December 1, 2008
All-age gut strategy
Alec Soth
I regret the title of the recent blog entry on advice to 'young photographers.' There shouldn't be an age limit on up-and-comers. I appreciate compilations like 25 Under 25 and PDN 30, but I sometimes worry about the 50-somethings with breakout projects.
The current issue of the excellent FOAM Magazine is also focused on youth. From over 300 submitted portfolios, the editors chose 12 portfolios from photographers age 35 or under (Magnum's Jacob Aue Sobol among them).
Fortunately the entire issue of FOAM isn't limited to young voices. There is an entertaining interview by Sarah Baxter of two Magnum photographers: Thomas Dworzak (36) and Elliott Erwitt (80). This interview adds some depth to the original post on advice for photographers:
Sarah Baxter: Let's start with the obvious: the generation gap.
Elliott Erwitt: I'm older than he is! (laughs) I was born in 1928, in Neuilly, France, but I left when I was two months old, so I don't have much influence from France. I'm an American.
Thomas Dworzak: I was born in 1972 in Kötzting, a small town in Germany. And I lived in Cham, a really small town, for 18 years, always wanting to leave…
SB: When did you decide to become a photographer, how did it happen?
EE: I was on my own from when I was fifteen and a half. And I had to do something to make money, so I took pictures. This was in Hollywood, where I lived. I took pictures of school events, children, neighbors. That sort of thing. That's how I started. It seemed like a good way to be independent. The only steady employment I ever had was in the Army. But not by choice! In the Army I worked in the darkroom. I was working for several magazines at the same time. That's the thing about photographers, we're always working on the back of something else.
TD: I never studied photography. I was twenty-two when I figured what an F Stop was. In my case, I think studying photography would have destroyed me. Maybe for other people it works. My luck was that I wasn't exposed to photography early on. I just saw reality and printed pictures of it. And it was the result of a random decision. I knew I didn't want to be a doctor because I didn't want to study for a long time. At one point, I thought I would become a missionary, in Africa. I come from a deeply Catholic family, growing up in a small town, so there weren't that many options. Now there are so many jobs, people are web designers or whatever. I left Germany for Prague, then to Yugoslavia when the war started. Then I went to Russia for ten years. I traveled a lot.
Thomas Dworzak by Elliott Erwitt
SB: Do you think you need a strategy to pursue your work as a photographer?
EE: I am too old for strategy.
TD: I guess I'm too young for strategy! I'm confused, I don't know, I wish I had a strategy.
EE: You do have a strategy: it's doing whatever you feel like doing.
TD: It's a gut strategy. I trust my guts.
EE: It's the best strategy you could ask for.
TD: The best stuff I've ever done was not the result of a lot of reflection or anything; it was simple guts.
EE: That's what photography is all about.
Published on the Magnum Blog on December 1, 2008
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