[interview] Jon Cartwright part 2
This is the second part of the interview; read the first part here.
What are your favourite things about your local area? And what are your least favourite?
I love the atmosphere of the South Bank, the river, the architecture, the tourists, the kids who come from miles around to fall off skateboards… Someone once described it to me as London’s promenade, and I think that’s about right. People take their time and are happy to be seen, you can walk a long way without crossing a road, and the light is incredible when it sets on the Thames to the west. There isn’t much I don’t like about it. A little too much trumpet, maybe.
I think most of your photos are black and white. Do you actually shoot in b/w or do you shoot in colour and edit your pictures later? What's the appeal of monochrome?
I primarily shoot digital, so I shoot in colour and convert to B+W later. As a rule of thumb, unless the colour is one of the main features of the picture, I'll lose it. B+W tends to emphasise the structure of a picture and can remove a layer of distraction. Although other times, colour can clarify a picture that might be confusing in monochrome. One of the joys of digital photography is that you can always try both.
One accusation that is often levelled at so-called street photographers is that they are voyeuristic rubberneckers. Do you agree with that opinion?
I think that would be quite fair in my case! In the strict sense, all photographers are voyeurs in that we like to look. But I don’t think there’s anything unseemly about that. I’m not peeping through windows! I’m primarily interested in how people behave in public, so there’s rarely if ever an expectation of privacy at play.
I did have pause for thought last summer when I was taking pictures of Blackfriars for a "Week In The Life" composite, and in the middle of the week, someone threw themselves off the bridge. Perhaps I should have excluded that event from the record, or started again the following week, but both those options would have undermined the point of the exercise. And the public nature of the suicide felt like a significant part of the tragedy, so I included elements of the police search shortly after he jumped and the recovery of the body at low tide the following day. It became a very different picture from the one I’d had in mind, and one that I genuinely agonised over. [See the montage here.]
Have you ever had someone get really angry at you for taking their picture? What did you do?
No, I've never had someone get really angry, but then I'm most interested taking photos in ultra-public places so it’s seldom an issue. However, I did shoot a collection for an exhibition in Whitechapel last year and met some resistance in some parts around there. But that’s fair enough, and if someone doesn't want their picture taken, I won't take their picture.
You tend to mostly focus on the area where you live and work, along the South Bank. Are there any places or people you dream about visiting to photograph?
The truth is that I don’t think I’m close to over-fishing even a small part of London, and it changes faster than I can photograph it. I love cities though, and would like to photograph a few more. San Francisco always looks ridiculously photogenic, I’d like to see Venice, and Tokyo looks incredible… but I think I’d always wonder what I was missing back at home.
As far as people go, I’d like to overcome my resistance to posed portraits. Most people just don’t look like themselves when they’re acutely conscious that they’re being photographed. And it feels ridiculous to pretend that it’s not a weird situation. So I have this idea of embracing that awkwardness and doing a collection of studio portraits of people hating having their picture taken. Obviously there’s a bit of a Catch-22 to that plan.
It's true, it's really a very weird situation. I hate having my photo taken by anyone else, as I almost always look awful if I know my photo is being taken (and sometimes if I don't know!). I think most photographers tend to be the same; they get uncomfortable if they're on the receiving end of the lens, because they don't have complete control over what they're going to end up looking like. Good lighting can go a long way to appease that worry, though! How do you feel about people taking photos of you? Are there any you've liked?
Maybe I should recruit you as my first subject then! You're right, photographers are the worst at having their photos taken. I hate it too and have huge sympathy for my subjects when I'm taking portraits, and endless admiration for people who are comfortable with it. People who think that models are talentless husks simply don't know what they're talking about. I think I've probably got a bit better since I started taking pictures of other people, but I'd still make a terrible model.
I've only taken a handful of self portraits and that was only when there wasn't a model who was available and patient enough to put up with whatever I was experimenting with. And I still can't look at those pictures objectively. In fact, with some I had to flip the image upside down on screen to process it, otherwise I kept getting distracted, thinking "Aaggh, it's me… Aagh, it's me…" It's almost certainly simple vanity, although I find looking at myself in the mirror slightly eerie too.
So no, no one has ever taken a picture of me that I like. They always reek of self-consciousness and gah.
This is a good point to talk about your burgeoning fame as an international street art icon, thanks to French street artist, C215. That must feel quite weird! I found it quite weird when I found out about it, and it wasn't even me it had happened to, but it demonstrated how small the world is sometimes. It felt weird because I'd seen the image on a wall in Brighton, and thought it looked familiar, but it took a random and unexpected comment from your brother on one of my Flickr contacts' photos for me to make the connection. If it was me, I'd probably be trying to find photos of it all over the world, just to see where it had been stencilled. Have you done that? Where was the best place?
You know what, I've not seen a single one the the flesh (paint?), even though the ones in London went up not far from where I live. I have my own copy though, and there are so many photos of them on Flickr that I never actually felt the need to go out myself to see them in situ.
Given how I feel about pictures of me, it does feel a bit weird. I saw that one was sold at his last show in New York, and the idea that a picture of me might be hanging in some fashionable Brooklynite's home feels odd to say the least. But I also feel reasonably disassociated from it. The stencil is such an awesome piece of work in itself that my role in it feels very minor. And as you say, unless you know about it, you're unlikely to make the connection. I might feel differently if I was getting recognised. C215 has made stencils from a few of my pictures, each more mind-blowing than the last. And we're planning a more concerted collaboration this year, so overall I'm very happy that it happened and am looking forward to what's to come.
Oh, cool! That answers one of my next questions, about whether you have any projects or experiments coming up in 2009 that you're excited about. I hope you keep us posted on that when you're ready to talk about it!
Last year, you put together a book - what made you decide to make a book? I've had a few ideas for books myself, and I've really been struggling with choosing the pictures and the layouts. It's not as easy as it looks! How did you choose a theme, and the pictures? Was it an easy process for you?
I first used Blurb to make a book because I'd done the unit photography on a short film called Stiletto, and wanted to give the cast and crew a souvenir. I threw together a simple book of 10×8s and was really impressed with the result. It's also a lot cheaper than getting prints and putting them in an album.
The web is a gift for photographers, but there's still something nice about prints. I've made a few books since for particular projects and having a big big coffee-table book of some of my favourite pictures of London has been a great way to show people a sample of the kind of thing I do without having to dispatch them, URL in hand, to find a computer.
As far as layouts go I'm a believer in keeping it simple. With the London book I selected half of the images to work as a full bleed 13×11, and the other half are cropped to best advantage and sit on the facing page against a black or white background. The hardest part was choosing the order but with a bit of playing around it's surprising how naturally a flow emerges. It's actually a lot of fun.
Buy Jon's book here, and see more of his work on Flickr.