All language subtitles for 8. Photographing People Who Are Close to You

I do

emphasize

to

a young photographer

that, to begin with, stick close to
home and photograph the people that

will put up with you.

So you can see what's possible

with what you do.

And I think you'll get

wonderful results

faster

than

starting to photograph people in
portraiture

that you don't know.

There's some photographs here of my
grandmother.

You see my grandmother's house in
Waterbury, Connecticut.

It was a formative Victorian.

It was kind of in a rough neighborhood,
and she was always having some problems.

And then there's a photograph of my
grandmother at her stove.

My mother was filming, and I'm saying
goodbye to her doll's airport and going

back out to the west coast.

That's a pretty classic picture of my
mother with a camera in front of her

face, an eight mm camera.

And my father didn't talk to me much,
but whenever I was in the car with him,

he would start telling me something.

I think he enjoyed driving, and that
was his

moment.

He would talk to me.

There was this wonderful little sitting
with my mother when I was just

beginning to work for rolling stone
magazine.

And I went home to see my family during
the summer.

And they were at a bungalow colony
upstate.

And there was an old overgrown tennis
wall there.

And I asked my mother if I could take
her photograph.

My mother was a dancer, and I asked her
if I could photograph her dancing.

And she did a small dance against that
wall.

It was a very moving sitting, because
for the first time, my mother was

a dancer and I was a photographer.

It was beautiful to see my mother in
another context than being my mother.

My parents

were sort of wonderful characters,

and they were wonderful to photograph.

Not only didn't they mind, but they
didn't care.

So

it was fine to take photographs.

At any time

after Susan, Sontag

died

was looking for a photograph of Susan,
and I didn't think I had a very good

picture of Susan.

And I just came across all this work of
mine over the years that

I had just continued to do,

and I was so taken with a story,

which was every man's story, because at
the same time my children were being born,

my father died.

I have this kind of eccentric, crazy
family.

It was kind of wonderful to put those
pictures together

and be so

open about it.

Nothing could have stopped me at that
moment.

I think

there's a problem, my most powerful
pictures

for my lifetime.

And I think that when I look at that
juxtaposition of the assignment work to

the personal work,

what I love about photographer's life
is that is really truly

being a photographer.

You know that both those aspects are
there.

And I'm

furious when

there has to be this idea that there's
one style or one idea coming out

of a photographer.

And it's interesting to me how both
those,

the assignment world and the personal
world, to offe each other, and how

they overlap, and what they mean.

And

to me,

it's definitely my

best work.

I think I write a passage for any
photographer

to really

photograph the people that will put up
with them, the people close to you.

It will probably be the most rewarding
work you do.

And it may never be published, but it's
the work

that you should care about and Embrace.

A Miles.

I'm really interested in the idea of

morning culture, and what it is to look
at an image after somebody's passaway,

and sometimes pass away.

What it's like to take an image,
knowing that the image will outlast the person?

Have you?

So you've had an experience where
someone

went on

who was it, my grandmother?

And how much time did you spend with
her?

She had alzheimer's for four years.

A lot of the moments,

a lot of the moments kind of got away
from me.

It felt like I was invading, like I was
such a private and personal moment,

where I have a lot of these images, but
it's hard to share them.

I know

photographers say it was hard for you
to share those images.

And I was wondering if you had kept any
for yourself?

Because I tend to do that.

Nothing could stop me from

putting that work together and
publishing it.

Nothing.

I mean, I was like, obsessed.

And I sobbed all the way through it.

When photographer's life came out,
there were so many people who came up

to me, photographers,

said, I was really scared to photograph

my mother, or my father, or

tar's life gave them

the strength to feel like they should
go ahead and do it.

We're driven as photographers, you
know, we just have to take photographs,

you know,

is what we do.

I hope

that's

the best thing about this period in
your lives

is photographing the people

who will put up with you,

your friends and your family.

And that's why your grandmother is so
important.

I sometimes feel

I could have,

my work, could have been that, you
know, because I love my family so much, and

I love that work because it's so

The photograph that has raised the bar
for me, which, as I know, is going to

be sort of an impossible

bar to reach.

And the kind of work that I do, because
I'm sort of going in and out fairly

fast in people's lives,

is the photograph of my mother

on the portrait of my mom.

And

I look at it and I realize it looks
like,

it looks like the camera is not even
there,

because she's looking straight at me.

I don't know how she doesn't see the
camera, but it's as if the camera is

not there.

She looked at me and she said,

I don't want to look oo.

And I was

crying by the gamma, because that was
determining, that she

should look her age.

It was because she always smiled at her
photographs,

that I didn't want her to smile.

I think a great exercise is
photographing people who are close to

you.

And you can start at home with the
people I always say, who are willing to

put up with you, or really don't care
one way or the other.

So

who do you consider the closest

to you in your life?

Try photographing them.

And

before you even look at the photographs

that you've taken, why don't you

take your journal and reflect on what
it meant to

photograph these people that you really
care about?

And

what was challenging

about that situation?