Andy Freeberg
Long fascinated with the gallery and museum worlds, Andy Freeberg often turns his camera on the dealers, artists, museum guards, and their interplay with the works of art themselves. His project, Guardians, about the women that guard the art in Russian museums, won Photolucida’s Critical Mass book award and was published in 2010. His series Art Fare was published as a monograph in 2014. Freeberg’s work is in many public and private collections including the MFA Boston, the George Eastman House, and SFMOMA. Guardians had a solo show at the Cantor Museum in Palo Alto, CA in 2012 and at the Russian State Museum for the City of St. Petersburg in 2013. His work has been featured around the world in publications such as Le Monde, The Guardian, Art Basel Miami Beach Magazine, and The New Yorker. He is represented by the Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York and the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.For more on Andy Freeberg,visit http://www.andyfreeberg.com
Russianfoto: As a Russian, I find your work on Guardians of Russian Art Museums to be especially interesting. Can you tell us what inspired you to take on this project?
Andy Freeberg: I had been to Leningrad in 1980’s and had taken some pictures of people around the city. I thought that I might do a “before and after” type series in 2008. It was now St Petersburg and I had heard about the changes to life after the USSR, so I went to see for myself and revisit the places where I had taken the photographs. It wasn’t quite working out, things had changed but I was finding it difficult to make it visually interesting. I decided to take a break and look at art in the Hermitage and that’s when I noticed women guards. That became my project!
Russianfoto: There's such an interesting connection in this series between the art and the sitter. The relationship extends to the faces, outfits and poses, as if the sitter and the painting or sculpture were somehow in dialog. Can you tell us more about this? Did you select the works for them to sit by? Did you give any instruction on how to pose?
Andy Freeberg: The first pictures I took at the Hermitage were completely candid. I had my camera with me and I took pictures without the guards knowing, I was looking for and finding the ones with the best connection to the art work. I made 2 subsequent trips where I had permission to be in the other museums and in most of those pictures the guards were aware that I was taking their photograph and I told them to pretend that I’m not there, just do what you do as if I wasn’t here. Of course I was selecting images where the connections were the best. I made many other pictures that did not make it into the series.
Russianfoto: Do you think there would be a different kind of relationship between the guardian and the art in other cultures? For instance, have you thought about taking on this project in your own country, the United States?
Andy Freeberg: The guards in the US art museums generally wear uniforms, much like policemen and they are almost always standing. That’s why the Russian guards were so interesting to me. I have seen guards in other countries that sit in the galleries. I saw this in Italy and London. They still weren’t quite as interesting as the Russian guards to me.
Russianfoto: Do you have plans to work on other Russian subjects?
Andy Freeberg: I don’t have any plans right now to work on Russian subjects but I’m always on the lookout for new ideas so maybe I’ll find something in the future.
Russianfoto: Would you say there's a gendered aspect to women (as opposed to men) sitting guard?
Andy Freeberg: I only saw 2 male guards at the museums I was photographing at in Moscow and St Petersburg. In the US it’s closer to 50-50. From what I understand, there are certain jobs that seem to be handled by the “babushkas” in Russia. Subway guards, coat checks in the winter, museum guards, maybe there are others too.