Plug in to your
photography
community.Nashville
January 19–21, 2020
imagingusa.org3 days of EVERYTHING photographYsmarter people than myself have not
figured anything out.
Actually, there’s nothing to figure out.
Which brings me back to doing
Empty New York because that was lit-
erally just documenting my environ-
ment, the streets I walked down every
day. Then, I never did anything with
it. Out of the 200+ images in the book,
I maybe had 15 published.
The apocalyptic scenes in Stanley
Kramer’s 1959 movie “On the
Beach,” about nuclear fallout
emptying the streets of still-intact
cities, have scenes reminiscent of
your Empty New York project.
You know why I remember that
film? Ava Gardner. She was the most
exclusive creature.
Looking at all these places, they began
to look like stage sets, particularly the
barbershop. On a hook was this white
coat that the barber wore. He comes in,
then puts on his barber costume, then
does his barber act cutting hair all day
and shaving customers.
I saw these places not just as a
space but as a space where something
occurred. Looking at Balthus’ street
scenes led me to think, “Well, then, I
should make my own dramas.” That
was very liberating. I don’t know that
if I hadn’t done the Empty New York
series [first] if I would have arrived at
the sequences series.
That [first] series opened my Pan-
dora’s box.
When did you first start doing
sequences and start writing on
your images?
I was doing Empty New York 1964-’65,
and by 1968-’69, I was doing Sequences.
I hit the trifecta.
Remember Camera magazine?
Allan Porter from Philadelphia? They
published my sequences in the maga-
zine. Then, Doubleday saw the issue,
called me up and said, “We want to do
a photo book.”
Then, I got to see John Szarkowski
at MoMA. He wasn’t at all interested in
what I was doing. I was anathema to him.
He was strictly reportage. If he included
me in anything, it was because he had
to. I was too visible to ignore. [Garry]
Winogrand and [Lee] Friedlander and
Diane [Arbus] —all traditional street
people—is what he promoted. Then, he
gave me a show because of Peter Bun-
nell, who was there as his assistant.
So, I hit the trifecta with Camera, a
book and MoMA.Were you making a living as a
photographer at that time?
I was always making a living as
a photographer.
See, that’s a big mistake, and I wish
photography schools would tell students
that. I gave a talk at a graduation at the
New School and asked the kids, “What
does it cost to go here? Two-hundred
thousand dollars? Get out on the street
and take pictures.”
Then they graduate and think they’re
going to go out and become Cindy Sher-
man. And they’re not.
I never, ever wanted my private
work to support me. I always did com-
mercial work, and they are actually
taught to look down on commercial
work. It’s shocking.An adverting job can support a
personal project for months.
I was proud of my commercial work. I
am the complete photographer.
There are art photographers who
never made a nickel in the commercial
world. I made a career in the commer-
cial world, but I never had the apparatus
of a business. I never wanted to be a busi-
ness. I never had a studio.
All these people who [say they]
won’t sell out have nothing to sell. It’s
harder to be a commercial photogra-
pher because you have to make other
people happy. You have to produce.
I’ve done LIFE covers, campaigns for
Massachusetts Mutual, a sequence
for the Synchronicity album cover for
The Police.How did you learn the technical
aspects of photography?
On the job.