A
dear friend’s birthday present ten years ago took me,
(and Catherine and another close friend, a conflict
photographer) on his art history tour of the Italian
section of the Louvre, 25 paintings only. These things
affect you. And you are your practice.
S.P.: What lessons have you learned over the course of
your career? What hasn’t worked and why?
B.C.: I learnt at an early moment that you must get on
with what is important to you, no matter the current
currency; find a way to make your projects the way
you believe best. If others come aboard, all the better;
if not, I can embrace my work all by myself, although
the most loyal Catherine will embrace it with me,
haha. And my kids!
S.P.: What do you think have been the most interesting
developments in photography in general over the last
decade and how have such changes affected your own
practice?
B.C.: The discipline of photography has been in
continual change from the beginning. When I jumped
on the night bus with purpose, the rough road ahead
was yet to distress my mind. It was a free ride for a
while. In the last 30 years and more, there has been an
exponential intellectual maturing of photography in
universities, to the point a few years back, Foucault
and Derrida were persistently quoted in student
essays, and to a much lesser extent Nietzsche and
Heidegger, but certainly the word phenomenology
was recurrent. I must say, the word pedagogy in
conversation, both casual and not so casual, is a more
recent trigger/snigger word. And of course, Burgin,
Sekula, Rosler, and others spawned a flap amongst
photographer friends. And then the digital revolution
and beyond camera technology produced a mighty
democratic access to the wide world of photography
and thinking, beyond merely the anointed. While not
everything from universities or the digital revolution
is useful, both have been driven by money, your
practice is unquestionably affected. Instinct is pretty
cool though.(opposite) BRUCE CONNEW Body of Work #38 2015
Pigment print, 800 x 532 mm.
(right) Bruce Connew on the roof garden of an Auckland hotel,
October 1984
(Photograph: Sigourney Weaver)