A ton of interesting posts this week from Andrew, Liz, John and Alec, all to do with what happens when magazines call and I just want to pile on!
I posted this scan of a contact sheet from a job long ago for Fortune, this is, or was, I don’t know now, the CEO of Whirlpool. The headquarters of Whirlpool is in Benton Harbour Michigan. More on that later. You can see by the rebate that it was shot 4×5. I had reached the apogee of what I like to call the Canada Dry Style. Perhaps I had reached it before this shoot, but definitely, in this shoot, having been forewarned that Mr. Whitwam was not the most dynamic of characters, I did not bring “Da Noise” or “Da Funk”….
“Guys in ties” is what Michelle McNally, then head of photography at Fortune called them, I liked to think of them as totem poles sometimes. But back on topic, essentially the clash between what you do for yourself, and what you do for others, and what comes out after that battle is through. But this is what happens on assignment. You fly to Chicago and rent a car, and drive through the hinterland to a corporate HQ designed to look permanently stuck in the 70′s. The PR coordinator, himself an X-photographer points out all the scenic overlooks where you might catch a wooly CEO in the wild if one were to be so lucky. But ‘dang-those curtains! It was too much for my generational irony-meter to withstand. I believe they must have been stolen from my High School’s teacher’s lounge…and that painting, sorry, lithograph, of the bald eagle, I tried to frame it out as much as possible to please the coordinator, but the sum total was, this guy is your High School principal…
So I liked it, at the time, I think I sort of threw up my hands, you know, this was guy-in-tie number 1000 or so. And I had already used all the other tricks, you know, guy-in-tie (GIT) next to reflective window, GIT next to looming background from low angle, etc etc. After a while you just find yourself in a cul-de-sac, persuing strange things for yourself that maybe you have no business doing for someone who is paying after all.
I didn’t really like the Todd Hido portrait they are all talking about, and also, having spent 180$ this week at the ICP bookstore (thanks Devon, et al) and looking at Between the Two because I really really loved House Hunting, thinking, wow, this is really flimsy, what happened? But do you think TH could have gotten that guy on a bed in a rundown house? Of course not. So the portrait looks nothing like what we expect, but it is our expectations that are wacked. He can do what he wants.
This is such a bad post. What am I trying to say? You can’t always do what you do for yourself when you are on assignment, even though that is what you are being paid to do often times. Your head just goes someplace and you get stuck there, and it is entirely wrong for the assignment. But you can’t help it, that is what you want. Sometimes I think you have to know how to get out of your own way in these cases, and just refocus, and get something else. If you get wrapped up in your “style” I think you stop “seeing” and you stop reacting to what you see. This is something I have learned from street photography. The moment you start thinking, it is over.
Later that day I went down to the lakefront and got this, it was all just there.
Assignment work is the hardest thing.
BTW, thanks Andrew for the props!
Robert, I just happened upon your blog and saw that you mentioned my post on the Todd Hido photo. (I had no idea it would generate so much discussion.)
In a completely full-circle kind of a thing, get this: I was actually raised in St. Joseph, Michigan, and my family still lives there. Crazy, huh?
and it’s most often terribly boring….I have always felt that editorial content would be better served if photgraphers were allowed to pick it.