Welcome to the new series “Ten Questions.” Creative professionals make much of the best work we see, but how does that work come to exist, and what makes these creative types tick? In this series, I will interview artists, writers, photographers, illustrators, designers, and anyone who lives life through a creative lens. My goal is to introduce them to my YouTube audience.
There is a major difference between online celebrity and real-world, industry relevance. Both are relevant in these most modern times, but knowing the difference is key to improving as a professional and key to adding to a visual conversation. Robert Stivers is a Santa Fe-based artist who works in both painting and photography. A master of the traditional, wet darkroom, Stivers creates one-of-a-kind silver-gelatin masterpieces. His work is in numerous collections and he has six monographs to his name. A full-time working professional for over thirty years, Stivers is a shining example of what can happen when you dedicate your life to your craft.
Comments 10
I really like your current interview style!
Author
Cool. Me too. Needs work but getting there.
I understand commercial/advertising photography, as well as the work of those such as Leiter, commercial creatures who also seek to explore the unconstrained-by-clients side of their photographic interests. Sometimes, professionals say that there is no difference between their professional and “personal” photography, though that does often seem to be perhaps a claim just a little too far. Even if the actual imagery is much the same, but an unavoidable consequence or by-product of style, the pressure that’s behind a commission can’t help but influence what a photographer does: he knows that unlike his personal stuff, the commissioned bears with it consequences.
What I can’t get it together with is intentional bad technique. I see no value in flat, degraded tonality and curled up prints lying on the floor. There is always a good way of printing, processing and drying and finishing off a print. From a personal perspective, the very use of mat papers is a bad decision, original photographic sin: film is capable of delivering fantastic tonality, so why settle for surfaces that chew up that property, cut down on available quality/tonal range? The undoubted best way I discovered of producing a print is by making it on WSG double-weight, and glazed on a rotary. (Personally, I believe the day that graded papers were displaced by multigrade, short-wash resin-coated alternatives was the day that printing went to hell. I tried to make the best of it, but thank God my career had, by that time, pretty much moved entirely over to Kodachrome and Ektachrome. To this day, it seems unbelievable that the jolly yellow giant could ever have fallen. I owe it a lot.) However, art’s a funny business: one of my favourite snappers is the late Deborah Turbeville. Her sense of moment and scene is wonderful, but quite why she also felt it incumbent upon herself to degrade her vision with intentional dust and scratching beggars belief. She already had the perfect thing; later messing it up didn’t add anything at all. I guess artists find it hard knowing when enough is enough.
Author
It depends. Certain people get to a certain level where they are left alone. Case in point, Helmut Newton. His clients knew if they wanted what he could really produce then they needed to leave him alone. And they did. Most photographers, especially now, aren’t making anything unique enough to get that power. It ain’t easy. When I shot portraits I had total control. People just said “Do what you do.” But I also had twenty plus years of working as a full time photographer before I go there.
This format is really something different yet still just an interview. But it pulls you in a much more personal way than an 2 people sitting ina chair and going back and forth. Good work being done here…
Author
Cool, thank you for that. I figure Robert’s story and work have nothing to do with me, so no need to have me there.
This may be my favorite thing you have done, the format, the depth, the intimacy of it. And it helps that I also really, really like his work.
Author
I love his work too, and thank you. I had a blast making this. Would love to do more.
Well, Dan, Newton did have notoriety on his side, and maybe it’s a chicken and egg thing, but that adds to power too. It’s also a matter of period: was a time – certainly in Britain – during the 60s and 70s where the models did their own hair and makeup, and the norm for many of us on a shoot was just the two essential people: model and photographer. When you work simply, assistants aren’t much in demand. Today, what with the madness of artificial sexual tensions and the muddying of the workplace waters with all these different “women’s movements” looking for the sin in every smile, I’d be terrified of going on location or into a studio without dragging along my lawyer – just in case. Maybe that’s really why they seem to spend so much money making “making of” videos: nothing to do with art but all to do with covering their asses with visual evidence of no foul play!
I really wonder how the thing works today; we all had our ways of interacting with the girls as we tried to coax a good performance out of them, and from asking girls how the competition used to work with them, it seemed we were all pretty much the same: verbal flirts the lot of us, anything to get the reaction we required. I suppose that when that became a minefield, the work became so much more anodyne too. It’s been a long time since anything new has thrilled me very much. There used to be a vogue for golden couples – Bailey and Shrimpton, Veruschka and Franco RubartelliI to name just two such – where the relationships did get very personal, but I sometimes wonder if the consummation of those relationships didn’t also ring the bell for the last round; expectations and imagination can be stronger than reality attained. I guess there are golden ages in all pursuits.
By the way, as you and I both dig black/white so much: have a look at the official video for Imelda May singing Call Me. Visual echo, in part, of Patty Loveless’ Crazy Arms even though the latter is in colour. What do you think – accidental?
Author
Kirkland and Monroe? Everything has changed but I think as a collective we have lost whatever group intelligence we might have had. Golden Age Ism. It’s true, maybe?